City leaning toward forming independent CFAC oversight group

City leaders met Monday night to review an Environmental Protection Agency Technical Assistance Grant program put forth by Robert Moler and Mike Cirian of the EPA. Each TAG provides up to $50,000 to community groups so they can pay for technical advisors to interpret and explain reports, site conditions, and the Superfund process.

Designated a Superfund site, the CFAC property has been found to be contaminated with cyanide and flouride as well as other potentially harmful compounds. But none of them have migrated off the site in levels above safe water drinking standards to date.

To make the most efficient use of a TAG, a nonprofit group of diverse stakeholders should conduct a needs assessment to get a technical advisor who brings expertise that’s lacking in the group. A technical advisor might be a lawyer, engineer, hydrogeologist, or someone else, depending on what the nonprofit needs to get information in layman’s terms.

Moler explained how the TAG program works with the example of the fictional “Flathead River Group.”

“They get together and say, ‘Hey, I know how to raft, I know how to fish, but I don’t know engineering,’” he said. “If they’re a 501(c)(3), they can have technical assistance to have technical information translated to them and made available to the public.”

The discussion of the TAG program launched when Mayor Don Barnhart asked Moler whether a TAG-assisted nonprofit would overlap or replace the current community liaison panel.

Moler replied that the panel is not eligible for a technical grant because it’s funded by Glencore, CFAC’s parent company. Only nonprofits are eligible for the grant, he said. In Libby, for example, community stakeholders formed a Community Advisory Group and then applied for a technical grant. If the current panel were to lose its funding, it could become independent and thus a nonprofit advisory group.

Cirian suggested that a TAG is “a really good thing if you have lots of questions or lots of documents.”

Council member Mike Shepard was in favor of the TAG so that former CFAC employees wouldn’t have to rely on the community liaison panel for information and decisions. Shepard liked the idea of an independent group which would welcome former employees and allow them to share their thoughts.

Cheryl Driscoll, executive director of Glencore, interjected, “We’ve worked very hard to work with the community.”

Driscoll asserted that panel meetings are organized to address member concerns, not dismiss them.

The challenge with forming a community group, Moler noted, is that people must be willing to volunteer and donate their time for several hours a month. But without a community group or other nonprofit to receive a TAG, there’s no independent technical reviewer - meaning that the community must accept the data put forth by a privately funded group.

City manager Susan Nicosia wondered whether a Columbia Falls nonprofit could even receive a TAG for the CFAC site, as the property is outside the city limits.

Matt Vincent, former chief executive of Butte-Silver Bow and former director of the Clark Fork Watershed Education program, soothed Nicosia’s doubts.

“Whatever happens at that site has more bearing on the health and safety of this community than anywhere else,” he said.

Towards the end of the review, Shepard remained in support of trying to get a TAG.

“If we get the chance to translate what is going on to the English language, maybe,” he said.

Nicosia was in agreement, expressing concerns that the way the panel meetings are conducted creates undue panic — for example, if the word cyanide or fluoride comes up, people leave the meeting convinced that the water is harming them, because there’s no technical advisor to provide plain-language answers to citizens.

Barnhart thought the TAG sounded appealing, too.

“Let it be publicized that we think it’s a great idea,” he concluded.

City council will formally vote on the TAG program at their next meeting.