Congressman Chris Smith said a report released earlier this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals additional information about the contamination and risks at over 250 sites across the country including Hamilton, N.J. that received contaminated ore from a mine in Libby, Montana. Smith said the report underscored the need for legislation to remedy the flawed public notification process and require EPA to adopt a defined system to convey information about cleanups to the affected communities.

“This new report provides a comprehensive list of communities like Hamilton, which were put at risk by EPA’s inadequate public notification process during the clean up of facilities that received contaminated ore,” Smith said. “GAO completed this report in response to disturbing findings and unanswered questions in an earlier GAO report that I requested in 2007.”

The 2009 report is entitled: “Hazardous Materials: EPA’s Assessment of Sites that May Have Received Asbestos-Contaminated Ore from Libby, Montana.”  The 2007 report was entitled the “Hazardous Materials: EPA May Need to Reassess Sites Receiving Asbestos- Contaminated Ore from Libby, MT, and Should Improve Its Public Notification Process” (GAO-08-71).

The 2009 report can be viewed at http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/gao-09-7sp/ .

            In a letter sent this week to Chairman Bart Stupak of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Smith is requesting a congressional hearing on his public right-to-know bill to address notification shortcomings.

Between 1923 and the early 1990s, the mine in Libby, Montana shipped millions of tons of asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore to sites in 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. As early as 1978, the EPA was notified by a company in Ohio that its employees were suffering lung problems believed to be related to the asbestos in the ore from the mine, owned by the W.R. Grace & Co. Since then, workers and others who inhaled the asbestos fibers developed serious, in some cases fatal, asbestos-related respiratory illnesses.

A series of articles published in a New Jersey paper, The Times of Trenton, indicated that EPA most likely knew about the public health dangers to hundreds of thousands of residents living near the vermiculite exfoliation plants since at least 1985, including the Hamilton, N.J. site—which is located in Smith’s Fourth Congressional District. 

“EPA did little or nothing to address the public health threats until 1999 when increased media coverage forced the agency’s hand into action in Libby and subsequently other processing sites in the U.S.,” Smith said. “Only then did EPA administrators begin to notify the public around the sites of the health dangers associated with the contaminated sites and their clean up.”

GAO’s 2007 report documented that in some instances the EPA regional offices did not implement key provisions of the agency’s own regulatory public notification process and in cases where they did, those procedures often proved insufficient to meet communities needs.  Public notification problems are a concern not only with asbestos-related clean up sites but with the clean up of Superfund sites all across the country.

To secure the rights of citizens to be made aware of information about the clean up of environmentally hazardous sites, including the basis of their clean up, in their communities, Smith recently introduced: the National Public Notification of Environmental Hazards Act (H.R. 1005).  He is seeking a congressional hearing on the bill by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

“My bill will ensure that in the future, communities are well aware of the risks associated with Superfund clean-ups and they are given all the information by the agency in a timely manner, not after-the-fact in the newspaper,” Smith said.

Provisions of H.R. 1005 would:

• Codify into law some of the best notification practices identified by the GAO that were found across the country.

• Require a public information office for each site, a designated spokesperson, a public data repository, updated web sites and a toll-free information number.

• Mandate newspaper notifications to be prominent and include information about the location of the site, the hazardous substance and other information.

• Require EPA to conduct a door-to-door and mail information notification campaign for every resident and business located within a ½-mile of the site.

“I expect to get an update from EPA within several weeks regarding changes it made to its notification process as a result of the 2007 GAO report I requested,” Smith said. “Communities like Hamilton have the right to know when EPA is making decisions that can affect their health and environment.”