KFBB reported that Columbia Falls Aluminum is set to shut down at the end of October, leaving 88 employees out of work.
The company had been able to buy discount electricity from the Bonneville Power Administration, a quasi governmental outfit that for decades sold at cost electricity to big industrial customers. Due to a population increase in the region at cost power availability to industry was severely limited and eventually was replaced entirely by a subsidy that helped the aluminum company and others buy down the cost of electricity.
Critics successfully argued that the subsidy was too large and came at the expense of other rate payers and in December a court ordered the Bonneville Power Administration to end its subsidy to Columbia Falls Aluminum.
Bonneville and the aluminum producer put together a bridge agreement that carried the company through September 30th 2009 but that agreement also was successfully challenged.
