MISHANDLED ASBESTOS SPURS CRIMINAL COMPLAINT AT GRAND TETON

[ensho]

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1233


Public Health Imperiled by Park’s Illegal Asbestos Removal, Transport and Storage


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In August 2001, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the park for subjecting the workers who removed 2500 feet of asbestos-coated water pipe to unsafe and unhealthful conditions such as shoveling the asbestos dust which peeled off the pipes without protective equipment. The PEER complaint focuses on what followed the OSHA citation, charging that park managers –

•Heaped the crumbling asbestos at local sites without any containment or means to protect park visitors from exposure;
•Dumped some loads onto campsite fire grates that were later distributed throughout the park; and
•Loaded much of the materials into uncovered dump trucks that were driven through Jackson Hole, Wyoming on a 300-mile trip to an open dump at Mud Lake, Idaho, where it remains today.

PEER contends that by these actions park officials knowingly violated both the Clean Air Act and the Comprehensive Emergency Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (Superfund), federal laws that carry criminal penalties for such violations. Knowing violations can bring fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to five years under the Clean Air Act and three years under CERCLA. The organization argues that the clear danger to the public and workers, as well as the fact that the asbestos today still poses a hazard due to improper disposal, merits treating these offenses as crimes.

“Grand Teton park managers showed an outrageous disregard for the health of the workers and the public in how they carried out this asbestos removal,” state PEER Staff Counsel Christine Erickson who filed the complaint. “National Park officials sometimes forget that environmental laws apply to them as well.”
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cripe - wonder how the lungs of the people driving behind the dump trucks are doing?

or the people sitting around the campfires?