THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 7, 1995 TAG: 9512050114
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
AN OBNOXIOUS SEPTIC ODOR that periodically fouled the air at Lake Taylor Middle School and whose origins eluded detection for several years apparently has been snuffed out.
After two years of detective work, school district maintenance officials traced the foul smell to leaky urinal pipes in a second-floor bathroom and a loosely sealed air duct that circulated septic odors through the building, said Bill Wood, the district's director of school risk management, safety and property.
The discovery couldn't have come at a better time for the school's 900 students and 95 staff members, who were at their breaking point over the nasal assaults that mysteriously came and suddenly disappeared.
The foul odor, which teachers said had gotten progressively worse within the past two years, could be overwhelming, causing headaches and nausea in some people. The smell occurred sporadically and sometimes dissipated within minutes.
The Education Association of Norfolk last month handed the School Board a petition signed by 69 Lake Taylor staffers calling for the board to ``immediately expend extraordinary resources to eliminate the odor . . .''
The petition stated that the odor ``has created an unbearable learning environment for pupils and an equally unbearable working environment for employees. . . .''
Shirley George, president of the association, said she was told the problem, which first occurred five years ago, has been solved but she is not convinced. George, who worked at Lake Taylor for six years, said the odor often recurred after long absences.
``We're taking a wait-and-see attitude,'' she said. ``Initially it was just an annoyance, then it got to the point that the staff was afraid - `Was this going to impair my health?' ''
Administration officials said air samples were taken when complaints were made and that the odor never posed a health risk. They acknowledged, though, that some people are more sensitive to odors and could have a ``psychosomatic'' response to the sewer-gas smell.
Repairs were made about six weeks ago, Wood said, and since then there haven't been any complaints.
``We've spent a significant amount of money in staff time to identify the problem. It took longer than I had hoped, but I think we've got it solved,'' Wood said Monday.
Wood could not say how much money was spent over the years trying to locate the problem. All of the repair work was done by school district maintenance officials, he said.
Wood attributed the difficulty in tracing the odor to a ``bizarre'' set of circumstances that triggered the smell.
The urinal pipes had been leaking liquid waste into a crawl space of the ceiling each time they were flushed, he said. When the bathroom door was opened, a vacuum was created that sucked the odor into the building's mechanical room through a loosely sealed air duct installed in a cinderblock wall. From there, the odor was picked up in the building's ventilation system and circulated throughout the school, Wood said.
When the odor wafted through the school, the smell was ``horrible,'' George said. ``It was like working on top of a septic tank. It is just the foulest odor.''
Often, the odor would dissipate in the few minutes it took maintenance workers to respond to complaints, making it nearly impossible to trace the odor, Wood said.
Workers finally discovered the problem after detecting a faint odor while searching in the ceiling's crawl space, Wood said.
``This was a mechanical failure and it was a multi-faceted problem,'' Wood said. ``All the ingredients had to be available for the odors to arise. I've been working on this problem for a couple of years.'' by CNB