Firm Must Pay for Asbestos Cleanup in Libby, Montana, Say Supremes

TerrEEEE ! ? "they are too stupid to read a book or understand it if they did." That's nonsense. "They" who? "They" are the county government; on the payroll of developers - like ALL California local government politicians. Of course "they" aren't stupid. The path to State government is bankrolled by good-ol' fascist local developers, and those local politicians that play the game get to move up. If there's ever a stereotype white Republican area, it's El Dorado county. Did you read the same story I did? (I'm 60 miles away, btw. Yolo county is owned by the local developers too). These peasants don't WANT to be told there's a problem because they can't ADMIT there's a problem. Problems require blame. "IF" there was a problem THEN the blame would have to be passed to "conservative local officials" (who worship the "correct imaginary-friend"). Blame would then be passed to "the bedrock of their society" - the "successfully people" ? the resident executives (in gated Sorano !!) who are successful because they worship "the good imaginary-friend". Then it would be Republicans in general looking bad. And then - THEN - the imaginary-friend looks bad. These people would rather kill their kids than admit their party - and imaginary-friend - screwed them.

Until you understand the middle-trash and upper-middle-trash, you will keep calling people stupid (like Bush) and underestimating their power and where it comes from. It comes from the worship of the peasants.

Libby is my hometown. The percentage of death and disease for this tiny town is stunning. Yet, typically, this corporation deliberately caused this devastation, in the name of profits. Human lives have no meaning to these predators. Rather than just having to clean up their dirt, executives of this company should be standing trial in criminal court for murder.

Story from Mother Jones "Not in Their Back Yard"
The "asbestos" which in reality is Tremolite, the most deadly form of "asbestos", one of only 2 asbestos types and 1 other mineral fiber known to be powerful enough to cause environmental epidemics in the absence of industry. was found on the school grounds in El Dorado County in 1997!! Not by EPA in 2005! EPA was notified of this find of course in 1997, but they did nothing at all, Which is what they did in Libby Montana for decades after science article after science article was published detailing the deaths. Libby even held public meetings in the mid 1980s, to alert the population as to what was occurring and EPA still did not respond. After the asbestos was found on the school grounds, the County of El Dorado Public Health Officer took two steps to cover it up so nobody would ever know. The first step was to replace the air intakes for the school, which were located directly in front of piles of asbestos. The second step was to spend 3 million dollars to attempt to hide the asbestos exposures that had occurred there for over 25 years, from EPA, by covering up the various asbestos piles and cleaning out the school rooms. They were trying to not be embarrassed when EPA came to town. Of course El Dorado officials had no idea what they were doing, so their clean up was found to be inadequate by EPA who spent another 2 million to clean the school. Irony of ironies, directly after this clean up, and EPA wasn't looking anymore, the school purchased gravel made up of white serpentine rock, composed of some 30% Chrysotile asbestos and approximately 7% Tremolite, and placed it for a road directly on top of the original "asbestos" find!! With no pavement over it. It remains open to the school children to this date.

Based upon this exemplary behavior by El Dorado County officials, EPA decided to leave the whole asbestos question to their devices!! As if anyone in El Dorado County Government would ever tell anyone the truth regarding "asbestos" exposures!! Heck no they won't. They get elected to office by the money from people who develop the land. So do the officials EPA made a deal with to not super fund anything in El Dorado County. Meanwhile the largest known pure Tremolite deposits in the United States can be easily found at the surface on many people's properties, exposures occur every single day and they are moving thousands of more people onto these deposits as we speak.

Not to be outdone, I have found the same situation in Amador County where the death toll already exceeds El Dorado County, by a lot...but El Dorado is catching up quickly. Other found the same situation with Tremolite only, in other counties. Of course California has 50 counties with serpentine (Chrysotile) asbestos present, not one death ever found associated anywhere with these Chrysotile deposits. But in the very few places in California where there are Tremolite deposits, the death toll simply jumps out of the records at a person. Dr. Marc Schenker at UC Davis has the goods on this. All of these deaths in El Dorado and Amador, from exposures 30 to 40 years ago, way before the main source of Tremolite was opened up in 1996!!

Basically a person has no protection at all from asbestos poisoning in the United States. EPA officials allow exposures 1,000 times greater than is required to cause fatal disease, as a matter of course. (See Feds will check on Bayview asbestos San Francisco Chronicle August 3, 2007) .A person is actually in more danger from EPA than they are from Corporations who use "asbestos"!! Most exposures in the United States go completely unregulated so are substantially higher than the un protective levels adopted by EPA as a benchmark for safety!! What a complete and horrendous joke, perpetrated by Keystone Kops upon the innocent American Public. (See also "A dangerous lie" Missoula Independent July 27, 2007).

Please also see Randall Patterson's comment regarding the book "Enemy of the People" at front of the hard copy of this issue of Mother Jones. "It's as if El Dorado County Officials were taking their lines directly out of Ibsen's Enemy of the People"...which of course they are..without knowing that they are because they are too stupid to read a book or understand it if they did.