Delta mayor wants answers on Sungod rot and mold

NORTH DELTA — Delta municipal staff insist that swimmers and gym users at North Delta’s Sungod Recreation Centre are not in any danger from black mold and rot in a wall on the building’s roof.

Global News aired video footage Wednesday night that showed a rather gross mold problem on the outside wall of a mechanical room some thirty feet above the pool. A building inspector interviewed by the television news crew advised that the centre should be shut down so at least a preliminary test can be done.

“Oh my god, look at that,” Delta Mayor Lois Jackson exclaimed, upon viewing the footage.

“I’m absolutely shocked.”

But Ken Kuntz, Delta’s director of parks, recreation and culture, said pool and gym patrons should not worry. “I can assure you you’re safe,” he said.

Greg Scott, Delta’s deputy director of development, said the mold is on the outside of the building, on a parapet wall well above the roofline.

He said siding covers the mold and rot, revealed during siding repair done last August. It’s on the old part of the building, not the newer part renovated in 2002 for $10.2 million.

Somewhere there was a leak in the building’s envelope, Scott said. Because it was late in the year to replace the parapet, he said, the work was postponed to this spring. “We’re just looking at the weather.”

He said that in the meantime, there are no structural or health risk worries. The municipality has not conducted recent air quality tests at the pool, he conceded, but it is considering doing so “maybe to alleviate” any concerns.

“It is contained,” he said of the rot and mold.

This year has been Delta parks and recreation department’s annus horribilis, with part of the Ladner Leisure Centre’s stucco façade collapsing last month, resulting in the building being evacuated and closed for repair, and now this.

Scott said what happened in Ladner, and this situation at Sungod, is a coincidence.

“They’re so unrelated,” he said.

Jackson noted that the portion of Sungod’s pool affected appears to be part of the original building, built some 38 years ago. She’s wondering now if any other municipal recreation centres built in the Lower Mainland in the 1970s and 1980s are experiencing the same, yet still hidden, problems.

“I’m gonna have to look into this,” she said of Sungod’s rot and mold. “You can rest assured I’ll be finding out and getting a report right away.

“Oh my gosh, what next?”

tzytaruk@thenownewspaper.com