By Adam Studzinski
BLOOMIGNTON – The City of Bloomington has temporarily shut down the Lincoln Leisure Center after finding asbestos in a boiler room.
Mayor Tari Renner explained the asbestos was discovered while staff was performing maintenance in the room Tuesday morning.
“The city acted quickly and decisively to address this situation the moment that we became aware of it. We are now in the process of gathering evidence to decide how to remediate the situation,” said Renner. “Let me also make clear that there is no reason to believe that this is serious.”
Tim Kiefer with Farnsworth Group, which is consulting the city on the issue, said considering the age of the building, this is not an uncommon thing to happen.
“There is no evidence to support that there has been widespread contamination throughout the facility, but there is additional evaluation going on to confirm,” Kiefer said.
The city will have crews in the building next week to begin the abatement of the asbestos, but is not sure how long full removal will take. In the meantime, Assistant Parks and Recreation Director Eric Veal said the city is working to find alternate locations for the various programs normally held at the center.
“Anything where we can pick up the program supplies and take it to another location, and have the space and have the ability, which I do believe we will have, we will do that,” Veal said.
Bloomington is also not yet sure what the cost of removing the material will be.
Adam Studzinski can be reached at adam.studzinski@cumulus.com.
Joe Ragusa contributed to this report and can be reached at joe.ragusa@cumulus.com.
