The Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. and the Environmental Protection Agency are close to an agreement to clean up the aluminum smelter site.

EPA project manager Mike Cirian said last week during a company liaison meeting in Columbia Falls the agency and the company are very close to finishing up the details of an administrative order on consent, which sets the legal and logistical framework for cleanup.

The company continues to seek an alternative to Superfund listing. While the site qualifies as a Superfund site, the company would like to have the site cleaned up under the EPA’s Superfund Alternative Approach, which holds the project under Superfund cleanup standards without actually listing it as such.

Only one other project in the EPA’s Region 8, which includes, Montana, Idaho, the Dakotas, Utah and Colorado, has used the alternative approach.

But Cirian said he was optimistic that CFAC could be a good fit. He noted the project will not be listed this fall, and he would advocate that it shouldn’t be listed next spring. The EPA only lists Superfund sites twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall.

But there are politics in play in the decision. Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Gov. Steve Bullock have both advocated Superfund listing for the site, and most of the public comments on the proposal also supported Superfund listing.

But since then, money has come to the table.

CFAC is in the process of securing $4 million in bank-guaranteed funding to complete the remedial investigation and feasibility study of the site, said John Stroiazzo, an engineer with Glencore, CFAC’s parent company. Stroiazzo is overseeing the CFAC project for the company.

 The remedial investigation and the feasibility study alone will take about four years.

The two parties have been in negotiations for several months and the consent order could come by the end of the month. Once it is finalized, it will be a public document.

If it does, the investigation would start in the spring, with test wells and other sampling being dug on the site.

Cirian said the EPA and the company want to know the extent of contamination on the site before any actual cleanup begins. He said if there is an emergency situation in one area, that could be cleaned up promptly if need be.

To date, the main concern has been cyanide, which has been detected in wells on the premises, though not at unsafe levels outside the plant.

A recent round of testing of residential wells near the plant found no cyanide above safe drinking levels. CFAC has been testing wells in the Aluminum City area regularly.

The CFAC site has several landfills, where waste from the plant, primarily spent potliner, was buried. Cirian is no stranger to the process; he has worked on the Superfund site in Libby for years.