Missoula News

Attention Paid

Neglected Libby Gets Government Notice, and Needed Money, at Last

By Amy Linn, 6-19-09

The former Grace vermiculite mine above Libby. Photo courtesy EPA.

Details and relief are arriving in Libby in the wake of the the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision this week to declare the town a federal public health emergency, paving the way for millions of dollars of long-needed health and cleanup funds to arrive.

The federal government has announced that $6 million will go to Lincoln County health authorities to help Libby and Troy residents get medical care for asbestos-related illnesses such as asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs, and mesothelioma, a lethal cancer. Libby area residents who never worked in the Grace mine, including children, are suffering from those diseases at staggeringly high rates, government studies show.

In addition, the EPA will give at least $125 million to boost ongoing cleanup efforts, according to an AP report in the Flathead Beacon. The money will be used “to speed the work of going door-to-door, raising tents over contaminated homes, removing contaminated soil and vacuuming out attics and any other surface once contaminated by miners returning from work,” reporter Nicholas Geranios writes.

Of the estimated 1,200 people in Libby who have asbestos-related lung problems, about 70 percent of them never worked at the mine or related facilities, according to the government.

Instead, residents inhaled asbestos fibers during everyday activities, stirring it up when they swept the floor, played in ball parks, jogged on the high school running track, or simply did the wash—since Grace allowed employees to go home covered in asbestos dust.

The legacy of the exposures will be felt for years to come, as there is often a long latency period before illnesses appear.

The EPA first arrived in Libby in November 1999 after Seattle Post Intelligencer reporter Andrew Schneider broke the story about widespread contamination from asbestos-laced vermiculite, mined and processed by Grace from 1963 to 1990. The vermiculite—donated by Grace to local schools and residents by the truck-full— has been found nearly everywhere, from homes and businesses to parks, streets and gardens.

In 2005, a federal grand jury indicted Grace and seven former top executives for knowingly endangering Libby residents, charging the company and its managers with a criminal conspiracy that included Clean Air Act violations and obstruction of justice. After an 11-week trial, jurors on May 8 found Grace and three former executives not guilty on all charges.

Charges against two other executives were dropped near the end of the trial, before the verdict was reached. A sixth defendant died in 2007. On June 16, federal prosecutors dismissed all charges against the final defendant, former Grace legal counsel O. Mario Favorito, who had been slated to go on trial in September.

For more about healthcare worries in Libby, click here. For a blow-by-blow of the W.R. Grace trial, click here.

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