EPA initiates cleanup of previous locations

Homes that have been surveyed, excavated and cleared by removal and restoration may be subject to another inspection according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new amphibole asbestos standard.

Granite Street homeowner Gerald Hayes said he doesn’t support the action to resurvey his property in the search for asbestos material.

“I think this whole project is a waste of taxpayers’ money,” Hayes said. “I don’t know why this needs to happen again.”

Hayes’ property was surveyed for the second time Wednesday, 11 years after it was labeled clean of amphibole asbestos. Hayes said the previous homeowners told him the property had been deemed clean in 2002.

The EPA’s new approach to property inspections is a more aggressive standard than applied previously, with the use of at 30-point composite test in place of the outdated 5-point. The new test uses 30 samples from a selected area, rather than five, to get a better indication of contained asbestos.

“I asked for the paperwork, they can’t even show me that my property was clean before,” Hayes said.

Hayes asked surveyors for past records of his home from when his property had been cleaned, to which there was little response. Hayes’ prior information on his home was reported lost by the survey company that performed the inspection in 2002.

“Yes, we missed properties. That happens,” said Mike Cirian, remedial project manager of the Libby Superfund Project.

Cirian said information was not filed or corrected properly in the earliest days of the EPA’s asbestos cleanup in Libby. Several records from the first 4,000 inspected homes were lost in the transfer to the EPA’s digital database.

There have been 26 properties identified in the database that were recorded as clean of asbestos but were left with visible vermiculite. These homes are currently the only properties known by EPA officials that will be subject to a second inspection.

“Some people want to remodel their house. They’ll go into a field and find an old garden someone quit using 50 years ago, but because it was a limited-use area, there was a cover over it, and we didn’t see the vermiculite,” Cirian said. “These are reasons that we’re going back.”

Regardless of what records are lost or filed without clear documentation, resurveys will be ongoing, Cirian said. What constitutes the requirement of a repeat inspection includes constantly developing science that the EPA did not previously have before, according to public files on the lagging project.

The EPA team in Libby has promised repeatedly to produce risk assessment studies that would determine health risks at various exposure levels and establish specific scientific standards for the cleanup project. Yet that risk assessment has been delayed multiple times, resulting in admonishment and an internal investigation by the EPA Office of Inspector General.

Michelle Hartley, an advocate for asbestos victims, said the EPA has not handled the cleanup properly.

“The risk assessment was prepaid and promised by 2007. The EPA has been in breach of that agreement,” Hartley said. “The science hasn’t changed, the experts in the field have said the same thing since day one.”

As the EPA revisits previously inspected properties, it considers changes that have been made on those properties over the years, including whether the property has been divided or additional development has occurred. The EPA also has made a few small shifts in their area definitions, such as adding gravel driveways to areas of concern.

Regarding the 1,825 houses that have been deemed clean by EPA tests, Cirian is not positive whether every property will require a second inspection.

“I hope not. I don’t know,” said Cirian.

Cost still remains one of the biggest questions to the EPA. While the Libby Asbestos Superfund Site receives a $20 million budget each year, handling properties circumstantially has made it difficult to determine an average cost of inspecting and restoring each property.  

“There’s no average. We’ve tried,” Cirian said. “Samples can run anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 a sample. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s $10,000 a property.’”

Since 2002, the EPA has collected more than 100,000 samples.

The EPA has contracted CDM Smith to inspect 100 to 225 properties per year that vary from 1,000 square feet to 40 acres. The average size of properties inspected was 0.3 acres in 2005. Today, that size has increased to 3.2 acres when the EPA began including rural homes surrounding Libby.

The EPA’s $20 million budget is also spent on science development, as well as salaries for federal employees.

“There are changes in the science, the way that we can analyze it with different information,” said Cirian. “But, yes, we also missed some stuff on the paperwork.”

Surveyors told Hayes they would be back to retrieve soil samples later this summer. Hayes said he plans to take soil samples of his own, and send his sample to Energy Laboratories in Billings to compare to the EPA’s results.

CDM Smith also inspected and removed material from Gerry Mercer’s property twice in 2008. After both visits, the EPA told Mercer that his property had been cleaned.

Mercer said his yard was revisited by EPA officials because they had concerns after a piece of vermiculite material was found on his yard after the first visit, possibly blown over from a neighbor’s property.

“I’ve been told twice that I’m ‘clean’,” said Mercer. “If I look at my back yard right now I would find more vermiculite. It’s never going to be clean.”

Cirian noted that prior to 2006, the EPA left behind visible vermiculite that tested non-detect for asbestos. These days, he said, the goal is to be more aggressive and remove as much vermiculite as possible.

Mercer criticized the EPA and said he believes they will be back to excavate his yard again.

“Do I feel safe? I don’t know,” he said.