State officials finalize cleanup accord

State officials announced Tuesday that they have finalized an agreement that will fund the cleanup process of contaminated soil and water in Mapleton.

The Utah Department of Environmental Quality signed the deal with Ensign-Bickford Industries last week. The deal requires Ensign-Bickford, which operated a former explosives manufacturing plant at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon, to pay nearly $12 million to clean up an aquifer that was contaminated by chemicals from the plant.

"We now will have the money in place to make sure that the contaminated water gets cleaned up," said DEQ executive director Dianne Nielson.

Calls to Ensign-Bickford, based in Connecticut, were not immediately returned Tuesday.

According to the agreement, Ensign-Bickford will pay $9.375 million to fund cleanup operations at the site and another $2.58 million to a state fund to which Mapleton can apply for a grant to pay for the replacement of the lost water resources.

The deal, which was first presented in 2004, has been the subject of much scrutiny. Nielson said there were many people involved in the negotiation of the deal who questioned whether the agreement was strong enough to achieve its goal.

"We held off finalizing any agreements because a number of individuals still trying to resolve some issues," Nielson said. "I think it was a good process. It has been a very important project for the community, but it has taken time."

Nielson credited Ensign-Bickford for moving ahead with the cleanup process while the details of the agreement were still being finalized. The soil cleanup process, which involved circulating contaminated soil through machinery that separates the chemicals from the soil and vaporizes them, has been going on both on- and off-site, and is nearly completed.

The water cleanup process, however, has proved to be much more complicated and is expected to take 20 years to complete. The process, which was proposed by Ensign-Bickford and approved by the state, consists of five pumps that remove the contaminated water, which is then sent to one of three treatment facilities.

At the treatment facilities, the water is brought to drinking-quality standards and then circulated into the water systems of Mapleton and Spanish Fork. Water samples are regularly tested by two independent laboratories.

The reason the process is expected to take 20 years is that the DEQ has determined that only 4,100 acre-feet of water can safely be removed from the aquifer each year.

"The important thing is that the groundwater has been getting cleaner and now we will have the money in place to make sure that the process is completed," Nielson said.

Ensign-Bickford closed the plant in February of last year, citing a desire to focus its resources on other divisions underneath the company's umbrella, which include defense contracts, aerospace and real estate.

In December, Ensign-Bickford and Mapleton mutually agreed to dismiss lawsuits they had filed against each other, ending a four-year legal standoff.

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E-mail: jtwitchell@desnews.com