Posted by toxsickniagara on 3/18/10

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http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n11/cover_story

Cover Story What's Black & Blue and All Covered Up?
by Buck Quigley

Sick cops get brush off from the city
When some police officers were talking among themselves at
Buffalo’s D District last year, conversation turned to the
number of people getting sick at work. Soon, they started
ticking off names of co-workers who’d become ill with
things ranging from bronchitis to cancer. They quickly
arrived at more than a dozen names—roughly 10 percent of
the people who worked there.

It seemed like a lot of people. So many, in fact, that a
few of the officers began to suspect that it might have
something to do with their place of work. For years, the D,
or Delta, District was housed in a single-story brick
building at 669 Hertel Avenue, just west of Elmwood. Might
those discolored ceiling tiles be a telltale sign of
something more sinister than condensation or a leaky roof?
What about that water in the basement that at times could
reach a depth of a few feet?

On January 14, an anonymous officer filed a complaint
through the Public Employee Safety and Health Bureau (PESH)
of the New York State Department of Labor, asking the
agency to look into possible problems at the worksite. (The
complaint forms include a section for the filer to request
that his or her identity be withheld from his or her
employer, due to the fact that reprisal from the boss is a
real threat whistleblowers face.)

In response, the City of Buffalo contacted Leader
Professional Services, Inc., a company the city keeps on
retainer to perform environmental assessments. On January
29, David Hornung in the city’s Division of Public Works
spoke on the phone with Keith Keller of Leader, and they
ironed out the scope of the testing—which locations in the
building were to be tested, and what they would be testing
for.

On February 1, Leader submitted its proposal/contract. On
February 9, Keller arrived at the station and did a walk-
through with Hornung to identify sampling locations. He
then began the testing, but not before noting that another
contractor, Indoor Air Pro, was there also. Indoor Air Pro
had been cleaning out the air ducts—before the air quality
samples were taken.

“What happened was we filed a complaint with the city about
the condition of the building,” says Lt. Sean O’Brien, who
chairs the Health and Safety Committee of the Buffalo
Police Benevolent Association. “And what they immediately
did was hire Indoor Air Professionals to go out and clean
the ducts. Indoor Air are the ones who told them: ‘You’ve
got a problem here with mold.’ The air vents were totally
clogged.”

On Friday, February 12, based on preliminary findings,
officers at D District were told they were being moved out
of the building. “The main issues were mold in the walls
and ceiling,”O’Brien says. “They said the testing would
take two to four weeks. Then I was told by city attorney
Diane O’Gorman that all information pertaining to D
District on the subject of mold would not be subject to
Freedom of Information legislation because it’s a pending
investigation.”

Independent (and unauthorized) testing
Because there’s no great trust between the police union and
the Brown administration, the PBA contacted Great Lakes
Environmental & Safety Consultants, Inc., and scheduled a
study of their own to take place in the building at 11am on
February 24. The PBA sent a letter to interim police
commissioner Daniel Derenda notifying him of this
appointment, and received a two-line fax back on the same
day from the city’s interim corporation counsel, David
Rodriguez. It read: “The City is still awaiting final
reports on tests conducted at the above listed sight. We
are not in a position to allow access to the subject
premises in light of our ongoing investigation and testing.
Please submit all future requests for access to this
office.”

On February 24, the PBA sent an official notice to the
mayor, copying Rodriguez, Derenda, and the New York State
Department of Labor, demanding full reports on the testing
being done at 669 Hertel, citing OSHA rules. They also
commenced court action to fight the city’s denial of access
to the facility.

In the meantime, D District officers were moved to a
temporary facility in University Heights, three miles
across town.

But, perhaps unbeknownst to City Hall, some of the
displaced cops returned to the Hertel Avenue building to
perform some environmental testing of their own. An
Artvoice source says that some officers went in and
collected samples directly from places where the mold was
most obvious, and sent the samples off to labs in Canada,
Florida, and Texas. The results came back in 48 to 72
hours, and the samples tested at all three labs came back
indicating lots and lots of black mold.

The tests were done without permission, and those involved
are concerned about retaliation from their superiors. Since
then, the city has changed the locks on the doors at the
precinct and deactivated the swipe cards officers use to
get in.

The city says the building is safe
Last Friday, March 12, a press conference was called in
City Hall to announce the “final air quality report on D
District.” In essence, the two-page synopsis said there was
mold—including Stachybotrys or “black mold,” which can
cause severe health problems—but that there was nothing to
worry about. City officials said that the D District would
be moved over to 205 Esser in Riverside, into space rented
from the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo for $4,500 a month in
All Saints Roman Catholic Church Society. The cops will
share space with the Boys & Girls Club and other parish
organizations.

The city has budgeted $300,000 for testing and remediation
of the D District building. The rent to the diocese is
extra.

Although the full study wasn’t immediately released to the
media, mayoral spokesman Peter Cutler indicated that a copy
had been sent to the PBA. Rodriguez said that the law
department was deciding whether or not the information
could be released to the media, pursuant to FOIL. Perhaps
by Monday, reporters were told, they would have an answer
to that. Mayor Byron Brown also said the PBA was welcome to
conduct their own environmental tests, and the following
Monday they city made the full study public.

At the press conference I asked if the air vents had been
cleaned prior to testing. At first I was told no. But by
the time I got back to the office, an email had arrived
from Cutler indicating that they were, but that “it
wouldn’t make any difference because (1) the air is drawn
into the building, not out; and (2) the subsequent testing
by Leader indicated that there was no evidence of harmful
airborne materials from the areas they tested.” I was told
to call Keith Keller at Leader if I had further questions.

I did. Keller did not explain why the direction the air is
drawn through the filters has any bearing on the question
of whether cleaning the ducts and replacing the filters
might have affected the results of an air quality test. But
he helped fill in some blanks in the timeline. He also
pointed me toward Indoor Air Pro, the company that cleaned
out the vents. When I called out to their Lancaster office,
CEO David Gordon told me that the city told him not to talk
to the press. “We’ve been specifically asked not to talk to
the media,” he said. He gave me the name and phone number
of Joe Schollard, Principal Chief Stationary Engineer with
the city, who would be handling all such inquiries.

I called Schollard and left a message, asking him to call
me regarding the D District. He didn’t call back, but when
I called back the next day, he had a ready response to my
inquiry. “Actually, they’ve put it with the law department
now. It’s with David Rodriguez. So you have to talk to
him,” he said.

Rodriguez has not returned phone calls.

On Wednesday morning, I spoke to North District Councilman
Joe Golombek, who was instrumental in lining up the lease
for the precinct at All Saints. I told him what I’d
learned, and pointed out that the police are rightfully
ticked off that this whole thing has been handled in a
clandestine way. Golombek called back and explained that he
was able to reach Cutler, and that the law department was
preparing to send papers over to the PBA formalizing an
agreement to allow them their own independent testing of
the property.

There is some reason to think that all of the tests run so
far may ultimately be inconclusive. According to a client
service representative at Galson Laboratories, where Leader
sent some of the D District air samples for testing, it’s
not a good idea to clean the air ducts before you test: “I
wouldn’t touch a thing, because you want to get a
representation of the way conditions were before anything
was done,” a representative told me. “In my opinion, if you
want to get a snapshot of what’s occurring within an office
building, just sample the way it is.”

As a result of cleaning out the air vents and changing the
air filters before the air quailty tests were performed,
the city may have ruined any chance of determining
precisely what the officers had been exposed to.

Sadly we should also note the passing of Police Officer
David Sadlocha, on Tuesday, March 16. Sadlocha, 53 years
old, had been a longtime cop at D District who’d been
battling cancer in recent years. He went into the hospital
last week, developed pneumonia, and died.

Read more:
http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n11/cover_story#SlideFrame_0#ix
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