Flint Hills Sulfolane update: company continues 'monitoring, cleanup, and recovery'.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES

A long-term cleanup plan between the state of Alaska and Flint Hills, which would include the off-site contamination, awaits an agreement on an acceptable level of pollution that might be allowed to remain, although at a level not harmful to human health. But there are sharp disagreements between the company and the state on what that level should be.

--Kristin Ryan

Director, DEC Division of Spill Prevention and Response

Without a doubt, contamination at the Flint Hills Resources refinery site near Fairbanks has become one of Alaska's most complicated environmental cleanup challenges. When Sulfolane, a chemical used in the making of gasoline, was discovered in nearby homeowners' water wells near the refinery in late 2009, Flint Hills moved quickly to supply bottled drinking water to homeowners and has since installed home water treatment and filtration systems and even drilled a new water well for the City of North Pole.

Eventually more than four hundred local property owners were affected by the Sulfolane, but about six hundred property owners are now receiving some form of alternative water or filtered water from Flint Hills, according to Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) officials.

Flint Hills spokesman Jeff Cook says: "Flint Hills continues to do monitoring, cleanup, and recovery according to our agreement in place with the DEC. Off-site we continue to do monitoring and provide service with alternative water systems to the impacted property owners." However, there is still no agreement on a long-term plan to contain and clean up contamination off the site or how overall liability is to be apportioned between Flint Hills and the former owner of the refinery, Williams Companies.

And as the lawyers wrangle over liability there is a lot of finger pointing. Meanwhile, the supply of bottled water and the other assistance is costing Flint Hills about $1.2 million a year, according to state officials familiar with the situation. Separately, a legal brief filed by the state Attorney General in 2014 said the operation of the water treatment pumps is costing Flint Hills $500,000 a year. Flint Hills would not comment on costs, due to litigation issues.

The Liability Bullet

The contamination of soils and groundwater at the refinery site has gone on for years and each successive buyer of the refinery--it changed hands several times--has worked to dodge the liability bullet. None of the owners comes out looking good but Flint Hills is given credit for moving quickly to deal with the human health issue, with the supply of bottled water. The previous owners are Williams Companies, which sold the refinery to Flint Hills, and Mapco, which became part of Williams when it was purchased.

At this point there is a project underway that is removing Sulfolane, a chemical, from groundwater on the refinery site itself, but the Sulfolane has meanwhile spread off the refinery site. So far there is no treatment project underway for that, according to Kristin Ryan, director of the DEC Division of Spill Prevention and Response.

A long-term cleanup plan between the state of Alaska and Flint Hills, which would include the off-site contamination, awaits an agreement on an acceptable level of pollution that might be allowed to remain, although at a level not harmful to human health. But there are sharp disagreements between the company and the state on what that level should be, Ryan says.

Until the level is established a cleanup plan can't be...