UBMC tour showcases history, cleanup progress

Last Wednesday, about twenty people boarded vans at Hooper Park for a three-hour tour of the Upper Blackfoot Mining Complex for a look at progress that has been made since remediation and restoration work began there in 2014.

Cleanup of the UBMC resumed this year on July 23, nearly a full year after efforts were suspended due to a debate among the partner agencies – the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program and the U.S. Forest Service - on how to best meet the cleanup goals with the money that remained of the $39 million settlement with ASARCO that has been funding the work there

Last week's public tour, the first in nearly 16 months, was coordinated by the Blackfoot Challenge and was actually the third tour scheduled for this year. The first two, planned for Aug. 18 and Sept. 15, were cancelled due to a lack interest.

Dave Bowers, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality UBMC Project Manager led the tour and provided the tour participants with a considerable amount of information on both the history of the area and on some of the challenges and successes of the operation to date.

The tour began at what Bowers refers as "Ground Zero" for the entire UBMC cleanup: the Mike Horse Creek drainage. Standing almost directly above the Mike Horse Mine's Little Nell vein in the upper end of the drainage, he explained that 95 percent of the ore that came out of the UBMC came from that mine.

"This is where all of the ore extraction operation was taking place," he said.

The mine reached its peak during World War II, extracting zinc and lead for the war effort.

Bowers, whose involvement with the UBMC dates to 2002, also walked the group through the history of site in the 1990's and early 2000's, after ASARCO cut a deal with the state to voluntarily cleanup the area to stave off having the site listed as a Superfund site, with ARCO and ASARCO listed as the responsible parties.

Although they did some good work and 'purtied the area up real good,' Bowers said they fell short at almost every turn.

From water contaminated with aluminum and zinc - unlike anywhere else in the district, to the natural geochemistry of the area, to cleanup efforts by ASARCO that missed the mark, Bowers showed that the Mike Horse drainage has been presented a complex, multi-layered puzzle.

An ASARCO request around 2000 for temporary water quality standards brought the operation under the regulatory umbrella of the state. Ultimately, the state filed a complaint against ASARCO, which put them at the front of the line for bankruptcy settlement funds in 2008.

"That brought in the $39 million settlement. That's a considerable amount of money," Bowers said. "Was it enough? I don't think it was, but we've done some incredible things with what we have."

The settlement relied on an Engineering Evaluation/Cost Analysis developed by ASARCO and the US Forest Service, which joined the state in the settlement. The EE/CA estimated a total of 450,000 to 500,000 cubic yards of mine waste, give or take 30 percent, needed to be moved.

More than 400,000 cubic yards of contaminated mine tailings were hauled out during the removal of the Mike Horse dam and impoundment in upper Bear Trap drainage alone.

"We're now up over 800,000 yards, which is $6.4 million more, as far as removals, than what was negotiated for," Bowers said. "When we're done, we're gonna be close to a million yards."

Although Bowers said the cost of removals will ultimately be $8-9 million more than originally expected, he said they expect complete work to the EE/CA boundary next year with the money that remains.

The tour left participants impressed with the amount of work that has been done. Tony Hicks of Ovando, who came with his wife Janice said things look significantly different than they did the first time they came out.

"Down here at the bottom they were doing all that excavation when we came here the first time, and I cannot believe the amount of stuff they hauled out of there," he said.

The tour also included some discussion of the Water Treatment Plan, which has been treating substantially more water than expected following the earthquake in July, 2017. Bowers said plans are moving forward on a new study on how they can expand and optimize treatment of the water.

Bowers, who was part of the team that looked at the plant when it was built by ASARCO in 2009, said they believed it was undersized at the time.

"Our consultant recommended in the neighborhood of 310 gallons per minute, I believe," he said. "They sized it up in an emergency situation to about 150, 160. With the earthquake, we're rocking and rolling at about 190, 200 this year."

Bowers credited plant manager Blaine Cox and his years of experience in water treatment for keeping things operating above capacity. "He's done an incredible job up here."

Saturday's Tour ended with a stop at the UBMC repository just off Highway 279. Now nearly full, Bowers said they expect to begin the process of permanently capping and closing it this year. He said they should permanently close it in 2020, once the last of the west down to the EE/CA boundary has been removed.

Although the EE/CA boundary is the limit of the removals required by the settlement, it leave the future of nearly 45,000 cubic yards of mine waste in the Upper Marsh in question.

The DEQ's proposed plan, released in 2015, discussed alternatives for dealing with contamination in the 63-acre Upper Marsh. They ranged from monitored natural recovery to full removal of the sediments, which are contaminated by lead, zinc and cadmium.

Beaver ponds are currently helping to keep contamination immobile and out of the water, but according to analysis in the proposed plan, that could change if beaver activity changes.

Any work in the marsh would require an action memorandum from the U.S. Forest Service, which has not been initiated.

At the endof the day, Briana McKay, a junior in the geoscience program at UM, found the tour particularly insightful.

"This was my first experience looking at any kind of a mining restoration project. I just wanted to see what all went into it; all the different complexities that go into it, the different variables that are being monitored and what the final goals and some of the costs are," she said, adding she's interested in doing an internship or possibly her senior thesis on the cleanup project.

"Mining is something we can't get around," she said. "We'll always need to mine minerals, but there's a way to do it, a right way to do it. I feel like we're called to be good stewards of this planet, so it matters.