| I've been meaning to write something up on the politics surrounding Libby, Montana, and its asbestos problem. Well, "problem" is too mild a term. Crisis? Disaster? What word evokes the horror of the industrial "accident" that is slowly killing the town?
But there's too much. It's one of those topics that a blog post can't even begin to touch. Read "An Air that Kills," by Andrew Schneider and David McCumber, an account written by the Seattle P-I journalist who broke the story.
What you do need to know, is that the one politician who's been in Libby's corner is Max Baucus. You can say whatever you want about his history in the Senate and his politics, but you can't deny this: Max has battled for Libby against WR Grace and the upper administrative echelons of the EPA. That's why you saw uncharacteristic anger from our senior Senator at a recent hearing on asbestos contamination in Libby, when he forbid two EPA officials from testifying.
What's made clear in "An Air that Kills" is that mining officials in Libby knew that its vermiculite was killing miners and townspeople -- and probably customers, too. And what's worse is that EPA officials knew, too, but helped block any regulation or investigation that would have exposed the problem. And in the book, the authors speculated whether the Bush administration had a hand in the most recent EPA stonewalling.
(I should hasten to add that the site workers and response teams from the EPA were not at all culpable, but took extraordinary actions to try to remediate the asbestos in Libby, all the while fighting the agency's upper levels of bureaucracy. That is, the boots-on-the-ground wanted to do what was right, but were constantly butting heads with the political apointees.)
Now Baucus is outright accusing the Bush administration of interfering in the cleanup of Libby:
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus has accused White House and Environmental Protection Agency officials of orchestrating a "conspiracy" by squashing a decision to declare a public health emergency in Libby three years after it was revealed more than 200 people died and another 2,000 fell ill because of asbestos exposure.
On Sept. 25 the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) held a hearing to discuss a report released the previous day by Baucus, D-Mont., that describes a scenario in which top-level officials from the national Office of Management and Budget prevented the EPA from declaring Libby a public health emergency. Such a declaration would have authorized the EPA to do extensive clean-up work along with providing Libby residents increased health screening, basic services like oxygen - which many people need because of asbestos-related complications - and long-term medical health care.
At the hearing, the EPA's Assistant Inspector General for Investigations Stephen Nesbitt suggested that federal officials persuaded the EPA to cancel its plans to declare a public health emergency in fear that such a declaration would start a sweeping and costly national effort to clean up asbestos.
Asbestos is a nation-wide problem. It kills millions of Americans. It's responsible for billions in health-care costs. (And why doesn't anyone mention the financial burden that industrial pollution puts on our health-care system?) We should start a sweeping and costly national effort to clean up asbestos. It's in our best long-term health and economic interest. And those companies that knowingly released a product that's harmful to human health should be obligated to help pay for that effort.
But also Baucus' investigation should remind us how pervasive and pernicious the Bush administration's influence into every aspect of our government continues to be. Don't be fooled by all the attention being paid to Obama and McCain: the Bush administration is still alive and well. More will no doubt come out after Obama occupies the White House, and ridding the federal government of its incompetent and partisan operatives is going to be a years-long problem. |
