Community rep has a history with manmade disasters, dumps

When the proposed action for the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. Superfund site is released this spring, the community will have a team with solid experience in Superfund sites and manmade disasters to answer their questions and give technical advice.

Karmen King of consulting firm Skeo Solutions met with Columbia Falls residents last week to introduce herself and talk about how she and the team at Skeo can help the community through the Superfund process.

The CFAC cleanup will soon enter a critical part of the Superfund process, as the proposed action is the EPA’s formal proposal plan for cleaning up the old aluminum plant site. Under the law, the EPA has to take public comment and address every one of those concerns, King noted.

That’s important as some members of the public, including longtime employees at the plant, claim that some areas have been overlooked and potentially need more testing.

What’s been found to date is contaminants in some of the soils, but most notably, very high levels of cyanide and fluoride in the groundwater near old ponds and leaking landfills.

King’ experience in dealing with dumps and manmade disasters dates back to the Exxon Valdez, a notorious chapter in American pollution when a tanker ship carrying crude oil struck Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound in Alaska and fouled the water with 10.8 million gallons of crude oil in 1989.

More recently, she has been the task technical advisor for the East Palestine train derailment and explosion in Ohio that fouled the air and water in that town earlier this year.

In Colorado, she said worked on the Leadville Superfund site; and the Gold King Mine disaster literally flowed through her front yard.

“I’ve sat in your seat,” she said.

All told, King has 33 years working on Superfund sites.

King is joined by Ali Cattani, another environmental scientist with Skeo.

King said once the EPA releases the proposed action, she and Cattani will examine the document. They’ll then have another meeting with the community — most likely in person.

“Our program is designed to provide an independent source of information,” said Alison Frost of Skeo.

While the EPA provides the funding, it is not allowed to chose the advisors for theprogram, Frost noted.

Members of the public raised several concern about the CFAC site — not just groundwater, but the impact on wildlife and the wildlife corridor in the area, the future development of the site, and the cleanup methods. CFAC owns about 3,000 acres total, of which just under 1,000 are the actual Superfund site.

One aspect of cleanup, King noted, is to make sure it does no more harm that what the plant has already done.

She also told folks that they want to make sure their comments are constructive. For example, if folks know of areas that were explored where contaminants may have been dumped, they need to mark them on maps.

“Every comment will receive a response from the EPA,” she noted.

Some folks were worried that the cleanup process will drag out like Libby’s asbestos cleanup has.

The proposed action has been a longtime coming. The first community meeting were held in 2015.

After the proposed action is released, the public will have 60 days to comment. King said the plan is to meet with the community prior to the EPA officials meeting with community members.

After that, the EPA has to take the comments into consideration and then will issue a record of decision. It then has to negotiate with Glencore, CXFAC’s parent company, and Arco, the former owners prior to CFAC, on a consent decree.

The decree sets out the actual cleanup plan.

King noted that even after cleanup, a site assessment is done every five years.

So what could a cleanup look like?

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.

Contaminated groundwater would also be treated.

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 Hungry Horse News examined the cleanup at the Kaiser Mead plant in Washington. That plant also has cyanide and fluoride in the groundwater.

At Kaiser Mead, which is also a Superfund site, they installed a water treatment system that removes the cyanide and fluoride from the groundwater and then pumps the clean water back into the ground.

The system requires staffing and operates 24/7, however.