Barbara Evans watched wide-eyed from her vantage on a low rise above the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers, remembering the decades of work that led to Friday's breaching of Milltown Dam.
“This is really a historic occasion,” she said. “You can go your whole lifetime without seeing something this monumental.”
Watch a video history of the Milltown DamEvans, recently retired after 28 years as a Missoula County commissioner, was among the strongest voices calling first for the replacement of Milltown's arsenic-polluted drinking water, then the removal of Milltown Reservoir's contaminated sediments, and finally for the dam's dismantling.
She was among a hundred or so federal, state and local dignitaries who gathered to mark the moment - at high noon Friday - when the combined waters of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork 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, whereupon a backhoe fitted with a long boom and stick lifted the last plug of dirt separating the upstream and downstream currents. The river knew just what to do, cascading through the pilot channel cleared earlier in the day.
“What better gift can you give a river than to set it free?” said Peter Nielsen, environmental health supervisor at Missoula's City-County Health Department and a founder of the river-watchdog Clark Fork Coalition.
“I was just thinking this morning about what hard-working rivers these have been for us,” he said. “There was a time when the Blackfoot was choked with logs floating to the mill, and the Clark Fork was choked with mine and smelter wastes piled alongside and pushed into the water.
“Now they are ready to do a new job for us, carrying people and fish upriver and down.”
Nielsen was reminded, too, of the long years of study, debate, science and politicking that led to the dam's breaching. “A lot of us didn't give ourselves much of a chance - maybe 50-50 - when this whole thing started,” he said. “If other communities face similar circumstances in the future, I would tell them to aim high because you might just reach the mark, or come close.”
Ultimately, he said, a combination of factors led to the sediment-removal, dam-removal decision: the continuing spread of arsenic in Milltown's drinking water, concerns about the dam's safety, the decline of bull trout populations, the sale of Milltown Dam to NorthWestern Energy, and the public outcry for a complete and lasting cleanup.
The last straw, in Nielsen's estimation, was the mile-long ice jam that broke loose on the Blackfoot River in February 1996 and came within a mile of careening into the dam, prompting both an emergency drawdown of Milltown Reservoir and a closer inspection of the dam's structural integrity.
The drawdown and its release of metals-loaded reservoir sediments delivered a lethal blow to nearly all the fish in the Clark Fork River downstream of Milltown. Further scrutiny of the rock-and-timber crib dam delivered a “high hazard” designation by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Work in recent months to dismantle the powerhouse - which constituted a third of the dam - proved the safety concerns valid, Nielsen said. “There was not a speck of rebar in the headwall of the powerhouse. The bricks themselves were crumbling.
“There's no question, this was the right thing to do.”
Time and again came the endorsement from those who gathered to celebrate Friday's history-making movement of soil and water.
“Today, we give this river back to the fish,” said Steve Lozar, tribal secretary for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “This is a place of healing.”
These waters provided sustenance for tribal people for 14,000 years, Lozar said. Its place names are some of the oldest words in the Salish language. And those words speak to a day before mines or smelters or polluted rivers.
Silver Bow Creek, for example, is known to the Salish people as “Catch a Fish by Shooting an Arrow into the Water” - because its waters were so clear and its fish so abundant. Perhaps the Clark Fork River will be that shiny and full of fish one day, Lozar said.
Trout never stopped trying to migrate upstream since that January night in 1908 when Milltown Dam's gates were lowered and water started to rise in its reservoir. A day later, the waters of the Clark Fork had backed up a distance of 1 1/2 miles, inundating the farmland once tilled by settler John McCormick.
“I wonder what the fish will think when they come upstream this year?” Nielsen said.
And not just this year, but for thousands of years to come, said former state Sen. Dale Mahlum, who lobbied then-Gov. Judy Martz to condone the dam's removal - a critical “aye” vote - in January 2003.
“These people - people like Barbara Evans and Peter Nielsen - were thinking about what was going to happen here in 1,500 years,” he said. “I was half-convinced the dam shouldn't go before I sat down and heard what they said. Pretty soon, I knew it was the right thing to do.”
Mahlum, in turn, was successful in persuading the governor, who used her State of the State address to make the announcement: “That dam has to go.”
Nielsen also credited John Wardell, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Montana office, for his steadfast support of the Milltown cleanup. “This wouldn't have happened without John Wardell planting his feet and saying, ‘This is going to happen.' ”
Milltown Reservoir's cleanup carried the EPA into unfamiliar territory, Wardell and Milltown project manager Russ Forba said just before Friday's breaching. Wardell knows of no other Superfund cleanup that required not only sediment removal (2.2 million cubic yards from the bottom of Milltown Reservoir), but also the dismantling of a dam.
Unusual as well, Forba said, is the simultaneous remediation of Milltown's sediment and groundwater pollution and restoration of the rivers' confluence. “This is a unique project,” he said. “It has been a very good team effort.”
Both Forba and Wardell asked for patience as the cleanup and restoration continues over the coming years.
“Obviously, today is one of the very big steps in the process,” Wardell said. “But there are still other really big steps to complete the remediation, restoration and redevelopment.
“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 all of Montana really, can be proud of.”
“I feel privileged to have been part of this,” said Nielsen. “This isn't an everyday sort of achievement.”
“Everybody in this whole state should be proud,” added Evans. “I am just thrilled.”
Reach editor Sherry Devlin at (406) 523-5250 or by e-mail at sdevlin@missoulian.com
Breach scene from the bluff: dogs, kids and picnics
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian
MILLTOWN DAM - There was a bit of a tailgate atmosphere here Friday morning, but as spectator sports go, dam breaching leaves something to be desired.
There were picnic lunches, a guy with a small grill, mountain bikers, kids scrambling over rocks, dogs in - what else! - bandannas, and old folks tiptoeing through the snow.
“Can you see what they're doing down there?” one man asked his wife. “I can't see a dang thing.”
Even if the man could have bulled his way to the front lines on the windy bluff above Milltown Dam, there wasn't much to see.
Far below, on the other side of the river, a yellow backhoe took a dozen or so buckets of dirt out of a coffer dam and the co-mingled waters of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers flowed undammed.
That moment of free flow brought some applause and mild whooping from the crowd of about 750, but most people couldn't see what had happened anyway.
The party atmosphere was cool, though, and the significance of the moment wasn't lost.
“It's only going to happen once,” Joe Bauch told his sons, Jacob and Owen, who happily scrambled up and down the scree to see what all the fuss was about.
“We've been coming down here for a while, watching the progress,” Bauch said. “It's a great moment for Missoula, and Missoula is a town that really gets behind this sort of thing.”
That's a fact. Cars lined the Deer Creek Road for over a mile on Friday, as folks carpooled up the hill, then slogged through the snow to the overlook above the long-dammed Clark Fork River.
“It's a remarkable day,” said Mayor John Engen, who opted to spend the moment on the hill rather than down below with other politicians and dignitaries. “To see all the work that's gone on, it's just heartening to see it all come to fruition. I wasn't sure we'd ever see this day.”
Judy and George Bowman came up for exactly that reason - to see something good happen.
“This is a great thing because something is going back to its natural state,” Judy Bowman said. “It's usually going the other way, so this is special.”
As everyone milled about on the bluff, a young girl named Ariel walked up to a reporter and asked a pretty good question.
“Mister, what are we doing here?” she said.
An explanation that included a bit of history and some drama about a dam coming down made her happy enough to go back to playing with her friends.
Someday, though, she'll be able to say she was there when the rivers once again ran free.
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com.
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