A strip of vermiculite chunks 50 yards long was discovered last week in a Libby park that has been cleaned at least three times of such deadly contaminants.
“I'm pretty sure it's been there less than a couple of weeks,” Mike Cirian of the Environmental Protection Agency told the Western News. “This isn't something you miss. These are large flake, silver-dollar-sized chunks of vermiculite.”
“If - and the emphasis is on the word ‘if' - somebody is purposely dumping contaminated vermiculite, it's a really serious situation of endangering the public,” Libby Mayor Tony Berget said.
Police have launched an investigation, but there are no known suspects and nothing much to investigate except that it happened, Police Chief Clay Coker said.
The chunks were found in a high-traffic area along the length of the parking lot at Riverfront Memorial Park, where a pavilion project is slated to begin Tuesday.
They're too big to work themselves up from the ground, and they didn't fall off any of the trucks used in the multimillion-dollar Superfund asbestos cleanup, Cirian said. They were tracked up and down the parking lot by vehicles, leaving a 12,000-square-foot area to be cleaned of the potentially fatal contaminants.
“The repercussions are astounding,” said Cirian. “It costs thousands of dollars to clean that out, which could be going toward (cleaning) a house instead.”
Vermiculite is still available in Libby, even at the farmers market. Cirian told the Western News he recently bought a sample bag that W.R. Grace used to sell for $5.
Plum Creek wants equal treatment
Plum Creek should be treated much like any other private landowner, something the Seeley Lake Community Council's latest land use plan doesn't do, the former timber company claims.
The Seeley Swan Pathfinder reports that Plum Creek recently presented nine examples of “alleged unfairness” to the council's Land Use Committee. In some cases, Plum Creek was faced with ratios of one dwelling to 160 acres, while neighbors were zoned at 1 to 10, 1 to 5, 2 to 1 or even 4 to 1.
Plum Creek used the latest data for the Total Ecological Values Map for the Clearwater Valley. The Pathfinder said an unidentified committee member pointed out the values map “is a planning tool and was not intended for this type of use.”
Plum Creek said its new land use proposals, available on Missoula County's Rural Initiatives Web site, are based on more equal treatment, being responsive to ecological values, and directing growth inside and discouraging it outside Seeley's Wild Urban Interface.
The next meeting of the land use committee is set for July 17 at 4 p.m. at the Barn in Seeley.
Vandals overturn statue in Deer Lodge
Vandals left an alabaster-white concrete statue of the Blessed Virgin face-down in a flower bed at St. Mary's Center in Deer Lodge.
Mary Lou Newman discovered the unsettling scene when she arrived to water the pansies in late June, the Silver State Post reported.
“I think it's some childish thing,” Newman said. “It made me sick. I called everybody, I was so upset.”
The statue had graced the entrance to the annex to the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church for more than a decade. Newman said it had belonged to Carol Rainville's mother, and Rainville donated it and an icon of St. Francis as memorials. The latter was not touched.
It seemed fitting the Virgin Mary's statue should be placed at the St. Mary's Center, Newman said. The vandals pushed or pulled the heavy statute, which was held in place by rebar, from its cement pedestal.
“It was somebody strong,” Newman said.
Weeklies Reader is compiled by reporters Vince Devlin and Kim Briggeman.
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