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Volume 71, Friday,
February 10, 2006
News Pipe problem in Law Library Cleaning causes minor water leaks in O'Quinn underground facilities by MAI BUI
Students and staff members of the UH Law Center were briefly interrupted by a minor water leak Thursday in the north section of the O'Quinn Law Library. The leak occurred during a procedural maintenance of the pipe system. Clearing the pipes also cleared the dirt that had been clogging the holes in the pipes, allowing water to leak through. "We have water coming down through the ceiling of the north stack for about three rows, so we immediately turned off the electricity," Spencer Simons, director of the Law Library, said. "We had to call in the facilities, the plumbers and the fire marshals, who arrived very quickly."
A water leak in the O'Quinn Law Library Thursday did not cause any major damage, but prompted University officials to temporarily turn off the electricity of a small portion of the library while crews repaired the pipes. Matt Dulin/The Daily
Cougar
Because the library is located underground, the leak came as no surprise to those familiar with the UH Law Center. "Every time there's a major flood, some water gets in the library. The library simply is not structurally capable of holding out a lot of water. When the O'Quinn entry was installed, they hoped to solve some problems, but the entry slopes down and that probably brings in more water," UH law professor John Mixon said. The Law Center building includes teaching units surrounding the library. "The architects made a decision to sink the library so that the roof of the library would form a plaza and the library itself would be an underground facility," Mixon said. This decision subjects the library to periodical flooding when there is a major storm. Most notable is Hurricane Allison, which occurred in 2001 and cost the library 175,000 volumes and $35 million in repairs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency and UH sources funded the repairs. The FEMA money came with a condition that books were to not be placed down on the basement floor of the library. "We had a renovation after Allison, and the lower floor of the library was converted into a student office space and is no longer used by the library," Simons said. More recently, there have been informal talks among UH administration and faculty to build a new law library. The idea is to move the library above ground to avoid additional flood damages. No official decision, however, has been made. Thursday's incident caused no extensive damages.
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