Environmental cleanup costs at Kaiser Aluminum Corp.s Trentwood rolling mill and shuttered Mead smelter will cost roughly $68 million, according to estimates from the Washington state Department of Ecology.


Those estimates were disclosed recently in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court document filed by Ecology in connection with Kaisers Chapter 11 reorganization. The state made the filing as a precautionary measure, says Steven Thiele, an assistant attorney general with the state attorney generals office.


Kaiser also could face a portion of another $84 million in cleanup costs because it has been named by the state as a potentially responsible party in Ecologys evaluation of two other contaminated areas: one in the Spokane River in the Valley and one in Tacoma, Wash., where it had operated another smelter.


Other parties also are on the hook for cleaning up those sites, and the Houston-based aluminum company likely wont have to foot the entire bill for either of those jobs, Thiele says.


The state estimated the costs of the Kaiser cleanups in Washington state in a proof-of-claim filing it made with the bankruptcy court in Wilmington, Del., Thiele says. The state and Kaiser have worked together in recent years to determine the extent of the contamination and the necessary cleanup steps at Kaisers Washington sites, but until the recent court filing, the companys costs on such projects hadnt been estimated.


Scott Lamb, a Houston-based spokesman for Kaiser, says the company views the court filing as a protective measure that doesnt influence ongoing negotiations between Kaiser and the state regarding planned cleanups.


Its nothing that changes our already embedded commitment to go forward with these projects, Lamb says.


Thiele says the dollar amounts in the filing are only ballpark figures, and Ecology doesnt know yet when the Trentwood and Mead cleanups would occur or when Kaiser will have to pay for the projects.


In the filing, Thiele says, the state estimated that it will cost $46 million to clean up the Trentwood plant, which continues to operate at a reduced capacity. That estimate includes costs for determining the extent of groundwater contamination, containment or treatment of groundwater contamination, and soil remediation.


Guy Gregory, a Spokane-based senior hydrologist for Ecology, says soil and groundwater under that plant have been contaminated by petroleum products, and some areas are affected by material containing potentially harmful synthetic chemicals, called polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. Kaiser already has proceeded with a significant number of cleanup actions there, Gregory says.


At the Mead smelter, which Kaiser shut down indefinitely last month, the state estimates it will cost about $22 million to complete potliner and rubble containment, groundwater remediation, and 30 years of groundwater monitoring. A draft cleanup action plan published by Ecology last year says potlining materials, which were used to separate molten aluminum from the steel shell of a pot and contain cyanide, fluoride, and other chemicals, were disposed in piles at the facility. Cyanide- and fluoride-contaminated soils have been found under those piles at Mead, and underground water contaminated with cyanide and fluoride forms a plume that stretches from beneath the piles of potliner material to the Little Spokane River.


Lamb says the company hasnt seen all of the data upon which Ecology has based its estimates and cant comment on the departments figures. He says, however, that in general, the bankruptcy process encourages an agency that makes such a filing to make very large estimates rather than to underestimate costs.


Generally speaking, he says, an agency might choose to base an estimate on maximum theoretical costs, some of which might be for work that later ends up not being required.


Thiele says, however, that the state doesnt err intentionally one way or the other when it makes such estimates.


In addition to the future Mead and Trentwood plant cleanups, Kaiser is one of at least a few parties the state has identified as being potentially responsible for two other cleanup projects in Washington state.


The Spokane River project, for which Avista Corp., of Spokane, and the Liberty Lake Sewer District also are listed as responsible for cleaning up, is expected to cost $6 million. That project involves investigation and remediation of sediment in portions of the Spokane River east of Upriver Dam, in the Spokane Valley, that contains PCBs.


The Tacoma site involves cleaning up natural resources damages in Commencement Bay, near where Kaisers former Tacoma smelter was located.


Kaiser recently agreed to sell that property to the Port of Tacoma. The state estimates that it will cost about $78 million for that cleanup project, but that cost likely will be divided among several parties, Thiele says.


Thiele says the state made the court filing against Kaiser in an overabundance of caution and has no reason to think that the aluminum company will try to shirk its responsibility to pay for the cleanups.


To Kaisers credit, they have not at this point tried to get out of their liability at the sites were actively working on, Thiele says.


The Department of Ecology is an unsecured creditor in Kaisers bankruptcy reorganization, Thiele says. That typically means Ecologys claims would have less priority for repayment than the claims of the companys secured creditors.


If, however, the state needed to assert its claims, Thiele says, it would argue that its claims have whats called administrative priority, which means that they would carry the same weight as other creditorssecured or unsecuredthat provide services essential to keep the company operational, such as the power companies that provide electricity to run the plants. We dont anticipate that the judge would let Kaiser off the hook on any of their cleanup sites that the Department of Ecology oversees, Thiele says.