New asbestos regs let health officials penalize offenders

Local public health officials have brought into effect another regulation to protect residents from residual asbestos.

While the Lincoln County Public Health Board adopted the Libby Amphibole Property Evaluation Notification regulations last March, the policy officially went into effect Feb. 1.

Speaking during a Feb. 17 Troy City Council meeting, Virginia Kocieda, director of the Lincoln County Asbestos Resource Program, said the PEN regulations served to cement commonly followed safe practices for mitigating asbestos exposure.

The PEN regulations require residents living within the Superfund site to contact ARP when conducting one of five activities: excavation, grading and landscaping; interior or exterior demolition, repair, modification, disturbance of material, or remodeling of permanent or temporary structures; transfer of real property; certain land-use changes; and any division of land.

Residents performing any of these activities should fill out a PEN form, which can be found on ARP’s website. Property owners must notify ARP at least three full business days before they begin the above activities.

The regulations require ARP to respond to residents within two days from when their request was filed.

“I want to stress that the majority of the community living within the Superfund site in Troy and Libby are already doing this,” Kocieda told city councilors.

The PEN notification process is fulfilled when residents call Montana811 to locate underground utilities on their properties, provide a realtor with a letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency detailing the status of asbestos on their land, or call ARP for any information about asbestos on their property.

Under the PEN regulations, the health board now has the power to penalize residents who don't contact ARP when performing the five activities listed above. Violators of the regulation could potentially be convicted of a misdemeanor and face a fine between $10 and $200.

“In the most unfortunate situations, where there’s a big event where someone is just not following the rules and putting people at risk, [PEN regulations] give a little bit more teeth to the board of health to say, ‘Hey you have to follow the rules,’” said Kocieda.

During a January interview, Kocieda said that the delay between the adoption of the regulations and their official implementation was due to issues in cooperative agreements between the state and county.

In July, the Montana Department assumed oversight of commercial and residential properties in Libby and Troy from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Due to funding holdups on the federal level, however, Kocieda said it took until December for the state agency to iron out its agreements with local officials.