CFAC cleanup could start after six years of study

It might be six years before studies are completed and actual cleanup of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. smelter site can begin, officials explained during a public meeting at the Columbia Falls High School on Dec. 11.

But the first step for the Environmental Protection Agency is to get state support in the form of a concurrence letter from the governor or the director of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, according to Rob Parker, an environmental engineer at EPA’s Region 8 office in Denver, Colo.

“We need community feedback so it doesn’t look like the federal government is making unilateral decisions,” he said.

About 50 people attended the meeting, including Sen. Dee Brown, R-Coram, Rep.-elect Zac Perry, D-Hungry Horse, and members of the city council.

Also attending were CFAC environmental manager Steve Wright, CFAC spokesman Haley Beaudry and Amanda Ludlow, a principal scientist at Roux Associates in New York, the company hired by CFAC to make an environmental assessment of the plant site.

Long process

Once the EPA hears from the state to proceed, the agency will take steps to put the CFAC site on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List, which will bring more money and technical resources to the cleanup effort, Parker said. That step must be “fully documented to justify the decision,” he noted.

“We expect the potential responsible parties will attack the documentation, so it’s likely we’ll need to fill a few data gaps,” he said.

The earliest the EPA could propose listing the CFAC plant site is spring 2015, Parker said. The proposal would then be published in the Federal Register for a nationwide public review process.

After that, the EPA would conduct a remedial investigation of the site that could continue over several seasons of data collection, followed by a feasibility study. The collected data would be used to support a record of decision document that would justify a cleanup. A remedial design would need to be completed before actual cleanup work begins.

Based on what has happened at other NPL sites in Montana, it could take two to three years to get going and two to three years to complete the studies, depending on the cooperation of the responsible parties, according to Julie DalSaglio, the director of EPA’s Montana office in Helena.

“Up-front negotiations could take time — we have a suite of potentially responsible parties,” she said.

It could take several seasons to understand the geohydrology of the site, DalSaglio said. Cyanide has leached out of CFAC’s landfills into the underlying groundwater, and the Flathead River is downgradient from the source of the contamination.

“Groundwater remediation takes a lot longer to do,” she said, and negotiations between the EPA and the responsible party will continue through the remediation steps.

Talks collapse

The EPA has taken the lead on the CFAC cleanup now that CFAC has announced it has broken off negotiations with DEQ. Parker said EPA personnel are currently searching for the responsible parties.

Jenny Chambers, administrator of DEQ’s remediation division, had been in talks with Glencore, CFAC’s parent company, ever since DEQ submitted an administrative order on consent on July 31 outlining work plans and funding for a remedial investigation.

She said she was waiting for feedback from Glencore, but in late August the Swiss-based commodities trader told DEQ that further talks must be held with CFAC, not Glencore. CFAC never signed off on the order, Chambers said.

Then, two days before the Dec. 11 public meeting, CFAC broke off talks with DEQ.

“We didn’t see eye-to-eye on some things,” Chambers said, including authority for work plans and who paid for what. Toward the end, attorneys did all the talking, not environmental managers, she said.

Moving forward

Certain cleanup steps could be speeded up if there is evidence of a human health hazard, Parker said. Additional sampling of residential wells near the plant this fall did not turn up contaminants that exceeded thresholds for drinking water, but if they did the EPA could use emergency funds to provide clean water to affected residents, he said.

Looking to the future, Flathead Basin Commission chairman and former Glacier National Park superintendent Chas Cartwright asked when public input would be taken for a “vision” of what the “landscape” should look like after the cleanup.

Sen. Brown responded by noting that “Montanans take their private property rights seriously,” and that the CFAC site was owned by Glencore.

After the meeting, Flathead City-County Health Officer Joe Russell and county commissioner-elect Phil Mitchell said they were asked to attend the meeting. Russell said he’d ask the county’s board of health to sign a letter of support for a remedial investigation to the governor. Mitchell said he’d try to persuade the county commissioners to do the same.

Columbia Falls city manager Susan Nicosia asked Russell if his department could do additional well sampling to provide “peace of mind” to residents near the plant site. He said he thought the job could get done with financial assistance from DEQ.

Letters of support for a remedial investigation of the CFAC site can be sent to Rob Parker, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 8, 1595 Wynkoop Street, Denver CO 80202-1129 or parker.rob@epa.gov or to Jenny Chambers, Montana Department of Environmental Quality, 1100 North Last Chance Gulch, P.O. Box 200901, Helena MT 59620-0901 or jchambers@mt.gov.

For more information on the cleanup, visit online at www2.epa.gov/region8/columbia-falls-aluminum-reduction-plant.