My little bit of ecological ranting

I was reading the news the other day and saw that there is a plan afoot to get rid of the Mill Town Dam on the Clark Fork River, outside of Missoula. The fundamentals are this: the dam was put in place to help contain heavy metals produced downstream at the Anaconda smelters. The Clark Fork provides at least half of Missoula with their drinking water. The dam is an earthen one, and is vulnerable to earthquakes and other natural disasters. If the dam were to go out, the water supply for Missoula would be severely compromised. No one has wanted to deal with the dam for decades.

Part of the problem is that the companies who were responsible for the many superfund sites in MT have either divested of their MT holdings, gone bankrupt or been absorbed by other companies. It's a really scary situation. People are surprised when they find out how much of the state is in really bad shape when it comes to industrial contamination. When you explain that a large part of the state's development was due to the mining industry, it becomes more clear.

The East Helena Smelter was another prime case of bad news deferred for several generations. It is still kind of open- no one really works there, but the holding company claims that it hasn't been totally mothballed, and therefore they don't have to clean it up. This will be a really scary one. The entire smelter is ensconced on top of a huge slag heap. I can only imagine what lurks in the black slag. There are acid pools on property, and the dust in the close vacinity is really nast stuff, I'm told. About 10-15 years ago, they replaced the yards of a bunch of older houses in East Helena- and took the top couple of feet of topsoil. It was due to lead contamination of the dirt. My Great-grandmother's yard was part of this. Scary fact- when I was very young, we used to play in the sprinkler and on the slip-n-slide in that yard. Betcha the grass was as contaminated then as it was in the early 1990s when they removed it.

Between the use of cyanide leach mining in the gold industry and lead smelting in the copper industry, there is enough really bad stuff in the ground covering large portions of the state to really warrant concern. Add in the vermiculite/asbestos situation in Libby and it's really scary. In Butte (home of the largest copper mining in the region) the tap water was unsafe until the late 1990's (and might still be iffy).

On the other side of the balance sheet, Anaconda turned their super fund site into a really great golf course (called Old Works- if you get the chance, go there- it's wonderful, I'm told). The sand traps are filled with black slag that's been treated and rendered safe. It's really pretty.

I'll be watching the Mill Town Dam project with interest. I really hope that it is taken care of soon- they don't need an earthquake to ruin the Missoula water supply and cause a huge fish kill.