Superfund revived Butte-City, state’s embrace of cleanup stands in stark contrast to Silver Valley fight

BUTTE, Mont. _
This is a town that
Superfund rebuilt.

Faced with mining
contamination
similar in scope to
the Silver Valley’s,
Butte traded conflict for cooperation in cleaning up its
massive Superfund site.

Karen Dorn Steele
Staff writer Spokesman Review

In return, the city of 35,000 has leveraged Superfund
dollars to clean up the mess, help revitalize the area
and honor its mining legacy.

"When the mines closed in the 1980s, we had 22
percent unemployment," said Don Peoples, a Butte
native and mayor from 1978 to 1989. "We went from
there to an All-American city, and Superfund
provided an impetus for it."

Now, the city is an example of cooperation among
local residents, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency and mining companies working to clean up a
region plagued by contamination.

Butte persuaded the area’s biggest mining company
and the EPA to not only handle the mess, but also
help finance a variety of local projects, from a mine
disaster memorial to a 31-acre recreation complex.

"We used Superfund as an economic development
tool," said Jack Lynch, a fourth-generation Butte
native and Butte-Silver Bow County’s chief executive
from 1989 to 2001. Lynch is now Spokane’s city
administrator.

"We’d lived with the problem for over 100 years, and
we felt we should be comfortable with the solution,"
he said. "We went from being spectators to being
limited partners."

There are many similarities between Butte and
Idaho’s Silver Valley, where the EPA is finishing work
on the Bunker Hill Superfund site and is planning an
expanded cleanup of the Coeur d’Alene Basin.

At both places, mine contamination spreads more
than 100 miles downstream.

Both are considered Superfund mega-sites, where
cleanup could last another 20 to 30 years. At both
sites, the EPA is concerned about human health risks
and serious ecological damage.

But there are key differences, too.

In Idaho, politicians and many local citizens have
fought the EPA for years. And the main Silver Valley
polluter, Gulf Resources, went bankrupt — leaving
taxpayers with most of the cleanup job and a few
surviving mining companies with the rest.

Butte has had a reluctant but cooperative partner in
the Atlantic Richfield Co. (Arco), which bought out the
Anaconda Copper Co. in 1977 and inherited its
pollution liability.

The company has spent $700 million on the cleanup
so far.

Arco doesn’t like Superfund’s retroactive liability
rules, but will dole out $1 billion for cleanup and
environmental mitigation before it’s over, says Sandy
Stash, Arco’s spokeswoman.

"In Butte, we’ve improved the environment," Stash
said. "People stop me on the street and compliment
me."

Stigma less than feared

Butte’s Irish bars, brick hotels and proud millionaires’ mansions were
almost swallowed by the Berkeley Pit, an 1,800-foot-deep defunct
open-pit copper mine that stands as a stark symbol of unaddressed
mining pollution.

In the 1970s, the Anaconda Mining Co. proposed expanding the pit
and wiping out the city’s historic center.

Butte balked at the idea.

"It was the first time Butte said no to the Anaconda
Copper Company, a company that used our air and water
as a free garbage dump for a century," said Pat Munday,
a professor of technology at Montana Tech, a branch of
the University of Montana in Butte. "Now, the bill is due."

The area was named a federal Superfund site in 1985 —
the largest site in the country.

The Berkeley Pit is filling with 28 billion gallons of water
so acidic it melts boat propellers. In 1995, the pit killed
342 migrating snow geese that landed on its
turquoise-blue surface.

Butte’s underground aquifer, the sole source of the town’s
drinking water, also was poisoned by acid drainage from
the huge mine.

Along the Clark Fork River, mining’s marks can be seen in
the green bones of dead animals, where copper has
replaced calcium. Some of the worst threats are invisible,
including arsenic in drinking water wells at Milltown — a
human health threat — and dissolved heavy metals that
harm aquatic life.

At first, Butte leaders were skeptical of Superfund,
Peoples says. He recalls where the most vociferous
opposition came from.

"It came from me," he said. "I said, `Over my dead body
would Superfund come here."’

But he quickly changed his mind.

"The stigma wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought — and not
nearly as bad as leaving cleanup undone," he said.

In 1987, Peoples was named one of the top 20 mayors in
the nation for saving Butte from economic ruin. He wooed
billionaire industrialist Dennis Washington, owner of
Montana Resources Inc., to mine copper and
molybdenum and keep paychecks flowing to 300 people
during the Superfund cleanup.

Peoples’ cleanup technology company, MSE Inc., is also
a Superfund beneficiary, attracting U.S. Department of
Energy and EPA grants to Butte.

It employs 200 people, many with advanced degrees, with
an average salary of $51,000. The company also has a $4
million-a-year research partnership with Montana Tech to
study cleanup techniques for water pollution — including
the toxic stew in the Berkeley pit.

With the closing of Montana Resources and the
downsizing of Montana Power, Butte is struggling again.
But Superfund isn’t the reason for the downturn, says
Butte-Silver Bow County planning director Jon Sesso.

"The environmental degradation that was here 15 years
ago is being eliminated. Without Superfund, it’s unlikely
we could have done it," Sesso said. "When mining went
down, environmental cleanup jobs helped us survive."

Cleanup money has helped Butte cap and contain its
worst heavy metals pollution, protect streams and close
170 mine shafts.

Butte also set up an innovative program to address lead
pollution in the town’s old houses, yards, playgrounds and
schools.

At first, EPA officials said Superfund couldn’t be used to
reduce lead paint, but the agency eventually accepted
Butte’s "pathway" approach to all lead exposure sources
that might harm a child.

"We pushed hard, and EPA listened. Now, we’re the
poster child of Superfund," Sesso said.

Butte was named along with Arco as a responsible party
for the cleanup because mine wastes were carried through
the city’s storm sewers. That gave local officials a place at
the table in negotiations with the EPA and Arco.

Butte’s leaders pushed for new structures over remediated
land — playgrounds, homes, a 31-acre recreation complex
and the Belmont Senior Center, built over a former mine.

In Anaconda, where ore from Butte was smelted, Arco
constructed a $20 million Jack Nicklaus golf course after
residents said they’d rather use the contaminated property
than fence it off.

They’ve also launched a $95 million cleanup of Silver Bow
Creek, a 25-mile stream that flows into the Clark Fork
River.

The Berkeley Pit’s toxic contents and related
contamination along the Clark Fork is next.

Politicians pushed for cleanup

Montana politics played a key role in Butte’s Superfund
success. In 1983, the state sued Arco for natural
resources damages.

"For six or seven years, we did nothing, " said Rob
Collins, an assistant attorney general in Helena in charge
of the state’s natural resource damages case.

"Then Arco moved for summary judgment, and we had to
fish or cut bait. Arco was figuring the state politicians
would back away. They didn’t," Collins said.

The Montana Legislature gave the attorney general’s office
$5 million to pursue the case with a study of natural
resources damages. The state settled a good part of the
case for $215 million, plus $20 million in interest, Collins
says.

The Salish and Kootenai tribes also settled with Arco for
ecological damages in the Clark Fork Basin.

With the money from the state lawsuit, a $215 million
trust fund was formed. The interest is being used for
environmental restoration.

By contrast, the Idaho Legislature refused to give former
Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones any money to prepare a
$50 million natural resources damages lawsuit against
Bunker Hill’s owners, Gulf Resources.

Idaho settled with the mining companies for $4.5 million
for a cleanup that’s already cost $253 million and may
require another $359 million over the next 30 years.

"That was obviously a bad mistake," Collins said of
Idaho’s decision. "Montana doesn’t normally get out front
on these things, but we did in this case."

Munday credits former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot.

"Racicot understood the public sentiment favoring cleanup
at a time when lots of others didn’t," Munday said.

Montana has worked amicably with the EPA at the state’s
11 Superfund sites, says John Wardell, director of the
EPA’s Montana office in Helena.

But when Butte was included in the cleanup, some state
officials worried it could impede Montana Resources’
mining plans.

"We worked through that. The mine operated for many
years," Wardell said. "It’s been shut down for the last
couple of years for economic reasons. It didn’t happen in
Butte that mining was driven out."

In March, Arco and Montana Resources signed a new
legal consent decree, pledging $87 million to build and run
a plant to treat the toxic water in the Berkeley Pit.

Montana Resources is a holding company with five other
parties — Asarco, AR Montana Corp., Dennis Washington,
Montana Resources and Montana Resources Inc.

Montana Resources bought the mine from Arco in 1985,
making it partly responsible for cleanup costs.

Treatment plant construction begins this summer. After
2018, treated water from the pit will be pumped into Silver
Bow Creek.

`Embrace the cleanup’

In its zeal to clean up, Butte didn’t ignore history. Many
mine head frames still dot the landscape — deliberate
monuments to mining.

In nearby Walkerville, a hilltop neighborhood once
populated by Irish miners, the Granite Mountain Overlook
commemorates 168 men who died on June 8, 1917, in a
catastrophic mine fire — the largest death toll in hard-rock
mining history.

That year, the mines were running at capacity day and
night, straining to fuel America’s arsenal during World War
I. Near midnight, a miner’s lamp touched an electrical
cable, turning the 240-story mine shaft into an inferno.

"We used (Superfund) mitigation money for the memorial
— it was nearly a century overdue," Lynch said.

At Lynch’s invitation, Sesso came to Spokane in January
and urged the Spokane City Council to shape its own
vision for how to deal with mine wastes flowing into
Washington state from the Silver Valley.

"In Butte, we hear daily what Missoula thinks. We are the
polluters. You are Kellogg’s Missoula — you have a very
legitimate standing," Sesso told the Spokane officials.

He told them the Superfund project’s most important
stage is the detailed planning that comes after the EPA
announces its chosen cleanup remedies. That decision for
the Coeur d’Alene Basin is expected next month.

In their written comments to the EPA, the City Council
says it favors an EPA-led cleanup and a thorough
scrubbing of Spokane River beaches and islands
contaminated by mining pollution from Idaho.

A comprehensive cleanup of the Coeur d’Alene Basin
watershed will enhance the Spokane region’s economic
vitality, Sesso says.

"You should embrace the need to clean up," he says. "Do
it and move on."

•Karen Dorn Steele can be reached at 459-5462 or by
e-mail at [email protected].

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=072802&ID=s1189635