Libby, Montana Clean-up to be funded by W.R. Grace
March 12, 2008, – Global chemical manufacturer W.R. Grace has agreed to pay a record $250 million to fund the removal of asbestos in Libby, Montana. This agreement finally settles a claim brought by the federal government in 2001 under the Superfund law.
It has been approximately eight years since the media first reported on the northwest Montana town’s asbestos problem. More than two hundred residents of Libby have died from asbestos-related diseases. The figure includes many people who never worked at the W.R. Grace-owned zonolite mine that was the source of the asbestos contamination.
EPA officials have said that the $250 million is, to date, the biggest Superfund settlement for the purpose of cleaning up a polluted site. According to the terms of the settlement W.R. Grace must pay the $250 million within thirty days of approval by a Delaware federal bankruptcy court (the company filed for bankruptcy in 2001).
If the settlement is approved by the court, the money will be paid into an independent Superfund account, to be used to recoup money already spent, and to pay for future clean-up and investigations. A total of $11 million will be set aside for future asbestos education programs and special projects such as emergency housing clean-up.
Over the last eight years, the EPA has spent around $168 million cleaning up asbestos contamination in Libby. Some of the money spent has also paid for medical check-ups and diagnostic medical tests for thousands of residents of the town.
EPA emergency coordinator Paul Peronard, who has been involved with the Libby clean-up since 1999 and is the EPA team leader for the project, says that up to an additional $175 million may be needed to complete the remediation.
Peronard says he doesn’t believe that remediation attempts will be completed in the near future, due to the enormous scope of the project, and the fact that Libby is such a heavily contaminated site.
The EPA has been removing asbestos in the town for eight years. In 2001 the federal government filed suit against W.R. Grace to recover costs of investigation and clean-up, and the company was forced to file for bankruptcy as a result of thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits.
In 2003, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy ordered W.R. Grace to pay $54.5 million to the EPA to cover asbestos clean-up costs, but the money was not paid due to bankruptcy. The $250 million settlement finally resolved that judgment, too.
The W.R. Grace criminal trial is expected to open in Missoula by June of this year. Federal prosecutors will use as evidence a number of investigations and studies carried out by the EPA.
On federal study indicated that more than residents of Libby and the surrounding area had developed lung abnormalities as a result of mining operations. These abnormalities were present not only in mine workers, but in residents who had never worked at the mine.
The record $250 million settlement finally makes the chemical company financially responsible for cleaning up Libby. The process of deciding whether W.R. Grace knowingly endangered the town will begin in just a few months, at the criminal trial.
