Lacking community input is major concern of Community Advisory Group

This is the third of a four-part series looking into EPA's Region 8 team leader Paul Peronard's Project Matrix to inform the community of decisions that must be made as

prioritization of the the 2008

Superfund budget is determined.

Paul Peronard may be the Superfund "decider," but unlike President George W. Bush who said, "I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I am the decider, and I decide what is best." Peronard admits he has made mistakes in his reign (Peronard's word) in Libby.

Gordon Sullivan said some of the mistakes made in the beginning included declaring everything, cars, steel tools, etc., contaminated. Rumors were rampant that some items that were confiscated due to contamination later showed up in a pawn shop in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.

Sullivan said when the high school track was being cleaned he noted all the trucks had Kalispell license plates, but today Peronard reports 100 percent of the cleanup work is being done by local contractors.

Peronard did not answer the charge that some individuals were given rest and recreation furloughs out of Libby, but he did admit that out-of-town seasonal workers get perdium, that is they get living expenses in addition to wages.

Peronard defended the use of seasonal employees because it wouldn't be fair to give Libby workers a part-time assignment, but Sullivan said that is called employment by many people who live in Libby.

In response to Sullivan's question about how decisions are made differently now than eight years ago, Peronard said in 2000 it didn't take a scientist to see what needed immediate clean-up. The screening plant and other places with heavy concentrations of vermiculite screamed priority. Volunteer reports of contamination drove clean-up decisions and by 2002 the EPA began a triage approach, "worse first."

In 2003, Jim Christenson determined 1,440 properties met clean-up criteria. To date, 954 have been cleaned, 300 have denied access, and the rest are in a holding process.

The EPA's decision in 2003 to not remove visible vermiculite with no-detect, proved to be wrong. When higher powered equipment detected asbestos fibers in the vermiculite that previously was labeled no-detect, Peronard changed that policy and began removing all visible vermiculite to a depth of 18 inches.

There are 450 properties that will need some degree of re-cleaning.

Sullivan said maybe these re-cleans should be a priority as residents have been living under the erroneous assumption that their homes were safe.

Complaints were made that conducting clean-ups all over town was not cost efficient, but when Peronard tried clustering clean-ups in 2006, complaints were made that areas were blocked off too long.

The EPA has tried to prioritize the clean-up of homes with children, but 43 percent of residential properties in Libby are rentals and renters sometimes move after the assessment process has begun.

Sullivan said decisions for clean-up have been, and are even now, driven by economics. Stephen Johnson, head of the EPA in Washington, D.C. said he is behind Libby 100 percent, but Sullivan questions why there is less than 100 percent in the budget.

When Sullivan said he believed the decision to leave vermiculite in the walls of Libby homes was based on money, Peronard agreed that when EPA decided not to clean walls, carpets and inaccessible crawl spaces it was partly cost-driven. The cost of removal of materials with lesser risk of exposure in one clean-up would have been at the expense of the next property cleanup.

The average cost, per property, for clean-up in 2004 was $50,000. That has climbed to $70,000 in 2007 because of the volume of material being moved while chasing visible vermiculite and clean-up areas are much larger. Therefore, while the number of properties cleaned has declined, the cost has risen.

EPA is now conducting activity based sampling (ABS) to assess how exposure differs during: no activity, some activity, different seasons, indoors and outdoors, and how homes that have been cleaned differ from those not cleaned yet, in homes that have been cleaned and those that have not been cleaned.

Toxicity studies are being done by EPA scientists to learn what amphibole fibers act like in the human body. Information from these studies will support risk assessments with scientific data. Risk assessment studies are paid for out of a separate budget.

Peronard said 60 percent of the projected $17 million budget for 2008 will be spent on actual cleanup. That is over $10 million to clean approximately 160 properties, creeks in the area where children swim, the Cabinet View Country Club, Troy high-risk properties and emergency response cleanups.

Based on that amount of money, some of these areas will not be cleaned this year. Which ones? Current clean-up prioritization is difficult because the risks are basically equal. There are no worsts to be first.

The Community Advisory Group (CAG) struggles to increase its membership, and at the same time tries to get the community involved in assisting Peronard in making decisions about clean-up priorities.

Only nine of the current 11 or 12 members were present at the October CAG meeting and four of the six individuals in the audience work for agencies directly involved in asbestos related issues.

Attendance at the September CAG meeting was much larger because there were public notices about the meeting that was said to offer "an unprecedented opportunity for individuals in the community to have direct input into how and where EPA would spend taxpayer money next year." The meeting in September was mandatory for anyone wishing to participate. However, the attendance was small and the opportunity was lost in lengthy digressions.

At the October CAG meeting, member David Latham said the town meeting should be scrapped entirely because if a couple hundred uninformed individuals come to the meeting it would be chaos.

When Latham was asked where 200 interested individuals could be found, he said when CAG first began in 2000 over 500 people attended, but when their concerns were addressed by CAG and the EPA they probably didn't feel a need to continue attending every meeting.

In September, Lincoln County Commissioner Rita Windom said she was opposed to a public vote about prioritizing the 2008 clean-up. She said Libby is beginning to heal from the rifts that came with the Superfund and a public meeting about clean-up priorities could open old wounds. Windom has compared the situation to the meetings by property owners objecting to the recent address changes for 911.

"In the end," Windom said, "The final decision rests on the official representative, no matter what others say."

Kirby Maki, Libby school superintendent, said it has been his experience that it is best to offer a public meeting. Then those who decide not to participate cannot say they weren't informed or offered choices.

Bill Patten said the board needs to remember that the nation still views Libby as damaged, and he said revitalization is essential. Patten added that he believes Peronard's reason for bringing the matrix to the public's attention was to repair the relationship between EPA and the community, not to create division. Patten supports a town meeting that will give the citizens a chance to participate in the decisions made by the EPA.

When a suggestion was made in September to use newspapers to explain the matrix to the community, Windom said she didn't think anyone would read something like that. She said it would be better if Peronard presented the matrix to organizations in town, so people could see his body language and hear his tone of voice.

CAG did vote in favor of holding a "Town Hall" meeting in January and prior to that meeting an opinion poll will be made available in the newspapers, the radio and some places of business.

Will Peronard be called the "decider" or will the community come together and assist him with these difficult decisions that have no right or wrong answers?