Federal listing spurs cleanup at Reynolds
The company already has taken steps to remedy pollution at the 500-acre site
near the Sandy and Columbia rivers.
By Web Ruble of the Oregonian staff Monday, December 19, 1994
Troutdale - The U.S. Environmental Prtection Agency has added Reynolds Metals'
aluminum smelter to its list of contaminated sites for long term cleanup.
Reynolds, which closed most of the plant three years ago, will have to pay
the entire cost of pollution removal, the company said.
R. Terry Olbrysh, Reynolds' manager of public relations in Richmond, Va.,
said Friday that the initial excavation and removal of contaminated soil would
cost the company more than $1million. Reynolds officials have yet to compute
the eventual cost.
Reynolds expected Fridays announcment because company representatives and
EPA offialsin Seattle have been working closly on plans for cleaning the site.
It has been proposed for the superfund list for toxic cleanup since October.
At that time, Reynolds officials expressed disappointment because the company
had begun cleaning up the land a year earlier.
Reynolds installed signs warning of industiral pollution around a company
lake and a nearby industrial landfill. It prohibited cattle from grazing the
westernmost section of the land. And guards at the front gate have monitored
the area, although recreational swimmers and boaters still managed to get in.
Olbrysh said Reynolds would continue to clean the 500 acres, which includes
wetlands. The property extends eastward to the confluence of the Sandy and Columbia
rivers.
EPA testing found that the drinking water, ground water and soil at the Reynolds
plant were contaminated by a number of dangerous chemicals and metals, including
fluoride and cyanide.
The agency also noted that private drinking wells exist within a mile of
the site and that the Portland city well field is within a few miles.
Investigators also found concentrations of copper and cyanide-exceeding water
quality criteria set by the Clean Water Act- in a drainage ditch that flows
to a company lake and then to the Columbia at Sundial Beach, a recreation site.
EPA testing found polychlorinated biphenyls used in electrical equipment, alimunum
and polyaromatic hydrocarbons such as coal tar and pitch.
Bruce L. Thompson, the president of teh Troutdale City Council, said he was
disappointed that Reynolds was included on the list because it "throws a serious
obstacle in the city's plans to develop the land, but added, "There's no doubt
the site needs cleaning."
The U.S. government built the Troutdale plant in 1941 for use in wartime
operations. Reynolds leased it from the government in 1946 and purchased it
in 1949.
Reynolds became one of the nation's leading producers of aluminum, but it
shut the Troutdale plant in November 1991 because of depressed world aluminum
prices.
Since then it has had a skeleton crew of 100 to 110 maintaining the plant
and casting molten aluminum imported from the company's Longview, Wash., operation.