After a six-week fight against an unusual mold, students at Vicksburg Intermediate School and Dana Road Elementary are again able to use their school library.

School officials got the green light Tuesday from the environmental testing company, Enviro-Care Inc., to open the library that had been quarantined since the school year began.

The source of the problem was traced to a power failure in July that shut down the year-old school’s air conditioning system for a weekend. After three days of heat and humidity buildup, mold began growing on the books, forcing school officials to close the library.

The Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees hired Munters Moisture Control Services of Harahan, La., to clean up the mold. The process cost $33,517.

Work over two weekends included removing all 14,000 books from the library to Munters’ facility in Harahan for cleaning, wiping down the entire library and returning the books.

The green, furry-looking mold that had infected the library was similar to bread mold. It had been identified in a laboratory in Jackson as aspergillus glacus.

About 1,300 students attend school at Vicksburg Intermediate and Dana Road Elementary schools and share the same cafeteria and library.

The books in the library came from Cedars and Bovina elementary schools after those schools were closed.