Tester, CFAC at odds over Superfund designation

Montana Sen. Jon Tester said last week he still favors a Superfund designation for the defunct Columbia Falls Aluminum Co, plant.

“It’s critically important we hold Glencore responsible,” Tester said during a tour of the site on Thursday. “The only people that can do it is the EPA.”

Glencore is the parent company to CFAC.

The company, meanwhile, favors a listing known as the Superfund Alternative Assessment, which holds the company to the same Enviornmental Protection Agency Superfund standards, but without the formal listing.

“It will let us do what we need to do with the EPA,” said Cheryl Driscoll, exceutive secretary for Glencore. She claimed the Superfund listing would be “detrimental to the community and the process.”

But Tester said the alternative would allow the company to walk away and then the process would have to start over. He shrugged off the potential stigma of a Superfund listing, noting that once it was cleaned up and released by the EPA, the property would be one of the best sites in the world, both for its scenic beauty and economic potential.

“There’s no stigma attached,” he said. “This is prime, prime, property.”

Tester commended the work the company has done so far. The remedial investigation and feasibility study will get underway this May, with 43 new wells, soil sampling and surface water sampling to determine the extent of contamination at the plant. There are already 25 monitoring wells on the site, the 43 wells would be in addition to those. Some of those wells have tested above safe water drinking thresholds for cyanide, though cyanide has not been found above safe water drinking thresholds in residential wells near the plant.

Even so, the city of Columbia Falls is concerned enough that it recently wrote the EPA asking it to stay the course on a Superfund listing. The county, meanwhile, has advocated the alternative approach and Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke, when he toured the site earlier this year, advocated for the state of Montana to oversee cleanup.

A decision on a Superfund listing would likely come this fall.

The listing certainly has political overtones and there is no love lost between Tester and Glencore. Tester from 2008 to 2012 went to bat for the company, urging the Bonneville Power Administration to craft a power supply agreement to keep the plant open and keep 350 workers on the payroll.

But it became increasingly evident that the company had no intentions of restarting the plant. 

In fact it sought a huge property tax reduction — 95 percent — for the idled plant shortly after the company went public in a $12 billion initial public offering in May, 2011.

Glencore followed the footsteps of most aluminum smelters in the Pacific Northwest and closed the plant. In 1999 there were 10 smelters in the Northwest. Today there are two, and only one is actually producing aluminum, CFAC officials note.

During the tour, city Councilman Mike Shepard, who worked at the plant for decades, noted the reason why no trees grow over the landfills behind the plant was because they were sprayed with water from ponds that contained arsenic. 

Even today, little grows on the slopes save for short grass and weeds. In addition, an overflow ditch of Cedar Creek runs right through the east end of the landfills into the Flathead River.

A plan to clean up the site will likely take four years, with a final remediation report expected in early 2020 and the final feasibility study expected by early 2021. The company is footing the bill for the study, posting a $4 million financial guarantee for the work.

The plant itself continues to be demolished by contractor Calbag Resources, a process that will take a couple more years. They are currently working to demolish the paste plant at the north end of the structure. The paste plant demolition is a delicate affair, because it contains carbon dust, which is flammable. A massive crane with a set of giant shears has been cutting the building down piece by piece.