Supreme Court refuses asbestos appeal
Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006
WASHINGTON — W. R. Grace & Co. lost its bid to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to get out from under a $ 54 million bill to clean up asbestos in a Montana mining town.
Justices rejected without comment Grace’s appeal of lower court rulings that said the company was responsible for the entire cost of removing asbestos-contaminated soil in Libby, Mont.
The case pits Grace, which operated a vermiculite mine in Libby for 27 years, against the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the federal Superfund program for the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites.
Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration’s Supreme Court lawyer, urged justices not to take the case. The EPA was within its bounds to seek to have Grace pay for the cleanup, Clement said.
Grace argued in court papers that the EPA had no authority to hand the company the entire bill, as well as responsibility for future costs, for the cleanup. The company contended the agency “has simply thrown money at the problem” and has ignored cost considerations in the cleanup.
The EPA began its cleanup in 1999 after a series of newspaper articles said 192 people had died of asbestos-related causes near Libby, a town of 3, 000.
EPA “removal” actions, those aimed at environmental hazards that require quick action, are normally subject to limits of $ 2 million and 12 months under the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act. Those limits may be exceeded in unusual situations, including cases presenting “an immediate risk to public health or welfare.” The 9 th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a federal district judge sided with the EPA, which sued Grace in 2001 to recover cleanup costs.
“The situation confronting the EPA in Libby is truly extraordinary,” the appeals court wrote in its opinion in December. “We cannot escape the fact that people are sick and dying as a result of this continuing exposure.” Grace said other appeals courts have ruled that companies can’t be forced to pay the entire cost of cleaning a polluted site without being allowed to challenge whether the cleanup was necessary to contain or remove contamination.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson estimated last year that it would take another five to six years to finish cleaning contaminated sites in Libby, in Montana’s northwest corner.
Between 1948 and 1993, Grace sent 64, 637 tons of Libby vermiculite to a site in North Little Rock, according to the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D. C.-based nonprofit organization. Grace shipped smaller amounts to Arkansas plants in Nashville, Hope, Pine Bluff and Little Rock. Over the 45-year period, 70, 048 tons arrived in 826 shipments.
Vermiculite — a lightweight insulating material that expands when heated — contains asbestos, which has been shown to cause cancer and other diseases. Asbestos has been used in products such as insulation, roofing, vinyl tile and brake linings.
The case is W. R. Grace & Co., et al, v. U. S., 05-1363. Information for this article was contributed by Mark Sherman of The Associated Press, Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News and Arkansas Democrat-Gazette staff.
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