COLUMBIA FALLS — It’s a major milestone in the ongoing efforts to clean up the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company Superfund site as a Record of Decision has been released by the EPA.
“Step five of a nine-step overall Superfund process, it moves us closer to getting a remedy implemented,” said EPA Project Manager Matt Dorrington.
The Columbia Falls Aluminum Company Plant (CFAC) operated from 1955 to 2009 creating significant quantities of spent potliner material, a federally listed hazardous waste, a byproduct of the aluminum smelting process.
For EPA Project Manager Matt Dorrington, the newly-released Record of Decision highlights effective remedies now in place at the former aluminum plant. The remedies address health and ecological issues.
Dorrington said public comment was essential when creating the Record of Decision, “We had public meetings, we received emails, we’ve got lots of feedback, over 800 comments.”
Highlights for cleanup efforts include consolidating and encapsulating contaminant sources to prevent exposure to humans, wildlife and the surrounding environment.
“There’s also some waste scattered throughout the site that will be consolidated, put into a landfill, new caps, new measures to prevent that waste from getting outside those landfills will be implemented,” said Dorrington.
Dorrington said the plan intends to reduce the movement of contaminants to site groundwater.
“Contaminated groundwater that contains cyanide, by limiting that interaction, we will see cyanide in that groundwater plume, and then the risks of ecological receptors in that seeps area near the river go away.”
Dorrington said the next step in cleanup efforts includes Consent Decree negotiations and remedial design phases.
He said feedback from the public will be important as the plan moves forward.
“The design could take a year, maybe two years, and then I’m hopeful within the next maybe three years we are out there implementing the remedy, and this milestone allows us to move that process forward, so again we are really excited to get going.”
The Record of Decision can be found here.
