City to request full-blown CFAC investigation
<p>Among the first hourly employees at the Anaconda Aluminum Co. plant in April 1955 were boiler-compressor operators, left to right, Lester Rhodes, Frederick Bickle, Fred Kost and Moody Copenhaver. Photo by Mel Ruder</p>
The Columbia Falls City Council expressed unanimous agreement April 21 about taking the next step in cleaning up the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. smelter site.
They directed city manager Susan Nicosia to draft a letter to Gov. Steve Bullock and Montana Department of Environmental Quality director Tracy Stone-Manning requesting that the CFAC site be placed on the federal Superfund’s National Priorities List for further action.
“The council letter would be contingent upon concurrence with the Flathead County Board of Commissioners,” Nicosia told the Hungry Horse News on April 23. “I spoke to commissioner Pam Holmquist today and she would like to discuss the options before submitting the letters asking for the risk assessment.”
Nicosia said she met with two representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency before their public meeting in Columbia Falls on April 15. The first phase, a screening reassessment, determined that the site is eligible for placement on the National Priorities List, they told her.
Phase 2 is a more detailed and comprehensive remedial investigation, but the EPA and DEQ want community support, including letters from the Columbia Falls city council and the Flathead County commissioners, before they will go to that level, she said.
Phase 3 involves remedial action and cleanup, Nicosia said, and the EPA and DEQ will look at past owners — including the Atlantic Richfield Co., which acquired the plant when it took over The Anaconda Co. — to see who would pay for the cleanup.
Nicosia said she asked the EPA representatives if Phase 2 funding could be used to help connect residences with contaminated wells in the Aluminum City subdivision to city water but didn’t receive a conclusive answer.
The EPA reported that elevated levels of cyanide were found in two Aluminum City wells sampled last fall, but the levels were below the Safe Drinking Act’s allowable limits. Cyanide is known to be migrating out of landfills at the smelter site where potliner waste was dumped before 1985.
Nicosia said the city currently has 18 water customers in Aluminum City and 12 in nearby Tracy’s Tracts, both outside the city limits. The city’s 16-inch main runs past the two subdivisions from the city’s water tank at Cedar Creek Dam to town, but the city has not developed plans for a looped water system for Aluminum City.
“I have talked to Flathead City-County Health Department director Joe Russell about having the county complete such a study, but I don’t have any idea on costs,” she told the Hungry Horse News.
Nicosia said she’s been asked if the city planned to annex Aluminum City, and noted that at least one resident there “was not keen about paying the additional cost for city water.”
“That’s because he hasn’t got his EPA test results back,” councilor Mike Shepard said.
The city’s water system is supplied by the Clare Park and LP wells, which draw deep groundwater located at least three miles away from the CFAC plant, and the city conducts monthly water tests, Nicosia said.