Calbag gives update on CFAC demolition

The demolition of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant is going smoothly, project manager Cliff Boyd told the Columbia Falls City Council last week.

Boyd said the last of the anodes will be removed by Oct. 27 and then the company will start on the cathodes, which are located at the bottom of the pot. At about two a day, it will take more than 300 days to remove all the cathodes, he said.

So far, the project has recycled 140 million pounds of material, of which about 80 million pounds were carbon. About 40 men are currently working at the plant.

The crew is building a “building within a building” that will have negative air pressure as it starts to remove the spent potliner, which contains hazardous substances. The waste will be sealed, placed on a truck and hauled to an approved landfill in Oregon.

Asbestos has slowed the project. They found asbestos in almost all of the roofs of the building on the north end of the plant, so they had to be carefully removed manually.

A current cumulative total of 67,960 pounds of regulated asbestos waste has been removed from the facility since the start of the project and all told, 995,190 pounds of asbestos total has been taken out. Structures included in the removal include the west rectifier, rod mill building, paste plant, quonset hut, west aluminum unloader, compressor building, and laboratory.

The entire demolition is expected to be complete by the spring of 2019, Boyd said.

“The project is running well now,” he said. “There’s been no speed bumps, so-to-speak. We’re pretty happy at the moment.”

Details of the demolition are listed on the state Department of Environmental Quality web site at: http://deq.mt.gov/DEQAdmin/CFAC/cfac