EPA to present CFAC findings

Residents with concerns about the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant site will want to attend a special meeting in Columbia Falls next week.

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency will discuss the results of their recent site reassessment and inform the public about the EPA’s and Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s environmental programs as well as potential next steps. A question and answer session will follow a presentation.

According to EPA site assessment manager Rob Parker, the purpose of the screening reassessment was to collect data that could be used to inform government officials, the community and other stakeholders. It did not draw conclusions on whether the plant should be torn down and cleaned up.

Parker said the site is eligible on a technical basis to be placed on the federal Superfund’s National Priority List, and the site assessment was conducted under that authority after Sen. Jon Tester and former Sen. Max Baucus formally requested that the smelter site be put on the list.

The plant has been closed since 2009, and while many residents would like to see the smelter fire back up, many residents and past workers have expressed doubts that will ever happen, despite the promises of Glencore, the Swiss company which owns the plant.

EPA gathered samples of groundwater, surface water, sediment and surface soils in September 2013. A 271-page report presents the analytical results of that sampling event.

Cyanide levels in some domestic wells in Aluminum City were elevated, but not enough to warrant ordering people not to drink the water, Parker said. Weston, the contractor that conducted the field work, will return to Aluminum City this week to gather more samples, Parker said.

Some contaminants have migrated to the Flathead River, but the river is not a source of drinking water for humans, and the EPA sampled only surface water and sediments, Parker said. To determine the impacts of the contaminants on fish and aquatic life would require actually sampling fish and aquatic life tissues, he said.

The informational meeting will take place in the Columbia Falls Fire Hall on Tuesday, April 15, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. For more information or to read the report, visit online at http://www2.epa.gov/region8/columbia-falls-aluminum-reduction-plant.