| Chapter 1: | The Milltown Cleanup |
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even as pressure was put on the federal authorities to provide a remedy other than channelizing the river.
The early spring of 1996 added a new concern to the Milltown situation (see figure 7). A combination of unusual weather conditions allowed for the formation of huge ice floes on both the Blackfoot and the Clark Fork Rivers. One ice floe on the Blackfoot was larger than any previously recorded. Observers said that it was well over 10 feet in height and 40 feet in width. A riverside home was knocked from its foundation, roads were closed, and evacuations were ordered. With large ice floes on both the Blackfoot and the Clark Fork, authorities feared a breach of the dam. In an effort to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure of the dam, the flood gates were opened and a surge of reservoir water was let loose, thereby grounding the ice where it could not put pressure on the dam. Within days, reports of major fish kills downstream circulated among the people of Milltown, Bonner, and Missoula. County reports would later claim that the “ice jams in 1996 scoured copper from the reservoir, exceeding water quality standards dramatically and causing 56% to 86% reductions in trout populations downstream” (Missoula County Water Quality District, 2005b). The ice floe incident set off a new round of questions: was the dam itself so unstable that it had to be removed? Was Missoula, the next downstream community, courting large-scale disaster if the dam was left in place? As compared to Milltown, the political giant of Missoula was now able to make demands. Given that the oldest sections of the dam were simply constructed of timber and rock, the city of Missoula was alarmed by the possibility of a failure (Nielsen, 2001). If catastrophic failure was a threat, dam removal was becoming a necessary element of the Milltown project and the project plans had to be revised.
Added to these revisions were concerns regarding native fish species. In 1998 the bull trout, which had long been blocked from the upper reaches of the Clark Fork River and from the entirety of the Blackfoot River, was listed as a “threatened” species (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 2002). The Clark Fork Coalition and the county of Missoula joined forces in pressuring state authorities to recognize that the Milltown