LIBBY, Mont. — For a decade, the people of Libby have longed for the day when they will be rid of the asbestos that turned their town into the deadliest Superfund site in America. Now they are being forced to live through the agony all over again, thanks to two giant piles of bark and wood chips on the edge of town.
An Associated Press investigation found that the federal government has known for at least three years that the wood piles were contaminated with an unknown level of asbestos, even as Libby residents hauled away truckload after truckload of the material and placed it in yards, in city parks, outside schools and at the local cemetery. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency did not stop the removal of the material until AP began investigating in early March.
Regulators do not know what effect the material could have on public health, but EPA documents obtained by AP showed that the agency found potentially deadly asbestos fibers in four of 20 samples taken from the piles of scrap wood in 2007.
The sprawling piles came from a now-defunct timber mill that took thousands of trees from a forest tainted with asbestos from a nearby mine.
The potential for more contamination has frayed nerves in the town of 3,000 people and further eroded confidence in the government to clean up the mess that to date has killed an estimated 400 people and sickened 1,750.
“We thought we were coming to an end, and now we have this issue all over again,” said Lerah Parker, who spread dozens of truckloads of the material around her property.
Danger found in mine’s ore
The source of Libby’s asbestos was a W.R. Grace vermiculite mine that at its peak produced 2 million tons of ore annually and employed 200 people. Vermiculite stripped from a mountain on the edge of town was shipped around the world to make insulation, only for authorities to discover later that the ore was loaded with deadly asbestos.
The EPA has spent more than $370 million over 11 years cleaning up Libby. Contractors in moon suits carting off tainted materials have become a constant reminder of the severity of the contamination.
The wood chips and bark became a popular item for anyone looking to add some landscaping touches to their yards and for contractors who packaged the product and sold it around the country.
Local officials estimate that 1,000 tons was used in landscaping and for erosion control in Libby. Over the past decade, as much as 15,000 tons was sold and hauled out of town to destinations unknown, according to the economic development official who was selling it.
The EPA is now scrambling to gauge the public health risk and is preparing to issue guidelines about how residents should handle the wood, including warnings not to move or work with the material when it’s dry to avoid stirring up asbestos. But the agency has decided it won’t track down where the chips went, saying it no longer has jurisdiction because the material is now classified as a commercial product.
Responding to AP’s investigation, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., pledged Tuesday to launch an inquiry into the use of the bark and wood chips. The longtime advocate for Libby said he wanted to find what EPA officials knew, when they knew it and whether more action was needed to protect public health.
“The people of Libby have already been poisoned in the name of greed, and I won’t allow them to be poisoned again because of negligence,” Baucus said.
The EPA’s press office declined repeated requests from AP to interview senior officials within the agency’s Superfund program about removal of the material.
The agency instead offered a written statement saying its prior tests on the material provided “incomplete information” and were too limited to indicate an imminent danger.
Wood seller not concerned
The local official who was selling the wood and bark, Paul Rummelhart, dismissed concerns, saying they unnecessarily threatened to undermine economic development in the Libby area, where roughly one in five people are unemployed.
“I’ve got a file that’s 3 feet thick on all the (asbestos) sampling that’s been going on,” Rummelhart said. “If you have a few hits, so what?”
Federal officials have acknowledged that removal of the bark went on for years without their knowledge. Yet the agency absolved the on-scene contractor, CDM, of responsibility, saying the company’s workers were not charged with monitoring movement of material into and out of the former mill site.
A CDM spokeswoman, Marlene Hobel, referred questions about the matter back to the EPA.
“We’re trying to take a look backward at what’s there,” EPA regional director Jim Martin said. “We’re trying to reconstruct history and see what has been moved and should it have been moved.”
The presence of the bark has stoked fears of widespread recontamination just after the EPA declared in May that it had reduced the dangers facing Libby.
“How many more years is it going to take?” asked Parker, who spread the material around her property and suffers from asbestosis, an incurable disease caused by inhaling asbestos fibers that scars the lungs and slowly starves them of air. “Are we supposed to sit here and hold our breath?”
