Libby's leaders need to hold EPA accountable

Guest commentary:

In El Dorado County it came to the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency after testing, that they had been testing on a previously filled (capped) asbestos area. They didn’t know it. This shows up quite clearly in R.J. Lee’s Evaluation of EPA’s Analytical Data from the El Dorado Hills Evaluation Project Exhibit C. 

What EPA did is test on top of a filled site, which is representative of a filled site in Libby. Even though the site had been covered the results of testing were some 55 times higher than the current Libby IRIS risk threshold of .00009f/cc. EPA conducted lots of testing in various areas of El Dorado County, but not one of those tests were ever conducted directly on top of tremolite deposits. 

At a recent asbestos conference it was announced that “EPA had tested in the wrong place.” It was known long before EPA started in Libby, or El Dorado for that matter, that capping of asbestos areas will fail. It is doubtful per EPA test results in El Dorado County that protections even survive the actual process of capping in the first place.

I know it is no fun having EPA constantly in everyone’s face. It is no fun listening to the attendant squabbling. But is it a wise decision to allow EPA to scoot out the back door extinguishing the public health emergency, extinguishing CERCLA with a Record of Decision, extinguishing emergency response, taking the money and leaving behind the victims of both W.R. Grace and the public health service, to be victimized again and again by the state and local governments? 

Through institutional controls, if they were to actually be enforced, Libby will become the least free of cities in all of the United States. As far as property values, it won’t take very much, maybe a $2,000 test analysis to show that properties are not clean, are not safe. I am aware that this will be done in a very short time frame after EPA leaves. It will be too late then. We in the scientific community knew very well when EPA came to Libby that they had no chance of ever cleaning Libby to the point where disease did not occur. EPA themselves should have known this after their misadventure in Pitcher, Okla. with a microscopic contamination. Surprisingly the main EPA leaders revealed at the recent asbestos conference that disease will continue in Libby in their absence. 

I am reminded by listing the above failures by EPA, of which there are many more, that EPA has been extremely successful with one thing, no matter where you look. They have successfully convinced one population after the next that what they are told by EPA is the truth. 

Ted Linnert said this in 2006: “Marketing the Message in Libby.....This feature of Social Marketing couldn’t be more applicable to Libby. The residents of Libby must accept and then adopt the so-called products or messages of our campaign – be it the buy-in that there’s a problem, be it the acceptance of our cleanup plan, or be it the adoption of some behavior modification, for example adopting and acting in accordance with whatever institutional controls we leave in place after we’re gone.” 

I trust that the leaders of Libby will reconsider their currently-being-built decision to allow EPA off the hook. I trust that a better thinking and creativity will occur among leaders. That the people of Libby will find some way to communicate, perhaps via petition, that EPA must do much better in Libby before they are allowed to simply take their toys and go home.

— Terry Trent is a biologist and asbestos researcher. This is the second in a two-part series of guest columns regarding EPA actions in Libby.