A long-awaited cleanup of FMC Corp.’s abandoned industrial plant property west of Pocatello, Idaho, is now underway after surmounting obstacles and setbacks in recent years. The controversial cleanup project is expected to cost $60 million and take up to three years to complete.
FMC’s massive four-furnace plant converted phosphate ore into elemental phosphorus from 1949 to 2001, leaving behind a contaminated site. Plant demolition commenced in 2006. At its peak, the plant used 1.75 million tons of raw shale/coke and silica annually to produce 250 million tons of elemental phosphorus.
The FMC property and the J.R. Simplot Co.’s adjacent phosphate fertilizer complex share the Eastern Michaud Flats Superfund site covering about 2,530 acres, including more than 1,000 acres of Fort Hall Indian Reservation land. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) created the Superfund site in August 1992 and issued a Record of Decision for it in 1998.
Kevin Rochlin, EPA remedial project manager in Seattle, said site grading for storm water management has started, reducing the size of mountainous piles of slag, which emit gamma radiation – one of three primary contaminants of concern – in addition to toxic arsenic and highly ignitable phosphorus. The phosphorus from spills and process leaks during production, storage, and handling has been detected as deep as 85 feet below the surface.
“The huge amount of earth moving will take 14 months from the time we start the grading to doing the cleanup,” Rochlin told Green Markets. “It’s actually nice when we get to the point we actually clean up.”
EPA issued an Interim Record of Decision (IROD) in September 2002, subject to public review and overseen by the EPA and Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. A Supplemental Remedial Investigation and Feasibility Study (RI/FS) was issued in 2010. FMC will do the cleanup work under an EPA Unilateral Administrative Order (UAO) issued last June that requires FMC to design, implement, and pay actions specified under a September 2012 IROD amendment.
“The issuance of the UAO was a meaningful step,” said Paul Yochum, former FMC plant manager, who now serves as a consultant for the project. Yochum told Green Markets that six qualified companies have been given the opportunity to bid on the project. “We hope to have it all concluded in 2016,” he said.
Requirements include: developing detailed technical plans and specifications for the cleanup actions; constructing caps over contaminated soil; and treating groundwater to prevent contamination from migrating to the nearby Portneuf River. EPA would continue to monitor soil, air, and groundwater to ensure cleanup remedies protect people and the environment.
EPA has endorsed redeveloping the property, which boasts railroad and natural gas lines and a power substation, as long as it complies with actions outlined in the amended record of decision.
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes have strongly opposed the EPA cleanup plan. EPA has agreed to work with the tribes to facilitate an independent review of technologies and approaches that can be safely and effectively used to excavate and/or treat elemental phosphorus at the property.
Bill Bacon, general counsel for the tribes, told Green Markets the tribes are disappointed in the remedies selected and approved by the EPA. “It’s always been our position that the site should be cleaned up, not covered up,” he said. “In response, EPA and FMC said there’s not the technology out there for cleanup of a site this large.”
FMC will not allow the tribes on the property to do testing, Bacon said. The Shoshone-Bannocks are concerned about 12 waste ponds that are emitting deadly gasses. The EPA cleanup plan calls for five water treatment wells to