LIBBY, Mont. -- For more than 65 years, lethal asbestos fibers from a nearby vermiculite mine contaminated this small town and its people.
Federal agencies have spent seven years and tens of millions of dollars removing tons of the cancer-causing material from homes, businesses, schools and playgrounds. Yet no one is sure that any amount of time or money can clean up the town enough to make it safe to live there.
So a growing number of residents now are proposing that the federal Environmental Protection Agency or Columbia-based W.R. Grace & Co., which owned the mine for the last quarter-century of its operation, buy their houses so they can rebuild outside heavily contaminated areas.
Government scientists met last week to try to develop studies to determine how risky living in Libby really is.
"The risk assessment must be completed prior to any decisions regarding the final cleanup plan," EPA spokeswoman Jennifer Wood said.
Talk of a buyout took hold after the EPA's inspector general said in a report last month that, because the agency has not determined the safe level of human exposure to the asbestos in Grace's vermiculite, the "EPA cannot be sure that the ongoing Libby cleanup is sufficient to prevent humans from contracting asbestos-related diseases."
The IG report also said the EPA must "fund and execute a comprehensive study to determine the effectiveness of the Libby cleanup" with special attention on the effects of asbestos exposure on children.
Paul Peronard, the EPA emergency coordinator who has been involved in the cleanup since the beginning in 1999, said, "The EPA has no plans for a mass relocation or buyout, although the concept is not off the table. Right now the judgment is the community would be better served by fixing the problem in place."
However, he added, "There is a possibility that our analytical methods are not sensitive enough to measure down low enough to say there is no risk, and with this type of asbestos we cannot say that we ultimately will know what level will be deemed acceptable."
Grace has taken the idea of a buyout seriously enough to study the costs and benefits, according to two lawyers involved in the company's bankruptcy case. Grace filed for bankruptcy in 2001 to protect itself from thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits.
