City Investigates Pumps In Defunct Power Plant

By Gordon HopkinsSeveral city staff and other individuals were inside Fairbury’s now-defunct municipal power plant in August of this year, despite the presences of highly friable asbestos. One of those people was City Councilperson and Chair of Fairbury’s Water Sourcing Committee, Brian Schmidt, who advised FJN via email, “There are 2 (two) high service pumps in the basement (sic)of the plant. These pumps move water from the underground reservoir and push it into our system. We are in the process of developing some sort of plan to either access or relocate the pumps.” The Water Sourcing Committee was formed to locate a lower nitrate source of drinking water for the city. The presence of asbestos has complicated the job of the Water Sourcing Committee because pumps for the city’s wells are inside of the power plant.An Asbestos Inspection Survey was completed on February 17, 2023. That report shows friable (meaning easily crumbled or reduced to a powder that can be inhaled) asbestos throughout the building.Asbestos has been linked to numerous lung diseases, including cancer, and the contamination is such that the NDEE (Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy) requires that no one enter the building without a respirator. All people that entered the power plant wore respirators according to Fairbury Mayor Spencer Brown.While it is currently unknown how much it will cost to clean up the asbestos inside the building, Mayor Brown told FJN, “There are different levels of cleanup, but for a complete remediation of all the asbestos it’s estimated to be almost a million dollars.”A less costly alternative would be cleaning up just the portion of the power plant where the pumps are located and isolating it from the rest of the building. Another alternative is to build an entirely new pump house or relocate the pumps to a new pump house. Thus far, the city has not estimates as to how much a new pump house would cost. In May of this year, the mayor told FJN, “ I believe the pumps inside the power plant are from the 1960’s so they have considerable age on them, so more for reliability sake, we would look at building a new pump house with new pumps and technology.”It should be noted that, even if the city chooses to build a new pump house, the power plant will still need to be cleaned of asbestos at some point.

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