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< SeptOct 2001
	ECO
Montana's Milltown Mess

Five miles east of Missoula, Montana, a lone canoeist chucks rapallas in the reservoir above Milltown Dam, at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. The canoeist is floating on 6.6 million cubic feet of toxic mine tailings, and is most likely fishing for introduced northern pike. Below the dam an estimated 35,000 fish, many of which are the endangered bull trout, bang their heads on the spillway as they try to swim upstream to spawn. The dam itself is a cracked hydroelectric relic built in 1907. If the dam and sediments were removed and replaced by a riverside and whitewater park--as Missoula County has proposed--this area would be a paddler's wet dream. Right now, though, it's a nightmare.

In 1982, after dangerously high levels of arsenic were found in the town of Milltown's drinking water, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the reservoir and upstream 160 miles of the Clark Fork river a Superfund site. It is now our country's largest. The town has found an alternate well to provide its water, but the reservoir continues to leach arsenic and other toxic heavy metals into the underlying aquifer. Currently the reservoir stores 2,100 tons of arsenic, 19,000 tons of zinc, 143,000 tons of iron, 13,100 tons of copper and 9,200 tons of manganese, all from the mines once located at the river's headwaters in Butte, Montana.

By late 2001, the EPA will make a decision on how it wants BP-AMACO, which now owns the mines that released the contaminants, to clean up the mess. A few months after the EPA makes their decision, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees the dam and which recently classified it as a Significant Hazard Dam, will decide whether to relicense or decommission it. And the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is also poised to make a decision within a year as to how they plan to recover the bull trout population in the area.

Most folks, including all of the Missoula County Commissioners, want the sediments and dam removed. A whitewater and riverside park, proposed by the county commissioners and designed by hydraulic engineer Gary Lacy, a two-time national team downriver kayaker, would help restore river functions. Lacy also designed whitewater parks on the Arkansas River in Salida, Colorado, and on the Kern in California.

"Barring sediment removal, this is not that hard to do," Lacy says. "We want to get the continuity back to the river for environmental and safety reasons." Lacy's plan is to remove a section of the dam, returning natural flow to the river. The base of the dam would be left in place creating a "monster rodeo wave," he says. Upstream on both rivers, boulders would create whitewater features and would also regrade the rivers and provide habitat for the bull trout and other fish. The old hydroelectric plant would be left intact to be used as a museum or education center. The plan also calls for building a riverside park and restoring the natural wetlands at the confluence.

Locals who otherwise support the proposal are concerned that no formal agreement exists between the EPA, FERC, and the USFWS to work together, which could make overall approval of the project difficult. Also of local concern, especially to Milltown citizens, is the loss of tax money generated by the dam, which is used in part to fund two area high schools. But Pet Nielsen, environmental health supervisor for the Missoula County Health Dept., says that a desirable recreation area--as opposed to a toxic dump--combined with the approved subdivision just downstream from the park would increase the community's income from property taxes.

"The economic results from the Two Rivers Project," Nielsen says, "would more than replace what's lost in taxes from the dam." Some hydrogeologists caution removal. The sediments are thick in the reservoir and on the upstream floodplain, and the now-defunct mines are still washing the toxic metals into the river and will continue to do so indefinitely; an attempt at removal could extend the problem farther downstream. Digging in the reservoir and on the flood plains may activate sediments that are now lying inert, making them even more toxic and dangerous. Because of the volume and risk factor, even if removal were approved tomorrow and work began the next day, it would likely take 10-20 years to safely extract and deposit the sediments. "We don't even know if we can do this," says hydrogeology masters student Adam Johnson.

If the EPA doesn't order BP-AMACO to remove the dam and sediments, it may require the company to extend the dam several feet higher and farther across the wetland area, says EPA spokeswoman Diana Hammer. This would help keep sediments that are scoured by occasional ice drifts or stirred up by floods from spilling over the dam, which happened in 1996, killing 70 percent of the juvenile rainbow trout and 86 percent of the juvenile brown trout downstream from the dam.

Retrofitting the dam may solve the EPA's and FERC's short-term problems, but it won't do anything for the bull trout, the local tax base, or the paddlers wanting for the next big thing. More importantly, it does nothing to solve the ongoing toxicity problem. The decision isn't a popularity vote, though. The cost of retrofitting the dam to better handle sediments is estimated to be $20 million, about the same as removing the dam. But the cost of removing it and the sediments is tenfold, the difference being the cost to safely remove the sediments. This could be inhibiting, even to the multi-national BP-AMACO. And Montana Power wants to keep the dam, which they own, because they receive hefty subsidies to operate the otherwise non-cost effective dam.

For the new corporate-centric administrations in Washington, D.C., and Helena, the capital of Montana, removal is a contentious political issue. The county commissioners, Missoula Whitewater Association and other regional groups have agreed to work with BP-AMACO if the EPA requires them to remove the dam and sediments to help them find additional funding for the project.

"Building a whitewater park is a tiny part of a massive project that will restore some functions to a thoroughly abused river," says Kevin Colburn, local boater and the Southeast regional director of American Whitewater.

"It is only one icing flower on a huge get-well-soon cake that the project would present to the river."