SKC battles high water table, subsequent mold
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PABLO – Salish Kootenai College President Luana Ross announced Thursday during a press conference at the Big Knife building on campus that a high water table from high spring precipitation and record runoff has caused major mold growth in the crawl spaces below SKC’s IT building and a few of its family student housing units.
Upon discovering the issue at the end of August, Ross says SKC staff acted prudently and promptly to help reestablish a safe and healthy campus environment. On campus, the college has 55 units in 22 buildings consisting of duplexes and triplexes.
According to Complete Restoration co-owner Richard Newbury, who is heading the cleanup process, mold needs three things to survive: food, water and lack of ventilation.
In SKC’s case, the buildings have proper ventilation to prevent mold growth, but the water came so fast the vents couldn’t keep up.
“The water came during the end of July, and we probably won’t see it gone until February. Any time the air is stagnant, there is a threat of mold,” Newbury said.
“We just couldn’t stay ahead of the water in those units,” SKC Construction Manager H.E. “Butch” Burland added.
Since the mold was discovered in late August, the college has begun to address the problem, with some buildings already undergoing cleanup efforts.
“It didn’t really hit us hard until July,” SKC Director Walter Fouty said.
“It equates to an underground aquifer that has the tendency to perk up under buildings. On the surface it looks dry; you can’t tell there is a lot of water beneath us.”
SKC hired D. Quinn Construction from Kalispell to test the buildings for mold, and brought in Complete Restoration, also from Kalispell, to remove the mold. According to Richard Newbury of Complete Restoration, the mold they’ve found is “bad mold,” which is made up of hundred of species and is a mutating hybrid that ranges from low toxicity to high toxicity.
“Some (of the molds) are bad, and some are not even in consideration,” Newbury said.
To fix the problem, Newbury said his company has the only patented mold removing product around, called T2 mold and mildew stain remover, which is 100 percent biodegradable.
The product absorbs into the mold, working at the root to remove the undesirable mold completely. Newbury added he hasn’t met a mold T2 couldn’t handle in six years of using the product, so he’s confident it will solve SKC’s mold issue.
“T2 has worked on all molds,” Newbury said. “It’s a cost-effective way to treat it.”
“We will fix this,” he added. “It is fixable.”
Newbury said they have prioritized the buildings depending on severity or the problem, tackling the most-impacted areas first.
He added his company has a system of testing the mold before and after removal to ensure the mildew is eradicated.
“We establish a baseline, then have post treatment where we test it again,” Newbury said. “We have had low spore counts on every other building.”
“We’re taking precaution for our staff and administration,” Fouty said.
So far, workers are making headway on the IT building, dropping from four or five pumps to just one pump.
“This will be a continued process,” Fouty said.
Units with mold will take a couple of hours to a few days to restore, according to Fouty. Students living in these units will be displaced during the duration of their unit’s cleanup, which would mean a few hours or days of displacement to remove the mold.
“The safety of students and staff is important to us,” SKC Chief Financial Officer Audrey Plouffe said. “We’re gonna have to do what we have to do. Safety is critical.”
Current cost projections are at approximately $200,000, or $2,000 a unit. The mold won’t be covered by SKC’s insurance, so the college is seeking disaster relief to help cover expenses.
“It won’t be cheap,” Plouffe said. “But we won’t know exactly how much (it will cost until the job is complete).”
