Montana News
Butte hits new milestone in Superfund cleanup along Silver Bow Creek
Butte’s Superfund cleanup entered a new phase Tuesday. Contractors for Atlantic Richfield officially started moving dirt to address historical mining contamination along Silver Bow Creek. It’s a small start, but one that officials say marks a new milestone in Butte’s cleanup.
- Duration:
- 1m
- Broadcast on:
- 07 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
With Montana News, I'm Elinor Smith. Butte's Superfund cleanup entered a new phase Tuesday. Contractors for Atlantic Richfield officially started moving dirt to address historical mining contamination along Silverbough Creek. MTPR's John Hooks has more. Construction crews started building an access road to the Grove Gulch project site along the Silverbough Creek corridor in central Butte. It's a small start, but one that officials say marks a new milestone in Butte's cleanup. JP Gallagher is Chief Executive of Butte Silverbough. It's incredibly important for our community. For them to see dirt moving and these projects starting to move forward, so it's a great day for Butte. Cleanup on the Butte Hill has been ongoing for decades, but a large complex of sites along Silverbough Creek have sat idle while officials negotiated and designed a plan. Grove Gulch is the first project in the complex to begin construction work. Cleanup and Butte is designed and paid for by Atlantic Richfield in consultation with state and local environmental officials. All work must be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. Josh Bryson, Project Manager for AR, said this stage represents the culmination of years of work. After, you know, 16 years of negotiations, you know, going on four years of design work, investigation work, it's time, you know, and I think it's kind of a Christian dough to a massive effort by a lot of people. A lot of people have put work into this. AR expects to finish work at Grove Gulch this winter. The company is finalizing designs for the rest of the Silverbough Creek corridor and hopes to start work on those sites next spring. In Butte, I'm John Hooks.