Complex Pact Clears Way for Montana’s Milltown Dam Removal To Begin in 2006
Thanks to an agreement signed earlier this month, the $100-million demolition of a century-old timber-crib dam near Missoula, Mont., is expected to begin late next year. The hydroelectric Milltown Dam, located at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers, has blocked passage of endangered bull trout from the rivers� upper reaches, while locking in more than 2.5 million cu yd of sediment that has washed downstream from copper mining activities 100 miles away in Butte and Anaconda. The dam is part of a 120-mile-long Superfund site along the Clark Fork.
In the early 1980s health officials discovered a spreading plume of arsenic, originating from the reservoir behind the dam, migrating into the area�s ground water and poisoning drinking wells. In 1996, a large ice floe on the Blackfoot River scoured into the sediment, sending the toxic metals downstream and killing fish. In January 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency, with support from the state, agreed to remove the dam (ENR 2/3/03 p. 14).