Though it may have been seen as still being a lumberjack's town in the 1930s, it is possibly better known today as
the town that was poisoned. In 1919 vermiculite was discovered in the nearby hills and a mine and processing plant put into operation, continuing in production until their closure in 1990. Vermiculite proved to be an excellent material for building wall insulation, fire-proofing and soil conditioning.
Unfortunately, the Libby vermiculite also contained small amounts of carcinogenic asbestos, containing minuscule, hook-like, glassy fibres which pierce the lining of the lungs and never come out. Not only were the miners and plant workers of Libby exposed to the asbestos, but the waste material from the plant was donated to the town as soil conditioner for parks, school yards and sports fields, exposing the entire population. As a result, 400 Libby residents have died and at least half of the town's population of 3,000 exhibit symptoms of exposure, from respiratory ailments to cancer.
The town of Libby has been a
Super Fund Site since 2002, with cleanup ongoing. The situation has been termed one of
America's worst man-made environmental disasters and the owner of the mine since 1963, the WR Grace Company, has been facing lawsuits for two decades or more and at least one settlement has been approved, this for $43 million. The company was also ordered to pay the U.S. government more than $54 million to cover Super Fund cleanup costs.
The town, however, appears to the visitor passing through to be just another small American town, with the usual amenities of parks, library, fire department, police department, etc., with the locals carrying on with their lives as usual. There's really no visible hint of the town's health disaster other than a Super Fund memorial in one of the riverside parks.
Libby's sad story garnered media attention around the globe, with many newspaper, television and radio stories published and aired over the years. A small portion of one, from the London Daily Mail, in 2012, has been reproduced below.
Fresh hope for toxic asbestos town where 400 have died of lung disease as it begins to recover thanks to $450 million government project
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 00:52 GMT, 16 July 2012
Grass and freshly planted trees are sprouting in a new town park that sits atop the site of a vermiculite plant that once spewed asbestos dust across a mountain city, killing 400 people there.
The new greenery is a major milestone for Libby, Montana, a town of about 3,000 near the Canadian border where an estimated 400 people to date have been killed by asbestos exposure. More than 1,700 have been sickened.
Lethal dust from the WR. Grace and Co. plant and the company's nearby mine once blanketed the town, and asbestos illnesses are still being diagnosed more than two decades after the mine was shuttered.
Following a 12-year cleanup, Riverfront Park hosted a wedding last weekend. Officials said another wedding and a blues festival are scheduled for early August.
For Mayor Doug Roll, the federal government's recent transfer of the park to the city offers a symbolic break from Libby's lethal past.
'It's sort of like Phoenix rising from the ashes,' Roll said. 'We've had a lot of negative stuff going on and we're trying to turn that around.'
But the park - the first major finished piece of a federal cleanup that so far has cost $447 million - carries a significant asterisk: because of the difficulty of removing all the asbestos-containing vermiculite from the highly-contaminated site, federal regulators say some of the dangerous material remains.
For three decades, the Grace plant was used to stockpile vermiculite from the mine before the material was exported by rail across the U.S. for use as attic insulation. The town's ball fields are right next door; Libby residents who today battle asbestos disease tell stories of playing in the plant's piles of raw vermiculite as children.
From the London Daily Mail