By the time Monterey harbor staff and Monterey police officers ordered everyone off of Del Monte Beach and out of the water Monday afternoon around 4pm, asbestos-contaminated water had been running toward Monterey Bay for two days.
It was thanks to a firefighter driving by the building at 787 Munras Ave., conspicuously wrapped in a white tarp during asbestos remediation work, who noticed water rushing down the driveway and stopped to ask about it that an investigation began, leading to a stop-work order and the beach closure. Monterey Public Works officials determined the contaminated water had indeed flowed out the storm drain at the beach, adjacent to Wharf 2.
Randy McMurray, hazardous materials management services program supervisor in the Monterey County Environmental Health Bureau, says what’s supposed to happen in projects like this is that asbestos is contained onsite, in water to keep it from becoming airborne, before it is disposed of as hazardous waste. In this case, McMurray says, the storage container was leaking, and a pump outside for freshwater was also leaking, “which increased the volume, and probably the distance it was able to travel,” McMurray says.
Contractor Alliance Environmental Group LLC, the contractor doing the asbestos work, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The building is owned by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, which is converting the old offices into much-needed residential space for students in the middle of downtown Monterey.
“Middlebury and its development partner take matters of this nature extremely seriously,” MIIS says in a statement. “The contractor and city and county authorities are working to bring this to a prompt and appropriate resolution.”
The city of Monterey red-tagged the building with a stop work order on Monday, pending the completion of a new work plan. McMurray says the wet asbestos material has been moved into a container that is not leaking.
Meanwhile, Del Monte Beach, from the wharf to Window on the Bay, will remain closed for several days. Health officials collected water samples on Tuesday, but the in-house lab doesn’t have the ability to test for asbestos, so they sent the material out for testing, and don’t expect results before Friday.
The primary health concerns with asbestos are inhalation into the lungs; McMurray says it’s not clear whether there could be harm to marine life or people from coming into contact with wet asbestos.
Any penalties for Alliance Environmental Group remain TBD by various jurisdictions, but the Environmental Health Bureau will bill the company their $168/hour fee for time spent responding to the leak.
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