Aliyya Swaby Photo
206 Wallace St., the shut down site.
The principal of a Wallace Street construction site is contesting $65,000 in federal fines levied for allegedly failing to protect workers from asbestos exposure.
In response to an employee complaint, Occupational Health & Safety Administration (OSHA) sent inspectors last November to visit 206 Wallace St., a former automotive warehouse, and hit owner Rakaj Companies this summer with a list of 17 violations of proper asbestos management.
Aleks Rakaj is affiliated with the property in at least three ways, as the member of CT Repair Services, LLC located at 206 Wallace St., as principal of 206 Wallace Street LLC, and as a member of Arka Group LLC located at 220 Wallace St., an extension of the property. Rakaj also owns Federal Oil, LLC in Seymour.
Rakaj did not respond to repeated requests for comment from the Independent.
According to the OSHA record, the agency issued 17 “serious” violations May 9, to be abated by May 13. Instead, Rakaj contested the violations June 8. The matter is now in court.
Sawco Associates bought the property from Yale University in 2009 for $1,250,000, before selling it in 2015 for $285,000 to 206 Wallace Street LLC on Nov. 12, 2015, according to land records. An appraisal of the property shows the land at 86,533 square feet, with a building area of 42,995 square feet — used as an industrial warehouse in a light industry zoning district.
New Haven’s health department officials got a call about suspicious activity in an empty building, and Brian Wnek, senior sanitarian, headed over on November 20, 2015. When officials went through the front door, the crew working on the project went through the back door, said Paul Kowalski, who directs the city’s environmental health program. Then, Wnek called the feds.
The investigation was turned over to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state Department of Health Asbestos Program and OSHA, and the work was shut down.
The 17 violations cover a number of alleged failures to protect employees’ health, including:
• Failing to provide lunch areas at the work site with safe concentrations of asbestos in the air.
• Failing to regularly monitor the concentration of asbestos in the air.
• Failing to use vacuum cleaners equipped with HEPA filters to collect all dust that may contain asbestos material.
• Failing to wet the site to decrease employee exposure to asbestos during cleanup, removal, handling and cutting.
• Failing to provide employees with respirators to breathe in a contaminated area.
• Failing to provide employees with shower areas to decontaminate themselves after exposure to asbestos.
This is happens all too often. Glad someone spoke up and to someone who was willing to listen.
But confusion remains. The incident was on Nov. 20, 2015 and it took OSHA until May 2016 to cite them, another month for them to contest, and another three months after that to report on it NHI?