Trenton Times, Tracey Regan
Published May 31, 2005
HAMILTON - The state is expected to file a civil complaint today against former insulation manufacturer W.R. Grace & Co. for allegedly providing false information to state environmental regulators when it closed its Hamilton plant in 1995, a source with knowledge of the planned action said yesterday.
The complaint, which will be brought by the attorney general, will name W.R. Grace, as well as two officials with the company, the source said.
The civil suit will allege that when Grace closed its Zonolite plant on Industrial Drive after years of processing asbestos-contaminated vermiculite ore for insulation, the company provided false information to the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), saying that only insignificant amounts of asbestos remained on the grounds.
A spokesman for Grace did not return calls yesterday for comment on the impending complaint.
The complaint will cite a report, dated June 2, 1995, that was completed by a consultant for Environmental Resources Management, which concluded - based on data that W.R. Grace provided - that no environmental testing was required on the grounds.
Earlier this year, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials bluntly called the 1995 report inaccurate.
"W.R. Grace said there was no asbestos above 1 percent on the site and that wasn't true," Richard Cahill, a spokesman for the EPA's Region II office, said shortly after The Times began reporting on the former factory. "We found it was inaccurate by doing sampling on the site."
The DEP accepted the company's report and declared the site clean.
Five years later Accurate Document Destruction Inc., a paper shredding company, moved its operations onto the property. Six weeks ago, the plant was destroyed by fire. A cause has yet to be determined.
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The environmental consulting firm that prepared the 1995 report has since defended its role in the assessment, calling W.R. Grace responsible for the report and its contents.
Environmental assessment reports, even when prepared by a consultant, are signed and certified by company officials. W.R. Grace's 1995 report was certified as "true, accurate and complete" by Jay H. Burrill, the environmental coordinator for the company, and Robert J. Bettacchi, a company vice president.
Bettacchi is one of seven executives named in a federal criminal indictment against the company filed in Montana in February.
In that indictment, W.R. Grace and company executives are accused of concealing information about the hazardous nature of the ore it mined in Libby, Mont., where 1,200 residents are now suffering from some kind of asbestos-related abnormality, according to the EPA.
W.R. Grace has owned the plant and the mine in Libby since 1963 and shipped tons of the raw vermiculite to several plants throughout the country, including the one in Hamilton.
Federal prosecutors have alleged company officials knew of the dangers of their vermiculite products as long ago as the 1970s and conspired to hide it.
Steven Picco, an attorney for Environmental Resources Management, stressed yesterday that the firm relied on information for its report provided by the company.
"The key document in a consultant's analysis is the material safety data sheets - that's the coin of the realm for a consultant's analytical decisions," Picco said, referring to the records companies are required to keep that document what materials, including hazardous chemicals, are kept on site.
W.R. Grace's records indicated that the material was "less than 1 percent asbestos and nonregulated and that's why we recommended there be no further action and why the DEP agreed to no further action," Picco said.
Federal health regulators have said that vermiculite ore shipped from the Libby mine had asbestos concentrations of between 0.3 and 7 percent.
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An EPA official this past spring suggested that the 1995 report to the DEP also deliberately withheld information about the dangerous material shipped to the site from the company's mine in Libby.
"We at the EPA believe that the company knew the shipments to sites such as Hamilton Township contained dangerous levels of asbestos," said an agency official who requested anonymity.
But in 2001, two years after several media reports detailed asbestos-related health issues in more than 1,000 residents of Libby, EPA testing of the grounds in Hamilton revealed asbestos concentrations as high as 40 percent on some slide samples the agency analyzed.
Based on those samples, the EPA ordered the removal of some 15,000 tons of soil from around the plant. The removal of about 9,000 tons has already been completed, with the remainder set to be taken out this summer.
The statute of limitations on the civil complaint was set to expire tomorrow and the state hurried to file its suit before the deadline, the source said.
And while the statute of limitations has already passed on some criminal charges, the state will continue to explore the possibility of an indictment against Grace for its operation of the Hamilton plant.
"This department continues to believe that any party who presents false and misleading information to a government agency, as W.R. Grace did here, should be subject to severe criminal and civil sanctions," DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell said yesterday. Campbell would not comment on the pending legal action.
Since reports of the plant's poisonous history appeared in The Times, several elected officials have called for the attorney general to take action against Grace.
Yesterday, Mayor Glen Gilmore, who has several times called for the attorney general to act, said the complaint was "great news."
"I'm glad to know the state is stepping forward and initiating a legal action to make a claim against the profits of this company to help the little guy who has suffered as a result of their callous actions," Gilmore said, adding that he hoped the civil complaint would be closely followed by a criminal indictment.
