School Board Fined for Asbestos Violations

January 18, 2007 - The Jersey Journal reports that the Bayonne (NJ) School District and a contractor who was hired by the school district have been fined $6,000 for violations of the New Jersey Asbestos Hazard Abatement Code.  The fine is the result of illegal removal of asbestos from a pipe during construction of an addition to the district’s Walter Robinson School last summer. The contractor involved in the alleged asbestos removal has denied that they had anything to do with the project.

According to the newspaper account, the Bayonne school district was fined $4,500 for failing to apply for a permit before it hired Nova, failing to have the asbestos removal work supervised by an asbestos safety control monitoring company, and failing to notify the building's occupants in writing 20 business days before work began.

The Department of Community Affairs also fined Nova $1,500 for failing to provide for proper monitoring of the asbestos removal, failing to provide a certified asbestos safety technician at the work site and for failing to conduct mandated air sampling during the removal of friable asbestos from the work site.

Nova denies all wrongdoing, releasing a statement which stresses that they never received a permit for the work and therefore never commenced with the asbestos removal.

"Nova never performed any work at Robinson School, had no request to do any work there, had no proposal for any work to be done there, has no invoices, has received no payment, has no record of any of its employees doing work there," says Nova’s attorney, Ron Steinvurzel.

The asbestos has since been properly removed by a licensed contractor.