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Huddled in the crawl space under one of Bell Park Garden’s units, Fabio Morales only took a few seconds to find the debris he was looking for. He photographed the crumbling, ashy gray material, bagged it and held it up before a Queens Tribune reporter.

“I’m positive this is asbestos,” Morales said. “If you test it, you’ll see.”

He turned the reporter’s attention to two heating pipes running the length of the ceiling, one with new white insulation, the other in crumbling disarray.

“They were supposed to put the new insulation on both pipes, but as you can see…” he said. “This is the situation going on all over the place.”

Bell Park Gardens’ board and property manager responded with assurances everything was up to par.

Documents obtained by the Tribune show a tangled mess of agreements, often conflicting, constantly amended and evolving as the work progressed. Each side has its own reasons for how the project played out.

The Trib has two bags which it intends to have independently tested.

An initial proposal submitted by contractor Asbestways Service Corporation in November 2006 assessed the project’s first phase, the removal of asbestos, to be $1.8 million. Two months later, the price dropped to $1.6 million.

“A reassessment of the materials and the project led to that drop in price,” said Anthony Doloroso, Bell Park Garden’s property manager.

In the spring of 2007, Bell Park Gardens went into contract with Asbestways, which assigned its work to Safety Lead Services (SLS), a subsidiary company.

City regulations require that an independent air testing company monitor all asbestos abatements.

As is often the case in these situations, the co-op consulted the abatement company when looking for a monitor. It went with Asbestways’s recommendation and enlisted Communication Gear, Inc. to monitor the work.

An investigation conducted by Local 78 found Asbestways Corp and Communication Gear, Inc. were owned by a father-son tandem, and claimed it constituted a blatant conflict of interest.

“We were completely unaware that the two companies were related,” Doloroso said. “When we learned the two were connected, we immediately changed course.”

But residents said Doloroso and the Board held off on any changes, sticking with both companies a year and a half after Local 78 revealed the family ties.

“It wasn’t until we made a big fuss about it that they changed companies,” one resident said.

A new company, Sunshine Environment Inc., took over the air monitoring work. While residents contend Sunshine and Asbestways are in cahoots as well, the Tribune has yet to find any connection between the two. The heads of both Asbestways and Sunshine also denied having any association with each other.

The contract called for one-third of the money to be paid upfront, another third once work had begun, which stuck in many residents’ craw.

“That’s not the way things are usually done,” said a resident, who contended the money is usually doled out in five percent intervals as the work is completed.

Also, while the initial cost of the project was $1.6 million, it only constituted the first phase. The remaining work of insulation and paying off City fines caused to price to balloon to $3.1 million – a figure provided by residents, not any documentation.

The cost was reflected in shareholders’ commons charges, which rose $128.

Arguably the most contentious issue remains SLS’s workmanship.

Residents said the work commenced under their residences without warning, and fear they may have been exposed to asbestos dust.

“I woke up one morning and there were guys carrying the stuff out in wheel barrows, leaving white footprints and a cloud of dust behind them,” a resident said.

In 2008 alone, the Department of Environmental Protection checked up on the work five times, and handed two violations for not wetting the asbestos before removing it.

When air born as a dust, asbestos is at its deadliest. It can get lodged in the lungs and has been known to cause a myriad of health problems, including asbestosis and cancer.

Already suspicious of SLS, many residents inspected their own crawl spaces after the company said it finished. They said to have found shoddy work or piles of dust they believed to be asbestos.

“Where these samples came from, I do not know,” Doloroso said. “But the work was completed properly.”

Morales understood the wary eye being tossed at Local 78 and its involvement.

“Of course we’d prefer the job was done with a more responsible contractor,” he said, stopping short of naming a unionized company as the right choice. “But we’d never plant the asbestos.”