Re: County Law books to be cleaned of mold (Athens, Texas)

[Guest guest]

Get the word out! A $15 humidity meter could have prevented this

loss of $50,000 of books, building damage, and I bet several sick

people. When are we going to focus on prevention instead of after the

fact damage to people and property?

> http://www.athensreview.com/display/inn_news/news15.txt

>

> August 1, 2002

>

> Law books to be cleaned of mold

> By Stone

>

> County officials haven't been able to remove the mold from the law

library,

> so they've decided to move the law library from the mold.

>

> The commissioners court voted unanimously Monday morning to

authorize County

> Judge Aubrey to negotiate a contract with Lake Area

Restoration, a

> Kemp-based company that specializes in mold decontamination.

>

> For the cost of $3 a book, Lake Area Restoration has agreed to

clean the

> mold off the books in the law library and store them until the

county needs

> them back. The county has between 3,000 and 3,500 law books, said

, so

> the cost will be around $10,000.

>

> The books will be cleaned with a filtered vacuum and treated with a

biocide

> wipe. They will then be moved from the library to a storage

facility owned

> by Lake Area Restoration, where they will be re-vacuumed and

treated with

> biocide again, stored in a low-humidity environment and inspected

before

> being brought back to the county. Lake Area Restoration's proposal

only

> includes storing the books for a month.

>

> The cost of having the books cleaned is less expensive than

spending the

> money to replace them a second time, pointed out. The

presence of mold

> prompted the disposal of law books last year, at a replacement cost

of

> $28,000. Those same books are now infected.

>

> The county has recently had an assessment of the mold issue done

and is

> waiting on the results. But no matter what the results of the

testing, it

> will still be awhile before the problem is fixed, said .

>

> " We need to do something (with the books) in the interim until we

can get

> the humidity removed from the library, " said . " This is where

the mold

> problems and the humidity problems are the worst. "

>