Politics & Government

Council Approves $50,000 to Remove Mold, Make Repairs to Lawrence Road Firehouse

Three contracts for mold cleanup, monitoring and associated repairs at the Lawrence Road Fire Co. firehouse on Route 206 were approved by Lawrence Township Council on Tuesday.

Members of Lawrence Township Council, during their meeting Tuesday night (Dec. 6), approved three contracts worth a total of over $50,000 to cover mold remediation and associated repairs at the .

The township had issued two requests for bids for the work at the firehouse in the 1200 block of Lawrence Road (Route 206) but each time no bids were submitted by contractors, according to Township Manager Richard Krawczun.  

“Under the local public contracts law, when a municipality goes out to bid on two occasions and either bids are rejected for price or there are no bids received, or some combination of those two items on those two occasions for the same work, then the municipality is permitted to a negotiate a contract. The one difference in this particular scenario is the contract can only be awarded by the governing body,” Krawczun explained to council.

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Approved Tuesday by council were: a $17,850 contract with Bristol Environmental of Bristol, Pa., for actual remediation of the mold in the firehouse; a $7,780 contract with Environmental Connection of Trenton for environmental monitoring and the filing of required reports with the state; and a $24,815 contact with Golden Crown Contractors of Hamilton for repairs to stucco and sheetrock, waterproofing, priming and painting work at the firehouse.

Work on the mold remediation began Monday, and some of that cleanup had already been completed as of Wednesday.

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Krawczun noted during Tuesday night’s meeting that some work still needs to be done to patch leaks in the roof of the firehouse. He said township public works personnel are working to determine exactly what repairs need to be done to the roof and if that work can be done by the township itself.

Mold was discovered this summer in ceiling tiles in an area of the firehouse hall below where a condensation pan for a roof-mounted air conditioning unit had been leaking, and also in an area of the ceiling and walls in the men’s restroom of the hall, below where holes had been punctured in the roof membrane by landscaping rocks that had been tossed onto the roof and subsequently stepped on over time, .

At that time, the township hired an environmental cleanup company to test the areas to confirm that mold was present. After mold was confirmed and identified as a type known as basidiospores, the township entered into an emergency contract – costing $8,950 – to have the mold removed and areas cleaned.

After those areas were cleaned, other areas suspected to contain mold were identified in the wall of the firehouse hall that runs alongside Pilla Avenue, a janitorial closet near the hall’s main entrance off Marlboro Road, and the wall at the front of the firehouse along Route 206.

Township officials learned of the possible presence of mold in the firehouse after two volunteer firefighters, brothers Ryan and Chris Dlabik, each contracted a life-threatening respiratory infection in June. The brothers, both trustees of the fire company, had examined the wet ceiling tiles in the firehouse hall not long before they became ill.

The brothers subsequently recovered from their illnesses. No definitive link between their infections and the firehouse was ever established, according to both township officials and the volunteer firefighters’ themselves.

“We still don’t know what caused it,” their mother, Linda Dlabik, told council when she appeared before them at their Oct. 4 meeting and asked questions about the status of the mold cleanup. “My kids are still going through issues… They were both in ICU [intensive care] for a week, unable to breathe.”

The firehouse hall has been closed since the mold was discovered and will remain closed until repairs and all appropriate monitoring are completed. Due to that closure, voting for the Nov. 8 general election for Lawrence Township Districts 3, 6, 8 and 11 was .


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