Cascade County Commissioners have unanimously voted to accept a $51,424 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to support ongoing work at the former Anaconda Mining Company smelter and refinery site in the Black Eagle area.

The site has three operational units:

OU-1 includes the Art Higgins Memorial Park and the Black Eagle neighborhoods west of the former ACM property.

OU-2 is the former ACM site and stack site, the Anaconda Golf Course, and land along the river owned by Montana State, Northwestern Energy, and Cascade County.

OU-3 is the Missouri River from the 15th Street Bridge downstream to Fort Benton.

Superfund cleanup work begins in Black Eagle this month

Funding will support ongoing remediation efforts at the Superfund site, including coordinating remediation planning for OU-1 with respect to public use of the rail corridor, commenting on remediation studies for OU-2 with respect to public use, working with the contractor to expedite remediation activities in accordance with EPA regulations, technical assistance, and more.

The county entered into a contract with Water and Environmental Technologies (WET) in 2017 to help develop land use plans for the site.

The EPA grant represents a continuation of the county’s work with WET, but with some minor changes due to EPA procedures and timelines, according to Sandy Johnson, the county’s Superfund manager who is retiring this year.

The redevelopment of OU-2 is expected to be several years away, Johnson said, but in the new cooperative agreement, the county is focused on accelerating the redevelopment and redevelopment of county parcels in the area and would like to begin implementing the land use plan developed by WET several years ago.

Discussions about possible location of the Children’s Museum in the Schwarzer Adler (2023) continue

She said they are working with the authorities involved to determine if this can be done through administrative channels rather than waiting for the formal decision record to be published.

The property the county is most interested in reselling is located beneath the Stray Moose building, which is being considered as the future site of the Montana Children’s Museum. County officials said, however, that museum officials have been silent on the project for some time.

Johnson said it is not known what plans the Atlantic Richfield Company has for its property while the redevelopment investigation continues.

Redevelopment work in OU-1, the Black Eagle residential area, began in May.

ARCO has contracted with Woodward and Curran, Inc. to perform the work required by EPA.

As of July 31, 23 years of renovation had taken place, with another five years of work in progress.

Sandy Johnson, the county’s Superfund coordinator, told the county health department in December that the process would involve removing contaminated soil from about 175 residential areas.

Mark Brooke, the Black Eagle community’s engineering consultant hired through a separate EPA grant, said in an email update to Black Eagle residents that crews would work as long as the weather holds this year and would resume after next year’s spring thaw.

ARCO recognized the need for additional soil coverage for the project and collected samples from a new soil source, called the Sun River Pit, in addition to the already permitted Shumaker reserve.

Sun River pit soils met project specifications and had average concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc that were below current acceptance criteria for these metals, Brooke wrote.

The EPA approved the use of the Sun River mine bottoms in the Black Eagle project on August 2, Brooke wrote.

Public comment requested on the redevelopment plan for part of the former smelting works site (2023)

Last fall, a federal judge signed the settlement agreement for the redevelopment of Unit 1 of the former smelter site. OU1 is a largely residential area in Black Eagle.

Plans to redevelop the former smelting site in Black Eagle have been in the works for years, and the authorities have been waiting for the settlement decision for some time.

County and authorities discuss details of possible use of Black Eagle site for a children’s museum (2023)

The former smelting and refining facility, known as the Great Falls Refinery, operated for nearly 80 years near the unincorporated community of Black Eagle. The smelting and refinery’s operations produced large amounts of slag, tailings, fly ash and other smelting and refining wastes containing lead, arsenic and other metals that contaminated soil, groundwater and surface water resources at the site, according to the EPA.

The EPA has placed the site on the Superfund program list. National Priority List in March 2011.

The settlement requires Atlantic Richfield to perform remediation work on the common lands of one of the site’s three operational units (OU1) at an estimated cost of $2,286,000 and to pay $464,475.12 for response costs incurred by EPA through September 30, 2022.

District approves rezoning of Black Eagle site as location for future children’s museum (2023)

The settlement is the last necessary process for EPA before ARCO can begin cleanup, which involves developing remediation plans for each property and then conducting cleanup, Johnson told The Electric last year.

District sets preferred land use plan for former smelting works site (2021)

Years ago, remediation work was done in the Copper Creek neighborhood behind Moose Lodge, Johnson said, and some soil was removed a few years ago when the water and sewer district replaced pipes above Art Higgins Memorial Park in Black Eagle.

There is currently discussion about the Children’s Museum of Montana moving to the Stray Moose building, which is privately owned but on county-owned land, located in OU2.

In 2020, Cascade County Commissioners selected their preferred design to redevelop the OU1 site.

A 2019 county press release stated: “Design ideas can assist with the cleanup strategies outlined in the EPA’s management plan and could even help fund park improvements through cleanup efforts,” a county press release said.

County selects preferred design option for Art Higgins Memorial Park (2020)

One of the goals of developing plans for future development and land use is to provide suggestions to the EPA for its redevelopment plan and, ideally, to reduce costs if some development ideas can be implemented through the redevelopment process.

The EPA announced the agreement in late August 2023 and it was filed in federal court in Great Falls.

Under Montana state law, the Department of Environmental Quality is separately required to submit the proposed settlement for public comment, which ran concurrently with the federal public comment period.

For information on operational units, past time-sensitive cleanup activities, and site history, visit the EPA’s Superfund sites page.