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NEWS
FEATURE
Aluminum Plant Fading Away One Piece at a Time, Leaving
Unresolved Legacy
As crews demolish the shuttered CFAC site, a community grapples with future uncertainty and the best path forward
BY DILLON TABISH OF THE BEACON
COLUMBIA FALLS — The mighty industrial plant along the Flathead River, once a shining example of blue-collar prowess and a proud economic generator, is fading from the landscape.
Flaking metal and rust now overrun the 960-acre Columbia Falls Aluminum Company site. Buildings that once produced some of the nest aluminum, mostly to supply generations of Americans with tinfoil but even to assemble early stealth bombers, have dimmed in degrees of gray and are toppling one by one. Many of the same men who once worked here, laid-o iron workers and other roughnecks, are now helping tear it down.
The collapse is nearly complete. An era de ned by the sheen of aluminum now mostly survives in pale photos and in the talk of old men. The greater legacy of this shut- tered facility on the outskirts of town looms with uncer- tainty along with consequences waiting to be unearthed.
“There de nitely is a sadness there,” said Mike Shep- ard, a former employee at the aluminum plant who has turned up in the empty parking lot on occasion in recent weeks to watch the site come down.
“To this day, every one of us who worked there, we still talk about how much fun we had when we worked there. Good people. Lifelong friends. It was good pay. It was a great place to work.”
Shepard moved here from Pittsburgh to become the purchasing manager at the aluminum plant from 1979 to 1985. In those days, the parking lot was always full as the site hummed with activity.
“We made lots of money. It was quite a shot locally for the economy,” Shepard said.
Like a ghost town, the plant today stands in sharp con- trast to its historical visage. From its famous opening in 1955 through the boom years of the 1960s and 70s, the facility fueled this rural corner of Montana with over 1,200 jobs — almost half the population of Columbia Falls in those days — and millions of dollars in new eco- nomic investment. Just to build the plant over two years, the original owners, the Anaconda Company, spent $65 million, equivalent to $580 million today after adjusting for in ation. At its pinnacle, the plant could produce 360 million pounds of aluminum per year.
Now the demolition of the CFAC site marks the begin- ning of a new saga de ned by ecological concerns and the potential for a long-term cleanup under the federal Superfund program.
Rather than nostalgia for a bygone era, questions of just how bad the site is contaminated, and to what extent the impact might have migrated into the surrounding valley’s watershed, grip the community with anxiety.
“It’s a question and as long as there’s a question we will have that dark cloud of uncertainty oating over our heads,” Shepard, now a member of the Columbia Falls City Council, said.
While community members debate the possibility of Superfund listing, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is further studying the amount of contamination on-site. But the ndings up to now have already quali ed CFAC for the National Priorities List, a register of haz- ardous waste sites that is a precursor for the Superfund program. The agency will decide in the fall whether the property should be approved for Superfund cleanup.
It’s a polarizing topic.
Some are afraid of the so-called Superfund stigma that could hurt the town’s tourism and real estate industries
U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke tours the shuttered Columbia Falls Aluminum Company on Feb. 16. JUSTIN FRANZ | FLATHEAD BEACON
and the potential for the EPA to extend the time it takes to nish the cleanup.
Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, a White sh native, toured the property with media last week, echoing his opposition for Superfund designation and expressing optimism for the site’s future.
“I think if the site can be cleaned up rapidly without Superfund, that’s the correct path. The more bureau- cracy that’s involved, it only lengthens the process,” Zinke said. “There’s a downside to having a Superfund site. There is a stigmatization. Once you get in it’s really di cult to get out.”
Zinke said he favors the state Department of Environ- mental Quality taking the reins as the lead agency over- seeing the cleanup rather than the EPA.
The Flathead County commissioners have expressed similar opposition for Superfund status, saying it sup- ports the Superfund Alternative, which proceeds with cleanup but cannot use federal Superfund money and must have a responsible party willing to perform the remedial action.
A year ago, Glencore, CFAC’s parent company and a global commodities trading and mining giant based in Switzerland, ended negotiations with the DEQ over how to proceed with assessing and cleaning up the contam- inated site, spurring the most outspoken support for Superfund. In November, the rm reached an agreement with the EPA to launch a $4 million remedial investiga- tion into the full scope of contamination. The investiga- tion process is expected to take four to ve years, starting with initial surveying in April followed by the drilling of 43 sampling wells from May through September, accord- ing to CFAC o cials. Groundwater sampling would begin in the fall.
The Columbia Falls City Council recently voted to draft a letter rea rming its universal commitment to cleaning up CFAC. Mayor Don Barnhart has said he
supports the alternative approach as the best way to clean up the plant without the pitfalls of the federal program.
While some have said Glencore’s latest agreement should negate the need for Superfund, others believe the federal program would ensure the company sticks to n- ishing the project.
Gov. Steve Bullock and U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, both Dem- ocrats, have pushed for Superfund listing from the outset as the best route for proper cleanup and mitigating pos- sible environmental risks.
The EPA received 77 public comments in early 2015 on the proposed listing and a majority expressed support for the Superfund cleanup, according to public records of the submitted comments.
“There is absolutely no reason to believe that (Glen- core) will clean up this site properly on their own. There- fore, we must rely on the EPA to insure this is done prop- erly and as quickly as possible,” Tom Kurdy said in a com- ment to the EPA.
“The potentially adverse impacts to human health and environmental quality, due to the current levels of contamination in surface waters, groundwater and soils, pose a signi cant risk to the community,” Thompson Smith, chair of the Flathead Basin Commission, stated in a public comment submitted to the EPA.
Concerns are centered on possible ecological hazards lingering throughout the property and potentially leach- ing into the ground and surface waters or even the nearby Flathead River, which ows south to Flathead Lake and is a keystone water source.
During those decades of bustling commerce and mass production, large amounts of hazardous waste, including contaminants such as cyanide and uoride, and metals, such as arsenic, chromium, lead and selenium, spilled or were buried on-site.
“Sometimes it went to the dump. Sometimes the ser- vice crew would bury it. Nobody really knows where a lot
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