Tester, Baucus ask EPA to look at CFAC site

Sens. Jon Tester and Max Baucus announced March 11 they’re calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to study whether contamination levels at the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company smelter pose a risk to the community and to future business.

Swiss-based commodities trader Glencore AG, which owns CFAC, closed the plant outside Columbia Falls in October 2009. Since then, Tester and Baucus have worked with Glencore and the Bonneville Power Administration to re-open the facility, but metal prices and other factors have kept the smelter from re-starting.

Tester and Baucus are now urging the EPA to determine whether the CFAC plant at the base of Teakettle Mountain should be declared a Superfund site. The senators suggest that designation could help create new jobs for workers cleaning up hazardous materials and by supporting new business opportunities for the region’s economy.

“We are concerned about an indefinite delay in economic opportunities at the site and support the community’s efforts to explore all options for remediation,” Tester and Baucus wrote the EPA. “Due to the complexity of the site, we urge the EPA to swiftly commence a site assessment of the CFAC production facilities for a listing of Superfund.”

Tester and Baucus want the EPA to assess risks posed by the plant’s decades-long handling of hazardous materials and specifically to study the plant’s landfills and any wastewater ponds that handled plant discharge until the 1980s.