Raising the red pollution flag

 Not feeling any urgency to save lives from the pollution from the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company, nothing is getting done with any haste to acquire Super Funds monies to clean up the mess.  The new owners of the CFAC, Glencore plc, could care less….as it is saving them money.  Their claim of contribution is to pass the obligation to the former owner Atlantic Richfield and BP plc.  And, of course, there are the ridiculous findings from well tests, reported to US Senator Jon Tester, that no significant pollution was found.  Not much social license here.

After all, what harm can drinking cyanide, fluoride, arsenic, lead, manganese, et al, from your tap water possibly do?   Well, for starters, given enough time, it can kill you.  Not to worry though…the EPA, Governor of Montana, two Flathead County Commissioners, Glencore, DEQ, don’t live here and so don’t have to drink this water…and CFAC is long gone from the scene.

So who does care?  Apparently neither the residents of Columbia Falls, nor the thousands who live along Cedar Creek and the Flathead River corridor clear down to Flathead Lake with personal, individual wells, since none of these stakeholders is squawking very much.  We wouldn’t want to interfere with Glencore’s property rights, now would we?

I guess I shouldn’t care since I live many miles upstream of the toxic poison in the water, but I will raise this red flag and inform the apathetic citizenry that they don’t have long to live.  Maybe they should have studied physics and chemistry and hydrology in school?

— Bill Baum, Badrock Canyon