Time to pay the piper
On Aug. 25, 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy ruled in Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. v. Atlantic Richfield Co. that CFAC must pay 65% of the total cleanup cost, and ARCO must pay 35%. It is time for CFAC and ARCO to fulfill their responsibility and pay up for polluting Columbia Falls. Stop the dodging, delays and deferring. The cluster of cancers coming out of Columbia Falls needs to be under the microscope.
Why should you listen to me? In 1990 and 1991, I worked as a registered nurse in a local medical clinic where cancer patients were diagnosed and treated. Over time, it stood out to me that there were clusters of cancers coming out of the Columbia Falls area, specifically children and adolescents. It became so obvious as months passed, that I became alarmed. I did not keep any confidential information related to my observations, but after leaving the clinic, I continued to be disturbed, especially in conjunction with information being reported that groundwater, soil and possibly air was being polluted around the CFAC site. So I contacted people at Montana State University and University of Montana and tried to get a Ph.D. student interested in doing an epidemiology study related to possible pollution by CFAC. I tried to garner interest by reporting the cancer clusters I observed in children coming out of Columbia Falls as compared to other towns in the Flathead.
I put significant effort in. No one was interested. I contacted Sen. Conrad Burns, again no interest. I made some calls to see if cancer patients in the Flathead were reported to a database, so that what I thought I had observed might be verified by someone doing a study. I finally gave up. But over the years, I did continue to hear of cancers in the Flathead coming out of Columbia Falls – again adolescents and children.
As we all know, the CFAC plant is now a Superfund site. It is reasonable to question a connection. And the polluters, CFAC and ARCO, are trying to plead that cleaning and hauling the contamination out of Montana is too expensive. Is it too expensive to remove carcinogenic material so that innocent families and their children do not suffer life-taking and life-threatening cancers? How do you price that out?
And, I am not sure, but is there a local contractor willing to build community housing next to the Superfund site if the pollution is covered over and fenced off? If correct, there is something wrong with that thinking in my opinion: Cover over, fence off and build community housing next to the cover-over? I would not want to live in that housing development. This should not be a Band-Aid fix. This should be a surgical-excision fix.
And CFAC and ARCO – court ordered – have their marching orders from Judge Molloy. It is time for them to pay the piper. To fulfill their responsibilities to the people and environment they have damaged in Columbia Falls. Or start being fined daily, on a significant basis, for shirking their duty. It is beyond duty – cleaning it up and hauling it out is the correct moral thing to do. Perhaps Judge Molloy could revisit the subject.
—Mary Jane Barrett, Kalispell & Whitefish