After three years of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, denials, public accusations and lawsuits, the Rumple Report, long sought after by amphibole asbestos activists in Libby, Montana, at least one reporter, and a public watchdog group, but withheld by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General, has finally been released.

The report confirms that there have been major mistakes made by the EPA in its cleanup of the nation’s most deadly Superfund site in Libby.

The OIG’s April 29 release of the report marks a major shift in the future of investigative reporting. President Barack Obama, who promised on Jan. 21, 2009 to reverse a Bush administration policy that directed government agencies to err on the side of withholding documents requested under FOIA, has so far made good on his word.

This means the Rumple Report may only be the beginning, a small leak indicating a major burst of information that will shed light on EPA policies. Already, Washington, D.C. based nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) is already submitting requests for more documents pertaining to the Libby cleanup.

The Missoula Independent initially attempted to get the report through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in May of 2006. When this was rejected, the paper ran a cover story entitled “A Dangerous Lie,” in which four men closely involved with the Superfund cleanup talked about what they believed was in the report.

Gordon Sullivan, Gerry Henningsen, Abe Troyer and Clinton Maynard, had suspected the EPA was not using scientific standards to clean Libby, in part because it had never done a risk assessment of amphibole asbestos.

Amphibole asbestos is particular to Libby, Montana, and a few other places around the world. An official study on the health risks of amphibole asbestos had never been completed, and because of this, Sullivan, Henningsen, Troyer and Clinton believed the EPA had no way of knowing whether the clean up, on which $110 million had been spent, was successful, because there was no known safe exposure limit.

As evidenced in the Rumple Report, many observers of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Libby cleanup believe the agency’s policies could still be exposing people to amphibole asbestos, which has killed hundreds and sickened thousands.

It is documented that public health statements made by Bush administration officials, which downplayed the risks posed by Libby amphibole asbestos released in Manhattan after the 9/11 attacks, were used by W.R. Grace to lower the standards of the Libby cleanup.

It is also documented that, despite spending more than $110 million on the Libby Superfund cleanup, EPA still has no idea exactly how dangerous amphibole asbestos is, and yet portrayed to the community that Libby asbestos was safe in small quantities.

Eventually, pressure from the public, media reports, and congressmen pushed the EPA to retract information it released to the community that minimized risks of asbestos, and caused the agency to begin the process of investigating the risk posed by amphibole asbestos.

Gordon Sullivan says one of the most important revelations of the report is that the EPA’s own scientists were intensely critical of how standards had changed in Libby post-9/11.

“The most extreme issue in that entire report comes from inside the EPA,” he says. “When your head toxicologist says it’s unconscionable, you’ve got a problem.”

Sullivan refers to Chris Weis, Senior Toxicologist of the EPA’s National Enforcement Investigations Center. According to the report, OIG Special Agent Cory Rumple asked Weis about a brochure entitled “Living with Vermiculite” which was mailed to all Libby addresses, and states that low-level, short-term exposure to asbestos is not dangerous, and that it is perfectly safe to vacuum up “small releases” with HEPA vacuums, or wipe them up with damp cloths, as New Yorkers were told to do.

Weis, according to the report, “stated the language within that document contained ‘double speak,’ adding in his opinion it was ‘unconscionable’ to write a document with such language.”

A quick read of the introduction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of the Inspector General’s April 29, 2009 release of the Rumple Report would suggest OIG Special Agent Cory Rumple is satisfied with its results.

The report, he writes, resulted in the retraction of EPA documents in Libby that he, and the four men who made knowledge of the report public, believed were misleading Libby citizens on the known risk of amphibole asbestos. It also brought a criminal investigation,  and got the EPA to stop trying to issue a Record of Decision (ROD), a contract specifying exactly what the agency will do to finish the cleanup.

But those four men, who include Gerry Henningsen, Gordon Sullivan, Abe Troyer and Clinton Maynard are not jumping for joy.

According to Gordon Sullivan, “Nothing’s changed.”

The EPA, he says, is almost exactly where it was three years ago, when the Rumple Report was written, “They’re pushing for a ROD without a Risk Assessment.” In 2006, Sullivan and others questioned how the agency could specify its final cleanup plans without knowing what risks were posed to the community by amphibole asbestos.

At that time, Henningsen noted that “Once they (the EPA) finalize the ROD, they’re done, and you’ll play hell to ever get them back in town again. Their legal obligation is over.”

The issue then, and now, is that the EPA has yet to create a Risk Assessment for Libby, which is a comprehensive study that determines both what the ongoing exposure to asbestos is in Libby, and how toxic the substance is. In December of 2006, the EPA admitted it did not know the risks associated with amphibole asbestos, and in June of 2008, the federal government announced that the Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) would do an $8 million study over five years to determine the toxicity of amphibole asbestos.

This poses a few problems. For one, the ATSDR does not plan on finishing its assessment until 2013, but the EPA is already planning how it will finish the cleanup. On top of that, this study only establishes how toxic the substance is. In order to understand risk, it is necessary to know how much of it the public is being exposed to. Finally, the ATSDR has an issue with credibility. In March of 2009, a scathing congressional report was released that, in part, concluded:

[A]cross the nation local community groups believe that ATSDR has failed to protect them from toxic exposures and independent scientists are often aghast at the lack of scientific rigor in its health consultations and assessments. The studies lack the ability to properly attribute illness to toxic exposures and the methodologies used by the agency to identify suspected environmental exposures to hazardous chemicals are doomed from the start.

Perhaps most disconcertingly, the report notes that in 2006 the ATSDR found amphibole asbestos at Illinois Beach State Park, and, despite having no complete scientific information about the risks associated with this substance, declared the beach to be safe.

This, of course, does not inspire much confidence in the ATSDR’s ability to deliver a study of amphibole toxicity that, at best, would give Libby and the EPA half the information it needs to do a risk assessment.

Henningsen notes that, even if the EPA were to change course on the toxicity study and the ROD, there is another huge problem.

He says that EPA’s Region 8 office (which is based out of Denver and covers a geographic area that includes Montana) pressured and misled the citizens of Libby to accept a settlement from W.R. Grace & Co. of $250 million dollars, telling them this was a good settlement.

On March 12, 2008, Grace agreed to pay $250 million to the EPA Superfund program. The agreement settled a claim brought by the federal government under Superfund law to recover costs related to asbestos removal from Libby properties.

“Basically, that would do nothing,” Henningsen says of the settlement. “The average Superfund site costs $1 billion to clean. Here they are going to spend a total of less than $250 million and let Grace off the hook for the worst site ever in the nation.”

Henningsen even provides a chart, showing settlements for Superfund sites across the nation. It is easy to see that Libby falls near the bottom for settlements.