The Closure of ‘PCB Hall’ Reflects Problems Across UNC System

As first-year students in N.C. State University’s College of Education trickled into orientation on a stifling summer morning, Chelsea Lundquist-Wentz handed out flyers that plunged them into a cold reality.   

“You are the first Education class in a half-century that has not been exposed to toxic chemicals in Poe Hall, which has served as the Ed. building since 1971,” the flyer read. “Let’s keep it that way.” 

Lundquist-Wentz was part of an unusual welcome party that greeted gaggles of students in July in front of Withers Hall, a short distance from the building that now sits empty. Like the orientation leaders, she wore a uniform for the occasion. Hers was a white T-shirt, the back emblazoned with an illustration of the seven-story building and a sign that said “PCB Hall.” 

Lundquist-Wentz, a third-year doctoral student in public history at N.C. State, is a founding member of a grassroots coalition that’s expressed frustrations over environmental safety and health on campus. 

The sentiment had long simmered among faculty and students, but it boiled over this past school year when the university discovered PCBs in Poe Hall. The chemicals were once used in building materials like caulk, sealants, and fluorescent light ballasts, and have been linked to a variety of adverse health effects. N.C. State closed Poe. 

As months went by, Lundquist-Wentz said she watched as the subsequent investigation into the building drew scrutiny from experts. Some students, faculty, and staff members thought they weren’t being heard. 

“A lot of trust has been broken and faith lost, especially among current graduate workers and faculty,” Lundquist-Wentz said. 

That’s when the Campus Community Alliance for Environmental Justice took shape. The group wants action extending beyond Poe Hall. Its members, like others across the UNC System in recent years, have mounting worries with the safety of the aging campus buildings where they work, study, and live.     

For years, the 16 UNC System universities had scant funding for maintenance, so they pushed it off. As buildings aged, problems proliferated. Brick buckled. Concrete crumbled. Now, nearly 60 percent of square footage across the campuses isn’t in satisfactory condition, and about one-quarter requires major renovations to repair deteriorating buildings, according to a system-wide study of facilities data from 2022 released in April. 

Less than a decade ago, only about 30 percent was considered unsatisfactory. As degrading buildings go years without updates, problems swell exponentially, resulting in a dramatic decline, the study says. 

At times, the consequence of deferred maintenance could merely be an inconvenience. But at its worst, aging buildings can become urgent and costly hazards. Schools are scrambling to catch up to the ballooning backlog.

“As buildings age, the building systems wear out, reach the end of their useful life, or become harder to repair and maintain due to obsolescence,” the study says. “Failure to plan for timely replacement of systems often leads to building system failures and costly emergency repairs.”

Sporadic Funding

UNC System administrators have been concerned for decades that buildings are spiraling into disrepair. In the competition for often erratic capital funds, some maintenance needs were cast aside in favor of flashier projects.

“Everyone likes a ribbon cutting,” Jennifer Haygood, senior vice president for finance and budget and chief financial officer in the UNC System Office, told The Assembly. “No one does ribbon cutting for a new roof.” 

Amid sporadic maintenance funding, Haygood said, institutions were forced to hoard the limited dollars for repairs and renovations in case of an emergency.

Now, schools face a flood of capital needs. At N.C. State, survey results that were intended to be confidential indicated that “notable numbers” of its trustees found aging buildings to be among the biggest challenges or risks to the university in the coming year. (The survey results were briefly uploaded to a university website, then removed.) 

In the 53 years that Poe Hall bustled with students, staff, and faculty, the building never underwent a “significant renovation,” public records show. A university administrator said the school didn’t know that PCBs festered deep behind the walls in ductwork sealant.

N.C. State knew the building could use repairs, said Doug Morton, the university’s associate vice chancellor for facilities. But that’s true for any decades-old building. At the recommendation of an engineering firm in 2018, the university installed filters to assuage employee concerns about black material wafting from the vents, which Morton said was from the ductwork lining. A complete overhaul of the ventilation system had to wait for other projects, like bringing the building up to modern fire code. 

It’s no surprise to some experts that PCBs were present. EPA research indicates PCB products are likely in two-thirds of U.S. building stock. They were banned in 1979. 

PCBs at concentrations above the EPA limit have been found in two other buildings on N.C. State’s campus. UNC-Chapel Hill found the same in Carrington Hall in April 2023, public records show, in testing that preceded demolition of a section of the building built in 1969. So did UNC-Pembroke in 2024.

‘The Not-Sexy Stuff’

In the eight months since N.C. State closed Poe Hall, the university has spent roughly $880,000 in legal and consulting fees, public records show. State lawmakers suggested it will cost far more to remediate the building. House Republicans have proposed allocating $180 million to renovate Poe but have not finalized a revised 2024-25 budget. 

Meanwhile, schools across the UNC System, including N.C. State, have begun to tackle more maintenance. 

Some have more daunting needs than others, according to the recent facilities study. UNC-Chapel Hill, which has the oldest campus and has historically received the largest share of the system’s repair and renovation funds, has a $1.1 billion maintenance backlog. It reported that 94 percent of its square footage is in unsatisfactory condition—a steep jump from 24 percent in 2013.  

The UNC System prioritizes renovation and repair funding to address life safety and accessibility issues, Haygood said. When money can’t stretch to cover the less critical issues, there’s still a cost: Facility conditions worsen rapidly.    

“Adequate capital funding to address chronic deferred maintenance continues to be the primary challenge for all campuses,” the system-wide study found. 

At Fayetteville State University, where 87 percent of its square footage is in unsatisfactory condition, some students will soon bear the cost of improvements. Its board of trustees hiked residence hall room rates for the upcoming academic year to pay for delayed roof replacements and plumbing upgrades. 

Morton, the N.C. State administrator, said when parts of N.C. State’s frail, decades-old electrical distribution system began to fail and “campus started going dark,” the school opted to self-fund the $60 million system upgrade that began in 2018 rather than seek state funds, which could have taken several years.

Still, system officials say schools are better poised to eliminate the beleaguering maintenance demands thanks to the State Capital and Infrastructure Fund, which the legislature created in 2017. Haygood said the program’s in the “toddler stage” because capital projects take time.

But now, “The funding is available to take care of these needs that often fly under the radar and don’t get anybody’s attention,” said Katherine Lynn, vice president for finance and capital planning in the UNC System Office. The legislature authorized $1 billion for repairs and renovations across the UNC System over the 2021 to 2025 fiscal years, according to data from a system spokesperson. 

By UNC System estimates, it would cost nearly $8 billion to remedy the inadequacies in all its buildings and at least $225 million annually for routine upkeep. Lynn said it’ll likely be 5 to 10 years from now before schools can get ahead of pressing maintenance needs and make progress on curtailing the backlog.

Haygood said that’s a priority. 

“If we can catch up and then stay on top of things, it’s so much more cost-effective to prevent problems than before they become crises,” Haygood said. “We are huge advocates for the not-sexy stuff.”

A Matter of Trust

The Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t require schools to test for PCBs, said Keri Hornbuckle, a professor at the University of Iowa and the director of its Superfund Research Program. While the EPA does regulate PCBs in building materials, it doesn’t regulate indoor air levels. The “exposure levels” it recommends are unenforceable.

Robert Herrick, a retired Harvard University faculty member and an expert on PCBs, said because the chemicals are common in older buildings, it would be burdensome to test and remove hazardous material on a large scale. Instead, many opt to test for PCBs before renovations to ensure regulated materials are disposed of properly, which has been done previously at UNC-Chapel Hill, N.C. State, UNC-Pembroke, and East Carolina University, public records show.   

There is some state oversight of airborne PCBs in the North Carolina Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Division, said its assistant deputy commissioner Paul Sullivan. For two types of PCB, the state enforces federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace airborne exposure limits, which are “almost like a speed limit,” he said. 

But Sullivan said he’s seldom encountered significant exposures to PCBs in the 30 years he’s worked for the state. The air testing in Poe Hall didn’t detect reportable amounts of the two PCB mixtures that the state OSHA regulates.

Since September 2023, three complaints of an alleged safety or health hazard in Poe Hall have been lodged, the agency confirmed. The first complaint, received on September 20, was still open as of August 7. 

The demands from the Campus Community Alliance are similar to those outlined in a letter written by a group of graduate students to the administration in 2021, said Hwa Huang, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences and co-chair of the N.C. State Graduate Workers Union. 

That letter urged N.C. State to address indoor air quality concerns in a chemistry building that some suspected arose from “aging and inadequate HVAC infrastructure.” (Almost a year prior, a North Carolina Department of Labor official who inspected part of the building for the same complaint found no apparent violations of workplace safety standards.) 

“If we work in the building, we should have a say on how we think it should be run,” Huang said. The letter asked the school to pay for more independent environmental testing of buildings, among other demands. 

Though the buildings at issue change, some people’s trust in administrators hasn’t, said Walter Robinson, who’s been an atmospheric sciences professor at N.C. State for 15 years. Over time, he said, “You start seeing a pattern of sort of a cavalier attitude towards faculty, staff, and student health.” 

That idea frustrates Morton. Health considerations are why N.C. State moved more than 400 employees and thousands of students out of Poe Hall last November, he said. PCBs spread throughout Poe Hall’s ventilation system because it has an atypical configuration, he said, making it unlikely PCBs could manifest the same way in other buildings.

Even so, North Carolina A&T State University began testing the air in March in dozens of buildings across its Greensboro campus for PCBs. The school hasn’t detected PCBs in over 100 samples thus far, said William Barlow, associate vice chancellor of facilities at NC A&T. 

“It’s costly, but we’re looking out for the well-being of the folks here at A&T,” Barlow said. Before this year, the school hadn’t ever done PCB testing. But he said, “We thought testing the air would be in our best interest and also the best interest of the folks who work here and go to school here.” 

Emily Vespa is a freelance journalist and a recent graduate of North Carolina State University.