A former landfill, the last vestige of Alcoa’s seven-decade history in Vancouver, will be the subject of a public hearing Thursday at Clark College.
The hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Foster Auditorium, 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.
The state Department of Ecology is proposing to allow Alcoa to monitor pollution leaching from an old landfill near the Columbia River, rather than requiring an expensive cleanup. The 7.7-acre landfill is leaching trichloroethylene, or TCE, but state environmental regulators say it’s impractical to force a cleanup that’s estimated to cost $22 million to $24 million.
Instead, the agency is proposing to require Alcoa to monitor groundwater, with the expectation that the pollution will dissipate once it enters the Columbia River. TCE is a suspected carcinogen.
Lured by inexpensive federal hydropower, Alcoa opened the Pacific Northwest’s first aluminum smelter along Lower River Road in 1940. The smelter closed for the final time during the West Coast energy crisis of 2000.
The Port of Vancouver now owns the entire 208-acre site.
