Even though superfund operations at U.S. Magnesium are well underway, it could be years before regulators, contractors and the company are ready to begin the clean-up effort, officials say.
Ken Wangerud, the remedial project manager overseeing investigations at U.S. Magnesium for the Environmental Protection Agency, told residents, activists and community leaders assembled at a Tuesday evening forum that there are numerous complicating factors that make the U.S. Magnesium project difficult.
U.S. Magnesium was added to the National Priorities List and made a superfund site in 2009. In 2011 the company signed an Administrative Order on Consent in which it agreed to pay for an extensive environmental investigation under the supervision of the EPA.
In late 2013, U.S. Magnesium retained the services of Environmental Resources Management (ERM), a third-party contractor, to conduct the investigation. Sampling began shortly thereafter.
The 4,525-acres designated as the U.S. Magnesium superfund site have been divided into 17 preliminary investigation areas, Wangerud said, and the air shed surrounding the facility is also considered an area for investigation.
Wangerud said the sampling of land and water in the outermost investigation areas is already complete, and that data gathered from those samples is currently under investigation. However, he said the inner areas, which mostly consist of large lagoons of wastewater, have not been sampled yet because of the technical difficulty of collecting samples under those conditions.
“This is a big, complicated place,” he said. “Complicated in some in some ways, not complicated in others.”
The high acidity of the water in some of the lagoons means it could be unsafe for researchers to just walk up and “scoop dirt into a bucket” as they have done in other areas, Wangerud said.
And although the largest of the lagoons cover several hundred acres, the lagoons themselves are rarely more than two feet deep, which means collecting samples by boat is also infeasible.
Whatever method they do choose must also follow strict research guidelines and protocol regarding collection and processing to get the most accurate data possible, Wangerud said.
At this time, he said, ERM is actually considering using helicopters to drop sampling apparatus into the lagoons.
“We had a suspicion that the contamination in those inner areas was probably pretty bad,” Wangerud said. “But we don’t know if that represents 100 percent of the area or the majority of the area or whatever.”
Wangerud said the current plan is to sample the inner areas through the rest of 2015 and into 2016.
ERM is also currently developing a plan to monitor releases of chemicals into the air surrounding the plant as well. The EPA is specifically concerned about releases of hydrochloric acid and chlorine, but Wangerud said there is no pre-established protocol for sampling air sheds for long-term, potentially wide-spread chlorine contamination, leaving it to ERM to design a new protocol mostly from the ground up.
This type of chlorine gas poses a particular challenge, Wangerud said, because the gas is extremely reactive and usually only remains chlorine for 10-20 minutes before chemical reactions in the atmosphere change it into something else.
Wangerud said ERM plans to finish its plan to sample the air shed in the next few months, but once that plan is approved, ERM would likely spend at least a year monitoring air quality around the U.S. Magnesium site.
ERM is also conducting an extensive background study on the natural environment surrounding U.S. Magnesium to determine if any of the contaminants present on the site, such as heavy metals, are actually a natural part of the environment there.
In the event that they are, Wangerud said, then “that’s the way God made it and we leave it that way.”
Because the sampling of the outer investigation areas is already complete, Wangerud said he expected the EPA could have some preliminary results to report to the public at the end of the year. There are currently no results available to make public, he said.
Nonetheless, he said, the EPA plans to continue to host public presentations such as Tuesday’s meeting to keep residents and interested parties informed regarding the operation.
“It’s not trivial, and it won’t happen fast,” Wangerud said, “but I wanted you to know that it’s getting underway, and why it’s going to happen.”
There is no set date for the next meeting, but Jennifer Chergo, a communications and public involvement specialist with the EPA, said it was possible that another community forum could be scheduled before the end of the year as preliminary results are made available.
U.S. Magnesium is a mineral extraction operation located northwest of Grantsville. The plant employs more than 700 people, and the raw materials it produces are essential to the production of aluminum and titanium, according to a fact sheet distributed by the EPA at Tuesday’s meeting.
Wangerud said the size of the investigation area, as well as the fact that the plant is still in operation, make the U.S. Magnesium investigation one of the most complicated superfund projects that the EPA has ever undertaken.
“This is not like going and sampling out behind a warehouse in New Jersey,” he said.
Tuesday’s forum was held at the Grantsville City Library and was attended by 20-30 citizens.