| Chapter 1: | The Milltown Cleanup |
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cleanup could no longer be limited to groundwater remediation. They argued that the removal of the dam was necessary to avoid downstream contamination and that river restoration was essential for the bull trout. With these added concerns, the Montana Bureau of Reclamation became fully involved and negotiations resulted in the 2003 report titled “Proposed Plan” (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 8, 2004). In spite of its official title, locals referred to this 2003 version as the “revised plan” because it called for the removal of the dam as well as river restoration.
Comments concerning the 2003 report resulted in further revisions that were made public in 2004 as the EPA's Revised Proposed Plan (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 8, 2004). This 2004 report became known locally as the “re-revised plan.” Throughout this book, we have adopted the colloquial naming conventions. Thus, in general, references to the “original plan” should be understood as references to ARCO's 1996 Draft Feasibility Study, references to the “revised plan” should be understood as references to the EPA's 2003 Proposed Plan, and references to the “re-revised plan” should be understood as references to the EPA's Revised Proposed Plan that, in turn, provided the text for the 2004 Record of Decision (ROD).
In the end, the ROD explained that the re-revised plan included three phases. First, the Clark Fork River would be diverted to a temporary channel that would bypass the reservoir. The diversion would allow for the reservoir to be drained and for the dam to be removed. Second, approximately 2.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment would be removed from the reservoir bottom. These sediments would come from the areas with the finest silts and the worst of the contamination. The excavated sediment would be “de-watered” and hauled upstream via railroad to a hazardous waste repository at Opportunity Ponds, a community near Anaconda. The contaminated water would be treated and released back into the river system. Third, a state-directed river restoration project would (re)naturalize the river's flow and the remaining reservoir bottoms would be stabilized and rehabilitated with a fast-growing riparian vegetation mix. The ROD estimated that it would take five to