The Environmental Protection Agency is investigating the Stevens Mill project, although what prompted the investigation is unclear.

Chinburg Properties, the company behind the remodel of the long-shuttered mill complex, says they would fully cooperate with the EPA. Senior Development Manager Paul Goodwin wrote that the company believes “the alleged incident to be a fabrication from a disgruntled former employee who was briefly employed.”

The ambitious project is set to feature 157 apartments and 27,000 square feet of retail space, some of which is already occupied by a pair of local breweries. The so-called disgruntled former employee, Al Magnifico, said he did not contact the EPA. Instead, Magnifico said EPA officials visited his home after he was fired from the project.

“They were concerned about the lead paint in the place and the asbestos that was stripped off the roof,” Magnifico said. “They had no containment, so it was going everywhere, in the parking lot, the rivers in the backside of the building. It was pretty windy out there, too.”

The EPA confirmed they are investigating, but did not provide further details, including the type or level of contamination.

Magnifico was initially fired from Blanc Building & Masonry while working on the project. He said it was due to pointing out safety concerns, including rotting beams, overloaded support columns and a December incident where rainwater leaked through the roof and damaged drywall.

“There were a lot of structural issues,” Magnifico said. “They said they couldn’t fix it because it costs a lot of money. They just didn’t want to fix anything.”

Magnifico said some rafters in one of the buildings were rotten, but not initially visible because they were behind masonry. It was not until that masonry was removed that the condition of the beams was visible.

He also expressed concern regarding the flow of the Winnipesaukee River through a portion of the building complex.

“There was constant water flowing back into the Winnipesaukee,” Magnifico said. “When they opened the floor up and digging into there, it all just got stirred up and flowed back into the river.”

After being fired from the masonry company, Magnifico took an on-call property management position with one of Chinburg’s other buildings adjacent to the project.

Magnifico “did not work for us in the capacity of working on the Stevens Mill. Sometime while he was on-site and in good graces with his employer and us, our property manager hired him to be an on-call person to respond if there were alarms, lockouts or something like that,” explained Eric Chinburg, chief executive officer. Magnifico lives nearby that property.

Magnifico was fired from that role after repeatedly reaching out to Chinburg directly about his previously raised concerns.

“I immediately got back to him and said, ‘We’ll share it with the team,’” said Chinburg. “I did talk to our team, our project supervisor, our project managers, and we were going to contact the building inspector.” Chinburg said that, after checking in with the team, they felt confident in the work done so far.

Magnifico emailed Chinburg again, insisting that some issues may have been missed by the team.

“I understand that this project is way over budget, everyone is feeling the effects of the economy, me more than others right now since Dave managed to get me fired for disclosing a confidential text message, but being over budget can’t interfere with making sure people have a safe place to live,” Magnifico wrote. “If these things aren’t addressed I feel like I’m going to have to make sure an outside authority makes sure they are or at least looked at and signed off on by a non biased third party.”

Magnifico was fired from his on-call position in response to this email. He then contacted the building inspector. In an interview, Magnifico said he never heard back from the building inspector regarding his claims.

According to Franklin’s building inspector and fire chief, none of Magnifico’s grievances were found in their inspection.

“I did as I’ve told, as I said I would do. I brought our engineers over. Lengthy inspection,” Chinburg said. “We got full reports and everyone has signed off.”

Goodwin added that the plans for the building were stamped for approval. “The city ends up doing building inspections,” Goodwin explained.

“There are multiple checks and balances in place to make sure that it’s safe.”

Chinburg and Goodwin pointed to the company’s strong reputation and hands-on experience specifically converting old mill buildings.

“We have an expertise in adaptive reuse of historical buildings. When dealing with buildings of this age, it’s not uncommon to find stuff like asbestos,” Goodwin said. “We anticipate it, you never know where it’s going to be. That’s why the protocol is in place.”

The chief executive officer added that no one from the EPA has contacted the company so far.

“No one has notified us. We only heard that through [The Sun],” Chinburg said. “Our site supervisor said there are officials at Magnifico’s house, in the area of our project. We assumed it was from his scrapes with the law.”

Chinburg said he hopes to bring residents into the building complex sometime next year.

“The top two or three floors are drywalled,” Chinburg said. “We’ve opened up one of the buildings, Building A, where we have Kettlehead and Vulgar, both brewers, and we’ve been able to maintain our commercial tenants in the building,” Chinburg said. “The building that Kettlehead is in is largely complete. They’re occupying the kitchen, putting in their tanks and stuff. There are two or three drywalled spaces there that are not yet leased.”

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.

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