Public should demand a thorough clean-up from EPA

While emergency cleanup of the worst asbestos contaminated areas is ongoing, a parallel effort to determine the final cleanup goals and plans has also been ongoing.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that this emergency cleanup is enough, that it’s OK to leave up to 25 percent of a residential yard with known asbestos contamination up to 0.2 percent.  This proposal is based on their risk assessment that indicates exposure in the community would be below levels that would cause asbestos related disease, provided that an array of new and expanded local government programs are developed to manage the asbestos left behind.

However, the Libby Area Technical Advisory Committee, a non-profit group of local residents supported by their own technical advisors, has evaluated this information and finds that the potential for risk to many individuals in the community could still be sufficiently elevated to cause disease, and we have deep concern about the cost and consistent success of all of the newly proposed asbestos management programs. If you put a playground on that 25 percent of land not cleaned up, the children who play there might get more exposure than considered in EPA’s risk assessment. If you put a dog run on that 25 percent of area not cleaned up, and that dog rolls in the dirt and comes into your house, your house can be re-contaminated.

The possible scenarios are endless, and the task of managing individual behavior on residential property through government programs seems fraught with pitfalls. Don’t let EPA leave town having only done the emergency cleanup –ask them for a “full cleanup of all reasonably accessible and useable areas of a yard.”

Email your comments to EPALibbyPlan@epa.gov, or mail or bring comments to EPA’s Libby Information Center, 108 E. 9th Street, Libby, MT 59923 on or before August 7, 2015.

— Tracy McNew, on behalf of the Libby Area Technical Assistance Group