After ruling in September of 2008 that the City of St. Louis had violated Clean Air Act regulations, U.S. District Court Judge Carol Jackson is back in court debating whether to impose penalties on the city.
The case arose out of a demolition project the city undertook between 2000 and 2004, removing an entire subdivision of 1,900 homes and 70 businesses to make room for an airport runway at Lambert Airport, located in suburban St. Louis but owned by the city.
The lawsuit was filed by Public Justice on behalf of a neighborhood coalition called Families for Asbestos Compliance, Testing and Safety (FACTS), whose members lived near the 99 oldest buildings which were the major source of concern during demolition.
These 99 older homes in the St. Louis suburb of Bridgeton were deconstructed using an asbestos abatement procedure known as the "wet method", in which structures are sprayed with water to keep asbestos fibers from entering the air.
Public Justice and its legal team argued that the method was both unproven and dangerous. The approved method, under the NESHAP regulations of the Clean Air Act, requires removing the asbestos by hand and disposing of it in designated hazardous waste sites. Public Justice further argued that the city of St. Louis, which saved money by using the method, put its own economic interests above the health of residents.
City Attorney John Cowling defended his clients by stating that the city was merely following the orders of the St. Louis County Health Department, which held regulatory and permitting authority from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA.
For its part, the EPA countered by saying it didn't realize the city was using the unapproved method until 2003, when Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) persuaded then-EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman to allow it.
When Whitman's authorization expired the following year, the EPA extended it for the term of the demolition, even though it subsequently refused to allow a Fort Worth (Texas) deconstruction firm to employ the same method.
The EPA later denounced the method as unsafe, but remains under pressure from developers and asbestos remediation firms to ease its standards to allow the method. According to legal experts, the city of St. Louis case is only one example among many of a continuing attempt to weaken federal asbestos safety standards to the benefit of said developers and the detriment of the public.
According to Jim Hecker, an attorney with Washington-based Public Justice, the St. Louis trial marks the first time American citizens have tried to stop the use of the illegal and potentially dangerous wet method.
Judge Jackson is not expected to issue a ruling for several days, but penalties could range from civil fines to further remediation at the city's expense, which are precisely the kinds of things FACTS is seeking, though it has agreed not to ask for personal injury settlements.
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