But the improvements didn't stop current and former workers from getting sick, including some managers at the site, according to earlier news reports.
Though some former workers' medical costs have been borne by either workers' compensation or a Grace-sponsored health care plan, others have sued. Skramstad was one of the first former miners to sue Grace and win a court judgment.
Mayor Tony Berget said he is eager for his town to get a clean bill of health.
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Timeline
• 1939 Zonolite Co. formed to mine and process vermiculite at Libby mine.
• 1963 W.R. Grace & Co. purchases the mine and other assets from Zonolite for about $9 million.
• 1974 Grace receives first asbestos-related workers' compensation claim in Libby.
• 1977 A Grace-commissioned study of hamsters finds a link between asbestos fibers and cancer. Separately, the first asbestos-related personal injury lawsuits from Libby are filed against Grace.
• 1990 Grace stops mining vermiculite at Libby (processing continues until 1992).
• 1999 EPA arrives in Libby to investigate news report about asbestos-related health crisis and later declares area a Superfund site. EPA has spent $86 million on cleanup. Grace moves headquarters to Columbia from Boca Raton, Fla.
• 2000 Grace initiates medical coverage for Libby residents diagnosed with asbestos-related diseases.
• 2001 Grace and 61 domestic subsidiaries file for bankruptcy protection, citing 81 percent spike in asbestos claims from 1999 to 2000. Grace says only 206 of the 325,000 injury claims were from Libby.
• 2005 Federal prosecutors charge Grace with knowingly exposing mine workers and residents in Libby to asbestos and covering up the danger. Seven current and former employees also face charges.
SOURCES: Company and U.S. Attorney for the District of Montana
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For his part, Berget said he thinks the town is working past its troubled history.
"I think I'd just like to see the EPA stamp that says 'clean bill of health' and move on," Berget said.
But estimates of when the EPA will finish its work in Libby range from 2008 to 2010, about a decade after it began.
The EPA parachuted into Libby in 1999 after a report about the health crisis in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The agency already has spent $86 million to clean up the mine, a nearby plant where the vermiculite was processed and hundreds of area homes contaminated with asbestos. Jim Christiansen, the EPA project manager, says an additional $20 million may be spent this year alone. The agency continues to fight Grace in court over a $54 million award the government won to help cover the costs of the cleanup.
"It's not the biggest EPA cleanup in terms of dollar figures," Christiansen said recently from the agency's downtown Libby office, just a few steps from Grace's quiet storefront location. "But it's the biggest site in terms of human impact that EPA has ever faced, so the stakes are as high as they get."
"It's clear to most people that Grace should have done more," he added. "They knew there was a problem and they didn't act appropriately. And it made a lot of people sicker."
Johnson reported from Libby, ElBoghdady from Washington.
