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While people are dying, government agencies pass buck
Friday, November 19, 1999
By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
© 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved.
LIBBY, Mont. -- They all say somebody should do something.
City, county, state and federal officials agree that someone should follow up. Inquire. Ask questions about the hundreds of people from Libby who have either died or been diagnosed with fatal diseases after being exposed to tremolite asbestos from a vermiculite mine.
Somebody, they say, should investigate disturbing indications that Libby may still be at risk.
Medical records, death certificates, doctors in five states and the miners or their survivors say at least 192 have died and at least 375 more have asbestosis or cancers from the lethal, microscopic fibers.
Most of them contracted the terminal diseases years ago, when the mine spewed more than two tons of asbestos a day into the air, six days a week, in a fine white dust that settled over the mountainside and often carried into the town of Libby.
But Libby's nightmare did not end when the W.R. Grace Co. closed the mine in 1990.
For one thing, asbestos-related diseases take a long time to develop, so cases from earlier exposure will continue to crop up for decades.
But now, as more and more cases are being diagnosed in this little northwest Montana mountain town, some townspeople are finding questions none of the government agencies has dared to seek answers for:
The state says Grace spread yellow sweet clover and grass seed and planted 150 pine seedlings on each acre of the mine it reclaimed. Some have taken hold along the top of the mountain. But only a scant stubble covers the pinkish waste of the tailings pile, where thousands of tons of mine waste and asbestos dust were dumped. A web of gullies has eroded the pile.
"Natural landslides occur on the slopes in the area indicating the unstable nature of the vermiculite materials," the state wrote in a June 10 report.
The state admits that "the site would not meet reclamation standards that exist today." The tailing pile would have to be covered with clean soil. But the state says it is confident that "no asbestos is blowing off the hill."
The state's confidence may be misplaced.
Tremolite asbestos fibers were found in four of the samples. All were higher than the levels considered safe by EPA and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. One sample, taken at the curve on Rainy Creek Road, where youngsters from town often party, was more than four times above the action levels.
Using a vacuum air monitor, an air sample was also taken and analyzed. Again, much higher-than-acceptable levels of asbestos were found.
"More sophisticated testing would have to be done, but the levels (found in the P-I samples) indicate that if it were a workplace, the workers picking huckleberries in that area would have to wear a respirator and a protective suit," said Armina Nolan, who works for the EPA in Seattle and was the region's former asbestos coordinator.
Michael Watson, EPA's senior toxicologist in the Northwest's Region 10, said the "matter warrants a thorough examination. There appear to be big-time environmental pollutants up there . . . The levels could be far more than the average person should be exposed to."
When asked whether hazards remained on the mine site, a W.R. Grace spokesman said the company did not have "an in-house reclamation expert" who could answer the question.
"That's not it," said his wife, Gina. "He just doesn't want to know if something's wrong."
Her strapping, 34-year-old husband, a logger, has had pneumonia three times in a year. "That's a bad sign that something is wrong with his lungs," Gina said.
"He's never worked at the mine, so he thinks he's safe. There are several other people here in their 30s who think they have chest problems, but don't want to talk about it."
Shane shrugs off talk of his own health, saying, "Once you've got asbestosis, there's nothing you can do about it."
He pauses, then slams his fist on a coffee shop table. "It's our kids that I'm worried about."
Carson is 5. Darby, 10.
"That old vermiculite is all over this town. Has anyone checked to see what happened to the asbestos that's part of it? Are our kids safe?"
"You can see it sparkle," the mayor said. "It was used as fill. It covered the old ball parks, most of the town put it in their gardens. It's used as insulation in most of the houses.
"We know what happened in the old days, the miners coming home covered with white dust. But I don't think there's anything to worry about now. If there was a problem, I'm sure the county or the state people would have told us. They haven't given us any information so I'm sure there's not a problem."
Tony Berget desperately wants that to be true.
He adds: "I'm sure the county has tested for it, but they haven't found anything."
But Kendra Lund, who does environmental testing for Lincoln County, said she hasn't done any testing for asbestos "for years."
"We don't have the facilities to test for asbestos fibers. These are not county issues, but state responsibilities."
Dr. Brad Black, the part-time county health officer, said, "We're a very small health department with a very frugal budget. If there was anything wrong the state would tell us."
"The governor (Marc Racicot) is from Libby," Berget said. "If there were a problem, he'd tell us."
But the state has not done anything, and some state workers are concerned and frustrated. Patrick Plantenberg, acting mining supervisor at Montana's Department of Environmental Quality, said: "We keep hearing about all these people from Libby who are sick or have died, but no one that I know of from the state has any real information. Whenever I hear something, I call these people who are supposed to deal with it, but nothing has ever been followed up on."
Fred Ramsey, an epidemiologist for the Montana Health Department, added: "Apparently, the state has not designated anybody. It sounds like the asbestos problem in Libby may have fallen between the crack of 'whose territory is it?' "
Tom Ellerhoff, an administrator for DEQ, said, "We have lots of entities who could get involved and help determine what's happening in Libby," and he ticks off an alphabet soup of state and federal agencies.
"The question becomes, who has the authority to do something? The problem is that there hasn't been a murmur, let alone a public outcry, over what's happening up there. It's unfortunate but someone has to raise the issue, make it a hot topic, draw attention to it," said Ellerhoff. "That's the way to get the state Legislature and the Congress to demand action and raise money for the studies that should be done up there."
The federal government seems equally unsure of who has the duty to help Libby.
John Wardell, the coordinator of EPA's operation in Montana, initially responded to the P-I's questions about Libby by saying: "A lot of folks are saying EPA should do this or that, but not one of them, the town, the county or the state, has written us a letter or called and asked for our help. We cannot go out there unless we're invited."
Berget, the mayor, admitted he'd never called the EPA, but added, "This is not a big secret. They should know about it.
"Where is the EPA? It is their job to determine whether there is a hazard in this town. They are on our backs all the time, making people dig up old fuel tanks, after companies that drain stuff into the river. Why aren't they out here? We'd welcome someone looking at the issue."
After repeated queries, EPA's Wardell reconsidered his answer. He said this week that "based on concerns raised" by the P-I, the EPA would investigate the situation in Libby.
"Almost all the gardens in Libby have Zonolite in them. We haven't used it for years, but it's still there," she said, nudging a sparkle with her shoe.
At night, she sits up in a chair "because it's almost impossible to breathe if I lie down."
"I hate to die. I really do," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"I have a great-grandchild and six grandchildren and I want to watch them grow up. But I won't."
She's worried about the health of her grandchildren and the other children in Libby.
"Vermiculite is all over the place. Not just in the gardens. It's in the roofs and walls of the houses. You can see it along the river banks and on the roads and the old playgrounds. I don't want my kids to get it. I don't want them to die from that stuff.
"I can accept it if these deaths end with my generation, but what if it's ticking away in our children?"
She's going to try to persuade her two sons, ages 42 and 48, to get tested.
"They're afraid of finding out, but I think they have to know."
She says most of the town just doesn't want to know.
"We all played in the piles as kids. I can't understand why the government doesn't do anything and why the newspaper doesn't print a word. It's like it's a dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about."
EPA officials said that during the demolition, asbestos was released into the air that could have been inhaled by anyone downwind.
It is a startling paradox: The government took immediate action because of the improper removal of some pipes and vats wrapped with asbestos insulation, but has done nothing to evaluate whether the millions of tons of asbestos-laced waste remaining at the mine and the widespread vermiculite waste in town present a current hazard.
The EPA made an effort in 1992 to investigate contamination of the same road where the P-I took its sample. Ron Rutherford, then chief of the EPA's enforcement and compliance section in Region 8's Denver headquarters, asked EPA lawyers in Washington whether the road could be cleaned.
"Since the tailings (on the road) are a product of vermiculite mining, not asbestos mining, the tailings do not meet the definition of asbestos tailings," said the headquarters in refusing the request.
Rutherford, who is now senior enforcement coordinator, says Washington's decision left him no choice.
"We found that we had no regulatory authority to do anything. These regulations have not always made the most sense," he said.
"On the one hand we talk about how a single fiber of asbestos is not safe and can cause cancer down the road. But on the other hand, we don't regulate a lot of asbestos. It's just frustrating.
"Responsibility and authority are two different things. I would hope that we have responsibility for it but it's not clear to me that we have any authority. It's the way the environmental laws are written. Ask Congress.
"I don't doubt for a moment that there's asbestos in the air."
She worked for Grace doing assays. She has asbestosis, as does her former husband. She now works with AIDS patients in a mental-health clinic.
"I worry about the asbestos in this house, but I can't afford to move," she said.
"We stuffed as much new stuff as we could into the wall and ceiling, but I'm terrified about my daughter getting it," Kathy Tennison said.
Salisha, 18, beautiful and wide-eyed, leans against a wall, under a light switch covered with tape to keep the insulation from coming out.
She worries because her mother often has a hard time breathing. She's also frightened about her future.
"I think about it a lot, I worry that one day I won't be able to breathe," Salisha said.
She shakes her head. "Having to carry around a tank of oxygen, just to stay alive, is no way to live. No way at all."
Dr. Black, the county health officer, said, "My real concern is about the risks to those people who have the insulation from up the hill in their homes," but added, "I'm assuming that the risk of asbestos contamination was well-studied years ago."
But neither the county nor the state knows of any such studies, and there is no indication in the Grace documents reviewed by the P-I that the company ever studied what was in the walls and ceilings of Libby's old homes.
For most of the 70-year history of the mine, the asbestos and vermiculite dust that could be captured, that didn't soar up the stacks and into the wind, was dumped into the tailing pile.
The amount of asbestos going to the tailing pile increased dramatically in the '70s, when Grace shut down the dust-belching dry mill and switched to a wet process. Much of the estimated 5,000 to 9,000 pounds a day of lethal fibers that used to go into the air was being captured and dumped over the hill with the rest of the vermiculite tailing.
A 1981 internal audit of the mine by Grace acknowledged that the tailing pond, where runoff from the tailing pile was collected, was a storage basin for a "significant amount" of asbestos dust, "up to 40 percent." The auditors questioned whether this constituted "hazardous waste storage which would require federal licensing."
There is no indication in any of the thousands of pages of Grace documents reviewed by the P-I that the matter was ever dealt with.
But this fall, DEQ's Plantenberg found mention of the asbestos in the water while reviewing the reclamation bond for the mine, and he became concerned.
"Historically, they dumped tailings into that drainage and the whole drainage system is filled with tailings all the way down to the Kootenai River," he said.
"Next spring, if the spillway is full, we expect we are going to get a lot of asbestos going down Rainy Creek into the Kootenai, and I see that as a big issue here."
Asked whether the asbestos in the Kootenai presented yet another health problem for the town, he said he did not know.
"There is a water-quality standard so there must be health concerns," Plantenberg said, then added, "If there is a problem with contamination to air or water from that site, I'm sure we would go after W.R. Grace because the current land owners haven't done anything."
The company sold the mine in 1994 to two local loggers and a former Grace vice president.
Les Skramstad gingerly shuffles over the muddy field where Libby's kids used to play ball. He pauses at a pile of dirt scraped into the corner of the plot, stoops over and plucks up a glittering bit of soil. Then another. And one more.
"This is what frightens me," he said, watching the sun bounce off the vermiculite in his open palm. "This stuff was here for years and most of our kids played on it. The damn stuff is still here and no one seems to care."
About 200 yards away from the old pitcher's mound are half a dozen buildings and storage sheds that Grace used to process, package and ship bags of expanded vermiculite. There was also an experimental laboratory where they tried to turn Zonolite into everything from cattle feed to high-rising bread, and the tremolite asbestos into anything they could sell.
"After the scientists were done with their experiments, we'd just shovel that stuff out on the ground and make room for the next batch. These fields were piled with it," said Skramstad, who stops, squeezes his eyes shut and struggles to catch his breath.
He, his wife, Norita, and the two oldest of their five children have asbestosis or cancer of the lungs. The Skramstads were the first to go to trial against Grace, and they won.
But his doctor tells him he has only a few more years to live.
He accepts it with a shrug.
"Nothing can undo the disease we've got. We're all going to die from it. But I'm going to spend every minute I've got left trying to get people here to get serious about what's still on the ground, in the water and the air," Skramstad said.
Not far from the railroad tracks, next to the old shipping building, a half-dozen weathered bags of Grace's product are stacked atop an old wooden pallet. One of the bags is split. The others are still covered in heavy paper. The printing is faded but can still be read: "Warning Vermiculite Concentrate. Over-exposure to airborne fibers can cause a risk of cancer."
Grace knew there was the potential for trouble at the site.
In a 1981 inspection report, Grace's company auditors said that the town facility should be "secured by fencing since it is adjacent to a public ball playing field."
It was never done.
A metal-roofed building a softball toss away from the ball field was where Grace stored tall piles of vermiculite.
Mel Burnett, who owns the lumber yard that's there today, points to ropes still hanging from the rafters where the town's children used to swing and slide into the piles.
"I know that stuff is all over the place, but what am I supposed to do? Close down?" he asks with obvious frustration. "That stuff is hazardous, but so is not eating."
Skramstad said, "The politicians in this town don't want to wake up to the problem. . . . They say it's just some health problems left over from the old mine." He stares at the vermiculite he clutches in his hand.
"Death sentences are not just health problems."
He says the danger has been covered up.
"It's all suppressed. Those who don't have the disease don't want to talk about it or think about it.
"What's got to be remembered is that stuff lasts forever. You've got to wonder what kind of legacy we've left for our kids."
Butch Hurlbert was a steelworker and a rodeo roper. But not anymore.
After three years of working at the mine, he was about to hop on a treadmill for a cardiac test during a routine physical for a new job when the doctor who'd just examined him came running up waving an X-ray and told him to get off the machine.
"He told me, 'You've got cancer and you've got it bad,' " Hurlbert recalls.
The retired cowboy said he's angry about the way the "government types ... have covered up and downplayed the whole problem. That whole town should be tested, if they care about their kids, every square inch."
Understandably, the sick people have little patience for excuses.
"If the government says there is nothing wrong here, they're crazy," Carrie Detrick said. "I'm going to die. Let the government come to my funeral if they need proof."
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
But every official and every agency has a reason why, so far, they have not been that somebody.
Carrie Detrick has asbestosis stands in her Libby, Mont., garden, where she once used vermiculite for drainage.
Gilbert W. Arias, P-I Photos
'Big-time pollutants'
The mine on Zonolite Mountain is dormant, its buildings dismantled. The stacks that poured out so much dust are gone. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality has already given Grace back $400,000 of its $467,242 reclamation bond. The bond, which the state called "woefully inadequate" 25 years ago, was supposed to cover the costs of restoring the property to an environmentally safe level if the company had gone belly up.
This month, the Post-Intelligencer had two labs certified by the Environmental Protection Agency test soil collected from five locations along Rainy Creek Road. The road, once the main access to the mine, is now used by elk hunters, huckleberry and mushroom pickers, and others seeking access to the Kootenai National Forest land surrounding the mine.
Mayor Tony Berget, right, joins local businessmen for morning coffee at a local restaurant. He sais if Libby has an asbestos problem, "I'm sure the county or the state people would have told us." Gilbert W. Arias, P-I Photos
'He doesn't want to know'
Shane Whitmarsh says he just doesn't like sitting in doctors' offices.'The state would tell us'
Tony Berget, the mayor of Libby since 1996, agrees there is vermiculite all over the town.'I hate to die'
At 67, Carrie Detrick looks a lot better than she feels. She and her husband, Bob, both have asbestosis. "I never worked at the mine," Carrie Detrick said. "I just got it by living around here. It's all over the town." She leans on a shovel in her garden, freshly tilled by a friend. The black soil sparkles with pieces of vermiculite. A startling paradox
It's not as if the EPA doesn't know there are problems at Libby. In September 1994, Grace was fined and paid $510,000 for improperly dismantling some of the asbestos-covered equipment at the old mine. The penalty, one of largest Clean Air Act settlements in the country, "sends a clear message that violations of the asbestos regulations will not be tolerated," said Lois Schiffer, an acting assistant attorney general with the U.S. Justice Department. 'No way to live'
Kathy Tennison lives in a house her father built. It's warm, well-insulated with Zonolite, which was sold to the folks in town at a discount during the heyday of the mine. Water pollution concerns
Other hazards may flow from Zonolite Mountain.'The damn stuff is still here'
A Grace internal memo reported in April of 1965 that company air monitoring detected levels of asbestos "in downtown Libby on many dry days." An EPA inspection team reported the same thing in a 1982 report. What legacy for kids?
D.C. Orr worked as an excavator at the mine off and on for eight years. He is not sick, but several of his family members are.
P-I senior national correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reachedat 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattle-pi.com
Day 1
· A town left to die
· It all started with the search for gold
· The History of W.R. Grace Co.
· Dangers of asbestos exposure
· Known deaths from tremolite from Libby mine (graphic)
Day 2
· While people are dying, government agencies pass buck
· 'No one ever told us that stuff could kill you'
· Libby's lost miners: A gallery
· Group organizes to help victims
(newest at top)
· W.R. Grace to pay record Superfund fine
· Finally, asbestos-plagued Libby, Mont., to get help
· Up to 30% tested in Libby hurt by asbestos
· W.R. Grace files for bankruptcy
· Labor Dept. enters Libby's asbestos fight
· Why did dying miners get no help?
· Health warning on attic asbestos
· W.R. Grace buys its old Libby mine, then bans EPA investigators from it
· Grace backs off pledge to clean up asbestos
· Grace sends papers to EPA -- reportedly tainted
· A small group of physicians is trying to change the course of asbestos-induced disease
· One victim's story: '(I) couldn't get a breath; it scared me to death almost' · Horseman in the race of his life
· Class-action suit targets Grace Co., insulation
· Mine-safety agency takes action
· Immediate cleanup sought in mining town
· Grace to pick up medical bills in tainted town
· Asbestos study is expanded nationwide
· Deadly ore was shipped around U.S., Canada
· Just 23 months hauling ore--and it killed him 36 years later
· Finally, asbestos victims have their say
· Initial tests reveal areas of asbestos in and around Libby
· Montana's governor knows asbestos danger
· State, federal authorities sending teams to Montana mining town
· Editorial: Libby folks must get some answers
· EPA sues for access to Libby vermiculite mine
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