CFAC meetings on technical assistance coming up

The Environmental Protection Agency will hold two public meetings Feb. 16 on the technical needs assessment for the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. Superfund site.

One meeting is at noon, the other is at 5 p.m. at the Columbia Falls City Council Chambers.

The needs assessment — a report on how the EPA can better help the community as the cleanup project continues — comes from interviews of citizens, the Flathead County Health Department, the Columbia Falls City Council, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality and Steve Wright of Glencore, the parent company of CFAC.

Under the needs assessment program, Columbia Falls could bring in an independent, third-party advisor to help the community understand the cleanup process and the risks to the community.

The contractor would also be helpful in determining whether the company, the EPA and other agencies were giving the public accurate data.

A feasibility study completed by CFAC in June 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.

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

For example, the safe drinking water level for cyanide in water as set by the EPA 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 cost to haul the waste away by truck or rail was never determined by the feasibility study, as the document claimed it didn’t score high enough.

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.

The study also claims that digging up the waste could result in exposing workers to deadly cyanide gas.

The EPA is expected to release its proposed action for the site later this year.

The Technical Assistance Needs Assessment is available online at www.epa.gov/superfund/columbia- falls. To pre-register for one of the meetings: www.eventbrite.com/e/ columbia-falls-aluminum-co-superfund- site-tana-public-meeting-tickets- 523648826737