Town officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $27,000 contract with a Hartford-based company to remove asbestos from water pipes located in the basement of Waveny House.
Bill Oestmann, buildings superintendent with the Department of Public Works, said the town is approaching the work as “a phased project because of the sensitivity and the age of the building and what we’re handling.”
“We don’t want to open up a big can of worms here,” Oestmann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held at Town Hall and via videoconference.
First Selectman Dionna Carlson and Selectmen Steve Karl and Amy Murphy Carroll voted 3-0 in favor of a $27,300 contract with Haz-Pros Inc.
Oestmann said the company will “come in and remove the asbestos piping and around the areas where we’re going to make the transition from all the new piping we’re putting in to all the elaborate piping going up to the bathrooms and what have you,”
Each pipe is about 10 feet long and there are some 200 total feet of piping that require asbestos abatement, he said.
“Once we get all that done and the pipes hooked up, the whole system will actually then be replaced and then we can take our time, sit back and say, ‘OK, how do we want to abate the rest of the basement?’ ” he said. “It buys us some time and we get what we need. We have all new water lines now.”
The abatement is one piece of approximately $200,000 in asbestos removal that officials anticipate at the iconic town-owned mansion in Waveny, officials said.
The selectmen asked for clarification on the total feet of piping now requiring abatement (about 200) and whether the $200,000 budgeted for the overall project includes abatement as well as installation or just abatement (the latter).
Asbestos does not have to be removed from pipes if it goes undisturbed in any new work, officials said.
Oestmann said: “We don’t want to disturb the heating pipe… We don’t want to shake anything. We don’t want to cut things with saws off. We don’t want to make any vibrations. We’re just going nice and easy.”