EPA plans to leave asbestos 'remnants'

A recent discussion between the Environmental Protection Agency and a Lincoln County representative had the local health board up in arms on Wednesday over fears that the agency could pass the financial responsibility of asbestos contamination onto homeowners and future real estate developers.

Nick Raines, manager of Lincoln County Asbestos Resource Program, who represented the county in a meeting with the EPA, updated the Lincoln County Health Board on the EPA’s plans for the final stages of the asbestos clean-up effort. 

While EPA officials said in June that they were about three years away from completing large-scale, on-the-ground operations, no exit date has been given.

Raines said Libby is still in the remedial investigation phase, which is not far from where the EPA started in 1999. Normally, a risk assessment would be done before a clean-up began. However 15 years later, Libby is still waiting on toxicology results before a risk assessment can be done. Raines said the toxicology results and risk assessment would be completed by the end of 2014.

On Wednesday, after Raines passed out a summary of a meeting in Helena between the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the EPA and the Lincoln County Asbestos Resource Program, the county health board members had a few minutes to go over the points of when the EPA would consider asbestos clean-up complete.

Immediately, health board members began expressing alarm at what they were told was a “benchmark” for a final decision.

“A lot of things here raise red flags,” board member and Libby Mayor Doug Roll said. “This is ridiculous, I’ll put it bluntly.”

The meeting notes refer to a draft document written by EPA remedial project leader Rebecca Thomas, which was used as a guideline in the July meeting between Raines and the EPA.  According to notes on the document – which has not been finalised -   cleanup would be considered complete by the EPA if vermiculite insulation remained in sealed or inaccessible areas such as wall cavaties, and closed-off attic areas. Outside, cleanup would be checked off as complete if the asbestos was in low concentrations. It would also be considered complete if there was a slightly higher level of asbestos that was covered by a sufficient layer of top soil.

As far as maintaining the cleanup, property owners would be responsible for managing “remnant” vermiculite when encountered. Institutional Controls (IC) would only get involved to help remove contamination if it came directly from the mine site and was not a commercially available product.

Notes on the document also says property owners and/or developers will be responsible for managing contamination that remains at the surface if the property use is changed or developed.

Furthermore, if the property was undeveloped and contamination was left at the surface because it was a field and considered low-use, anyone who wanted to develop that field would be responsible for meeting the EPA clean-up criteria for higher-use.

Raines said he had told agency heads during the Helena meeting that people in Lincoln County would not accept financial responsibility for managing contamination left in-place.

The response from the EPA and the DEQ, he said, was that this approach is similar to other Superfund sites.

The EPA has maintained that it will always have a presence in Libby, but this could just be by doing assessments every five years.

In Wednesday’s meeting, health board members said assessments could lead to further conflicts on who is responsible if asbestos is found. This would be especially true if the county signed off on a remedial plan that was difficult to regulate.

One issue that was immediately apparent was that it would be extremely difficult to differentiate between commercial insulation and insulation that was from the mine site, if it was discovered in homes. This would make it easy for the IC to opt out of getting involved.

Berget said he would not feel comfortable signing off to something he knew wasn’t going to happen.

Brad Black, board member and medical director for Center for Asbestos Related Diseases, said overall, the strategy would be a huge financial impact on homeowners.

“There would be huge losses to people in the community,” Black said. “This is a horrible strategy...we all sense that re-entry of materials is going to occur.”

Board member and Lincoln County Commissioner Tony Berget said what they were reading was clearly not what had been spelled out in “comfort letters” to Libby area residents in previous years, promising that costs would not fall back on homeowners.

The EPA had set aside $11 million for cleanup, but board members said this was not enough.

Board member Allen Payne said what was being presented was frustrating.

“We were given the assurance there would be resources – we didn’t understand the resources were the homeowners,” Payne said.

Raines said the meetings had been informational, and no decision had been made on a final action plan. The purpose was to provide information to the community leaders in Libby and Troy so that the EPA could receive feedback.

The next meeting on the EPA cleanup action will be held in September.