In news from last week, the EPA announced on March 12, 2008 that WR Grace had agreed to pay $250 million to the EPA to fund the clean up of the town of Libby, MT., one of the most notorious environmental disasters of the last 25 years. You can read the entire AP news wire report by clicking here.

" Taxpayers have been footing the bill for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's investigative and cleanup work in Libby, where the agency arrived in 1999. Expenses total $168 million and another $175 million in costs are likely, said Paul Peronard, EPA's Libby project leader. Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, called $250 million "a drop in the bucket compared to the destruction and pain our neighbors in Libby have been through."

Asbestos came from the vermiculite mine and processing facilities, a few miles from Libby, that Grace owned and operated from 1963 until the site's closure in 1990. Vermiculite was used in a variety of products and the asbestos was dispersed in a variety of ways. Workers carried it home on their clothing. Asbestos also ended up in the yards of homes where vermiculite was spread as a soil conditioner. Exposure in Libby has been blamed for lung-scarring asbestosis and for mesothelioma, a fast-moving cancer that attacks the lungs. "

While notable for it's amount and the fact that at long last some measure of compensation and justice for the residents of the small Montana mining community is on the horizon, the facts of the Libby case and what still lies ahead really isn't discussed in great detail in any of the news reports.  For perspective on what happened at Libby, the nature of this environmental and public health disaster we have turned to LBN's Jan Schlichtmann, one of the nations leading environmental lawyers to discuss the case.

For today's edition of Speaking of Justice, discussing the Libby Montana $250 million EPA settlement and what the future holds, click here.