Air quality to be tested at Goshen Police and Courts building to check for contamination

There are concerns about air quality in a government-owned building. Tests will now be done at the Goshen Police and Courts building.

The situation developed several years back.

A building that now houses a motorcycle shop was a dry cleaners. A problem developed when a plume of contamination was found under the building. Steps were taken to deal with it at the site.

But the police department sits next to the former dry cleaners location.

“There's been some clean-up efforts, some monitoring effort for that situation over the years,” said Mayor Jeremy Stutsman, Goshen (D). “We just want to do our due diligence just to make sure that that plume is not going to the south to the building right next door, which is our police department.”

As a result, the city is putting out bids to test the air quality in the building. It will be selecting a contractor soon to conduct what's known as “vapor testing.”

“They are going to put equipment inside the building, especially in the basement of the building, and actually sample the air that's in the building," said Stutsman. "That will tell them if there's further investigations that we need to do to figure out what's going on, if anything at all is going on."

Officials want to make sure nothing is being overlooked.

“Trying to make sure that our officers and everybody that spends time in that building, you know, are in a healthy situation,” said Stutsman.

The city wants to err on the side of caution. If the air quality tests turn up anything, appropriate action will be taken; if not, it will give the city some peace of mind.

“But if we find any contamination, we will be letting other surrounding business owners know too that maybe they should check their buildings,” said Stutsman. “But we don't think that is going to be the case. We're just making sure that nothing’s changing and heading to the south, which it wasn't before, but we just want to make sure.”

Stutsman says it will take about 10 days to complete the vapor testing and then about 15 days to get a final report back.