KERHONKSON –When the Rainbow Diner went up in flames back in July, it was devastating for owners George Haralabopoulos and his wife Carol, who watched their building get destroyed for want of a tanker truck to put out the flames. But that was only the beginning of the saga of the old diner, which is still a burned-out husk along Route 209 — a single table and two chairs with charred settings in place at their center —despite efforts to clean the mess up.

"George and Carol have no insurance," said Rochester Supervisor Carl Chipman. "They got a friend who is a contractor to do the cleanup in return for whatever he could get for the scrap metal."

Haralabopoulos rented the front loader for the work from Taylor Rentals, and the contractor started the job. And quickly stopped.

Just an hour after the cleanup began an agent from the state Department of Labor showed up with a stop work order, citing the contractor for conducting an asbestos cleanup without a license.

"They almost showed up faster than the fire trucks," joked Deputy Ulster County Legislature Clerk Fawn Tantillo, who has been working to resolve the issues which were uncovered. "They wouldn't even let him turn off the equipment."

DOL rules require a licensed asbestos removal contractor to do the cleanup whenever there's a suspicion of asbestos being present, Tantillo learned.

"The DOL's first response to our request for information was to tell us that they would make a determination on our request — not give us the information, just make a determination — by March 13, 2013. We told them that was unacceptable," she said. "Then they told us they couldn't release the test results because it's an ongoing criminal investigation."

"I raised hell," Chipman recalled. "There are rats as big as dogs there, it's a safety hazard, and it's an eyesore at the gateway to our community."

Finally, Tantillo, who got involved when Chipman contacted Legislature Chair Terry Bernardo, got the test results from the samples the DOL sent out.

"There were fourteen samples and two to three of them showed evidence of asbestos," she noted.

That's sufficient to require an asbestos contractor to do the work, she discovered.

It's also enough to grind the process to a halt, according to Chipman.

"The property is assessed at $53,000, and that kind of cleanup is going to cost as much as $149,000," he said. "They don't have that kind of money. The town could condemn the building and do it, but then it would go onto their tax bill and what are the chances of them paying it?"

State officials have tried to get things moving. Assemblyman Clifford Crouch helped convince the DOL to release the test results, and Senator John Bonacic wrote to the governor asking for requirements to be waived. But no such accommodation has been reached.

"It's kind of ridiculous that we're hung up on a couple of rules while this thing is sitting there, possibly blowing asbestos around," said Crouch.

Bonacic's office released a statement, saying, "We have urged the Department of Labor to be more proactive. We have asked them to see what they can do to be more accommodating. This is a blight on the community..."

In addition to trying to wrest information from the DOL, Tantillo said that Bernardo has been working to find grants to pay for the cleanup.

Calls for comment to the Department of Labor were not returned in time for this story.