Dust clouds construction of new parking garage downtown
All winter, the residents of Telephone Hill watched a giant chunk being blasted out of the downtown hill on which they live - that is, when it's not too dusty to see.
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Residents say the dust has been a major nuisance and some worry it also poses a health risk. The city took steps to respond over the past months but did not anticipate the problem, and is now scrambling to answer their concerns.
In March, Telephone Hill resident Peggy Pijan said, a 1-year-old collie got construction dust in her eyes. She scratched and scratched, and her eyes inflamed and swelled shut. The emergency vet bill was $379 and the dog is now fine.
Southeast Earthmovers, the Sitka-based contractor doing the blasting, did not want to pay, but its insurance company settled Pijan's claim.
"It was so bad that the guy at the drill rig, he would literally disappear, standing there," Pijan said of the dust. "It would be like somebody in one of these snow whiteouts."
Across the street from Pijan, Wayne and Lois Ward's cat was pumping out mucus, stopped eating and ended up at the vet's office. They wonder whether the dust was to blame, and are considering asking the insurance company to pay their vet bill, too. Wayne Ward said he and his wife have been coughing on the dust for months.
"I've just been resigned to my fate, in a way," he said.
Marta Lastufka, like other Telephone Hill residents, had been expecting a project like this for a long time. The plan for a Capitol Complex in the area dates back to the early 1980s. She, like many others, had been worried about the blasting. But the blasting turned out to be fine - the explosions were actually fun for her child. It was the dust that was the trouble.
When the drill rig was right under her house, Marta Lastufka's nose began bleeding two or three times a day, and her husband was getting headaches. They could taste the dust. It was all over everything, and still is. When they complained, the workers responded quickly, putting plastic over the house's windows and changing an air filter on a drill rig that was spewing dust. (They covered the Wards' windows, too.) That helped a lot, but the dust continued, she said.
Lastufka doesn't know what caused the nosebleeds, and her doctor said she was OK. But now that neighbors raised the specter of silicosis, a respiratory problem caused by breathing silica dust, she wonders whether the dust was the trigger.
The residents took further action this month. Pijan sent an e-mail to friends accusing the city of not dealing with the dust adequately, among other issues with the project. The e-mail was widely forwarded.
Since the first complaints of dust, and more concertedly since Pijan's e-mail, city engineering director Rorie Watt has spent hours responding to the dust issue, including assessing its risk.
"We've got a duty to figure it out, regardless of whether we think it's real or not," Watt said.
Damp dust doesn't fly, and the workers are now wetting what they drill. But in the winter, doing so would have dangerously iced over the site, said the contractor, Southeast Earthmovers owner Jon McGraw.
Pijan said, in her e-mail, that she thought the city had scheduled the project for the winter to avoid tourist season. McGraw thought that, too. Considering the dust, Pijan equated such scheduling with putting tourists above Telephone Hill residents. But Watt said the project simply started once all permits were obtained.
"We didn't particularly choose the winter," Watt said. "Nor did we predict that dust was going to be as much of a problem as it was. I think that honestly did catch us off guard."
After her dog got sick, Pijan began investigating the dust and became more worried. She learned of silicosis, an occupational health risk to construction workers. It can take years to appear.
Silica is a common mineral. Typical beach sand, which is mostly silica, is no threat, but overexposure to crystalline silica dust can scar the lungs and limit their ability to get oxygen from the air. Pijan does not pretend to be an expert but worries that she and her neighbors, as well as the workers, may be at risk.
Watt hired an environmental contractor this week to take a dust sample from the rock and send it to San Diego for tests, which will determine whether it contains silica. Results are expected next week.
Watt also called public health experts. Lori Verbrugge, environmental public health program manager for the state, wrote Watt that it was good he sent samples, since he didn't know whether the rock contains silica. But she also assured him that short-term exposure to ambient dust does not put people at risk of developing silicosis.
Watt also called back an expert in urban blasting who had consulted on the project about the equipment and dust-control practices at the project. He learned that Southeast Earthmovers' rig is "state of the art for dust control in the industry."
"I haven't found anything that makes me think there's any (health) risk," he said.
But some Telephone Hill residents, even those who didn't complain, said this recent flurry of response is rather late.
"It's just surprising to me that they didn't do it until Peggy (Pijan) got on the horn," said Lastufka. "I would just hope that they'd be watching out for us a little bit more."
"They could have responded sooner, and they probably could have been a little more all-inclusive in taking care of the houses," said Wayne Ward.
For McGraw, the contractor, the dust issue has required an undue amount of time, money and aggravation. And the talk of negligence, when he has never been cited for wrongdoing, clouded over a tricky urban project he's quite proud of.
"We took out (20,000) yards right out of the middle of downtown, and it came out really well, and you have to sit here and fight about this on a daily basis," he said.
McGraw said he feels the hill residents, particularly Pijan, just want to stop the project, or get money out of the city.
"I don't think the fight's over yet," he said.
But Pijan and other residents said this isn't about retribution, money or stopping the project.
"What we've been about is, how can we bring this to somebody's attention, who's supposed to be a public servant, and say, 'Hey, this is a problem, we'll change the way we do things to take care that this doesn't happen again'," Pijan said.
• Contact reporter Kate Golden at 523-2276 or kate.golden@juneauempire.com.