Angry residents decry state's asbestos report
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: February 3, 2009
MONTPELIER — Residents of several small, rural northern Vermont towns recently poured out their anger at the Statehouse over a report that said those living near an abandoned asbestos mine had a higher risk of lung disease.
They were joined by lawmakers, who also decried Friday the way the study about the mine in Eden and Lowell was done and released by the Vermont Health Department.
State senators are considering a resolution pointing out the shortcomings in the Vermont Department of Health study, in part to appease residents' concerns that the publicity over the now partly discredited study has damaged the region's reputation.
"If you want to talk about fiascos this is the biggest one I have ever seen a state agency blunder into," Sen. Susan Bartlett said. "The impact this is having on their lives and their property values are real."
One major conclusion of that study — making a connection between the mine and cases of lung cancer — has already been withdrawn by the state. Residents of Eden, Lowell, Johnson and other Northeast Kingdom towns are worried about their property values and perceptions that their towns are unsafe, and were not satisfied by the idea of passing a resolution.
"As far as I am concerned it doesn't amount to anything," said Warren Earle, an Eden landowner. "I don't see that it will benefit us any more than if I urinated in Hutchins Brook and expected to kill the lamprey in Lake Champlain."
Earle, like some of the other residents who testified, said the health department study has already caused him damage, saying a bank declined to talk to him about a loan or line of credit on his land because of the report.
The health department report initially made a connection between both asbestosis and lung cancer and living in towns near the mine, based on hospital discharge records and death certificates. After reviewing its study the health department retracted the connection to lung cancer.
But the connection between cases of the asbestosis, another lung disease, and living in the towns near the massive abandoned mine is solid, said Health Commissioner Dr. Wendy Davis.
"We believe the asbestosis data is statistically significant," Davis said.
"I think we could have done a better job communicating more broadly with the folks in the affected towns."
Some lawmakers said there was little they could do to aid residents beyond express their displeasure with the study in a resolution.
"I don't think we can put the genie back in the bottle," Sen. Vincent Illuzzi, R-Essex/Orleans, the chairman of the Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee, which held the hearing.
It would be a mistake for lawmakers to direct the state to withdraw the report because then it would look as though they were bending to political pressure and covering up the issue, and the damage to property values would remain, Illuzzi said.
Christopher D'Elia, president of the Vermont Bankers Association, said the fears of landowners about what effect the study might have on their property values are justified.
"I think the concerns they have are legitimate. Very legitimate," he said. It remains to be seen exactly what the effect on property values and therefore re-financing and mortgages will be and how it can be dealt with, D'Elia said. But there is a public perception that could be damaging for landowners, D'Elia said.
"It is something we are very aware of," he said.
Those at the meeting said the 10-mile radius the health study drew around the mine is completely arbitrary, since mine tailings were widely used to build everything from wellheads to roads.
Leslie White, a resident of Eden, said she spent five days recently driving to town offices around the northern part of the state to see if they ever purchased rock from two companies that sold the mine tailings as a construction material. Every town she stopped at — although she did not make it to every town in northern Vermont — had done so at some point over the years, from Middlesex to Troy and Enosburg to Craftsbury, White said.
"All the towns I went to documented that they had used some mine rock," she said. That is unlikely to pose a health risk since that rock has long since been buried under more layers of dirt road, but it illustrates that the problem is not confined to Eden and the surrounding towns, White said.
"The state was drawing an arbitrary distance," she said. "I think they should totally retract their findings."
Of the five deaths included in the study the Department of Health concluded that two were mine workers. Of the other three she has discovered that two others had asbestos exposure, one as a shipbuilder unrelated to the mine, the other as a mine worker for one year, White said.
Even if one of those three deaths is excluded because of workplace exposure, the study still shows a significant correlation between living in the towns and the proximity of the mine, Davis said. She is not sure if that would remain true if two of the fatalities were excluded, Davis said.
Contact Louis Porter at louis.porter@rutlandherald.com.
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