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EPA sets meetings in Fort Hall, Pocatello
POCATELLO -- The Environmental Protection Agency will conduct meetings today in Fort Hall and Wednesday in Pocatello to apprise the public of the status of the Eastern Michaud Flats Superfund site cleanup.
Current and future actions with Pond 16S will be discussed, as well as the FMC Resource Conservation and Recovery Act status. It will also cover ongoing FMC and Simplot Don Plant and Off Plant area Superfund work. Tuesday's meeting will be held at the Fort Hall Business Council Chambers. The Wednesday meeting will be held at the Pocatello City Hall chambers. Both meetings will start with an educational poster session with one-on-one opportunities, beginning at 5:30 p.m. At 6:45 p.m., the EPA will begin its presentations, followed by a question-and-answer session. The meeting will adjourn at 9 p.m.
The 2,530-acre site near Pocatello contains the defunct FMC Corp. phosphate ore processing facility and the operational J.R. Simplot Co. Don plant. Both plants began operation in the 1940s. A 1976 groundwater monitoring study conducted by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare indicated levels of arsenic, lead and cadmium in excess of federal drinking water standards.
Further testing confirmed the earlier data. The sites were placed on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1990. Pond 16S covers approximately 10 acres and has 140 acre feet of phosphorus-containing waste on the old FMC site.
The pond was capped in 2005. In 2006, air emissions were detected from the pond. Testing found concentrations of phosphine gas and hydrogen sulfide were being emitted. Phosphine gas is extremely flammable and produces a dense cloud of phosphorus pentoxide, a severe respiratory tract irritant, when burned. The EPA has ordered FMC to design, install and operate a gas-treatment system to reduce gas to safe and sustainable levels.
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Rick Simpkins wrote on Jul 29, 2008 4:58 PM:
My experience includes recovery of phos from one of these waste ponds, where my team recovered millions of pounds of phos, that FMC sold for good money. This whole strategy of capping ponds is a joke. My team at pond 8S proved that the cleanup technology existed and worked.
The EPA has let FMC off too easily in their 'cleanup'. From FMC documents I read over 20 years ago, I learned that FMC considered this whole mess to be something to be handled by pushing it as far as possible into the future as possible. With their 15% ROI rate, if something was pushed 7 years out, it was then basically free. Evidently their strategy worked, as it is obvious that much of the hazardous waste out there will never be cleaned up, just managed.
Even more amazing at the time, was the political action committee documents I read. There for the first time, I was exposed to the doctrine of bundling PAC contibutions from the various PACs set up at the numerous FMC plants, to buy more political influence. When I read the part about developing their own candidates, I thought to myself that they had lost their minds. After seeing their lobbyist Kempthorne being elected mayor of Boise and everything else since, I see that I vastly under rated their political acumen.
The bottom line here is that they made a fortune from this plant in the decades it was there. They poisoned the groundwater, air and their employees and made very good money, in the process. While it is too late to help my old coworkers who died from asbestos, dust, stress from rotating shift work, etc, it is not too late to hold FMC's feet to the fire and demand accountability in cleaning up this mess. "