On Friday March 30th,
Katie, Ryan, and Myself made the trip out to Lowell, Vermont to visit the old
asbestos mine. We met Leslie
White, a community member who knows everything about the mine and has worked
very hard to educate the citizens of Lowell about the correct information
regarding the mine. When we got to
the mine Leslie unlocked the main gate and we entered onto the property. Despite the big locked gate at the
entrance to the property, one could also easily enter onto the property simply
by walking around the side of the gate.
Leslie described the mine back in the days of its peak operation. She said it was like its own little
city…with employees working around the clock in 3 shifts per day. She explained how the employees
received a good pay and how the mine was the center of the towns economy back
then. Leslies story then skipped
many years forward to an incident in 2004 in which a town member found some of
the old pilings from the mine in the wetlands on his property. This guy thought this was not cool and
raised a fuss about it. The state
of Vermont conducted a health study of the old mine site. The study was released and made the
mine look like a dangerous place full of toxicity. It came out that the study was full of errors and the
results that had been released to the public were flawed. Lowell’s economy today is highly
dependant upon seasonal rental properties. After the health study was released a huge number of people
were calling in to cancel their rentals and thus the economy took a hit. Leslie worked hard to get the state to
retract its health study and after 3 years they finally took it off the
website. This incident caused a
great deal of mistrust between the people of Lowell and the state. Leslie felt that these people who were
supposed to be looking after the town and its citizens had let them down in a
major way. Leslie says that to
this day the town has yet to recover from this incident. After this incident Leslie and 4 others
formed a committee. Their purpose
was to act as “fact finders” and present the correct well researched
information to the people of the town.
Leslie and the other members of the committee played a huge role in
educating people to make an informed decision about the superfund status of the
site. Leslie explained to us that
“there are no asbestos fibers blowing around here”. The mine has had mitigation work done on it and is not a big
threat to human health in the area.
Leslie
went on to describe the superfund process to us. The way it works os that the town has to say yes to
superfund status before the EPA will give them any information about the clean
up plan or process. After saying
yes, the EPA has a 3-5 year period to do as they see necessary to clean up the
site. Additionally, the state has
to agree to cover 10% of the estimated cost of the project. Cleaning up the mine would be a huge
process with a very large price tag.
It would involve moving the pilings of waste back into the quarry, which
might in fact be more dangerous than just leaving them be as they are. The community was not satisfied with
this process and did not see this intense “fix” to be aligned with the threat
that the mine poses. The community
vote was overwhelmingly against the superfund status and many believe that some
remediation work would be sufficient.
The town feels that it is important to look at all the possible options
that could be done to clean up the site.
They are looking to examples of other mine clean up projects around the
world. Leslie explained that “any
money they spend up here is not going to save any human life…” A rough estimate for what the state
would have to cover if the site did attain superfund site status would be 25
million dollars. Isn’t there some
more beneficial things the state could do with this huge amount of money that
would benefit more people?
The
site visit really trough into focus for me the different levels of involvement
on the community, state, and national level. It is a trick thing to get these levels working together and
in the case of the Lowell asbestos mine, not all parties involved were on the
same page. There seems to be a lot
of misconceptions out there about the mine and its potential health effects. The main environmental hazard posed by
the mine is erosion into the streams surrounding the mine site. IT has been shown that some aquatic
biota is damaged in the parts of the streams near to the mine but further down
this problem does not exist. When
the water that fills the quarry is tested it shows drinking water quality.
Leslies
story was very captivating and full of information that we had not previously
found in our research. We left the
site visit and interview with a new understand of how powerful listening to a
community’s story can be. We also
left considering and questioning the role of the media in this issue. Why is it that we had to travel all the
way out to Lowell in order to get the whole story? The site visit was very worthwhile and proved to be an
enjoyable afternoon for all.
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