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Today's Stories January 15, 2008 Andrea Peacock How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds January 14, 2008 Ishmael Reed Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man Roger Morris Burials in the Sind Uri Avnery The Hands of Esau Mike Whitney Bush's Voodoo Stimulus Package Allan Nairn General Suharto of Indonesia: One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses William Blum Oh, By the Way, the Iraqis Don't Really Want Us Alan Farago A Subprime Wake Up Call David Macaray Are Labor Unions Ready for Prime Time? Eva Liddell Getting Drunk with Obama Zoe Blunt Road Kill: New Highway Blocked by Protesting Raccoons Website of the Day Doug and Andrea Peacock on Grizzlies   January 12 / 13, 2008 Andrew Cockburn How the New England Journal of Medicine Undercounted Iraqi Civilian Deaths Saul Landau 60 Years of Empire Corey D. B. Walker Barack Obama and the Crisis of the White Intellectual Col. Dan Smith Bush, Iran and the Magician of the Tarot Eric Toussaint The US Subprime Crisis Goes Global Ron Jacobs Television, Murder and Vietnam Fred Gardner The People vs. Christopher James Chakos Stan Cox Don't Take That Pill! Jacob G. Hornberger The Warfare State Ramzy Baroud The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Joseph Grosso The Anglosphere: a Special Relationship of Elites David Díaz-Arias Imagining An/Other Latin American Left Stacey Warde Before We Move On ... Dan Bacher Pumped to Extinction: the Decline of the Delta Smelt Michael Dickinson Georgie in Jesusland Website of Weekend CounterPunchers Protest Outside NYT Offices   January 11, 2008 Dave Lindorff Did Hillary Really Win New Hampshire? More Questions About Diebold Voting Machines Paul Craig Roberts No Escape from War and Unemployment Andy Worthington Six Years of Guantánamo Kenneth Couesbouc Banking on Thin Ice Jeff Ballinger Inside the Vienna Consensus Christopher Brauchli Lethal Injection, the Supremes and China Manuel Garcia, Jr. Paying No Attention to the Presidential Campaigns Andrew Silverstein Bush's Weepy Visit to Jerasulem Marwan Bishara Bush in the Middle East Robert Weissman The First Amendment Gone Wild Patrick Irelan Damn the Small Boats! Website of the Day Hillary and the Superdelegates: Or Why She Wins Even When She Loses     January 10, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Now Nader Claims He Didn't Endorse Edwards Bob Wing Marqueece Harris-Dawson Race Within the Race: Obama, the NH Vote and the Specter of Tom Bradley Michael Donnelly White Women Gone Wild? David Macaray Three Big Reasons for the Decline of Labor Unions China Hand Bush's Delusional Policy Pushes Pakistan to Brink of Catastrophe Ayesha Ijaz Khan Saudi Arabia and Pakistan: Brotherly, Friendly Countries? Rannie Amiri Obama, Man of Kansas or Kenya? Website of the Day Iranian Video of the Hormuz Incident   January 9, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair The Empire Strikes Back Dave Lindorff The Bad News from New Hampshire: Death By Triangulation John Chuckman Pardon My Laughter: Watching the US Primaries from Canada James Bovard Stomping Freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006 Alan Farago As Florida Sinks: the View from the Titanic Russell Mokhiber Why Picket the New York Times in DC on Friday? William S. Lind Kicking the Can Down the Road in Iraq Peter Morici Beyond the Sophistry: Why the Trade Deficit Matters Josh Reubner Sudan vs. Israel: Double Standard on Divestment Mike Roselle The Pursuit of Happiness Website of the Day Bottles of Tears on the Wall: Steve Perry on NH   January 8, 2008 Paul Craig Roberts No Jobs for the New Economy (or the Old) Russell Mokhiber The Black Hillary: Obama is Just Another Political Sedative Robert Fantina The Gulf of Tonkin and the Strait of Hormuz Dave Zirin Butts on Parade Shamako Nobel I Am an Emcee: the Politics of Hip Hop John Ross Zapatista Women Encounter Themselves Brenda Norrell Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security Laura Carlsen Why Bolivia Matters Patrick Irelan Remember the Maine! Evelyn J. Pringle The Holes in Bush's FDA Jonathan M. Feldman After Iowa and New Hampshire: a Strategy for Rebuilding the Peace Movement Michael Dickinson Playing Soldier Website of the Day Sean Hannity on the Run!   January 7, 2008 Chris Floyd There Will Be Blood: But No Justice for Iraq Atrocities John Blair Remove That Man! Creeping Fascism in Indiana Uri Avnery The Case of the White Bird Andy Worthington Who Are the Gitmo Saudis? Binoy Kampmark Needling the Convict: Lethal Injection and the Supreme Court David Macaray Women on Strike Ralph Nader Obamarama: the Politics of the Smooth Mood Michael Donnelly It's the War Vote(s), Stupid! Ron Jacobs Ron Paul's Run: Is Being Against the War Enough? Gideon Levy The Hostile President Dave Lindorff A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and the Bomb Website of the Day Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea   January 5 / 6, 2008 Douglas Valentine Good Guys in Black Hoods Kevin Young The US Occupation and Popular Opinion in Iraq Richard Rhames Saddam Who? Saul Landau Bush Snatches Defeat from Victory Marc Lynch Why Bush's Iran Strategy is Failing Robert Fantina Iowa, Democrats and the Iraq War Donna Volatile Antiwar Soldier: an Interview with Jonathan Hutto, Sr. Jelle Bruinsma Norman Finkelstein in The Netherlands Bob Sutcliffe Remembering Andrew Glyn, Rebel Economist Harvey Wasserman Anti-Nuclear Renaissance Missy Beattie Why Obama Can't Save Us David Swanson Remembering the Separation of Powers Jacob Hornberger The Importance of the Padilla Case Shepherd Bliss Survival Tools from Kokopelli Farms Ron Jacobs Bleeding Kansas Poets' Basement Patti Smith, B.R. Gowani and Peter Buknatski Website of the Weekend Jimmy Dean Sausage Call Complaint   January 4, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair A Good Night in Iowa Jonathan Cook War Crimes Airbrushed from History Paul Craig Roberts Thinking for Yourself is Now a Crime Stan Goff Ron Paul's Monkeywrench Dave Lindorff Clinton's Iowa Flop Exposes DLC Myths as Frauds Niranjan Ramakrishnan To Pindi Station Allan Nairn U.S. Elections Over Before They Began Joshua Frank The Failures of Sectarianism Peter Morici Economy on the Skids Mary McInnis Iowa Cocky-Us: How to be a Caucus Tease Website of the Day The Return of Obama Girl   January 3, 2008 Fatima Bhutto Farewell to Wadi Bua Pam Martens The Free Market Myth Dissolves into Chaos Joanne Mariner The Presidential Candidates and Torture Zoltan Grossman Remember the '80s: Social Movements Between Woodstock and the Web David Domke The Echoing Press and Huckabee Norman Solomon Edwards Reconsidered Nikolas Kozloff Return of the Faux Liberal Jacob G. Hornberger The Padilla Case and the Future of Habeas Corpus Martha Rosenberg Quit Picking on Huckabee's Son, Michael Vick Russell Means This Property is Condemned: a Notice to Those Occupying Lakotah Lands Website of the Day WolfQuest   January 2, 2008 Jeff Taylor The Left and Ron Paul M. Shahid Alam The Life and Death of Benazir Bhutto: a Pakistani Tragedy Gary Leupp Madness Compounding Madness: Calls for Intervention in Pakistan Paul Craig Roberts Criminals with Badges Heather Gray Georgia's Racist Death Penalty Fred Gardner and Shobhit Arora Dr. Strangelove's Nemesis David Macaray Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley Benjamin Dangl Fear and Loathing in Bolivia     January 1, 2008 Iain A. Boal City of Disappearances B. R. Gowani Benazir's Death in Crisistan Shahid Mahmood Bhutto and the Press Linn Washington, Jr. Old Injustices Endure: From Crack Sentences to Racial Profiling Harvey Wasserman Taking Leonard Peltier to Iowa: the Moral Low Point of the Clinton Era John Ross 2008, Already a Year to Forget Website of the Day The Thrill is Gone: BB and Gladys   December 31, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Goodbye 2007 and Good Riddance! Tariq Ali Pakistan, the Aftermath Liaquat Ali Khan The Perfidy of Pakistan's Rulers Wajahat Ali After Bhutto, a Nuclear Pakistan? Robert Fisk Who Killed Bhutto? Ajai Sahni Myths and Realities About Benazir Bhutto and Pakistan's Dark Future Marwan Bishara You Say Talk, I Say Attack: The Middle East and the US Presidential Election Campaigns Uri Avnery The Beilin Syndrome Mark T. Harris Does This Happen in Canada? Brenda Norrell Resistance and Censorship Website of the Day A People United Will Never Be Defeated   December 29 / 30, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Options in America: Kill Yourself or Have a Baby Tariq Ali Indignation and Fear Stalk Pakistan Fawzia Afzal-Khan My Encounter with Benazir Bhutto Gary Leupp The U.S. and Pakistan After 9/11: Blowback from an Unholy Alliance China Hand Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss Jacob Hornberger Stop Medddling in Pakistan John Chuckman Pakistan and the Failure of Quick-Fix Politics Missy Beattie Evaluating Bush with the Bhutto Corruption Standard Ralph Nader Who Will Take the Next Step? Fidel Castro There Hasn't Been a Day in My Life When I Haven't Learned Something Robert Fantina The Sham of Homeland Security Greg Moses Beauty from the Heart of Texas Catherine Lutz What We Can Not See: Art and Bombing Kristin Van Tassel Seeing in the Dark Kim Nicolini Redacted: Brian DePalma's Scream of Outrage Phyllis Pollack Keith Richards Runs With Rudolph Once More Poets' Basement Landau, Gibbons and Davies Website of the Weekend Driving Karachi in Search of the Perfect Naan   December 28, 2007 Farzana Versey The Complex Electra Wajahat Ali A Pakistani Requiem Binoy Kampmark Death in Rawalpindi: Bhutto and Her Legacy Ayesha Ijaz Khan Not Dead Yet: The Pakistan People's Party Still Survives Anthony DiMaggio Turkey's Bombing of Iraq Ray McGovern Creeping Fascism Jim Goodman Biofuels, the Biggest Scam Going Ron Jacobs Transcending the Colonizer's History: Iran, a People Interrupted Russell Hoffman Mini-Nukes by Toshiba John Murphy Greens Gone Wild Website of the Day Guiliani Campaign Official: "Only Rudy Can Defeat the Muslims"   December 27, 2007 Dilip Hiro A Tragedy Foretold: Will Bhutto's Death be a Boost for Her Party? Murtaza Shibli Who Killed Bhutto? Stephen Soldz Fallujah, the Information War and U.S. Propaganda Bill Quigley Locked Outside the Gates Paul Craig Roberts The Great American Lock-Up Omer Subhani Killing Bhutto: What Happens Next in Pakistan? Marjorie Cohn The Torture Tape Cover-Up: How High Does It Go? Allan Nairn Cataclysm By Money Whim Jacob G. Hornberger Smearing Ron Paul: Shame on the NYT Norman Solomon Channeling Suze Orman Patrick Irelan Rumsfeld Spills the Ink Ben Tripp Pass the Razor Blades Website of the Day Quagmire, For What It's Worth   December 26, 2007 Charles Tripp From One Saddam to Fifty Paul Armentano No-Knock, You're Dead Rannie Amiri Lebanon in Search of a Government Stanley Heller Brzezinski and Charlie Wilson's War John Walsh Two Unreasonable Men Martha Rosenberg The Strange Career of Scott Gottlieb Norman Madarasz Bolivia Amends New Constitution and Faces Mutiny from Within Website of the Day Cockburn at the Battle of Ideas   December 25, 2007 Patrick Cockburn Conscience and Empire December 24, 2007 Andrea Peacock A Dark Ride on the Border Tariq Ali Thinking of Edward Said Uri Avnery Help! A Ceasefire! Jill Jameson Burma is Not Back to Normal: A Trip from Rangoon to Mae Sot Steve Melendez Russell Means Goes to Washington Mike Whitney The Big Fix Chuck Munson Not Getting It About New Orleans John Walsh Clueless Crusaders Farzana Versey Tony Blair and the Hawking of Religion Richard Neville Dreaming of a White House Christmas Website of the Day Back in the USSR December 22 / 23, 2007 Alexander Cockburn Mike Huckabee's Ascending Chariot Ralph Nader Politics and Profits: How the Oil Cartel Gets Its Way Andy Worthington Intelligence Failures, Battlefield Myths and Unaccountable Prisons in Afghanistan Ahmad Faruqui The Comedian of Pakistan Bill Moyers Society on Steroids Rev. William E. Alberts Blessed are the Peacemakers Timothy J. Freeman From Kant to Lennon: Can War Really be Over? Anthony DiMaggio Democrats Continue to Capitulate on Iraq Fred Gardner Molecule of the Year, Cannabiodiol Paul Krassner Enhanced Hazing Techniques Seth Sandronsky 17 Years of Meanness: Repealing California's Three Strikes Law William Loren Katz Christmas Eve Freedom Fighters: Recalling the Battle of Lake Okeechobee Michael Dickinson In the Dungeon of the Zabita Ron Jacobs Why Leon Russell Still Matters David Vest Doyle Bramhall's "Is It News?" Poets' Basement Orloski, Davies and Ford Website of the Weekend George W. Hates Santa   December 21, 2007 John Ross New Massacres Loom in Mexico Jacob Hornberger Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq Dick J. Reavis A Way Out of the Newspaper Abyss Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon The 2007 P.U.-litzer Prizes Peter Morici Business as Usual as Recession Looms Jack McCarthy Let Us Now Praise Judith Regan (Even If She Did Sleep with Bernie Kerik) Raúl Zibechi Sex and Revolution Steve Early How the Presidential Candidates Made Me an Atheist David Macaray Union Aftermath Patrick Bond Zuma, the Center-Left and the Left-Left in S. Africa Lakota Freedom Delegation A Declaration of Independence from the USA Website of the Day Solomon v. Beck: Tale of the Tape   December 20, 2007 David Rosen Mitt Romney's Secret Life as a Pornographer Alan Farago The Huckster and the Wreckage: Jeb Bush and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Laura Carlsen Standing Up to NAFTA Ashley Dawson The Return of the Bread Riot Wayne Smith and Jennifer Schuett Cuba Changes, US Policy Stagnates Website of the Day How to Talk to a FoxNews Reporter   December 19, 2007 Saul Landau Is the NIE Bush's Watergate? Paul W. Lovinger Hillary the Hawk Norman Solomon The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck Dave Zirin George Mitchell's Drugs of Choice Marjorie Cohn Bush Still Spinning Iranian Nukes Sen. Russell Feingold The Iraq War is Exhausting Our Nation Sonja Karkar A Christmas Reflection on Palestine Anthony Papa Open the Drug Gulags Christopher Ketcham Pave the Holy Lands with Good Intentions Davey D Britney's Little Sister is Pregnant: Should We Blame Hip Hop? Website of the Day When Republicans Use the F-Word on TV   December 18, 2007 R. F. Blader The Politics of Teen Pregnancy George Wuerthner Gunning for Wolves in Idaho Steven Higgs Can the NAFTA Superhighway be Stopped? Vijay Prashad Encounters with Ghadar David Macaray The Free Rider Problem Ralph Nader Nine Books That Make a Difference: a Reading List for the Holidays Eva Liddell Privatizing War Abroad, Invading Privacy at Home Martha Rosenberg While the Bodies are Still Warm: Drugs, Shrinks and Shooters Dave Lindorff When Impeachment is Out of Print Peter Morici The Consequences the Trade Deficit Website of the Day Ron Paul: How Fascism Will Come to America   December 17, 2007 Mike Whitney Staring Into the Abyss Tom Barry Planning the War on Immigrants Uri Avnery A Gaza Masada? Greg Moses Crossing the Line in Texas Allan Nairn Terrorism; Counter- Terrorism: Excuses for Murder Patrick Bond South Africa's Fight Between Hostile Brothers Stephen Lendman Police State America Charles Jonkel Grizzly Right of Way Laray Polk An Inside-Out Crisis in Gaza Stephen Fleischman Pawns in Their Game December 15 / 16, 2007 Peter Linebaugh A People's Penny for the Magna Carta Howard Zinn Bomb After Bomb Standard Schaefer The Greening of Big Tobacco Raymond J. Lawrence Let's Take Christ Out of Christmas Alan Farago Down on Desolation Row: the Vultures and the Growth Machine Saul Landau Lord Byron and the Bad Tourists Jenna Orkin Lying to "Reassure" the Public: Bush's EPA and the Post-9/11 Toxic Air Cover-Up Ahmad Samih Khalidi Why a Palestinian "State" is a Punitive Construct Robert Fantina Politics By Photo-Op Missy Comley Beattie Resistance Amid the Ruins Ramzy Baroud Of Mormons and Muslims James L. Secor A Vision for China's Future Elijah Wald Ike Turner's Music Won't be Forgotten Website of the Weekend The Alliance for the Wild Rockies Needs (and Deserves) Your Support   December 14, 2007 JoAnn Wypijewski The Dirty Cad: What Giuliani's Sex Life Tells Us About Him John Ross Iraqi Refugees Return: One Cruel Hoax Jacob Hornberger Terror Suspects Belong in Federal Court Andy Worthington Guantánamo and the Supreme Court: What Happened? Allan Nairn "Shoot Them on the Spot": Rewarding War Crimes Dave Zirin The Mitchell Report: Absolving the Owners Dave Lindorff The First Cut is the Deepest Misty MacDuffee Toxic Grizzlies Ben Terrall What Happened to Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine? Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi Prerequisites for Peace Website of the Day Sen. Kit Bond: "Waterboarding is Like Swimming"   December 13, 2007 Paul Craig Roberts Shrinking the Dollar from the Inside-Out Mike Whitney Dershowitz for the Defense--of Waterboarding Ron Jacobs Blank Check DemocratsL the Great War Funding Conspiracy Norman Solomon The USA's Human Rights Daze Peter Morici The Dragon and the Toothless Dog: China Doesn't Flinch Sandy Mayes Blocking the Strykers: 13 Days of War Resistance at Port Olympia Franklin Lamb The UN in Lebanon: Whose Mission Is It Fulfilling? Jacob Hornberger Don't Reform the CIA, Abolish It Nadim Rouhana An Interloper in My Own Land Dave Zirin On Pigskin and Petrol Website of the Day Rachel's Needs (and Deserves) Your Support! December 12, 2007 Allan Nairn US Intelligence is Tapping Indonesian Phones Alan Farago How Sprawl Eats Its Young Ray McGovern Torture, Lies and Videotape Winslow T. Wheeler The Phony Pentagon Budget Cuts Evan Jones The Raid on Great Western: Why an Australian Bank Might Spell Doom for the US Farm Belt James Petras An Open Letter to Sarkozy on the Exchange of Political Prisonsers Joel Hirschorn The Horserace Fiction: Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Machine Joshua Frank Why Ron Paul Deserves Our Attention Sherry Wolf Why the Left Should Reject Ron Paul Dan Bacher Survey of a Fish Graveyard Website of the Day Men Eating Bugs                 Subscribe Online

January 15, 2008 *** A Special Investigation *** A Breach of Trust in America's Most Toxic Town How the EPA is Rubbing Poison Into Libby's Wounds By ANDREA PEACOCK The voice on the phone spoke with the confidence of authority: he had called to say that the people of Libby, Montana, were being screwed over once again. The culprit, however, was not the W.R. Grace & Co., whose asbestos-contaminated vermiculite mine had been the source of death and disease for these folks for most of the 20th century. This time, the anonymous caller asserted, the Environmental Protection Agency was to blame. He had my attention. A contractor on the cleanup, he said, was secretly ignoring decontamination procedures in violation of federal law, while the EPA turned a blind eye. "It's fraudulent and deceptive, and the blame goes all the way up." For the better part of 70 years, Libby miners dug away at a virtual mountain of vermiculite located about seven miles northeast of town as the raven flies. Under the auspices of the Grace corporation (which bought the mine in 1963), this small town in the far northwestern corner of Montana provided the vast majority of the world's commercial vermiculite. Marketed as a soil conditioner and do-it-yourself housing insulation, Grace's ore resides in the walls and attics of an estimated 35 million buildings in the United States. It also happens to be contaminated with a highly virulent form of asbestos referred to as Libby Amphibole. Grace kept this information to itself for the nearly three decades it spent mining Libby of its wealth and health, tracking the decline of its workforce through annual medical exams, and blocking the inquiries of doctors and federal regulators when the stench of its secret aroused anyone's curiosity. The death toll ran to almost 200 before anyone outside of town noticed. A subsequent study found nearly one in five locals who volunteered for testing showed signs of lethal asbestos-related damage in their lungs. When the EPA rolled in at the tail end of 1999, its agents promised a new era of accountability. "In the past you've dealt with government as a broad, faceless bureaucracy," team leader Paul Peronard told a packed town meeting hall. "Your satisfaction or not is my responsibility." Eight years later, Peronard finds himself on the hot seat. Apparently thinking no one would notice, a cleanup crew under the EPA's supervision had stopped using filters on the pond water that was being used to decontaminate the dump trucks running back and forth from town to the old mine site with asbestos-laden soil--pond water that drains from the old mine tailings pile and itself carries a heavy load of asbestos. My source (who wants to keep his job, and asked therefore to remain anonymous) says his own inquiries suggest these filters had not been used since 2003--a five-season long violation of the work, health and safety plans governing the cleanup operation (also, incidentally, a violation of federal law). The sham was only noticed when a W.R. Grace contractor--assisting in the cleanup--arrived last fall and inspected the setup. That's also what the EPA was supposed to be doing, along with its contractors: the Massachusetts-based Camp Dresser & McKee, and Environmental Restoration of St. Louis, MO. In fact, the EPA built in 12 layers of oversight for the Libby project, with Peronard at the top of the pyramid. Those things were supposed to be checked daily. The intended cleanup scenario is pretty straightforward: contaminated building material goes to a specially built cell at the landfill to be contained indefinitely; contaminated yard waste goes back up to the old mine site to be buried. Crews on the soil team run a 10 hour shift of dump trucks each day, five days a week from spring to fall, accounting for between 3,700 and 4,000 trips along Highway 37 each year. In order to minimize the chance of spreading contamination around, the EPA paved a portion of the Rainy Creek mine road as far as the "amphitheater" (a wide spot in the road where Grace trucks used to pull over and let each other pass, and where high school kids used to party). With Rainy Creek Road closed to the public since 2000, the amphitheater now hosts a waste transfer station where the trucks each chuck their loads of between 10 and 12 yards of asbestos-laden dirt, get washed off with filtered water from the Mill Pond, then turn around for another round trip to town. In this manner, the dump trucks never leave the pavement, and the contaminated dust gets rinsed off on a regular rotation. At least, theoretically. There were to be two components to the filtering system, first straining out all fibers longer than 20 microns, then one going down to five microns (putting aside the question of whether asbestos fibers shorter than five microns are health hazards--emerging data suggests they are, particularly in non-cancerous but equally fatal forms of asbestos-related disease). The problem is, these filters clog up and need to be changed. EPA spokesperson Ted Linnert says they probably should be changed out twice a week on average; depending on the circumstances--spring runoff, sediment from construction activities, summer algae blooms--they might even clog on an hourly basis. Costing $25 for the 20-micron filter, and as much as $150 for the 5-micron filter, the process of swapping out filters could get to be an expensive aggravation very quickly. So at some point in time, ER workers merely left the filter housing--metal cylinders into which these bag or sock-like filters fit--in place and ran the water through the empty cylinders as though they were functional. Peronard says he cannot be sure when, exactly, Environmental Restoration dumped the filters. "The official response from ER was that they were never responsible for switching these filters out under the contract," he says, "and therefore they can't ever vouch that it was ever done. That would be the answer that it had happened since at least 2003." Prior to that year, the EPA provided filters. Then, the contracts were restructured so that ER bid a lump sum to do the entire job--an incentive to cut corners, Peronard acknowledges. But in 2003, the EPA gave the company a batch of leftover filters, then left them to their own devices. He assumes these leftovers got used. Also, ER switched managers in 2005, and Peronard says this is another point at which the filters could have been dropped. He suspects the truth lies somewhere in between. "I'm not sure I ever get to know that, by the way," he says. "All of it speaks to your first question which is, hey you moron, how are you gonna keep these guys doing what they're supposed to be doing?" Apparently, not with the likelihood of serious repercussion. Although Congress mandates a fine of $7,000 for each of such serious violations of occupational safety rules (those likely to lead to death or serious harm), the EPA merely issued a "CURE notice," giving ER the choice of remedying the situation or losing its contract. ER immediately slapped on some 100 micron filters, then began trucking in clean water for the final days of the 2007 season. No harm, no foul, no fine. "I'm sure ER is apoplectic that such a relatively little thing threatened their entire contract," Linnert says by way of explanation. "That's why we're not hell-bent on punishing ER--we already put the fear of god in them and the responsible employees have been reamed." My source is outraged for the people who live along the route, saying he'd sue if he were them. For my part, it's easy enough to construct a likely scenario. It's not uncommon in Libby to see moon-suited cleanup workers excavating in a yard, while a mother walks with a stroller on the sidewalk across the street. Or for workers in full protective gear to take air samples while doing household chores, to gauge the exposure to the family who will be doing those same chores later in the day. If the risk is that great, why are people still allowed to live there? And if it's not, what difference do a couple of filters make To be fair, no one knows the answers. Meanwhile, the mixed messages abound. For Peronard, the issue is less one of exposure from this particular breach--which he maintains is not that bad--but of the likelihood it's a warning flag, that safety precautions and oversight may be failing in other parts of the operation. My source cites improper use of protective gear, and Peronard hears similar complaints. He's called in the Army Corps of Engineers to audit the operation. "You know on that list of big deals, the filters aren't a big deal, at least in my mind. But they are emblematic of a larger problem and that is, we've been out there doing business for eight years, and it's real easy to just get set in your ways and take things for granted," he says. "Especially in town, in people's homes, to me there are places where that kind of thing could leave contamination behind, it could lead to real cross-contamination." It's that kind of pragmatism, combined with a disarming candor, that has served Peronard well in Libby. He tends to look beyond the written regulation to the spirit of the effort, and for that has been tremendously effective. But such an approach has its drawbacks: Along those lines, the EPA has devoted its cleanup money to getting vermiculite out of as many homes as possible, and is only now beginning to go back and investigate whether those cleanups are adequate. For instance, the agency decided at the outset to leave a good deal of the vermiculite it finds in place: under carpets, between walls, in crawl spaces. The logic being that if the material is not disturbed, it's not a threat. But the EPA's own studies show that even minor activities--installing a ceiling fan, rummaging around in one's attic--can be a very bad idea. So last year, Peronard's team got $7 million to begin an "activity-based sampling" program--to find out if the 900-odd houses they've worked through so far are actually safe. If they are, Peronard says there are 400 or so more on the queue in Libby, 300 they have yet to take a look at, and god knows how many in the neighboring town of Troy "These are expensive investigations and every year we'd sit down and say, we're going to spend our money cleaning up properties. It's more important than doing sampling," he says. "Well, the [Inspector General] came out last year and beat us over the head and shoulders, because while we were doing all these cleanups, we couldn't tell people whether they were good enough. Or what the cleanup target was. That's a pretty fair criticism.' "So last year we started to correct that, to collect that information. All the rest of these questions--how many properties in Troy, how about these 700--are awaiting on that information. Whether we need to go back to the 900 properties that we've already cleaned up. There's going to be a bad day, huh?" Peronard is only half joking--there's a very real possibility that the EPA will have to come back in and redo five year's worth of work. He assured then-Gov. Judy Martz back in 2002 (as she considered whether or not to give her approval to the Superfund designation) that the EPA would be in and out in three years. "Silly me," he says now. "Three years--what the hell was I thinking?" Peronard is the master of the mea culpa, readily admitting his mistakes and acknowledging the ugly sorts of human tendencies that lead to situations like the one with the filters: finger-pointing and complacency. In response, the people of Libby largely have trusted him and his colleagues with their homes, with their families' lives. To be sure, W.R. Grace is the ultimate villain in this story, and the cleanup job of such monumental proportions, it would be impossible not to blunder now and then. But ER's willful disregard for people's health (what went through the head of the man who first took out those filters?), and the EPA's collapse in oversight go beyond a situation where feeling "really awful" is an adequate response, the pending audit notwithstanding. A better start would be to send each person involved in the fiasco door to door along Highway 37 to explain himself and apologize to those homeowners who were endangered by the crews' laziness. In addition, Environmental Restoration has won contracts worth $20 million for its work in Libby since 2004. Peronard's contrition would carry more weight if the EPA made damn sure ER paid a chunk of that back. Andrea Peacock is the author of Libby, Montana: Asbestos and the Deadly Silence of an American Corporation and co-author, with Doug Peacock, of The Essential Grizzly. She lives in Montana. She can be reached at: apeacock@wispwest.net     Your Ad Here

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