A lawsuit filed last week in a California court accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of allowing perilous delays before forcing companies to bear the cleanup costs associated with hazardous waste sites. The impetus for the case was the situation involving W.R. Grace and their vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana, which has caused widespread asbestos contamination and death in the little Montana town.
According to an article in the Missoulian, Lisa Evans, a lawyer with Earthjustice who filed the lawsuit March 11, believes the shortfall is due, in part, to the EPA’s failure to draft regulations that would require “high-risk” companies to demonstrate a financial ability to clean up their messes.
“Congress gave EPA five years to write these regulations - that was 27 years ago,” said Evans, who spoke on behalf of the Sierra Club, Idaho Conservation League, Great Basin Resource Watch and Amigos Bravos. “We are asserting that it is long past time for EPA to abide by this mandate. Thus we are filing our complaint to ask the court to require EPA to write these critically important regulations addressing financial assurance.”
Instead, companies are permitted to hide behind “a cavalcade of bankruptcies” while taxpayers foot the bill, slowing the cleanup of hazardous waste sites like Libby, Evans said.
“The fact that companies don’t have the money and don’t step up to the plate definitely has a delaying effect on cleaning up the sites,” Evans said. “And then you have Superfund sites that the public has to clean up.”
Evans believes that enforcing the regulations would ensure that the polluter had to come up with the funds for cleanup, not the government/taxpayers. She also believes that the enforcement of such regulations would provide incentives for companies not to pollute.
The EPA has characterized Libby as “the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.” It has been eight years since the contamination was brought to light and thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent for cleanup before W.R. Grace was finally ordered last week to pay $250 million for cleanup costs.
“My biggest issue is: Is it really going to be enough?” said Gayla Benefield, a longtime Libby activist and full-time resident. “I mean, [the EPA] paid over $160 million already and how much has that really accomplished? The people in Libby are still being diagnosed with asbestos-related disease and they’re still dying from it.”
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