CHEYENNE -- Asbestos contamination at the University of Wyoming earlier this year came from one of two small buildings that a Laramie man bought and removed from campus, university documents show.

Mason Skiles bought the metal buildings in March with a $368 bid. He removed the buildings sometime in March or April and asbestos turned up at the site during a June inspection, university officials said.

Documents the university provided to The Associated Press in response to a public records request include a sale document in which Skiles agreed to clean up any debris associated with removing the buildings.

Skiles didn't clean up the site as required, university spokeswoman Jessica Lowell said Monday.

"They were supposed to remove the building and take care of all the tasks associated with that," Lowell said.

Phone messages left at Skiles' law office in Laramie weren't returned Monday.

The university sold off a total of five steel-framed buildings and one wood-framed building near the Bureau of Mines Building at the northwest corner of campus. The last building was removed about a month ago, Lowell said.

Analysis last year showed that three buildings contained asbestos in insulation surrounding steam heating pipes, Lowell said. Asbestos wasn't detected in either of the buildings that Skiles bought, she said.

Lowell said asbestos has not been a problem with any of the other buildings removed.

Cleanup of the asbestos began June 23 and finished June 25, documents show. The work was done by a Cheyenne company, Safe Air, and Lowell said university officials are satisfied that no asbestos remains.

The buildings were removed to make way for the $20 million Berry Center for Natural History and Conservation, which will house the university's botany and zoology collections. Preliminary ground work on the facility has begun.

A violation notice issued Sept. 28 by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality states that the university failed to conduct an asbestos inspection and remove a regulated asbestos-containing material before demolition. The university also failed to use trained personnel to remove the material and didn't adequately wet it down or place it in leak-tight containers ahead of disposal, the notice said.

The university provided documents to the Department of Environmental Quality as well as AP.

"It sounds like there's a different party involved at this point," department spokesman Keith Guille said. "Obviously we need to make contact and determine if enforcement action is prudent."

Lowell said the university spent $5,100 cleaning up the asbestos but does not intend to pursue legal action against Skiles or otherwise try to recover the expense.