While the EPA’s Record of Decision recently issued for the Columbia Falls Aluminum Company Superfund site is dismaying, EPA leadership’s failure to do so without actionably taking into account public and community concerns and numerous technical issues raised but repeatedly dismissed, is quite appalling.

First, the leadership at the District 8 EPA, who made this decision on the level of cleanup required at the CFAC Superfund site, could have gone high and made us proud. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they chose to require only containment of highly hazardous waste with an unproven slurry wall and no treatment of the over 40 hazardous chemicals including cyanide, fluoride and many heavy metals, identified to be contaminants at this former aluminum reduction facility, now Superfund site, on the banks of the Flathead River. 

Buried in EPA’s recent 432-page decision is their own admission that, “the selected remedy does not satisfy the [EPA’s] statutory preference for treatment to address principal threats posed by a site.”

In our letter to EPA and the governor in October , the Coalition for a Clean CFAC wrote that the EPA could, by simply giving priority to EPA’s own proposed cleanup alternative 6 rather than their final decision to go with alternative 4, include treatments that would reduce the cleanup of the toxic groundwater plume and its harm to area fisheries and the Flathead River from 35 to 60 years to six to nine years, as their own consultant had encouraged EPA to consider. But no, EPA’s final record of decision failed us all — current and future generations - and our precious water quality and economy, which is driven by clean water. Instead, EPA chose the absolute lowest level of cleanup that, while perhaps legally allowed, is certainly nothing to be proud of.

Secondly, despite over 800 formal written comments and petitions to EPA from organizations and individuals representing some 20,000 plus Montanans, most all of which favored removal and treatment of these hazardous wastes, EPA gave unexplained preference to the cheapest option of mere containment over treatment, which only serves to benefit Glencore, one of the world’s wealthiest corporations. 

As pointed out by Earth Justice, a team of nonprofit attorneys who defend the public’s right to clean water time and time again, in their letter to EPA in November, “Further, as the federal District Court for the District of Montana found, cleanup costs at the site would have been reduced if CFAC had not 'knowingly avoided regulatory requirements and regulatory scrutiny.'" 

Moreover, as two of the world’s largest and most profitable companies, Glencore and British Petroleum should be held to high standards of corporate responsibility. This is especially the case for Glencore, which profited over $1 billion from its ownership of CFAC, following a comparatively negligible investment.

Finally, the EPA, throughout this public process, made a mockery of any meaningful consideration of the extensive public comment they received. 

They chose instead to use public comment only to check off their list of required public involvement. As one EPA official recently said, and we paraphrase, “Never throughout this whole process have we ever doubted our science, we have always known we were right, we just wanted to engage the public in understanding that we were right and why.” 

But here is the spoiler alert for EPA. The Coalition for a Clean CFAC and our many, many supporters are not giving up. Instead, we will be continuing at every opportunity going forward to challenge what we see as the flawed science and failed leadership of EPA to do what is indeed best for the community of Columbia Falls, and the state of Montana. We will be insisting at every step forward that EPA and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality go high and do oh so much more to provide greater long-term, permanent protection of the health of Columbia Falls residents, the Flathead’s clean water, healthy rivers and fisheries, and the local economy that depends on these qualities to thrive.

Phil Matson, Mayre Flowers, Shirley Folkwein, Del Phipps, Laura Damon and Peter Metcalf are on the board of the Coalition for a Clean CFAC.