Butte's Walking Trail: urban and industrial history

Historians of technology debate the issue of cultural preservation: should industrial landscapes be preserved, even if such preservation compromises environmental cleanup? EcoRover comes down solidly on the side of protecting human and environmental health as a priority over cultural resource preservation, but compromise is possible.

That's how it is on Butte, Montana's, uptown walking trail. Sometimes called the "Butte Hill Line," it's a "rails to trails" path that follows part of the old Butte, Anaconda, and Pacific rail road grade. The BA&P never got past Anaconda, the Pacific being another 500 or so miles west. But it ran a lot of ore from the Butte mines to the Anaconda smelter, much of as an electric railway from 1914 to 1967. The old line was heavily polluted by arsenic and heavy metals, but it was capped and made into an urban historical trail complete with interpretive signs.

Most of the time, if I'm going for a walk, I head out the backdoor and into the hills. But my wife Jan and her friends have taken to walking the uptown trail, and so there we were, with RTD, on a sunny but cool Sunday afternoon. We began at the Anselmo mine yard (est. 1887) on Excelsior Street a half mile or so below our house. The Anselmo "gallows frame" (aka the head frame used to lift ore and miners) stands tall above the landscape:

We walked uphill and east, passing the Missoula Gulch area. Arco-British Petroleum and EPA made a half-hearted effort to cover up this vast tailings wasteland about a decade ago. They used a thin cover of soil, planted exotic grasses, and called it good. While an improvement over the vast barren area that contributed a lot of dust on windy days, it's a piss-poor permanent remedy. Here's RTD next to one of the many "failed" spots on the cover up, where acid and metals-laden tailings have burned their way back to the surface:

The trail passes through the funky neighborhoods of uptown Butte, and under Montana Street:

And Main Street:

One can imagine what it was like to live here a century ago in the "glory days" of mining with its filthy air, barren landscape, and dangerous working conditions. Today, we can safely romanticize the era of Industrial America. And in this post-industrial age Butte is groping along into the future much like other preterit towns such as Bradford, Pennsylvania, or Troy, New York. Nice views, even if you can't eat the scenery:

Neighborhood along the trail with the Original gallows frame in the left background:

View up the hill to the Mt Con gallows with the Butte motto, "Mile High, Mile Deep" (and an incoming plane in the right background):

And the end of the line with the Kelley gallows (est. 1947, the junior of the Butte underground mine family) looming in the background and the East Ridge (of the Continental Divide) behind all:

We turned around and headed back to the Anselmo and home. It was a nice walk, and I was heartened to see another six or eight walkers out and about on this chill day. Everyone, I think, had at least one dog with them. I don't think it's required that you own a dog to live in Butte, but I do think you need to own at least one in order to buy a house here!

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Butte, Montana: along the Continental Divide at the headwaters of America's largest Superfund site.

A New Year on the Upper Clark Fork

A version of this commentary aired on KUFM, Montana Public Radio (http://www.mtpr.net/commentaries.html), as part of a regular series I do for the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee (www.cfrtac.org).

It's nice to see a real winter settle across the Butte landscape. Snow-pack is looking good, which portends well for fish and river flows this summer. And the thirty below zero temperatures might even slow down the pine beetles that have been chewing their way through the forests of lodgepole pines. This cold weather slows me down. On the cross country ski trails, I’ve been waxing with Swix Polar and even then it’s a little like skiing on beach sand.

Here’s news to warm our hearts: Montana’s Natural Resource Damage Program recently announced that 20 million dollars would be available in this year’s grant cycle for restoration and replacement projects in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. This is a huge increase—more than doubling the amount available in prior years.

The increase seems to stem from the expectation that Montana and Arco-British Petroleum will arrive at a settlement for the state’s outstanding natural resource damage claims on the Clark Fork River, Anaconda Uplands, and Butte Area One. Montana received a total of 230 million dollars in 1999 as a partial settlement for its claims. Of that amount, about 130 million dollars was solely for injuries to our natural resources.

The total value assigned to the outstanding claims is about 175 million dollars. Up until now, no restoration funds were available for these areas. For example, projects on the Clark Fork River were off limits.

With 20 million dollars available and the prospect of the entire basin open to projects, there are some attractive possibilities. Property acquisitions for big horn sheep winter range, river access sites, conservation easements along the river, and combining remedy & restoration in heavily polluted areas: these are just a few of the ways that this funding could be used.

In order to consider increased funding and opportunities, CFRTAC recently hosted a meeting of folks representing landowners, conservation groups, sportsmen’s groups, and local communities. One overarching concern emerged from the discussion: there is no comprehensive restoration plan for the Upper Clark Fork River Basin.

A watershed is a closely integrated system where the parts interact in intimate and sometimes unexpected ways. Without a holistic or “big picture” understanding, it is easy to fall into bad management practices. As a simple example, consider the property owners that rip-rap the river bank. This further destabilizes the river channel, creates problems for downstream owners, and harms habitat health.

We saw some problems early on when money became available for restoration projects in the Silver Bow Creek watershed around Butte. The lack of a comprehensive plan encouraged piecemeal projects that, in some cases, did not contribute to overall watershed health. Because of concerns raised by the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee and other conservation groups, the Natural Resource Damage Program developed a comprehensive watershed restoration plan. This plan identified and prioritized restoration needs, and now guides decisions about which projects get funded.

The Silver Bow Creek Watershed Restoration Plan was developed with broad public involvement. Participants included local citizen-activists, community leaders, conservation groups, and agency scientists. Diverse grassroots and scientist participation helped educate Natural Resource Damage Program staff about the many environmental subtleties, restoration needs, and holistic connections within the watershed. Information needed for a comprehensive plan was already out there—but it was not available in ways that could shape good decisions about how and where to spend the public’s money.

For example, we learned that several tributaries of Silver Bow Creek hold populations of native Westslope cutthroat trout. Restoring these streams, protecting native fish from hybridization by introduced species, and enhancing connectivity between the tributaries and Silver Bow Creek emerged as major priorities. Throughout the comprehensive plan, the emphasis is on restoration as a self-sustaining process that will not require constant maintenance or additional funding, and in ways that contribute to future environmental health and community well-being.

It is critical that the Natural Resource Damage Program invest in a similar comprehensive plan for the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. While 200 million dollars sounds like a lot of money, natural resource restoration and replacement projects can be very expensive. It would be easy to blow the whole wad and have little to show for it. Residents of the Clark Fork River watershed – including future generations – deserve better.

For more news about the Clark Fork River and related Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink www.cfrtac.org.

The Moulton Journal: A Winter's Tale

This morning, our world of sin is blanketed with the most amazing snowfall--light, feathery little bundles of interlocked flakes; four inches deep on the front sidewalk, but easily swept away with a broom. There is not a breath of wind, and walking along the flanks of Big Butte I was mesmerized watching this fluff fall from the sky, drifting down at less than a meter per second.

Yesterday dawned cold and clear. Here's the view west, with the sun just beginning to light the higher peaks of the Pintler:

The -14 deg F temperature at The Moulton made for slow skiing, but on such a day it is a joy to be outside. I warmed quickly skiing up the main access road from the parking lot, and it felt good to linger here and there where the sun lit up an opening in the trees. Breath, perspiration, and snot freeze on contact with the frigid air; cold fingers pry into the lingering soul:

The cow moose that has been hanging out in the willow bottom near the parking lot moved down the valley. Did even she feel the cold last night, or has she some intuition of deeper snow to come? Poor man that would presume to know the mind of a moose. Here she is, just a mile or so above Walkerville:

On a cold morning such as this, warm vapors rise from the Berkeley Pit (the world's largest toxic lake) and form the notorious "Pit Fog." Here it is, like brute matter brought to life, towering over the town:

Too Late for Opportunity? Superfund & Theatre of the Oppressed

A group of students from my Politics of Technical Decisions class presented a two-act play about the town of Opportunity, Montana, and the problems posed by the adjacent Arco-British Petroleum hazardous waste repository. The play uses techniques developed by Augusto Boal in what he called Forum Theatre or Theatre of the Oppressed. Boal's techniques give us a way to confront social injustice and to imagine resolution.

Historical overview: Beginning c. 1910, the Anaconda Copper Mining (ACM) company smelter in Anaconda stored waste in a series of settling ponds near Opportunity. By the time ACM closed in the 1980s, the ponds spread over 5 square miles and held about 160 million cubic yards of toxic mine waste. With the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) implementing remedies for the many operable units in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin complex of Superfund sites, the ponds -- now owned and operated by Arco-British Petroleum -- became a regional repository for toxic mine waste cleaned from Butte, Silver Bow Creek, Milltown, and other areas. Residents of Opportunity suffer from dust storms blowing from the waste repository, fear their ground water will become contaminated, and do not want the stigma of a large, barren, toxic waste repository in their backyard.

The aerial view (above) shows Warm Springs, MT. The Arco-British Petroleum waste repository is the prominent, bright (no vegetation) feature south of Warm Springs. The town of Opportunity is directly south of the waste repository. East of the repository and across I-90 are the Warm Springs Ponds--another Arco-British Petroleum Superfund site.

Cast: Jackie Dumke as ACM and Arco-BP; Gretchen Miller as Opportunity; Will Thornsberry as Milltown; Schylar Canfield as EPA.


Act I of the play opened with ACM (Anaconda Copper Mining corporation) counting its rich wealth of copper (above).


ACM dumps its toxic mine waste on Milltown (above).


The EPA orders Milltown to "Get rid of that." (above)


Milltown brings the mine waste to Opportunity, which clearly wants no more of it. (above)



Despite Opportunity's pleas, the EPA seems unable or unwilling to help Opportunity. (above)

ACT II

Act II of the play begins with Opportunity approaches Arco-British Petroleum, seeking a solution to its toxic mine waste problem. (above)


Opportunity pleads with Arco-British Petroleum. (above)


But Arco-British Petroleum tells Opportunity, "It's too late." (above)


Opportunity goes to the EPA, but is again told, "It's too late." (above)

Then, the audience becomes involved.


In a "what if" approach to history, Nancy Mccourt takes over as Milltown, teams up with Opportunity, and together they insist that the ACM manage its own wastes instead of spreading it all over the landscape as a free garbage dump. (above)


Sean Eamon takes over as the contemporary Arco-BP, and offers money to Opportunity in return for accepting the waste repository. Anaconda got a golf course from Arco-BP, so what does Opportunity want that money can buy? Opportunity sees the money as a partial solution, but still wants assurances regarding human health issues such as clean water and blowing dust. (above)


Glen Bodish takes over as EPA, makes an effort to find out what Opportunity wants, questions Arco-BP about its long term management plans, and ponders the agency's obligations to the American public. Bodish-as-EPA also insists on bringing the relevant parties together as a group exploring solutions. (above)


Andrea Stierle (first from right) steps in as Science, playing an advisory role to EPA and suggesting more ideal solutions--such as hauling all the waste from the Arco-BP repository and other sites back to the Berkeley Pit. (above)


Serge Myers (first from left) takes over as Opportunity and along with actors and the audience generally supports this option: Use the Berkeley Pit as THE repository for ALL Superfund toxic waste in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. (above)


Thank you, audience, for your participation in this lively event and for your thoughts on this important issue!

For more about Opportunity, see George Niland's Opportunity Citizens Protection Association blog at http://opportunitycpa.blogspot.com .

Giving Thanks for Environmental Activists

A version of this commentary aired on KUFM, Montana Public Radio, as part of a regular series I do for the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee (www.cfrtac.org).

Elk season is over. It’s time to clean and put away the rifles. The snow is calling. Purple wax on those cross country skis will be about right.

Give thanks for Pilgrims and Indians and turkeys and elk. And thank the activists that helped bring environmental remedy and restoration to the Clark Fork watershed. Without activists, Arco-British Petroleum would have held even greater sway over the Environmental Protection Agency, and Montana’s Natural Resource Damage suit against Arco-BP might have died for lack of legislative support (i.e. funding).

Instead, Montana obtained 215 million dollars nearly a decade ago as a partial settlement. If we can believe a recent Missoulian newspaper editorial, Montana and Arco-BP will soon resolve remaining claims. Now that’s a holiday present!

The money we have received has done some good. A recent Fish, Wildlife & Parks electrofishing survey of Silver Bow Creek found significant numbers of trout. Most – including a few native westslope cutthroat trout – were found near the confluence with German Gulch. A few were found closer to Butte. Good on the Montana agencies and citizen activists that helped make this possible.

Butte’s George Grant Chapter of Trout Unlimited played a critical role, working with the Butte-Anaconda Greenway Board, insisting that the recreational project include riparian and stream enhancements. Furthermore, George Grant TU’s restoration project along German Gulch Creek – a Natural Damage Program funded project – enhances the overall restoration of our Silver Bow Creek watershed. Again, thank these activists. This stuff doesn’t just happen unless a whole lot of volunteer citizens put in a whole lot of hours at meetings, in writing grants, and on managing projects.

I’m an environmental philosopher, and believe "the glass is half full and the glass is half empty.” Retired FWP fisheries biologist Wayne Hadley cautions that we should not expect too much, too soon, of Silver Bow Creek. After all, there is a tremendous amount of toxic mine waste outside of the flood plain that is not being cleaned up, and that material may re-pollute much of the creek.

We’re in this for the long haul. I don’t reasonably expect to have good fishing in Silver Bow Creek within my lifetime. If, however, my daughter doesn’t enjoy good fishing in the creek by the time she’s my age, then my ghost will be seriously pissed. We don’t have to accept environmental degradation as "the price of progress," and we can make the world a better place.

The Natural Resource Damage Program will likely sprinkle more fairy dust around the Upper Clark Fork River Basin–about 14 million dollars worth in the coming year or so. Projects include the usual Butte and Anaconda waterline work, but also: more funding for the Silver Bow Creek Greenway; a trail and outdoor education center near Deer Lodge; and restoration work for a public park on Forest Service land near Butte.

Near Missoula, the Clark Fork Coalition should receive nearly three million dollars to remove additional contaminated sediments from Milltown–an amount over and above what the EPA requires under remedy. Ideally, the agency would have made Arco-BP pay for this. Instead, we must spend precious and limited Natural Resource Damage dollars. Still, it’s money well spent. Removing additional mine waste from Silver Bow Creek improved the creek’s environmental future, and removal of additional sediments at Milltown will do the same.

It’s not all clover and roses here in upper end of the Clark Fork River superfund site.

Those contaminated sediments from Milltown? Yep, they go to the Arco-BP waste repository in Opportunity’s backyard. Milltown sediments are a drop in the bucket compared with what’s already there. Still, how happy would you be living with a backyard toxic waste repository of 160 million cubic yards, extending over an area of more than five square miles?

There are no easy answers for questions about environmental justice at Opportunity.

A group of my students in the "Politics of Technical Decisions" class have a novel approach to this problem. They plan to stage a play using techniques developed by Brazilian, Augusto Boal. His "theater of the oppressed" is a popular tool for political dissent and public education in South America and Europe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Boal).

The production is titled, "Too Late for Opportunity?" The short, two-act play will be staged at the Venus Rising Café in Butte, from 3 - 5 p.m., on Monday, December 10th. To help resolve problems posed in the play, audience members are invited to participate by taking the place of an actor and redefining that actor's role. We’re inviting representatives from Arco-BP and the EPA, as well as Opportunity residents and the general public.

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

From Butte to Missoula, we deserve a clean, healthy, and accessible Clark Fork River. It’s your river. Wade in, and help make the future.

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/.

Warm Springs Ponds: the future of a Superfund site

Warm Springs Ponds and the 3 Rs (adapted from a KUFM radio commentary)

The three Rs of Superfund : “Reclamation, Remediation, and Restoration.”

If we go by the book, the three Rs have distinct definitions. Reclamation is the broadest term—something like a genus in biology. You know, like the genus “Canis,” which takes in wolves, dogs, and coyotes. Reclamation is a fuzzy notion.

Mining engineers define reclamation as “returning damaged land to a beneficial use.” British Petroleum-ARCO likes to call itself a “partner in responsible reclamation.” As the legally responsible party in the Clark Fork Superfund mess, BP-ARCO is responsible for a lot more than reclamation! But if BP-ARCO can pull off a cheap reclamation job that masquerades as remedy, it will do that. Look at the golf course or all those ball fields built on mine dumps.

Remedy is defined under federal Superfund law as the “removal or treatment of hazardous material to protect human and environmental health.” The removal of toxic mine waste along Silver Bow Creek is remedy. EPA oversees remedy, and the decision that makes it official is called a Record of Decision.

Restoration is a legal term defined under the state version of Superfund law as “returning injured natural resources to baseline conditions or otherwise accelerating the natural recovery process.” The construction of a functioning streambed and planting native vegetation along Silver Bow Creek is restoration. Montana oversees restoration.

My student, Michelle Sullivan, recently completed an undergraduate research project about the three Rs. Michelle interviewed federal, state, industry, and academic experts.. Surprisingly, half of these experts were as confused about the three Rs as were members of a lay audience.

Well, the real world is a complex place that simply does not easily conform to the language we invent in order to describe it. The intentional obfuscation of terms by BP-ARCO doesn’t help, either. Nor does the complicity of the EPA in allowing BP-ARCO sometimes to count superficial reclamation – i.e. cover-up – as remedy.

Still, the world is a complex place. Consider Warm Springs Ponds—2500 acres of beautiful, lush habitat along I-90. Despite appearances, the area is an industrial waste treatment facility for the polluted waters of Silver Bow Creek. Construction began in 1911, and work continues to this day. For example, in the early 1990s, ARCO removed more than 500,000 tons of contaminated sediments. And there are millions and millions of tons still in place—an amount probably exceeding what’s at Milltown. Furthermore, the concentrations of arsenic and other toxic metals are far higher than at Milltown.

Warm Springs Ponds faces an uncertain future. EPA, Montana, and BP-ARCO all have their fingers in the pie. EPA has not specified a remedy – or Record of Decision – for the area. In part, this is because remedy and restoration of Silver Bow Creek will take another decade or so.

Should remedy and restoration on Silver Bow Creek exceed all reasonable expectations and should the creek actually meet water quality standards, Warm Springs Ponds might no longer be needed for waste treatment. One could imagine a radical solution such as bulldozing the ponds back to the hillside in a vast dry-closure waste repository. Or, a trickle of water could be maintained over the ponds as a wet waste repository. Or, the ponds could be maintained very much as they are today.

Consider this last option—maintaining Warm Springs Ponds in perpetuity. There’s a good argument for this. Hundreds of resident and migratory birds depend upon the area; and it’s home to upland game and trophy trout. On a walk around the ponds last weekend, my family and I thrilled at the site of osprey snatching fish, sandhill cranes dancing and hooting, and Canada geese guarding their fuzzy yellow offspring. The area provides important recreational opportunities for bird watchers, anglers, waterfowl hunters, and dog trainers.
[below: eared grebe at the ponds, from www.gobirdmontana.com]
Warm Springs Ponds will not take care of themselves. Maintaining the natural resources and recreational opportunities will cost money. Toxic muck will need to be dredged periodically and hauled to a repository, the ponds’ dikes will need to be monitored and kept safe against erosion, and trails and signage will need to be maintained. For these reasons and others, the future of the area must be secured--perhaps with an operations and management trust fund, something like the $50 million stash that Butte received from BP-ARCO for assuming oversight of the Butte Priority Soils remedy.

Recently, a diverse group of conservationists came together to deliberate this issue. Citizens included representatives from groups such as Trout Unlimited and the Montana Wildlife Federation as well as interested local folks. We do not yet know what the future will bring, but we do want to play an active role in shaping it. We don’t want reclamation masquerading as remedy.

For more news about Warm Springs Ponds and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at hyperlink www.cfrtac.org.

The Three R's: Reclamation, Remediation, and Restoration

Here in America's larges Superfund site, the language of environmental clean-up is very important. Three terms -- reclamation, remediation, and restoration -- are often confused. Reclamation is a blanket term often used, for example, by mining engineers when they rehabilitate a disturbed site for some useful purpose. Remediation is a legally and technically specific term for treating hazardous material to reduce or eliminate harm to human or environmental health. And restoration is a legally and technically specific term for returning a disturbed site to a more-or-less natural condition.

The federal Superfund law, based on CERCLA (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980), speaks of remedy--"Long-term remedial response actions, that permanently and significantly reduce the dangers associated with releases or threats of releases of hazardous substances that are serious, but not immediately life threatening." To qualify for CERCLA remediation, a site must first be listed on the Environmental Protection Agency's "National Priorities List."

Because a state is the trustee for its natural resources, federal CERCLA allows states to seek compensation from parties that damage natural resources through the release of hazardous substances. Montana create its own law, CECRA (the Comprehensive Environmental Cleanup and Responsibility Act of 1985), to create the legal mechanism for seeking natural resource damages.

The figure below illustrates the relationship among these three terms. On the vertical axis is Environmental Quality, defined as the relative "naturalness" or integrity of the environment. On the horizontal axis is Time. When Lewis & Clark traveled through western Montana, Environmental Quality was high--represented by the "Natural" baseline in black at the top of the figure. When mining & smelting began, Environmental Quality declined rapidly: Silver Bow Creek became a lifeless industrial sewer and the hills were barren of trees, shrubs, and grass--represented by the red line. When mining & smelting ended, nature took its course and some natural recovery occured: some vegetation recolonized the hills, and there were a few trout in the Clark Fork River 26 miles downstream of Butte--represented by the dashed brown line near the bottom of the figure. Remedy will help the environmental quality of the area recover, although even with the removal or capping of hazardous material the landscape is far from its natural condition. With restoration, we try to reestablish the native vegetation, return the riffle-pool and meandering structure to streams, and otherwise try to recreate natural conditions. Though of course we cannot fully return severely damaged natural resources to pre-disturbance conditions, we can approach that ideal goal.

Mining and smelting took place for more than a century in the Upper Clark Fork River basin, and it is hard to appreciate the severity and extent of the damages done to the environment. Even today, many years after mining and smelting ceased, the Granite Mountain Memorial near the north end of Main Street looks out over an utterly barren and sterile landscape. A comparison with nearby areas also helps bring this lesson home. For example, although the Clark Fork River looks healthy to the casual observer, lingering toxic metals means that it supports just about 1/6 the trout population of the nearby Big Hole River.

Mining & smelting created more than a century of damages in the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. Remedy & restoration have been underway for just a decade or so. We'll get there -- like the bumper sticker says -- "One Day at a Time.

Sources

CERCLA Overview http://www.epa.gov/superfund/action/law/cercla.htm

National Priorities List http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/npl.htm

Natural Resource Damages per CERCLA http://www.epa.gov/superfund/programs/nrd/primer.htm

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.

Environmental Clean-up and Social Restoration

Winter is settling in over the upper Clark Fork. We have put the hunting rifles away and it’s time for the Thanksgiving/Winter Solstice/New Year’s round of parties and feasts. With the major Superfund decisions behind us, it’s also time to pause and think about where we are at in this environmental process.

All across America, people are beginning to link environmental clean-up with cultural renewal. Like grief, we seem to experience this process in stages. First there is denial: “Say it ain’t so, Marcus! Surely Butte will always be the richest hill on earth?” Next, there is industrial-history-as-Toxiland-theme-park: “OK, kids, let’s ride the roller coaster at Copper Mountain, and then we’ll head over to the Mine Tunnel of Terror.” At some point, reality takes over. We are indeed living in a post-industrial world, and the future will not look like the past.

Butte, I think, is tottering at this point. It’s a scary place to be. We need to cope with whatever second-rate clean-up we get from EPA and Arco, beg for a few more scraps, and spread scarce dollars over a big landscape.

EPA is allowing Arco to leave most toxic waste in place—you know, “cover it up” instead of “clean it up.”

Most waste will be capped and then protected with fencing and other institutional controls. These postmodern fields will be a monument to our industrial past, and must be protected and maintained in perpetuity.

Toxic house and attic dust will be cleaned up on a limited basis, and only if home owners insist. Never mind the routine roofing, rewiring, and attic renovation jobs that go on everyday and cause toxic exposure for contractors and residents.

Only time will tell whether Butte’s cultural renewal can take place despite such limitations.

Butte-Silver Bow will likely get a few more scraps from its side-deal with Arco. In exchange for the county’s complicity in the proposed Superfund remedy, the county gets 49 million dollars for things like historic preservation, health studies, and the in perpetuity treatment of contaminated water and maintenance of waste caps. The county hopes to make a million dollars or so per year as interest, available over the next one hundred years. Some of this money will be available for redevelopment.

Like the money available from the state’s Natural Resource Damage Program, these Arco trust fund dollars could be used for cultural renewal.

A new citizen’s group, the Butte Restoration Alliance, is forming. The group will advise Butte-Silver Bow government on projects for the community.

We should maintain a healthy critical attitude toward this process. Projects funded by the state’s Natural Resource Damage Program might give us a model of what to expect. Projects have fallen roughly into three categories.

In the first category, we simply fix the leaky pipes left by a century of corporate neglect. New waterlines for Butte and Anaconda fall under this category.

In the second category, we enhance public access to natural resources. The Butte-Anaconda greenway and Milltown pedestrian bridge fall under this category, as do acquisition projects that convert private holdings to public amenities. By simply connecting people with nature we hope to restore an appreciation for and the use of natural resources.

In the third category, we actually restore damaged resources. Projects that rebuild streams to function naturally and support native fish are a fine example of this. Instead of regarding nature as an economic resource to be converted into dollars, nature is a sustainable resource—something that we can become a part of without wrecking or significantly altering. There have not been many such projects.

But here we have a key criterion for authentic environmental restoration and cultural renewal: sustainability. If our activities impoverish the local ecosystem or if our restoration of natural resources requires heavy-handed maintenance in perpetuity, then we have failed at our task. A restored culture will require citizen participation and educational programs, as well as day-to-day activities wherein we live our goals. Shopping at the local farmers’ market, catching a wild trout in the river that runs through it, and attending the local arts festival: all are simple but tangible indications that environmental restoration and cultural renewal are succeeding hand-in-hand.

The twentieth century was the era of non-sustainable industrial growth and environmental pollution. Let this new century be the era of restoration and renewal.

For more news about the Butte Priority Soils remedy and other Superfund issues, please check out CFRTAC’s website at www.cfrtac.org.

From Butte to Missoula, we deserve a clean, healthy, and accessible Clark Fork River. It’s your river. Wade in, and help make the future.

[this post is a modified version of a KUFM radio commentary I did on behalf of CFRTAC]