As the clerks were transferred out, he says he and at least five others were stuck crammed into a tiny 'sardine can' of an office in the basement. Ryan Egger, a 6-foot-3-inch bearded former Water Department foreman, was one of them. Half of the employees in the basement of the main building had been complaining of headaches. 'We've done that.'īut it wasn't just the clerks who had complaints. 'We got recommendations to improve that outside airflow into the building,' Feist says. The city spent tens of thousands of dollars diagnosing the problem, and eventually installed a slew of upgrades to the building's air handling system. The clerks were allowed to work from home and eventually moved to another building on the site. To Marlene Feist, Spokane's director of public works, the city's response to the complaints was proof of how much they care about employee safety. 'Any one of these can cause minor to serious acute and chronic health effects and in combination create an unhealthy work environment,' a report from Spring Environmental, a third-party consultant concluded in April 2021, saying the issue stemmed from a 'direct result of inadequate fresh air flow throughout the facility.' The city brought in experts, who discovered the building didn't just have a dust problem - it had excess carbon dioxide and radon, too.

It got so bad that the whole building was temporarily evacuated a week later - under suspicion that there may have been a gas leak. They could feel the air scratching their throats and coating their mouths. Like the canaries carried into coal mines, the department's clerks were the first to know. 12, 2021, the deadliest month of the COVID pandemic.

'One of the things that we know is the amount of dust in the air causes a significant amount of health problems,' City Council member Jonathan Bingle said at the council meeting.Īnd nobody knows that like those who worked for the Water Department.Īccording to public records recently obtained by the Inlander, Water Department employees worried that the air inside the department's main building near Gonzaga Prep had become poisonous. L ast month, with neighbors complaining about the sheer quantity of dust coming from Spokane's city Water Department complex on North Foothills Drive, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for the department to relocate some of its work. After employees at Spokane’s water department complained about air quality, experts discovered excess carbon dioxide and radon.

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