Business park working toward delisting from Superfund site

Delisting the Kootenai Business Park from the Libby Asbestos Superfund Site is the goal of the Lincoln County Port Authority, and the park has two recent accomplishments toward that goal.

The business park would be the first partial Superfund site delisted in Montana, said the Port Authority’s executive director Tina Oliphant, calling it a strategic objective that will help future development.

“It removes a stigma to outside investment,” she said, adding that the delisting would help establish confidence in the Port Authority’s ability to manage further development.

Since the Environmental Protection Agency reached a Record of Decision in February in regard to the 8-unit site’s cleanup, Oliphant said the Port Authority has been negotiating with the EPA and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality.

“We now have some momentum,” she said, noting that a final remedial action report was finalized in August and a final institutional control plan was completed in September.

Those effectively have put the Port Authority in the “operational and functioning” phase, she said, noting that phase will tentatively last for one year.

There are still two big questions lingering for when remediation is complete, she said.

These include: who will be responsible for dealing with future “asbestos encounters” at the site(s) and who will pay for them?

Nick Raines, Lincoln County’s Asbestos Resource Program manager, said that the EPA designated some $11.8 million of the $250 million settlement from W.R. Grace to go toward long term operations and maintenance. If that money runs out, some $600,000 in state funding could be available starting in 2018 through SB20, which reallocated the metal mines license tax, but that’s a big if, Raines said. (The Legislature passed SB20 last year and it was signed by Gov. Steve Bullock.)

And it’s not only the Kootenai Business Park, each of the other seven units in the Superfund site could be in need of funds too when “asbestos encounters” occur after the EPA has left and the state is in charge.

“”We are a couple of years ahead of everyone else,” said Brett McCully, director of operations at the business park.

“We want to make sure the burden is not put on property owners,” Raines said.

In the meantime, construction is scheduled to begin in the late spring on a rail spur connection at the business park, with completion targeted for summer. That project is being funded with a $750,000 grant from the federal Economic Development Administration.