State Will Help Tackle School’S Mold Problem Kettle Falls To Get Up To $68,000 For Initial Repairs, Planning For Final Solution

Wed., Feb. 24, 1999

By John Craig johnc@spokesman.com

School officials here learned this week the state will help them solve a major mold problem at Kettle Falls High School.

Superintendent Kurt Matter said the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction authorized up to $68,000 to make short-term repairs and plan a long-term solution for toxic mold that has been growing inside walls since the school opened in 1983.

In other good news, Matter said, tests show none of the mold is getting into the air inside the school. Regular air monitoring will continue, but the school won’t have to be closed as feared.

School officials thought they corrected the mold problem with more than $160,000 worth of repairs in 1990, but more mold was found in December when workers tore a wall open to fix damage from a broken sprinkler pipe. The mold had been growing a long time, and more of it was found inside walls in other parts of the building.

Matter said the emergency state funding will pay for continued air monitoring and temporary repairs this summer when the building is empty. It also will pay for an engineering study to find a permanent solution.

“Without this help from the state, we’d really just be shooting in the dark,” Matter said. “I kind of feel we went down that road before. This is going to give us the information we need.”

Matter said he hopes to have enough information by summer to ensure that “even the short-term fix will tie into the long-term goal. I don’t want to put money into something that we have to do over again.”

The problem apparently is caused by a design that places rain gutters directly on top of the building’s outer walls, and by use of waterproof artificial stucco that prevents water from escaping once it gets inside the walls.

Construction standards imposed by the state two decades ago also may be a factor, Matter believes.

“There were a lot of public buildings that were built in that time period that have similar problems,” Matter said. “When they came out with the energy-efficiency regulations in the late ‘70s to seal up these buildings, that caused a lot of the problems that we are seeing.

“My own personal opinion is that school buildings should be using time-tested materials, and block and brick come to my mind.”

Matter said he hopes state legislators have come to the same conclusion and will help Kettle Falls and other districts fix their moldy buildings.

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