Superfund fatigue.

That’s how Lincoln County Commissioner-elect Mark Peck explains the overriding feeling of many in Libby as asbestos cleanup drags on and the number of people with asbestos-related disease keeps growing.

It was mid-November 1999 when the Daily Inter Lake first brought to light the extent of the disease and death left by asbestos exposure from the W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine near Libby. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s extensive report a week later thrust Libby’s asbestos problem into the national spotlight.

Community leaders led by victims’ advocates Gayla Benefield and Les Skramstad insisted government agencies take steps to hold Grace accountable. They demanded health care and cleanup — and eventually got both.

By 2002 Libby was declared a Superfund site, although cleanup of asbestos-laden properties had begun a couple of years earlier.

Cleanup costs have surpassed $400 million and 2,060 properties have been cleaned so far. There are about 300 to 500 sites left to clean.

A big missing piece of Libby’s asbestos puzzle — the long-awaited toxicity values report — is expected to be released by the end of year. That crucial report will provide a baseline for safe containment levels, allowing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to determine how much contaminated material must be removed and how much can safely be left behind.

The EPA has been moving forward with cleanup in the absence of knowing how toxic Libby’s unique amphibole asbestos really is. And it’s quite possible some sites that have been cleaned may need to be cleaned again.

At the Center for Asbestos Related Disease, or CARD Clinic, in Libby, the caseload of asbestos patients keeps growing. Every year about 850 new patients come to the clinic and 45 percent of those are diagnosed with asbestos-related disease.

Dr. Brad Black, the longtime medical director of the CARD Clinic, estimates that since 1950, more than 60,000 people may have lived, worked and played in Libby in the middle of the environmental disaster.

“We’ll never know just how big this is,” Black said. “More than 40 percent of our existing patients are from out of the area.”

One of the confounding things about exposure to Libby amphibole exposure is that some people heavily exposed to asbestos dust don’t have the disease while others with minimal exposure are very sick.

“It’s a hard thing for patients that it affects everyone differently,” said Tanis Hernandez, a social worker and administrative director of the Center for Asbestos Related Disease. “A lot of our patients never worked in the mine at all.”

Through it all, Libby’s business leaders have kept their chins up and express a sense of optimism.

Pam Peppenger, interim director of the Libby Chamber of Commerce, said the summer visitor traffic through Libby this year was extremely strong, and fewer inquiries center around asbestos these days.

“I don’t think I got 10 questions all summer about asbestos,” she said.

Housing rentals are full and homes are selling, Peppenger said.

Surviving the years-long recession for an already economically impacted area was a challenge.

“Everyone held their own during the recession,” she said. “Most [businesses] stayed open and we had very few foreclosures.”

Tom Gilmore moved to Libby in 2008 to buy the Ace Hardware store. He’s now expanding the store on U.S. 2 into the adjacent former Hometown Variety store, adding another 25,000 square feet.

Gilmore’s success is driven by a single question he asks: “Does someone need that?

“We try not to limit ourselves to what the pre-conceived notion of a hardware store is,” he said, pointing to store inventory that includes everything from major appliances to gifts. “Our customers tell us what they want and we try to supply it.”

Community involvement organizations formed nearly 15 years ago are still going strong, providing oversight to the asbestos aftermath.

The Community Advisory Group still meets regularly to share information from the EPA and relay questions and concerns from the public to the federal  agency.

Since 2003, the EPA has continued to award a technical assistance grant so the Libby Area Technical Assistance Group, another oversight organization, can fund an independent technical adviser to review EPA site documents and maintain an independent website.

Mike Noble, chairman of the Technical Assistance Group, said the group currently is working on institutional control issues, such as possibly setting up a building permitting process, “so we know there’s been a cleanup and to what depth, so we can protect the public,” he said.

“I feel we have made a difference,” Noble said about the group’s ongoing work.

During the fall of 2012, the Libby Legacy Project, with the support of the EPA, presented a series of 90-minute sessions to educate teachers, students and the community at large about the history and the legacy of mining asbestos-contaminated vermiculite.

Another fairly new effort on the asbestos front is the Lincoln County Asbestos Resource Program, developed under the guidance of the City-County Board of Health for Lincoln County and funded through a cooperative grant from the EPA. The agencies wanted a pilot program that could become a long-term management tool for reducing the risk of exposure to asbestos communitywide.

Then-U.S. Sen. Max Baucus was a driving force behind getting help for Libby asbestos victims. He worked relentlessly to coax the federal government into taking the unprecedented step of declaring a public health emergency in Libby in 2009. It was the first time the EPA had made such a determination under authority of the 1980 Superfund law that requires the cleanup of contaminated sites.

The declaration opened doors for additional resources to address Libby’s ongoing health-care needs.

U.S. Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who steps into Baucus’ long-held Senate seat in January, has also pledged to keep Libby on the front burner.

“Since entering office, I have made it a priority to meet regularly with Lincoln County commissioners to discuss the situation in Libby and to maintain constant communication with the Center for Asbestos Related Disease in Libby,” Daines said in an email to the Inter Lake. “As Montana’s next U.S. senator, I will continue an open dialog as we move forward to a final cleanup solution.”

Daines further said he supports Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s request for the EPA to release its toxicity report on the Libby amphibole asbestos contamination so the community can evaluate its needs for a final cleanup plan.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.