Weather in Montana can be fickle, and so it can be difficult
sometimes to plan ahead for trips outdoors. This was the case when we had
planned on touring the superfund complex up the Clark Fork. While we didn’t get
to see the Berkley Pit, we did get to concentrate on the down-stream part of the trip, at the Milltown superfund site.
The close proximity to the University made the trip seem even
more relevant in a way, knowing that millions of dollars were being spent to
clean up a part of the river only a short bike ride from our classroom. Knowing
that the cleaning was being done on a river I walk over all the time on my way
to class, maybe even to talk about this very ecological disaster.
First we met up with the park manager, Michael Kustudia at
the parking area to the Milltown overlook. It turns out that he was very
familiar with the area before working here, having grown up just across the
highway in Bonner, and spent time at Milltown Reservoir as a kid. This gave him
a personal appreciation for the way the dam and reservoir were perceived by the
local community.
Michael gave us a history lesson starting with the Salish use
of the area. Before the Clark Fork was dammed up, there were large bull trout that
migrated up the Blackfoot river all the way from Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho.The
confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot was a popular fishing spot for
people living in the area hundreds of years ago.
But then of course, “The richest hill on earth” was
discovered, in the later part of the nineteenth century, forever changing many
parts of western Montana’s landscape including the Clark Fork River. Copper
king William A. Clark who owned much of Butte at that time had a lumber mill in
Bonner. In order to get power for his mill he built the dam in 1908. Shortly
after the completion of the dam, a giant flooding event washed huge amounts of
heavy metals from upstream where they eventually settled behind the dam. This
caused contamination of the local ground water, and eventually leading to the
designation of the sight as a superfund site.
Michael was quick to point out where artificial logs made out
of coconut fibers were installed near the bank of the river to plant willows in
and stop erosion. He also pointed to a group of willows that had come back on
their own, along with some cottonwoods. He said some people had theorized that
the seeds had been under the soil for over one hundred years, waiting for their
chance at life in an entirely different world than that of their ancestors. The
reseeding that was done by park employees was part of what Michael called the
three R’s of superfund sites, remediation, restoration, and redevelopment.
We could
look just upstream at where the cottonwoods were already mature, and get a good
sense of what the area would look like in the future. Although humans have a
knack for disturbing ecosystems, and in the case of the upper Clark Fork, really,
really disturb it. It’s good to see that we can put some of these landscapes
together again.
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