Distinctly Montana Magazine

w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m 89 SUPERFUND SITES AND THE COMPLICATED LEGACY OF MINING by ZUZU FEDER MINING HAS SHAPED THE MONTANA WE KNOW AND LOVE TODAY. If you have visited her ghost towns, been to a St. Patrick's Day in Butte, Mon- tana, or seen the Anaconda smelter towering over the landscape from the highway, then you know Montana would not be what it is now without the mining industry. Mining quite literally put Mon- tana on the map. Yet, it is impossible to talk about Montana's mining history without acknowledging that many of the industry's legacies have left painful, dark marks on the Montana land and Montanans. The Berkeley Pit comes first to mind—Butte's infa- mous and oddly beautiful tourist site, featuring silent lookout points across a watery expanse of heavy metal-laden acidic water so deadly a fleet of warning cannons were installed to prevent birds from landing and dying on the placid surface of one of the most toxic sites in the nation. Montana is home to a whopping 17 federal Super- fund Sites. Superfund, or Comprehensive Environ- mental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), was established in 1980 to allow the En- vironmental Protection Agency to clean up contam- inated, toxic sites around the United States, while forcing responsible parties to assume the burden of the cleanup or reimburse the federal government for the cost; in cases where no responsible party remains, Superfund covers the cost of cleanup. In Montana, the mining industry has certainly left behind a trail of contamination and damage. The Berkeley Pit, the Libby asbestos site, Milltown Reservoir on the Clark Fork River, East Helena, and more areas of mining contamination dot the Superfund Site map.

• Cover