The Fort Hall Business Council, already having expressed its dislike for the recent EPA order outlining the cleanup of the FMC Corp. site near Pocatello, reiterated its position on Friday and was joined by the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, which said it also apposes the plan.

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently issued a Unilateral Administrative Order, or UAO, which outlines the guides and scheduling for cleaning the former FMC site as required by an Interim Record of Decision approved last September.

    One former FMC official, Paul Yochum, who was manager of the plant that closed in 2001, said FMC was ready to get the process started.

    “The IROD and UAO represent the culmination of many years of investigation and exhaustive study and evaluation of alternative remedial technologies,” Yochum told the Journal earlier this week. “The remedial actions specified in those documents are first, scientifically sound, second, protective of human health and the environment, and third, consistent with the remedial actions of implemented successfully at similar sites around the world.”

    Fort Hall Business Council Chairman Nathan Hall disagreed, saying in news release earlier this week that the “EPA paves the way for FMC to sweep their 50-year legacy under the rug.”

    The release went on to say the plan allows FMC to “cover up” rather than “clean up” the contaminants.

    Hall continued the strong talk, even taking it up a notch, in a release that was issued on Friday, writing, “My people, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of Fort Hall, Idaho remain enraged over this decision — a decision I question.”

    He goes on to ask, “Is this the best the EPA can do to order FMC to clean up their mess?”

    Also sent with the Fort Hall Business Council release on Friday was one from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes that concurs with Hall’s message, saying the Tribes are “strongly against the EPA’s recent Unilateral Administrative Order to ‘cover up’ the hazardous waste at the FMC superfund site in Pocatello, Idaho.”

    In the release, the tribes accuse the EPA of misleading the public by saying the cleanup is protective of human health and the environment, and they say the EPA did not incorporate tribal concerns in the Interim Record of Decision.

    They also contend the EPA’s proposed plan to extract groundwater will not prevent contamination from entering the Portneuf River and will only treat a “fraction of the arsenic, another deadly chemical.”

    Yochum, earlier this week, told the Journal that FMC could spend up to

$60 million over three years in cleaning the arsenic, elemental phosphorus and gamma radiation contaminants from the site.

    He said methodology they have been told to use is standard in 73 percent of all Superfund sites and 100 percent of similar phosphorus sites.