dr. phillip cook remembers.k: i think there was kind of a gut reaction of people living in the area, who were... more environmentally concerned, that something that big was a problem. they didn't really, at first, have any specific concerns, other than it looked like the lake was getting cloudy and there was obvious turbidity being caused in the immediately vicinity of the discharge. but, you're right, there was a feeling that this was a lot of material going in the lake. schoumacher: uneasiness soon turned to fear. in 1973, word got out that the tailings might contain asbestos, a known carcinogen. within a few weeks, much of the population of duluth, 60 miles to the west, had stopped drinking tap water. but was there a problem or wasn't there? cook: we knew we had tailings in the water. we knew that amphibole mineral was an important fraction of these tailings particles. we knew that some amphibole minerals, particularly the grunerite, which was in the tailings, can occur as asbestos, and that is associated wit