Frank Fahland, 61, is one of the many citizens of Libby, Mount. , who suffer from an asbestos-related disease, which makes them potentially more affected by COVID-19.
Nate Hegyi / Mountain West News Office
Frank Fahland has spent many days since the start of the pandemic in the house of his dreams, fulfilling a 15-year-old love task as he moved away from the city and the people closest to him.
The city of Libby along Montana’s Kootenai River in the winter of 2010. Libby has the deadliest Superfund site in the country’s history: at least 400 other people have died from asbestos-related diseases after breathing dust contaminated with asbestos. for mine vermiculite.
Rick Bowmer / AP
The vermulite mine closed in 1990 and, for decades, Miller says, the mine constantly dumped asbestos-laden dust in the city.
“At the top, I don’t think you can shop in this town without breathing some dust,” Miller says.
The scope of the public aptitude crisis in Libthrough was not known until after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published a series of articles through journalist Andrew Schneider in 1999. There are still more than 100,000 outstanding programmes that oppose it.
The EPA added Libby and its landscape as a Superfund site in 2002 and declared a public fitness emergency in 2009. The EPA has spent more than $600 million to clean 2,600 homes and got rid of more than 1 million cubic meters of infected soil. according to the agency.
The company and its executives were acquitted in 2009 of the federal fees the company conspired to hide the mine’s fitness risks. Grace went bankrupt in 2014 after a legal settlement that she established to accept as true with the budget to pay for existing and long-term ones. Medical expenses of asbestos victims. The company agreed to pay $250 million for cleaning in 2008.
Those affected by the asbestos also sued the state of Montana, saying state officials knew the danger but had been unable to prevent it. The agreements in 2011 and 2017 totaled $68 million.