Watch the breaching of Milltown DamAt high noon Friday, the combined waters of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers flowed freely for the first time in a century, cutting their way through clean fill to find a new, natural channel.
“Let ’er run,” came the command from Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who joined a large group of Envirocon employees and local, state and federal officials assembled on a low rise above the rivers’ confluence.
The water will do the rest of the work, said Matt Fein, who heads the Milltown Reservoir Superfund project for cleanup contractor Envirocon.
Over the afternoon and evening hours Friday, the river will cut through 18 feet of fill dirt - clean sediment, not the contaminated soils that earned Milltown its Superfund designation - and recapture the river channel, Fein said.
“This is really a historic occasion,” said former Missoula County Commissioner Barbara Evans, who played a key role in the decision to remove Milltown’s dam and 2.2 million cubic yards of metals-contaminated sediments in its reservoir.
“You can go your whole lifetime without seeing something this monumental,” Evans said. “I am just thrilled.”
Milltown Dam was completed in January 1908 as a hydroelectric plant to power Milltown, its sawmills and an electric streetcar that ran from Missoula seven miles upriver to Bonner. Its reservoir filled with sediments two years later, in May and June, when a flood washed millions of cubic yards of mine and smelter tailings down the Clark Fork River from Butte and Anaconda.
Friday’s breaching of the dam is one part of the $100 million cleanup of Milltown Reservoir - and of the $500 million cleanup of the Upper Clark Fork River.
Hundreds of local residents watched the water make its way, tentatively at first, then in robust waves, through the fill and down the river - a free-flowing Clark Fork. The public was given access to a high bluff on the south side of the river, and they took full advantage, gathering before 10 a.m. to wait and watch and cheer on the workers down below.
On the north side, U.S. Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester joined Schweitzer, the Missoula County commissioners, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in celebrating the day.
“Today we are turning the corner,” said Baucus. “We in Montana are taking advantage of this Western resource that is our rivers.”
John Wardell, head of the EPA’s Montana office, urged all those who live and work along the Clark Fork to be patient in the weeks, months and even years to come.
“Obviously, today is one of the very big steps in the process,” he said. “But there are still other really big steps to complete the remediation, restoration and redevelopment of Milltown Reservoir and the rivers’ confluence.
“If we can do those tasks as well as we’ve done everything leading up to today, we will have a really high-quality end product that folks in Missoula and Montana can be proud of.”
“Everybody should be very proud,” added Evans, who retired last year after decades of service as a Missoula County commissioner. “It’s amazing.”
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