Home Renovator gets $5,500 fine.
Mary Hughes’s experience with a home renovation should serve as a warning considering a similar job.
She hired a contractor to raise a ceiling at her Norwich Street West residence. It was a job that would see the demolition and removal of a portion of the structure’s roof. In the course of the work, the contractor discovered some material affixed to the roof and within some walls of the home. It was tested and was found to contain a type of asbestos.
The contractor ceased work on the home but Hughes arranged for it to continue. A complaint regarding asbestos at the house was received by the Ministry of Labour. A ministry investigator attended at the home, discovered a garbage bin with construction debris at the site. The next day the investigator returned, discovered the bin had been moved elsewhere and inquired as to its whereabouts.
Hughes had directed a waste removal company to take away the bin after the inspector’s first visit but told the inspector she wasn’t aware of why the receptacle had been removed.
The inspector determined the cause for the removal and discovered work had been done in the area where the asbestos was first noted.
This month, Hughes plead guilty to two charges laid under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. She was fined $4,000 for not removing asbestos prior to structural alterations being done and $1,500 for providing false information to the inspector.