Resource firm chips away at plant demolition

If all goes according to plan, the ongoing demolition and recycling of most of the buildings at Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. could finish by the end of 2017.

After announcing it would not reopen the plant, CFAC sold most of its above-ground assets to Oregon-based Calbag Resources.

Calbag’s scope of work is limited to demolition, recovery of materials and removal of hazardous waste in and around the buildings — a project separate from the daunting task of removing buried waste in adjacent CFAC landfills.

That process is the focus of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed listing of the CFAC property as a Superfund site. The EPA is undertaking an investigation into the extent of soil and water contamination at the plant site.

About half the buildings have been torn down, and of those remaining, several warehouses and the plant’s front offices will be kept intact. CFAC has yet to decide whether it will demolish the machine shop.

Cliff Boyd, Calbag’s asset recovery director, said the demolition work has gone smoothly for the most part, aside from the previously unknown extent of asbestos in several of the buildings. That discovery added nearly a year of work to the schedule, originally expected to take a little over two years.

“Nobody knew that asbestos was there,” he said. “We went and drilled through the roofs — there may be six or seven layers on it. The original layer, from the ’50s, tested for asbestos. Nobody would have known that was there unless you drilled a hole.”

Currently, Calbag is waiting for specialized equipment to tear down the massive paste plant and final approval for hazardous waste removal from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

That permit will allow Calbag to remove hazardous waste to a specially permitted landfill in Oregon. Aside from common hazardous materials one would find in most automotive shops, the main culprit is the spent potliner, or SPL, in the aluminum reduction pots themselves.

No demolition work can begin on the 40-acre building containing the 10 pot rooms until those materials are removed.

“If the plan gets completed in a timely fashion, we’re ready to start removing all the hazardous materials in pot rooms one through four right now,” Boyd said. “We then dig all the SPL out of the pots, put it in a truck the very next day to transport it off site.”

He said the plan calls for removing all the hazardous waste within 235 days once the plan is approved.

Boyd said he will submit the revised plan to the state agency for final approval in the next several weeks.

The far more intensive process of removing underground hazardous materials is less clear.

The EPA expects to complete an investigation into the extent of contamination by 2021. A preliminary study of the site identified unsafe levels of a range of heavy metals and other toxic substances in the groundwater, soils and sediments.

While his company has completed similar remediation efforts at shuttered aluminum plants in Oregon and Washington, Boyd said for now he’s just focused on the work at hand.

“We’ve obviously suggested to the owners that we have some skill sets and we’d like to bid on some work, but we don’t have any current contracts,” he said.

Reporter Sam Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.