DNR fines Marion company accused of exposing workers to asbestos

Crestview Acres of Marion, before it was demolished. (Photo courtesy of Google Earth)

A Marion real estate investment company did not take required safety precautions when its workers removed about 20,000 square feet of asbestos-containing floor tile from a former nursing home it demolished last year, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Irish Capital Investments might have saved itself from expending more than $100,000 to properly remove the asbestos, a recent DNR order said. The tiny, fibrous material can suspend in the air and lodge in people’s lungs. It is known to cause cancer and other lung disease.

The company’s “employees were not properly trained to remove asbestos and could have been exposed to asbestos fibers as the floor tiles were not removed properly,” the order said.

The company recently agreed to pay a $7,000 fine to the DNR.

The building it razed was the former Crestview Acres nursing home at 1485 Grand Ave. in Marion. The site had been uninhabited since 2020, according to county records.

The home’s parent company, QHC Facilities, filed for bankruptcy in 2021, and Irish Capital Investments bought the Marion site for $400,000 in June 2023.

About four months later, someone made an unspecified complaint to the DNR about the demolition work, the department order said. A subsequent investigation found that the company had commissioned an asbestos survey of the site that identified about 20,000 square feet of floor tile and more than 10,000 square feet of drywall joint compound that contained the hazardous material.

Surveyors marked the contaminated materials with orange paint. Irish Capital allegedly told its workers to remove those materials, according to DNR, but they were not kept wet until they were gathered and contained, as required by federal regulations.

The DNR issued the company a violation notice in December 2023. The company later pledged to adhere to the requirements and “provided a written protocol indicating how it would avoid asbestos violations in the future,” according to the recent DNR order.

That order — to which Irish Capital signed its approval — acknowledged that the money the company likely saved by exposing its workers to asbestos exceeds the penalty DNR imposed. But it said the penalty “is the appropriate enforcement action,” without elaboration.

The Iowa Occupational Safety and Health Administration did not investigate the situation because it received no notification about it, a spokesperson said. Iowa OSHA has the authority to impose much higher fines: In 2022, a northeast Iowa school district paid $70,000 for potentially exposing its employees to asbestos.

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