EPA Approves Eastern Idaho Superfund Cleanup Plan
An Environmental Protection Agency official says a cleanup plan has been approved for a Superfund site at a former phosphorous production plant in eastern Idaho.
The Idaho State Journal reported that spokesman Roger McLerran at a meeting Friday of the Chubbuck City Council said the plan calls for capping major areas and putting in extraction and treatment wells downstream.
Philadelphia-based FMC Corp. is paying for the cleanup. The company operated a phosphorous production plant from 1949 to 2001 on the Eastern Michaud Flats area west of Pocatello, on the Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation.
More than a decade after FMC mothballed the operation its capped ponds continue to produce phosphine gas that smells of rotten fish and can damage respiratory, nervous and gastrointestinal systems, and the heart, liver, and kidneys.