CFAC open house draws plenty of questions

The public had mixed reactions to the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company open house last week.

Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, Roux Associates, Calbag Resources, CFAC and its parent company Glencore and the community liaison panel were present. Glencore employees and the EPA regulators met in person for two days last week to have a technical review of the remedial investigation and feasibility study work plan for the cleanup of the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. plant. Also present at the meeting was Roux Associates and Montana Department of Environmental Quality officials. Roux is the company overseeing the cleanup for CFAC.

The EPA had eight comments and 94 questions for Glencore, which will be used to revise the work plan and then send the updated document back to the EPA. A final review of the document is planned for the end of October. The contract between CFAC and the EPA, known as an administrative order on consent, is still on track for the end of November.

Dave Hadden, executive director of Headwaters Montana, a local conservation group, left the open house with more questions than answers. He talked at length with people from each entity because he wants the plant to be cleaned up appropriately. He has worked for decades to conserve water quality in the North Fork of the Flathead River. 

“I understand now that Glencore does have the option to walk away from its obligations … and that the EPA also has the ultimate authority to list this as a Superfund site,” he said.

If the plant becomes a Superfund site, he said that it doesn’t have to be negative and would actually benefit the community by helping it clean up the problem inherited from past generations. 

“I hope the community will embrace it, and make it an advantage, because right now, the community seems to be framing it as a disadvantage,” he said.

Tammy Fox and Joe Hauser, owners of Montana Vortex House of Mystery, wanted to learn the pros and cons of having the site be designated as a Superfund site. 

“I’m still not sure what would be the best way to go,” Hauser said.

“I don’t know that you can trust the company to clean up their own mess,” Fox said. 

Hauser added, “or if you can trust the EPA because their track record of cleaning up Superfund sites has been really bad.”

They were also interested in the future of the land. Fox wants it to become housing or a resort rather than an industrial park “or some awful thing we need to hide away over there again and contaminate the valley with.” 

Fox claimed that the plant has produced more contaminants than CFAC told her at the open house.

“I don’t trust them, I don’t believe them,” she said. She claimed that people in the valley have been dying of cancer at much higher rates than the rest of the nation. That doesn’t appear to be the case. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the age adjusted cancer death rate for Flathead County is 161.1 per 100,00 people compared to the United States median of 185 per 100,000 people.

The United Steelworkers wrote a letter to the EPA in May recommending the plant be made a Superfund site in order to clean it up properly. The comments compared CFAC to similar aluminum smelter sites in Goldendale, Washington and Massena, New York. 

The assumption is that similar chemicals would be found at each of the sites, USW noted. However, there was a difference in the reported amounts and types of chemicals released at each. CFAC didn’t report benzene, chlorine, lead, manganese and PCBs, whereas the other plants did. None of the plants reported hydrogen fluoride. The other assumption, USW noted, is that CFAC would have greater reported chemicals than the other two plants because it had a larger capacity; however, this didn’t happen.

Also, USW recommended that dead animals found on the property and fish tissue from nearby rivers should be tested for toxicity since hunting is allowed. 

Finally, the USW encouraged that remedial investigation and cleanup should be focused on protecting the area’s “unique irreplaceable natural resources and numerous sensitive ecosystems.” The cleanup levels should be more “stringent” than “‘industrial levels’, as they are not appropriate for this site.”