Federal and state agencies last week issued their final decision on cleaning up historic mining pollution from the Clark Fork River. This represents a momentous milestone.
The decision comes from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with agreement from Montana's Department of Environmental Quality. It sets forth the broad outlines of a plan to remove or treat heavy metals-laden mine tailings scattered during a century of mining and smelting in Butte and Anaconda. It calls for restoration and revegetation of tainted soils along the river. And it includes plans to reduce the potential for erosion of riverbanks to prevent mine wastes from washing into the river in the future.
Did we say liability? Maybe "opportunity" is a better word. Cleaning up the Clark Fork will one day be hailed - by Arco, among others - as a great accomplishment, one that honors an important commitment to the environment and the people it sustains. The costs of this work will pale over time in comparison to the benefits produced - even to the company paying the bills. A cleaner, healthier Clark Fork will contribute to the region's prosperity, and cleaning up after their predecessors will benefit Arco and a mining industry haunted by its past.
Cleaning up the Clark Fork is, of course, only part of the success story unfolding across western Montana. There's a championship golf course in Anaconda today where one of the worst-polluting smelters in America once stood abandoned. There are plans in the works to clean up accumulated mine tailings in Milltown Reservoir, remove Milltown Dam and restore the natural confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. Pollution in Silver Bow Creek and Butte's Berkeley Pit will one day be cleaned up or contained.
It was only a few decades ago that the Clark Fork River sometimes ran red with pollution. A decade or two from now, what once was a river of shame will be the source of the greatest pride. Slowly but surely, we're making great progress.
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