CFAC community rep here April 27 for introduction

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced that Karmen King, an aquatic toxicologist with the firm SKEO, will be the community technical advisor for the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. Superfund site.

King will assist in advising the community on technical documents as other aspects of the Superfund cleanup of the site.

King has over 33 years of experience in ecological risk assessment, contaminated waste characterization, regulatory compliance, watershed science and toxicology, according to her biography.

She is also an educator and has been an associate professor for 10 years. Her work on the impacts of Superfund sites on aquatic environments has extended throughout the remedial process, from initial field studies through to risk analysis and remedy development. She has also been a part of teams updating Clean Water Act procedures and assumptions, and developing aquatic toxicity effect levels.

King is currently part of a team of scientists looking at the water balance in Colorado and identifying ways to address drought conditions and interstate water obligations.

The EPA is expected to release its proposed action for the site in the next few weeks. The proposed action is another step in the Superfund process, where the agency submits its plan for eventually cleaning up the defunct aluminum plant.

Unlike the feasibility study, the proposed action is subject to a public comment process and can be changed based on public input.

Folks can meet King in person during two meetings Thursday, April 27 at noon and 5 p.m. at Columbia Falls City Council Chambers.

A feasibility study completed by CFAC in 2021 looked at several alternatives and scored a slurry containment wall combined with bolstering existing landfills as the best alternative for dealing with contamination at the Superfund site about a mile north of the city.

Test wells near the west landfill and adjacent ponds show levels of cyanide and fluoride significantly higher than the safe drinking water level.

The cyanide and fluoride leach from spent potliner buried onsite, as well as years of wastewater being dumped into ponds at the massive plant, which has been torn down and removed.

For example, the safe drinking water level for cyanide in water as set by the Environmental Protection Agency is 200 parts per billion. Test wells just downstream from the west landfill show contamination of 5,000 parts per billion.

The feasibility study suggested the best way to clean up the site would be to keep the waste in place and create a “slurry wall” around it to keep the contaminants from leaching out.

A full containment slurry wall has a cost of about $50 million, according to the feasibility study. It would also require longterm monitoring and testing.

The contaminated groundwater would then be treated.

Some folks in the community want to see the waste removed entirely.

It estimated that there’s about 1.2 million cubic yards of material that would have to be removed, which would require 60,000 truck loads.

Hauling that much waste out would take four to five years, assuming there were 70 truckloads of waste removed a day.

That amounts to 60 million miles of driving.

There’s also an issue of deadly cyanide gas being released from the spent potliner if its dug up, the feasibility study notes.

Once the Proposed Action is released, the community will have 60 days to comment on it. Once the comment period is over, the EPA will release a Record of Decision, hopefully by the end of the year.

Project manager Matt Dorrington said the EPA will then enter into consent decree negotiations with current owner Glencore and ARCO, the previous owners.

Under a federal court order, ARCO was ordered to pay 35% of the cleanup costs, while Glencore, the parent company to CFAC, was order to pay 65%.