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CFAC demolition to start this spring

by Richard Hanners Hungry Horse News
| May 6, 2015 6:50 AM

Demolition and cleanup of the closed Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. smelter plant will start this spring, a company spokesman announced April 29.

As the Hungry Horse News reported March 18, a representative of a large, experienced West Coast corporation toured the CFAC plant in late February and made an offer to Glencore to clean up the potlines and associated buildings.

According to CFAC spokesman Haley Beaudry, CFAC has contracted with the same company, Calbag Resources, for the decommissioning and removal of certain structures, machinery, equipment and waste materials at the smelter plant.

“CFAC selected Calbag after thoroughly vetting several potential contractors,” Beaudry said.

Calbag began as a family business in 1907 in Portland under the name Northwest Junk with a focus on recycling burlap bags. It changed its name to California Bags and Metal Co. in 1929 and to Calbag Metals Co. in 1965, with an expanding business in recycling nonferrous metals. The company expanded to Tacoma, Wash. in 2001 and has more than 5,000 customers now.

The privately owned salvage and re-purposing firm has been involved in tearing down and recycling two nuclear power plants in Washington, an oil refinery recently in Wyoming, the Asarco smelter in East Helena, the Smurfit-Stone pulp mill in Missoula and several aluminum smelters in the Pacific Northwest.

A sister company, Transformer Technologies, has torn down numerous high voltage switchyards, and several large demolition companies have subcontracted with Calbag on cleaning up large industrial sites.

Glencore, the Swiss-based company that owns CFAC, dealt with Calbag in the past during the cleanup of the Evergreen Aluminum plant in Vancouver, Wash. Glencore bought the former Alcoa plant in 2002 and sold it to the Port of Vancouver in 2009. Cleanup there was completed in 2010.

Calbag was also involved in the cleanup of aluminum smelters at The Dalles, Ore., and Goldendale, Wash. Both were built and owned by Harvey Aluminum Co., the same company that tried to build an aluminum smelter in the Flathead in the early 1950s before Anaconda took over the project. The Goldendale smelter was very similar in size and technology to CFAC.

“CFAC is pleased to be moving this process forward,” CFAC environmental manager Steve Wright said about the upcoming demolition. “We understand the people of Columbia Falls want to see action at the site, and this is our first major step in that direction.”

CFAC’s plan calls for Calbag to mobilize this spring and complete its contracted scope of work within two to three years. Glencore has also contracted with Roux Associates, Inc., an environmental consulting firm, to prepare a remedial investigation and feasibility study work plan needed to clean up the CFAC site.

“CFAC is both fortunate and pleased to have been able to involve these two recognized leaders in their respective fields,” Wright said.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality is looking into what type of permits will be needed to undergo the demolition work, Remediation Division spokeswoman Jeni Flatow said. DEQ is currently working on an administrative order on consent with Glencore, which will contain more specific information, she said.

“As you can imagine, it is a very complicated site,” she said. “We expect they will need to do an inspection for asbestos and hazardous materials. After these are quantified, a complete plan for demolition and removal that is protective of the environment will have to be approved.”

The 3,196-acre CFAC property at the base of Teakettle Mountain includes a smelter facility, landfills and percolation ponds, and acres of buffer land to protect neighbors.

The smelter facility includes 10 pot rooms, each 1,180-feet long, 90-feet wide and held up by 1,500 tons of structural steel. In the basements are about 4 miles of beam-sized aluminum bus bars running up and down each pot room, linking each of the plant’s 600 reduction cells to the rectifier building.

The smelter facility also includes a casting house, storage silos for raw materials and chemicals, an eight-story high carbon paste plant, two coal tar pitch storage tanks, a boiler house, a rod mill, a high voltage switchyard, a sewage treatment plant, two steel warehouses, a machine shop, a laboratory, engineering offices, administration offices and a change house.