For the second time in two weeks, the County Office Building was closed Tuesday—and employees sent home—because of a fuel oil leak.
The odor from the spill is especially noticeable on the third floor, Board of Supervisors chair Bill Federice said Tuesday, “but we don’t want to keep dumping employees.
“If we get into a situation tomorrow [Wednesday], individual employees especially impacted will need to negotiate with their department heads.”
Building & Grounds Committee chair Steve Weinhofer was at the County Office Building Tuesday, assessing the situation, Mr. Federice told members of the Agricuture Committee, meeting at Emergency Management, “but man, oil going through the floor? And then how does it get into the duct work and the (ceiling) tiles?”
Mr. Federice said the first problem with the HVAC system happened last Monday when a leak in the “penthouse,” spilled about five gallons of fuel oil onto the floor.
The spill was quickly contained, he said, but “you could smell it, very faintly, and being prudent, we got everyone out of the building.”
The county called in the contractor, Trojan, “and I guess they thought they had it fixed,” he said.
But Friday, when someone was back working on the system, one of the environmental alarms went off.
The technician shut the system off, then back on—but Tuesday, the smell was back on the third floor, Mr. Federice said, and an investigation revealed another fuel oil spill on the cement floor of the penthouse--but this time it had infiltrated the duct work and dripped through the ceiling tiles below.
“Again we emptied the building,” Mr. Federice said—though that’s not something they can or want to keep doing.
“We’re not talking tons of oil,” he said, “but we need to find out what’s going on.”