EPA Seeks to Control Asbestos Dust Used on Unpaved Roads

Federal environmental officials are planning immediate steps to suppress hazardous asbestos dust in a residential community where 16 miles of unpaved roads may have been built with waste from a nearby asbestos mine and mill.

Environmental Protection Agency officials in San Francisco said that asbestos concentrations of 10% to 20%--described by an agency official as “very high”--have been found in dirt on unpaved roads in the Copper Cove Village subdivision southeast of Copperopolis near Tulloch Reservoir in the Mother Lode country. The roads were built about 15 years ago.

There are fewer than 150 homes in the unpaved part of the Calaveras County community, according to local residents, but the EPA findings have caused concern in the area. One resident said more families “are coming in all the time, and they’re bringing their kids with them. . . . It’s not good.”

Officials Urge Action

Two weeks ago, the EPA sent letters to Copper Cove’s developer and other companies the agency has identified as “responsible parties,” urging them to act, under agency supervision, to seal the roads to control dust. As an alternative, the work would be paid for out of the federal Superfund hazardous sites cleanup program and billed to the firms. The letters said the EPA has concluded that the situation “may present an imminent and substantial danger” to nearby residents.

Companies receiving the letters, including the current and former owners of the asbestos mine and mill, have denied responsibility for the problem. EPA officials said late last week that they expect to send a contractor to apply a chemical binder to the roads to keep asbestos out of the air, a temporary measure that could cost $150,000 to $200,000.

A permanent solution may involve paving the roads, which officials said could cost 10 times as much.

EPA officials said they have no air test data to show what levels of asbestos dust residents may have been breathing. But abundant data gathered by EPA consultants in California and other states has shown that unpaved roads containing elevated amounts of asbestos can produce much higher than normal airborne levels of the hazardous mineral. Asbestos-laden rock used on paved roads is not considered a problem, since the fibers do not become airborne.

Investigation Continues

EPA officials say they believe the asbestos material in the Copper Cove roads is waste from the nearby mine and mill but are still investigating.

The EPA involvement seems likely to trigger demands for a similar response elsewhere in the area, because waste from the asbestos mine and mill was used on other roads in the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, some rock quarries in the area have supplied road gravel containing high levels of naturally occurring asbestos. The asbestos is in deposits of serpentine, the California state rock, which is abundant in parts of Central and Northern California.

EPA officials said they will probably launch a wider investigation of sites in Calaveras and neighboring counties where asbestos-bearing rock has been used on roads that remain unpaved.

“Copper Cove is not unique,” said Dr. Robert Marshall, Calaveras County health director.

The EPA action will “open up a can of snakes here, not just a can of worms,” he said.

Moreover, it has raised questions among residents here about the speed of the government’s response. At least one Copper Cove resident said he made an attempt about four years ago to interest several agencies in the issue and got no response. Government officials say they do not recall such contacts.

Asbestos is a leading environmental cause of lung cancer. Most evidence of its cancer-causing potential involves studies of heavily exposed workers, many of whom did not contract the disease until two decades after initial exposure. But there have been documented cases of asbestos-related cancer among people whose exposure appears to have been brief or light, raising fears among some experts that no level of exposure is without some risk.

In the Copper Cove subdivision, even a single car kicks up visible dust along Cheyenne Road, where Tom Evans bought a home two years ago.

“I’m downwind of the road. Every time a car goes by we get dusted,” Evans said.

The asbestos “is a problem that I was not aware of when I purchased my property,” said Evans, a consulting geologist. “Naturally, I, like a lot of others up here, am pretty upset.”

Request by Resident

Ronald Shields, 43, an auto mechanic who lives in Copper Cove, made the call last fall that prompted the EPA’s decision to test dust and dirt samples on the road. He said it was his second effort to draw attention to the matter and that in his earlier attempt he was ping-ponged from one government agency to another.

Shields said he became concerned after hearing that the roads, built between 1969 and the early 1970s, consisted of mine and mill waste from the Calaveras Asbestos Mill about a mile away.

About four years ago, Shields said, he loaded some dirt and rocks from the road and mud scraped from the underside of his car into baby food jars and tried to get Calaveras County health officials to test the contents.

After both county and state health officials told him that such tests would be too expensive, he called the EPA, Shields said. However, he said, an official in the agency’s air quality program in San Francisco told him that the use of mill waste for road base in those earlier days was “perfectly legal,” so nothing could be done.

This “kind of took the wind out of my sails,” Shields said.

Prompted by News Reports

But he called the EPA again last October after seeing news reports about how the EPA was dealing with an asbestos contamination problem in Alviso, a suburb of San Jose, where material washed into the streets, apparently from a levee built partly of asbestos debris.

This time, Shields talked to different agency officials and “got a complete, opposite reaction,” he said. “They can’t do enough for us. It’s what I expected the first time.”

Within three weeks of Shields’ call, the EPA began taking road samples.

Calaveras County health officials said they were not aware of Shields’ earlier efforts to get action, “But I don’t doubt that that very well may have happened,” one official said.

County health officials said they had been pushing for several years to get a group of rural air pollution districts in the area to combine forces in investigating the risks of unpaved asbestos-laden roads.

Contact Not Recalled

EPA officials said they did not know the details of Shields’ earlier contacts with the agency. Terry Wilson, an EPA spokesman, said the air quality official Shields says he talked to does not recall such a conversation.

Officials said that in response to their recent letters, Great Lakes Development Co., developer of Copper Cove Village, has written to say it will not accept responsibility for work on the roads. A company general manager, Gerald Crossen, declined comment. He referred questions to corporate officers in Dallas, who could not be reached for comment late Friday or Saturday.

H.K. Porter Co. Inc., a Pittsburgh-based manufacturer of electrical and rubber products, has also told the EPA that it will not pay for the cleanup. The Porter company was majority stockholder of Pacific Asbestos Co., which operated the asbestos mine and mill from the early 1960s until it declared bankruptcy in 1974.

Porter officials could not be reached for comment.

George Reed Inc., a local sand and gravel concern, has also told the EPA that it was not to blame.

Firm Issues Denial

Wendell Reed, president of Basic Resources, of which George Reed is a subsidiary, acknowledged that the company formerly had an arrangement with Pacific Asbestos to use mine and mill wastes to make a road base material. But he said such road base material was always paved over. Additionally, he denied ever supplying or hauling any rock to the Copper Cove development.

Mike Dell’Orto, director of purchasing and spokesman for Calaveras Asbestos Ltd., which now owns and runs the mine and mill, said he believes the asbestos-laden rock may have come from a local quarry and not from the mill.