Family's Eastern District of Missouri lawsuit leads to review of

St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, Jun 13, 2008 by Kelly Wiese

Leslie and Jack Warden sued the Environmental Protection Agency four years ago to get the federal government to consider tougher standards for lead in the air. The fruits of that lawsuit were playing out in a modest meeting room at a downtown St. Louis hotel on Thursday.

That's where the EPA held a public hearing - one of two in the country - on its plans to lower the authorized level of lead in the air.

Under a 2005 court order from the federal Eastern District of Missouri, the agency's review of its air standard for lead and revised rule must be complete by mid-September. States still will have until fall of 2016 to reach compliance, an EPA spokeswoman said.

The lawsuit alleged, and a federal judge agreed, that the Clean Air Act requires the air quality standard for lead to be reviewed every five years, and the government hadn't done so in more than a decade. The EPA first set the standard in 1978 and it has not changed since.

"This court finds that the EPA has blatantly disregarded Congress' mandate that the lead [air standards] be reviewed at five year intervals," U.S. District Judge Richard Webber wrote in his opinion.

Leslie Warden spoke at the public hearing Thursday and said afterward that she's glad the lawsuit resulted in actual change, but remains cautious as the process has taken so long already.

"I have to be a little guarded because of what I've seen the last 10 years," she said. "This is a step forward. The enforcement is the next step."

The Wardens used to live in Herculaneum, which is near the nation's only primary lead smelter, run by the Doe Run Co. Many Herculaneum children have suffered from lead poisoning, and lead has contaminated many yards and streets.

The EPA proposal at this point, released in May, is to drastically reduce the authorized air quality standard for lead from 1.5 micrograms per cubic meter to between 0.1 and 0.3 micrograms.

Aaron Miller, environmental management coordinator for Doe Run, said the company is not advocating a particular standard but will work to meet whatever the government decrees. How difficult and costly that will be depends on what the final threshold is, he said. Today, he said, Doe Run is in compliance with the current standard and has made great strides in reducing emissions at the smelter.

"We have a common goal: we want cleaner air," he said.

Ilene Follman, an education consultant and grandmother, was among about 25 people who were speaking at Thursday's public hearing.

"The current [standards] for lead are woefully outdated and inadequate," she said. "There is no safe level of lead exposure."