MISSOULA — Ten years after the Smurfit Stone mill site was proposed for the federal Superfund program, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to plan for a clean-up. But locals are questioning why some sampling wasn’t finished.
EPA project manager Allie Archer recently told the Frenchtown Smurfit Stone Citizens Advisory Committee that the agency has enough data on the groundwater beneath the mill site to know that it’s contaminated, so it’s time to start developing work plans to clean the site up.
“There’s not another data gap we have to explore because we know there’s contamination. It’s consistently contaminated regardless of the time of year - that is the takeaway,” Archer said. “Is there a need for quarterly sampling or borderline sampling to investigate a cleanup alternative? I can’t answer that, but I believe that there probably will be. We just want to instill some confidence in that we have a contaminated groundwater site and some soils. And we need to move forward into looking at how to best clean that up.”
There may not be a data gap, but Archer doesn’t yet have data from all the groundwater samples that were collected.
The agency had collected groundwater samples more than five years ago but agreed in 2022 to do additional sampling at the behest of the citizen's advisory group and Missoula County. The work plan originally had the EPA adding more wells across the site, doing quarterly groundwater sampling and additional soil sampling.
Archer said that while drilling the new wells last April, technicians recorded the lowest groundwater levels ever measured on the site between 2014 and 2024, a critical piece of information.
The groundwater samples collected in the spring and fall of last year were sent to the EPA lab, but Archer said the lab had a series of issues, so no official data has been provided. But preliminary data shows the groundwater contains all the contaminants associated with the pulp mill, Archer said.
“The labs are being really slow, we need validated data and they’re missing some important quality-control pieces,” Archer said.
In November, the EPA reported lab results from a subset of wells sampled in 2023, which appeared to show that heavy metals, namely arsenic and chromium, were the greatest risk. But the laboratory had failed to properly test the 2023 samples for dioxins, furans and hexavalent chromium.
Jeri Delys, Citizen Advisory Group member, questioned why the EPA hadn’t conducted quarterly sampling last year as laid out in the work plan.
“What if quarterly sampling gives us the data that helps us best understand the site?” Delys said. “I’ve had multiple conversations with people who have informed me about CFAC. The decision of waste-in-place and building a concrete wall is not popular now. That community is very, very upset. I’m wondering how you would make those decisions without quarterly data to support it.”
Designated as a Superfund site in 2017, CFAC or the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company site, contains tens of thousands of tons of contaminated soil from the aluminum smelting operation. In January, the EPA released a Record of Decision of a cleanup plan that would leave most of the waste in place and surround it with a concrete wall. The EPA rejected a citizens’ proposal to completely remove the toxic soil and ship it to an Oregon landfill, saying it was too costly.
Elena Evans, Missoula City-County Environmental Health manager, also expressed disappointment.
“From the county’s perspective, we were hoping to see four samples in the same year to understand the (contamination) transport. Because transport and how contaminants are moving across the site - especially such a giant site - could depend or change over time,” Evans said. “So even if the data wasn’t showing anything was more or less contaminated, once we get to the feasibility study, it’s how the site gets cleaned up. And if we haven’t identified all the sources, then it’s hard to be sure that the areas that are contaminated need to be cleaned.”
Archer said the EPA doesn’t see a benefit in delaying the site cleanup just to collect more data when Archer already knows the groundwater is contaminated with heavy metals, dioxins, furans and PCBs. There will be one more groundwater sampling this year during the spring to see if high surface water flows affect the transport of heavy metals. However, the EPA won’t be collecting more biota - fish tissue - to update the ecological risk assessment.
“Over 10 years, nothing has ever shown us a different contaminant or a different source area. If we wait and (sampled) at Quarter 1, we would have another year to get that data back and another year of potential flooding,” Archer said. “Superfund is always a balance. You cannot study everything - that’s not the intent of the remedial investigation. In the law, it doesn’t say ‘remove all uncertainty.’”
Archer said her team has a lot of work to do once they get the data from the lab. They’ll update the ecological and human health risk assessments with the new contaminants of potential concern and finalize the remedial investigation report. Then, they can begin working on the feasibility study.
“Updating risk assessments is a huge endeavor. Then the remedial investigation report is going to be gigantic,” Archer said. “But we’re not pausing on the investigative side. We’re going to be concurrently working on work plans to address known problems. We have no doubt there’s a metal mobility issue so we know we can go study that.”
Archer said she didn’t want the citizens advisory board to think the site wouldn’t have a protective cleanup.
“We’re able to now tell the community we’re moving forward to look at how we clean up,” Archer said. “Ultimately, the timing was right for making that leap. It was always going to be hard. It’s also iterative. Any data we collect can also update our risk assessment. The EPA is always looking at ‘Is this changing anything - do we need to go back?”
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
