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“Clark Fork Revival: Remedy & Restoration at America’s largest

Superfund site ”

Pat Munday, PhD pmunday@mtech.edu

Professor of Science & Technology StudiesTechnical Communication Department

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Superfund Criticism

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pmunday copyright 2007 4Marcosson (1957)

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Historic Postcard

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Montana NRDP

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The Superfund Era• CERCLA (EPA)—from listing to remedy

• CECRA (Mt NRDP) restoration

• Anaconda Smelter-Community Soils (1983 1987-98)• Stream Side Tailings (1983 1995)• Clark Fork River (1985 2004)

• Natural Resource Damage suit filed (1983)• Partial settlement (1999)• Final settlement (2008)

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Montana NRDP

Silver Bow Creek

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Montana NRDP

Silver Bow Creek

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Silver Bow Creek

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Current Challenges

• Implement remedy– Butte Priority Soils– Butte Area One

• Integrate restoration with remedy– NRDP: $28 million for Butte Area One

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Butte Hill

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Butte Area One

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A Crucial Decision(possibilities framed by NRDP)

– Remove Parrot Tailings ($20.2 m)– Remove LAO/Metro Storm Drain Tailings ($5.4 m)– Cap additional mine waste sites ($3.9 m)– Basin Creek Reservoir water treatment plant ($15.8 m)– Big Hole Pump Station diversion dam ($1.6 m)– Big Hole pipeline ($29 m)

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Questions?

Superfund Criticism

Upper Clark Fork River Basin: America’s Largest Superfund Site

Berkeley Pit

Anaconda Smelter

Silver Bow Creek

SBCr Remedy/Restoration: Superfund Success

Current Challenges: Butte Soils; Area One

Crucial Decision: What to do with $28 mill?

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Selected Sources• Cross & Szostak (1995). Technology & American Society.• Davis et al. (2001). “Policy Analysis: An Analysis of Soil Arsenic Records of Decision”

Environmental Science & Technology 35: 2401-2407.• Finn (1998). Tracing the Veins: Of Copper, Culture, and Community from Butte to

Chuquicamata.• MacMillan (2000). Smoke Wars: Anaconda Copper, Montana Air Pollution, and the Courts,

1890-1924.• Marcosson (1957). Anaconda.• Malone, Roeder, and King (1976). Montana: A History of Two Centuries.• Marcus & Segal (1989). Technology in America.• Marx (1964). The Machine in the Garden.• Mitchell 1998). “Writing the Western: New Western History’s Encounter with Landscape.”

Ecumene 5: 7-29.• Mercier 2001). Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City.• Murphy (1997). Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte.• Murphy (2003). Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936-1942.• Mutschler 2002). Wired for Success: The Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railway, 1892-1985.• Pursell (1995). The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology.• Smith & Marx, eds (1994). Does Technology Drive History?• White (1995). The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River.