Alcoa finishes portion of four-phase cleanup

MASSENA — Alcoa has completed this year's St. Lawrence River cleanup project near Haverstock Road, adjacent to the Massena East plant. Construction on the project began this spring and wrapped up earlier this month, ahead of schedule.

Company officials will create a long-term maintenance plan for the remediated river segments and develop a viable cleanup plan for a polluted section of the Grasse River near the Massena West plant.

Alcoa Project Manager Larry J. McShea says this year's efforts to dredge and cap PCB-contaminated soils along the shoreline and riverbed of the St. Lawrence yielded positive, sustainable results.

This year's project aimed to repair and improve a previous cleanup effort made there in 2001, which had not been successful in removing an acceptable level of waste — primarily polychlorinated biphenyls — from the river.

The site's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency remedial project manager, Pamela N. Tames, said that Alcoa's efforts this summer have fulfilled most of the company's obligations in cleaning up the St. Lawrence River site.

"This was a long process, but we're finally finished," Ms. Tames said. "Everything went as planned and all of the different teams — the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, Alcoa, their contractor and the EPA — worked very well together. This was the last activity required for this site and now it will go into a monitoring and maintenance phase."

While a small amount of dredging was done on shallow sections of the affected area, much of the remaining contamination was buried beneath a layer of sand, which was topped with an armor layer of rock and heavy material and finished with a habitat layer of healthy soil that project organizers hope will encourage the restoration of the river's ecosystem there.

Ms. Tames said the cap will need to be examined extensively, particularly after winter weather does its worst on the river, to ensure the solution will be viable in the long run.

"If any of those caps are disturbed, they will need to be repaired," she said.

The Alcoa remediation team now will focus its attention on the ongoing Grasse River cleanup efforts.

The polluted sections of the St. Lawrence are only one piece of a larger, more complex effort to clean the Alcoa and former Reynolds Metals sites, which both were given federal and state cleanup orders after toxic waste was discovered.

The environmental agencies have split Alcoa's cleanup responsibilities into four major parts: the St. Lawrence River site near Alcoa East, the Grasse River site near Alcoa West and the Alcoa East and Alcoa West upland sites, which include the land surrounding each of the company's smelters.

EPA Remedial Project Manager Young S. Chang will lead the federal agency review of the Grasse River Project, which she says should be gaining momentum in the coming year.

DEC acts as lead agency on both upland sites, keeping the EPA informed of progress there as needed. DEC officials could not be reached for comment on progress at those locations.

Mr. McShea said a large percentage of the remediation work Alcoa has been ordered to do by both the state and federal governments already has been completed.

The EPA and Alcoa are hoping to develop a list of cleanup options for the contaminated 7.5-mile stretch of the lower Grasse River within the next year or so, according to Ms. Chang.

"As of now, pretty much all of the investigation is done," she said. "We're putting information together to come up with alternatives for the site. We have multiple interested parties," including DEC, the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, Alcoa, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the state Department of Health, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others, she said.

"We have to come to some consensus," Ms. Chang said. "Hopefully, within a year, we'll have that and we'll be able to go to the public with our preferred remedy."

The community will have the opportunity to review and comment on the proposed remedy before it is implemented, Ms. Chang said.