The Daily News yesterday reported allegations that a PHA work crew sent to fix a leak in Wright's apartment last September ripped asbestos insulation off the pipes and tossed it on the floor in her basement and kitchen.
Carpenter Robert Smith and PHA senior maintenance aide Rudy Barbosa told the Daily News that a PHA foreman ordered them to dump the asbestos debris into a hole in the kitchen wall, which had been opened to expose the pipes.
Smith and Barbosa alleged that the way asbestos was handled in Wright's apartment was routine at the Hill Creek site - and illegal. Last week, PHA spokesman David Tillman called the allegations by Smith and Barbosa "crazy" and "flat-out not true."
Last night, Tillman released a statement saying that PHA will remove the asbestos from Wright's apartment and "is investigating whether there were any improper actions by PHA employees. . ."
Meanwhile, more than a dozen former and current PHA workers called the Daily News yesterday and said that what unfolded in Wright's apartment was not unique to Hill Creek.
The PHA workers claimed that supervisors routinely ordered them to remove asbestos tiles and pipe insulation at buildings across the city. After removing asbestos pipe insulation, the workers often discarded the debris inside walls or tossed it into PHA dumpsters. Those who refused to do the job got fired, the workers alleged.
"This has been going on for years at PHA," said John Dougherty, who worked as a PHA maintenance electrician from 2000 to 2008. "This is the quote of PHA: 'You either do it or you're fired. You want a job, you do it.' It's the slogan of PHA."
Federal and local laws mandate that only trained, licensed contractors may remove asbestos from public buildings, and require asbestos debris to be disposed of in sealed bags, then trucked to a special landfill.
