HELENA, Montana - After years of litigation and negotiation, W.R. Grace has agreed to pay $250 million in reimbursement for government expenses in the cleanup of asbestos contamination at Libby, Montana.

The settlement was announced today by the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It is the highest settlement in the history of the Superfund program for environmental cleanups. The deal settles a claim the government filed against Grace to for past and future costs of cleaning up the site and surroundings of the former Grace vermiculite mine located just outside Libby.

The mine was owned and operated by the W.R. Grace & Co. until the early 1990s. It stopped operation mid-1990, and was officially closed in 1994. For decades previous, Grace had extracted tons of vermiculite every day from the mine. The vermiculite was contaminated with asbestos, a mineral that has been inextricably connected to mesothelioma, a rare cancer that is caused by exposure to asbestos fibers. Each day that the mine was in operation, it pumped tons of asbestos into the air to be breathed in by the residents of Libby.

Since 1994, over 1,200 residents of Libby have been diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases, including mesothelioma, lung cancer, asbestos cancer, and asbestosis. The Environmental Protection Agency has been working with residents of Libby and various environmental cleaning firms to decontaminate the mine and all the surrounding area by removing the asbestos-laden dirt and other asbestos-containing materials. Among other things, the EPA has removed tons and tons of dirt from around the mine itself, torn up a track at the local high school because it was made with asbestos-laced materials, and removed a skating rink from the Libby Middle School that was made with asbestos-containing materials. The cleanup has been going on since about 2000, and is expected to continue for years to come.

In 2003, a federal court in Montana awarded a judgment of $54 million to cover the initial cleanup costs, but the judgment was never paid because the company declared bankruptcy. The judgment covers that 2003 settlement and adds on additional costs incurred since then and future estimated costs of cleaning up the town and surrounding areas.

The settlement now must be approved by the bankruptcy court. Once approved, the company will have thirty days to pay the fine to the EPA. The EPA will hold the settlement in a special account within the Superfund to pay for future cleanup costs at Libby.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Asbestos Exposure, Asbestos Litigation, Jobsite Exposure, Montana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. Responses are currently closed, but you trackback from your own site.