(Host) Work is scheduled to begin soon on a new state office building in Bennington.
The $16.5 million dollar project includes the demolition of most of the so-called ‘sick" building. The structure was abandoned after workers there developed health problems.
VPR’s Susan Keese has the story.
(Keese) The link between the workers’ illnesses and the building was never definitively proved. But environmental investigators found air circulation problems, and bacteria in the old building’s air conditioning system.
State Buildings Commissioner Gerry Myers says the new building will be heated and cooled geothermally.
(Myers) "We’ve actually looked at geothermal for two of our buildings in St. Albans and Middlesex and the geothermal conditions in the ground just didn’t allow us to do it in a cost-effective manner."
(Keese) But Myers says Bennington has the two necessary ingredients to make geothermal work: There’s a water supply less than two feet deep under the state building property – and a relatively constant year-round ground water temperature.
(Myers) "And it’s stable in Bennington, somewhere between 50 and 60 degrees. It takes a lot less energy to get that water up to a place where it’s actually doing the heating in the winter and then bringing it back down to where we can use it for cooling in the summer. So it is that stable temperature of that groundwater that allows us to be very very efficient and very very clean."
(Host) The project involves tearing down all of the original sprawling flat-roofed building, built in 1978. An addition built in 1992 will remain as part of the new, three story structure.
State office workers were removed from the building in 2007, after pressuring state officials about health problems there: six employees were diagnosed with a disease called sarcoidosis and many more complained of respiratory problems.
Most of Bennington’s state offices and courts are currently housed in modular units on the property.
Myers says the new building should be ready for occupancy in the spring of 2012.
For VPR News, I’m Susan Keese.