Climate control

By The Standard Staff - 09/14/2007

The $80,000 that Butte-Silver Bow commissioners recently approved for air conditioning in the Butte Public Library is money well spent. It’s just too bad the dire need for climate control wasn’t recognized sooner, before so much damage was done.

Library director Lee Phillips told commissioners that an estimated 30 percent of the book collection will be removed and discarded because of age and heat damage, representing a $648,000 loss at replacement costs. Heat dries up the glues that hold book bindings together. She said molding is also separating from walls and columns in the building due to the heat, and the edges of shelves are peeling.

We’d say Phillips presented a very convincing case, and the 11 to 1 council vote reflects that.

The county’s decision not to replace the system when it broke four years ago is also understandable, however, because many of us in these parts still tend to think of air-conditioning as a luxury.

Sure, we’ve always recognized it as a basic necessity for the folks who live in down in Las Vegas or Arizona, but the conventional wisdom in Southwest Montana has largely been that we can get by without it since our nights cool down so pleasantly.

Or at least they used to.

During some stretches this past July, even the darkness brought little relief from the unrelenting heat, and climate scientists predict more of the same for summers to come. Phillips told commissioners that the average temperature on the library’s second floor was 89 degrees in July, and a patron even fainted one day after the thermometer had exceeded 93 degrees over several days.

It’s obvious now that air conditioning is no longer a luxury — even in Butte, Montana — at least for places like libraries, where the preservation of important documents is at stake, not to mention the health of the employees and the patrons.

We can chalk this up as yet another example of how the changing climate is changing our lives, and we can probably also expect more pleas to come from other local officials. Air conditioning was eliminated from the construction budget of the new jail, for example, and it’ll probably have to be added, especially since there are no windows to open in that building.

The acute need for climate control is also the major driving factor behind the upcoming $7.5 million bond issue for the Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives. Heat destroys, as we now know, and in the case of the Archives, it’s slowly but surely destroying valuable historic documents that cannot be replaced at any cost.

Please keep that in mind when the Archives ballot arrives in your mailbox late next month. Climate control is a necessity. The shelf lives of our books — and of our history — absolutely depend on it.