Dr. Anaconda Lake Campout 2007

Everyone in Butte-Anaconda has their favorite family campground. There are many fine places for car-camping in our backyard, and it probably does not matter where you go. Lakes tend to be favorite spots, and Brown's, Pintler, Lower Seymour, Lower Bowman, Lower Miner, the Twins, and on and on and on--all have their vocal (well, most people probably think "their" lake is a best-kept secret) adherents. For my friends and family, it's "Dr. Anaconda" Lake in the North Big Hole. Typical of lower elevation (c. 7,000 feet) lakes, the fishing is fair-to-middling, the views are good, there are numerous hikes to nearby points of interest, and it's 80 miles of bad road to get there.

This year, Butte ex-patriots Brent & Karina & their two kids arrived early and held down some choice spots. The rest of the gang rolled in throughout the day Friday, and -- bless Brent & Karina -- sat down to a supper of shrimp in alfredo sauce over noodles.

Usually, we plan this campout for Labor Day, but what with daughter Emily heading back to college before then and complications in other folk's schedules, we moved things up a bit.

There were lots of smoke plumes from various local forest fires visible on the drive to the lake, so we did not expect the air to be very clear (smoke from the fire is at the vanishing perspective point for the road):

We were suprised when we got to the lake and found sunny skies at the finest sandy beach in Montana:

What would a group campout be without a one-canoe "Polish" (Ouch. Sorry, Schahczenskis!) paddling contest among the teenage girls?:

Or a rainstorm that forces Brent & Karina to scramble their plans for a lake tour?:

Those girls might not know how to paddle a canoe, but they do know how to create art. Here are artists Katy (an exchange student from the Czech Republic) and Michelle (of YouTube video fame--see "President Bush Grills an Endangered Species" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wASzy-ikmYA):

And what a beautiful sand sculpture horse, waiting for wind and waves to teach us all a humble lesson in the empheral nature of our own existence:

The local bald eagle, too, had something to teach us about patience (and catching fish). "America's symbol," someone told Katy. "Do they eat Iraqis?," someone else asked. Or Bushes?

The "men's hike" (well, we did invite the women folk) took us over by Frog Pond. That's AJ striking a contemplative pose along the shore:

It's an apt name:

Well, maybe we should begin calling it "Lee's UV-Bar Lake?" Someone must have thought a lot of old Lee, and I hope his spirit is still around. Brent, Don, Dave, and AJ agree:

Celia brought this great birthday cake:

And here are the two birthday girls, Emily and Kenia, with brother Adler (the famous crackshot with a Red Ryder BB gun) on the right:

Appropriately enough, the weather turned cold and rainy as we pulled up to the house in Walkerville and began unloading the camping gear. It feels like the end of summer, and it would be nice to cool the fires. Whatever happens, we all have great memories to carry us over to next year's rendezvous:

Anaconda, Montana, the "Order of Red Men," and history

I love Anaconda, Butte's sister city. The town is the county seat of Deer Lodge County, and the courthouse is a gorgeous sandstone structure completed between 1898 and 1900. It was designed by Bell & Kent--the same architectural firm that designed the state capitol building in Helena, and is of course on the National Register of Historic Places. Here's a shot of the Deer Lodge County courthouse:And a closeup:
According to Sally Campbell, Under the Shadow of Mt Haggin (Deer Lodge County History Group, 1975), the building cost about $100,000, is 110 feet high, and the interior frescoes (sorry, I should have went inside and got pics of them) were painted by Consolidated Artists of Milwaukee.

My friend Earl Sager, a retired science teacher and Anaconda school administrator, told me about the quarry where the sandstone for this building was mined. Dave Carter and I decided to have a look. It's been very smoky in Butte -- visibility down to 5 miles or less most days -- and one needs to keep busy so as not to dwell on a scene out of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Here is the sunrise in Walkerville yesterday (the smoke only thickens as the day progresses):

Well, back to the courthouse in Anaconda. The quarry proved to be close by--just a long rifleshot from the courthouse:Here's Dave posed above the quarry rim; I tried to get him to back up a little for the photo, but he would not:Within the quarry, there is a lot of very soft and easily weathered stone exposed, but next to it is some very hard, solid sandstone that looks to be courthouse material:The quarry proved a bit of a disappointment. It has eroded greatly over the past century or so, and there was no sign of waste rock or how the rock was cut and hauled. There do not seem to be other buildings in Anaconda built of this material, so perhaps the quarry operated only for the courthouse.

The day was still young, so Dave & I did a long, looping hike through the cemetary. In death as in life: graves were grouped into distinct ethnic, religious, and fraternal association areas. For example, there was a Masonic section, one for Spanish American War veterans, one for members of the Eastern Orthodox faith, Knights of Pythias, Order of Woodmen, etc.

The most unusual and -- to me -- unfamiliar plot was for the "Improved Order of Red Men." There is one hell of an impressive monument:

With some cool details:



Most surpising of all, perhaps, is that the monument seems to be made of the same sort of sandstone as the courthouse.

These fraternal organizations were very important at a time when there was no health care insurance and people grouped together to take care of one another in the event of tragedy. Like the exagerrated claims of most fraternal organizations (cf. the Masonic claim to have descended from Moses' men who built the Great Pyramid), the Red Men claim to have descended from patriots at the Boston Tea Party. Whatever the truth of 'at, the group was officially chartered in 1834, and is still in existence today--though the membership of 38,000 is considerably down from the historic mark of 500,000 in 1938 (info from Wikipedia entry). Not surpisingly, perhaps, the current seat of the organization is in Waco, Texas!

On our hike, we also spotted a few wildflowers, such as this white knapweed (genetic variant or true white knapweed species?)--an exotic and many would say "noxious" species:

And this native blazing star:
Should we love the blazing star, and hate the knapweed? Well, in their place, all species are beautiful. So yes, love the natives. But there is not much use in hating the exotics: many, like knapweed and rainbow trout, are here to stay. And all have their virtues. Live with it, at least in cases where native species are not endangered.

Mt Haggin: Peak Bagging near Anaconda, MT

Over the years I've been to Mt Haggin (named after Anaconda Copper Mining company backer James Ben Ali Haggin) from several different routes, none of them particularly enjoyable. It's a lovely long ridge with very steep sides, dominates the Anaconda skyline, and is their "backyard" mountain. It also has several false peaks, so make sure you're on the right one--at least once before, I thought I was on THE top, but wasn't. From my Anaconda friends over the years, I learned of the favored local route. Leaving from the edge of town (c. 5400 feet elev), it follows a maintenance road up to the city reservoir:It's a steady and sometimes steep climb of about 5 miles or so. Once into the trees its shady and cool enough, but RTD (RolyTheDog) & I were thankful for the early start on this near-90 deg F day. Passing by some elderberries,

I thought of Grandma Beryl (nee Fitzgibbons) Munday, the world's best baker of fruit pies (my wife Jan has the title of world's best living baker of fruit pies). The Allegheny highlands of Pennsylvania were a great place for wild berries of all kinds. Elderberry pie was my favorite, and she would bake one or two for my birthday. In Montana, elderberries are seldom sweet and tasty--too short of a growing season, too dry, not enough heat?

Just below Hearst Lake (named after Anaconda Copper Mining company investor George Hearst, father of W. Randolph of newspaper fame; thank you for the correction, Anonymous!) is a little Hearst, and a favorite swimming hole for Mt Haggin hikers. It's shallow enough to warm up "just right" at 8,000 feet on a hot summer day:

Hearst Lake was improved once upon a time with a dam, but the dam might need repairs and the increased height no longer seems to be used:The saddle between Hearst and Haggin Lakes makes a nice base camp at 8,500 feet. What a place to be as a front moved in, lightning crashed on the peaks, and clouds dropped more than an inch of rain in my cooking pot rain gage. The pleasant meadow, and the old ACM/Anaconda water company (?) cabin (lower left in photo) is on the route to Mt Haggin:
I hope Cindy was (is?) worth it:I like passing through the feathery alpine larches that invariably mark the Pintler treeline at c. 8500 to 9000 feet. As my now-retired colleagues Jack Goeble and Dennis Haley liked to say, "What are the poor people doing today?":
For years, I thought it was called "Heart Lake," and you can see my confusion from this photo of Hearst Lake from near the Mt Haggin summit:

Above treeline, we join our friends the pika (Ochotona princeps). Here's a "rock rabbit" peeking out directly over RTD's nose:Global warming has been very tough on them in many areas of Colorado and points south. As the climate warms, they move higher up the mountain side, become "island populations," and are more and more cut off from "marriagable" members of other populations.

RTD finds a big drink of water at the last spring below the summit. As a north-facing slope, this approach to Mt Haggin is blessed with many such springs. Has the grazing of mountain goats selected for the less palatable butercups that seem to dominate the alpine meadows here?

The peak is marked by a most impressive cairn, as you would expect, given the peak's ritual importance in the lives of many Anaconda residents. In the peak notes, one can read of marriage proposals, anniversaries, reunions, eulogies, and other touching tributes to local lore (no mention of Cindy, though):For a time, it looked as if the weather was going to close in as the sun lifted moisture from the night's rain, and dense fog bracketed the ridge. Added to the time of summiting any peak (4:20), the fog created just a bit of "high" anxiety :But the sun prevailed, revealing a nice panoramic view beginning at the left with the Mill Creek/10 Mile ridge and sweeping west to the heart of the Pintler:Time to head down. On approaching the meadow, RTD began an intense gaze toward a spot about 300 yards below us. I've learned to trust her sharp eyes. What's this big-assed creature flipping over rocks (lower right in photo)?Thought it was a big boar of a bear at first, but then saw it watching something, and the cub scrambled into view (sow is on the right, looking back at her cavorting cub on the left):Big sow black bear--maybe 300 pounds or so, sows usually go half that or less. Glad she left our camp alone, she must have been finding plenty of tasty ants, beetles, and other critters under the rocks she was flipping over:A quick hike down to Hearst helped supplement our evening supper:Would have stayed later the 3rd day and fished Haggin Lake before hiking out, but ate like a bear(?) the second day and ran out of food. Oh well, a good 3-day/2-night trip, and a lovely route up Mt Haggin & back.

Social Justice in Anaconda & Opportunity

[modified from my 12 July radio commentary for Montana Public Radio, KUFM, on behalf of the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee]

Wow, the weather is hot and the Clark Fork River feels like bathwater. Though the scientific community solidly agrees on the reality of global warming, it’s interesting that radical reactionary groups – such as FOX News – still deny it. Well, DeNile ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Sadly, the Upper Clark Fork River can also be a river of denial.

Environmental justice is a special form of social justice, and it’s a nagging problem for some environmental and human health problems in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. EPA has this goal for all communities and persons across this Nation. It will be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.”

The Deer Lodge County towns of Anaconda and Opportunity have, especially, taken it in the shorts. The problems are many, and regular EcoRover blog readers are familiar with most of them.

The EPA refuses to rename its big waste repository, the Opportunity Ponds, to something like “The British Petroleum—ARCO Ponds” that does not cast aspersions on the cool little town of Opportunity.

The EPA set soil and house dust arsenic levels in Anaconda and Opportunity ten times higher than national norms, and much higher than arsenic levels in the Clark Fork River and Milltown sites.

The EPA approved a golf course tailings cover-up that is failing and will probably go bankrupt once British Petroleum-ARCO hands it off to Anaconda.

The EPA, after a lousy site characterization, approved a brown fields commercial development for Anaconda, only to have the developer strike a goldmine of buried toxic waste, for which it is now suing the town.

Compared with other counties in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin, Deer Lodge County has a declining population, the highest unemployment in the region (over 10%), and a much lower per capita income (about $20,000).

The EPA remedies for Opportunity and Anaconda site were selected without social justice issues coming to light. Whereas grass roots groups organized and became major actors in larger communities such as Missoula and Butte, Opportunity and Anaconda citizens were relatively quiet, unorganized, and passive. According to agency policy, it is virtually impossible to reopen a remedy.

The role of environmental justice in remedy selection and waste repository siting signifies a major shift in the Superfund process that moves us well beyond the now-traditional polluter pays principle. Though a 1994 Federal Executive Order, “Federal Actions to Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low Income Populations," initiated this shift, it has not produced meaningful results for Anaconda or Opportunity.

In a federally funded study of another Superfund megasite caused by mining, the authors found that “Lack of access to adequate health care, unemployment, poverty, and a number of other factors can have as much of an impact on community health as the contamination from mining wastes.” Though such problems lie outside the purview of Superfund, these problems are factors that influence the social perception of the Superfund process and public participation in the process in profound ways.

The application of social justice ideals to Superfund sites caused by mining and smelting reveal structural inequities that transcend Superfund. The nature of mining as the extraction of non-renewable resources necessarily means that a bust follows the boom. The larger the ore body and the longer it lasts, the more tenaciously people cling to the place where they have grown up, worked, and raised families. Thus all mining megasites are likely to eventually result in wide-scale unemployment and a cycle of poverty and poor health. The very nature of mining seems to create social and environmental injustice—especially if communities with a history of having benefited from mining do not become major actors and achieve power early on in the Superfund process.

Recently, Montana’s Natural Resource Damage Program seems to be reinforcing the same environmental injustices that have been stamped into Anaconda and Opportunity by the EPA. In its 2007 grant cycle, the Natural Resource Damage Program rates Anaconda’s proposal for a waterline project very low, and recommends against funding the proposal. Why? Because the county is poor: the low proportion of matching funds that Anaconda-Deer Lodge is able to bring to the table seems to be the decisive factor in the recommendation not to fund.

Thus is Anaconda treated unjustly. As a company town, it suffered horribly with the demise of the Anaconda Company and mismanagement by British Petroleum-ARCO. As a town of older, poorer citizens, it has been unable to generate the revenue or lobbying power of Butte and Missoula. For these reasons, the town now finds itself unable to compete with other proposals in the Natural Resource Damage Program funding process. This is wrong, wrong, wrong!

Anaconda-Deer Lodge County has fallen into a post-industrial economic abyss. Both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Natural Resource Damage Program should be doing what they can to help Anaconda and Opportunity climb out of this trap. Instead, they seem to making it deeper. The Environmental Protection Agency refuses to allow the county to participate in Superfund decisions, fund adequate technical and legal expertise, or support redevelopment assistance.

Anaconda is doing its part with an aggressive public outreach campaign, a business and housing growth plan, and active engagement in the remediation and restoration process. It is high time for the Environmental Protection Agency and the Natural Resource Damage Program to do their part.

For more news about Anaconda, Opportunity, and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink http://www.cfrtac.org/.

America's Largest Superfund Site: Butte, Montana

Buttians like superlatives, whether or not they are factual: "Richest Hill on Earth" (it wasn't--that honor goes to Butte's sister-city Chuquicamata); "Butte, America" (an effort to stress the national importance of the city, as opposed to it being just another two-bit Montana town); "A city of more than 100,000 people" (no, the census data indicates that the population peaked around 1920 at just over 40,000, with a total county population of about 60,000).

But there is one area where Butte is the undisputed champ: Superfund.

America's largest Superfund site (1) begins with Butte in western Montana at the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. The upper Clark Fork River Basin is truly a Superfund megasite, taking in three major Superfund sites (each a megasite in its own right) and numerous "operable units."(2) Because the environmental and human health damages in this area were all caused by the mining and smelting operations of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, this complex of Superfund sites should be considered as a whole.


The Environmental Protection Agency defines a megasite if "the total costs of removal and remedial actions will exceed $50 million." (3) Most of the dozen or so operable units within the Upper Clark Fork River Basin megasite complex have a price tag exceeding $100 million, and the total cost will exceed $1 billion by a wide margin.


Some of the major sites and operable units within the Clark Fork River complex, along with the year in which they made the EPA's National Priorities List, include:

• Anaconda Smelter-Community Soils site (300 square miles), listed in 1983


• Stream Side Tailings site (26-mile long Silver Bow Creek near Butte), listed in 1983
  
• Milltown Dam site (2.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments), listed in 1983


• Berkeley Pit operable unit, an open pit copper mine in uptown Butte (more than 30 billion gallons of highly toxic, low-pH water), added to Butte’s Stream Side Tailings Site in 1984


• Clark Fork River operable unit (more than 120 stream miles) above Milltown Dam to the Warm Springs Ponds, added to the Milltown Site in 1985


• Butte Priority Soils operable unit, in the uptown area of the town (12.4 million cubic yards of waste spread throughout urban neighborhoods), added to the Stream Side Tailings Site in 1987

To give you some idea of the extent of this area, consider the map of the megasite comples (below), with a superimposed outline of the state of Connecticut.


The EPA has reached a Record of Decision for most of the operable units within the Clark Fork River complex of sites. The estimated cost to achieve remedy under these RODs is as follows. Keep in mind that approximately $700 million has already been spent on emergency actions and various studies.

• ROD for the Berkeley Pit: $110 million.
• ROD for the Butte Priority Soils: $110 million to $157 million, and in addition to this British Petroleum-ARCO (the responsible party) cut a side deal with the town of Butte for $49 million.
• ROD for Silver Bow Creek (Stream Side Tailings): $80 million, included as part of a $215 million settlement by British Petroleum-ARCO with Montana's Natural Resource Damage Program. On Silver Bow Creek, remedy and restoration are being accomplished as an integrated effort.
• ROD for the Clark Fork River has an estimated price tag of $120 million.
• ROD for Milltown Dam has an estimated price tag of $139.5 million; as with SBCr, remedy and restoration will be intergrated.
  

The remedy for the Upper Clark Fork River Superfund complex is a big job! It is, for the most part, just getting underway. Work at remaining sites such as the Clark Fork River should begin soon--once British Petroleum-ARCO quits squabbling with Montana and the EPA about its penny-for-penny obligations. A few sites, such as Butte's "Westside Soils," have not yet been studied and characterized. In Butte, Superfund is a growth industry!

(1) The Hudson River Superfund site is sometimes erroneously referred to as "America's Largest Superfund site," but it consists merely of a narrow 200-mile long strip of river with a total estimated remedy cost of "only" $500 million. At about 1500 square miles, the Silver Valley/Coeur d'Alene (Idaho) site is also a contender, but the estimated remedy cost is "only" $359 million.
(2) An operable unit is a term used by the Environmental Protection Agency to consider a site that is dealt with as an intergral unit when developing remedy (or clean up) actions.

(3) Elizabeth Southerland, "Megasites: presentation for the NACEPT--Superfund Subommittee," at http://www.epa.gov/oswer/docs/naceptdocs/megasites.pdf.

An Opportunity for Arsenic Reduction

[adapted from KUFM/Montana Public Radio commentary aired 22.March.2007, see http://www.mtpr.net/commentaries.html]

In the Superfund process (as in life itself), the naming of things is tremendously important. Some might argue that naming is an arbitrary matter. Take cats, for instance. What’s the difference if I name my cat Gumbie, Rumpelteazer, or Gus? Well, as T.S. Eliot taught us, “The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter…” After all, like Adam in Genesis, we construct our world through the act of naming. Names create the roadmap for reality.

I think it was Joseph Kinsey Howard who first referred to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company as Montana’s Cheshire Cat: long after the cat was gone, it’s malevolent grin lingered in the Montana Power Company, the Plum Creek Timber Company, and of course ARCO and now British Petroleum-ARCO.

The little town of Opportunity between Anaconda and the Clark Fork River is inscribed with the Cheshire Cat’s grin; Opportunity residents are especially sensitive to the act of naming. For many years an area near their town was a toxic waste dump for the Anaconda Company. After the Company merged with ARCO and ARCO began Superfund clean up, this area became the toxic waste repository for other Operable Units—including Silver Bow Creek and Milltown Dam. Unfortunately for Opportunity residents, the ACM’s big cat box was named after their town.

Opportunity residents now ask that this waste repository be renamed the British Petroleum Ponds. The county’s chief executive Rebecca Guay says, “We’re just asking that whoever owns the ponds take ownership of them.” As Opportunity resident George Niland explains, “When people type in ‘Opportunity’ on Google we’d rather have them go to Opportunity, Montana, than the Opportunity Ponds.” [See the Montana Standard article, http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2007/03/20/anaconda/hjjcjghjjijjgg.txt]

Renaming the ponds is a reasonable request. British Petroleum should take ownership of its own toxic waste—both through the Superfund process and through the name of its repository. We hope that British Petroleum-ARCO and the Environmental Protection Agency listen.

As another act of naming, consider the safe human exposure limit for arsenic. In Anaconda and Opportunity, the so-called “safe” residential arsenic level is 250 parts per million.

Recently, epidemiologists have proven arsenic far more harmful to human health than previously thought. In the well-known Dartmouth study that helped reduce arsenic limits for drinking water, scientists called arsenic a vitamin that promoted cancer growth. Recently, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County government has hired technical advisor Jim Kuipers. We hope that local residents can use this sound technical advice and pressure the Environmental Protection Agency to be more protective of human health. Since Opportunity residents rely on well water, it is especially important that they take advantage of the ground water testing program recently implemented for their town.

Anaconda’s residential arsenic levels were set in a study performed nearly two decades ago. Some environmental toxicology classes use Anaconda as an example of a poor human health study. According to environmental engineer Stacie Barry, who also worked on an EPA-funded study of arsenic in family pets, the Anaconda study routinely underestimated the bioavailability of arsenic through the gastrointestinal tract, skin, and inhalation. Arsenic in attic dust was ignored. Long-term residential exposure was based on a two-week study of six newborn piglets eating yard soil. The piglet study neglected the long-term accumulation of arsenic in the bones and livers of real, human children.

When one compares Anaconda with the nation, the situation looks far, far worse. Nationally, Anaconda’s arsenic levels are an order of magnitude – ten times higher – than other sites. A review of state-by-state cleanup levels for soil arsenic in residential areas shows that many are in the 10 to 20 parts per million range. This makes sense, given the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent reduction of the arsenic limit in drinking water from 50 to 10 parts per billion.

Most all of the arsenic in the Clark Fork Superfund Megasite came from Anaconda Company smelting operations. One would think that with this common source – and with the same agency now cleaning up the sites – arsenic exposure limits would be the same throughout the Megasite.

Not so: along the Clark Fork River, the safe limit for soil arsenic levels is 150 parts per million; at Milltown, sediments are considered “highly contaminated” and will be removed when arsenic levels exceed 100 parts per million; however, in Anaconda and Opportunity, soil arsenic levels are set far higher—at 250 parts per million.

What the heck is going on here? Why are Anaconda residential arsenic levels set twice as high as those at other Clark Fork sites? Far more people are exposed to arsenic in Anaconda than along the river or at Milltown.

This appears to be a serious case of social injustice. Is it OK to increase the cancer risk for Anaconda kids in comparison with Milltown kids? Or for Montana kids vs. New York kids?

For more news about the British Petroleum Ponds, Opportunity, and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink www.cfrtac.org.