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Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.) Blasts US EPA
By asbestoshub | October 7, 2008
During a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) released a report showing that the White House blocked a decision to declare a public health emergency in Libby, Montana.
In compiling the 50-page report, Baucus and his staff spent a year combing through more than 14,000 internal documents provided his office by the EPA. According to the documents, the EPA was close to declaring a public health emergency in Libby in 2002, but halted that plan after interference by the White House Office of Management and Budget, OMB.
The declaration would have authorized the EPA to do extensive cleanup work in homes and other structures still contaminated from the W.R. Grace facility.
During the September 25, 2008 hearing, Baucus called the findings an “outrage,” and said the “political appointees at EPA, OMB, and the White House ignored officials on the ground, ignored the law, and ignored the health needs of Libby.”
In 1999, news reports linked death and illness due to exposure to asbestos from decades of vermiculite mining in the small northwest Montana town. Libby was declared a national superfund site in 2002.
Baucus was joined at the hearing by Stephen Nesbitt, Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at Environmental Protection Agency; Dr. Brad Black, Medical Director of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby; and Marianne Roose, Lincoln County Commissioner from Eureka, Mont.
“We are still waiting for EPA to declare a public health emergency in Libby,” Roose said. “It’s needed now more than ever.”
Baucus requested EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson’s attendance, but Johnson refused to appear today. Johnson also refused to let key employees at EPA to be interviewed by Baucus’ staff in the course of the investigation.
“It is time for EPA to listen to its own scientists and attorneys and declare a Public Health Emergency in Libby,” Baucus said today during the hearing.
Read a transcript of the hearing.
Topics: Exposure |
