CFAC: Hints of progress toward cleanup

Neighbors concerned about shared well

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While the details remain unclear, there are indications something’s afoot with talks about a cleanup at the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant.

In a meeting with Columbia Falls city councilors on July 7, Republican county commissioner candidate Phil Mitchell said a decision by Glencore, CFAC’s Swiss-based owner, could be made public in 60 days.

He also said he was not happy with the lack of interest in the matter by the sitting county commissioners. Mitchell said he was able to speak to commissioner Pam Holmquist about the situation but not Gary Krueger.

“Columbia Falls has not been treated right on this,” he said. “The commissioners should support the need for more testing.”

During the council meeting that night, councilor Mike Shepard said he had contacted Sen. Jon Tester and the Flathead Basin Commission about the need for a cleanup at the smelter site.

City manager Susan Nicosia told the council that Glencore officials planned to come to the Flathead soon and speak with officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

Nicosia also said Jenny Chambers, DEQ’s Remedial Division administrator, was encouraged by the fact that Glencore was ready to sit at the table without the government having to file a lawsuit. Glencore and Atlantic Richfield, which owned the CFAC smelter in the 1980s and 1990s and which is now owned by BP, have agreed that more testing is needed, Nicosia reported.

The city ran a more comprehensive panel of tests on its water supply and published it in the newspaper to show residents no cyanide contamination from the CFAC plant was present, Nicosia said. City councilor Dave Petersen, however, noted the irony of that statement.

“It could mean to some, ‘Not contaminated yet,’” he said.

The smelter completely shut down in October 2009. Recent sampling by the EPA indicates cyanide from spent potliner has leached into groundwater near landfills on plant property.

A second round of testing by the EPA this spring found no cyanide in nearby residential wells, but that didn’t stop a group of Aluminum City residents from writing a letter requesting a cleanup.

Nino Berube, a former engineer at the CFAC smelter and president of Gadow Mutual Pump, a well shared by several families in Aluminum City, wrote the letter, which was signed by six people who use the well.

Berube described three options. The preferable was “for Glencore to actively participate and fund the cleanup with the intent of transferring the site to owners interested in utilizing the infrastructure currently in place once the cleanup takes place.”

The second best option was for DEQ to manage the cleanup “because of their interest in putting Montana and its people first.” Berube said state-run cleanups tend to take less time to complete and cost less than federal cleanups, and state law better protects the rights of local property owners than federal law.

The least desirable option would be for the EPA to manage the cleanup. The EPA would “delay the cleanup with their bureaucratic ways that study and overspend on virtually every site they take over jurisdiction,” Berube said. “They are the least capable of getting this site cleaned and returned to a productive use.”

In the meantime, Berube wanted political pressure put on Glencore to implement “temporary measures that guarantee the plume doesn’t continue spread and contaminate additional acres of land needlessly.” He said some “straightforward fixes” could contain any underground cyanide plume until a more permanent solution could be found.