By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Both sides of the issue will spend thousands
attempting to educate the public on cleanup options
As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finishes work on a cleanup plan for Milltown Reservoir, two competing community groups will spend nearly $100,000 each this summer and fall, hoping to win the hearts and minds of area residents and the attention of EPA officials and Gov. Judy Martz.
"It is vital that the community stay engaged in this process," said Tracy Stone-Manning, executive director of the Clark Fork Coalition, which wants the toxic mining wastes that fill Milltown Reservoir to be removed and with them the dam that stopped their migration down the Clark Fork River from Butte and Anaconda.
"Even though the community doesn't have a seat at the negotiating table, it's important that the people at the table realize we aren't going away," she said. "The community has spoken, and it will continue to speak until the right thing is done."
That's why the coalition budgeted $90,000 for its Milltown campaign this year, much of it donated by historian Stephen Ambrose, much of it destined for television, radio, newspaper and billboard advertisements. And why on Saturday the group assembled a "Milltown to Downtown" flotilla of more than 150 boats packed with supporters of the dam-removal, sediment-removal option.
But the competing Bonner Development Group also has just under $100,000 budgeted for "educational development" and earmarked for its "Get the Dam Facts" campaign, said executive director Bruce Hall. The BDG wants Milltown Dam left in place and the sediments as well - the option favored by Atlantic Richfield Co. and NorthWestern Energy, which must pay for the cleanup and maintain the aging dam.
The companies also provide the bulk of the Bonner Development Group's funding.
"We believe there is a silent majority of people who don't embrace the idea that the best thing to do is to jerk the dam and remove the sediments," Hall said. "We feel that we are supporting what the majority of people in our community want. It's not like this is Bonner Development Group and Arco talking here. This is the people of Bonner and Milltown expressing their opinion, and we are supporting that opinion."
Hall will meet with the governor later this month, in hopes that she will tell the EPA that the state of Montana wants the dam and sediments left in place. He'll deliver a stack of save-the-dam petitions signed by 1,000 area residents, enough he believes to convince Martz that he represents the people most affected by the Milltown cleanup.
"If the Clark Fork Coalition had 1,000 people float down the river, is that more powerful than our 1,000 names on a petition?" Hall asked. "I don't think that just because you get a group of people to float down the river that they're representative of the general public. They're representative of a special interest group."
Over the past year, the EPA's Helena office has received 8,312 comments on the Milltown cleanup, a number unheard of for a Superfund site - particularly one that does not yet have a proposed cleanup plan.
"It's pretty impressive, and very unusual," said Diana Hammer, the agency's public involvement manager for Milltown. "I personally have never worked on a project that got this many comments."
As of mid-June, when Hammer last counted, the EPA had 7,801 comments - or 94 percent of the total - calling for removal of Milltown Dam and the contaminated reservoir sediments. The remaining 512 comments, or 6 percent, asked that the dam be modified and left in place along with the sediments.
Public opinion - called "community acceptance" in the Superfund program - is one of nine criteria that EPA officials will consider as they make a decision on the Milltown cleanup. A proposed plan is due out in early October, followed by a formal public comment period and a final decision early in 2003.
"When people comment, we certainly take that into account in our decision," Hammer said. "If people are strongly in favor of a cleanup option, that influences the decision. We want to know what people think."
John Wardell, the head of the EPA's Montana field office, has repeatedly emphasized the importance of community support for the cleanup plan. Particularly important, he said, are resolutions approved by the Missoula County commissioners and the Missoula City Council calling for removal of the dam and sediments.
Also important during the final push to a decision is the state of Montana's preference, as articulated by the governor. Earlier this year, state officials said they'd deliver a recommendation to Wardell by June.
But the governor isn't ready yet to reach a conclusion on the Milltown cleanup and won't be rushed, her natural resources policy adviser said Friday. It's likely Martz won't say anything until September, just before the EPA releases its proposed cleanup plan.
"For the benefit of the public, we don't want to rush into these decisions," said Todd O'Hair, Martz's top natural resources aide. "Quite frankly, between now and the time the special session ends, we're not going to have enough resources in this office, and the governor won't have the time required to focus her energies on Milltown.
"So between now and the time the governor has to make a decision, we'll be in a holding pattern, continuing to hear what the groups have to say."
O'Hair said he has two stacks of postcards on his desk: one from supporters of the Clark Fork Coalition, one from supporters of Bonner Development Group. He hasn't counted them, but they're on his desk nonetheless, a reminder of the controversy and community interest.
"It all has an impact," O'Hair said. "We read the newspapers and follow that stuff. The county commissioners and city council have had a pretty strong statement for a long time now, and area legislators are following the issue closely. It's a process that in a sense leaves no stone unturned."
The governor is paying close attention to work planned at Milltown Reservoir this summer to better estimate the costs - and the short-term environmental impacts - of sediment dredging and dam disassembling, O'Hair said.
Russ Forba, the EPA's Milltown Superfund manager, said officials at his agency's national headquarters also want a better sense of the likely costs, which in the past have been estimated at up to $93 million.
Early in August, NorthWestern Energy will draw down the reservoir, giving researchers access to the contaminated sediments, the worst of which are just above the dam.
"It's scientific work, but it's also work that translates very directly to the cost of doing the project and controlling the impacts," Forba said. "What is the real cost of keeping the dam in place? Or of taking it out? How much sediment would we have to dredge? How much could we remove on dry ground? And what is the quality of water generated during a dredging operation?"
The state's Milltown cleanup manager, Keith Large, has in the past spoken in favor of the dam-removal, sediment-removal option, again because of its permanence.
"John (Wardell) and I have been on the same page about Milltown for quite some time now," he said. "We think a permanent solution involves some kind of sediment removal, and the fish passage questions involve some kind of dam removal." (Milltown Dam blocks the migration, upstream and down, of native and sport fish - including endangered bull trout.)
But the final decision is not his, Large emphasized. "When it comes down to it, I'm not the one."
State agencies don't react or respond to advertising campaigns, he said, but they do respond to letters and questions. And the Bonner Development Group's "Get the Dam Facts" campaign has focused on what it believes are unanswered questions about the cleanup:
Will dam removal cause a "reverse plume effect" that sends arsenic into the river from Milltown's contaminated aquifer? How can anyone propose dam removal before they see a detailed plan for the work? Shouldn't the rest of the Clark Fork River - the 120 miles of streambed above Milltown Reservoir - be cleaned up before discussion begins at Milltown?
This summer's drawdown and tests may help to allay some of the group's fears, Large said, and that may help the governor reach a decision.
"At a technical level, Russ Forba and I are confident that those questions have been answered," Large said. "But we are doing our best to boost the confidence of those who apparently do not believe us, and they are a very small fraction."
"The agencies want to try to answer everybody's concerns as best we can," he added. "But part of it is politics. We are never going to get away from the politics."
And that is why Stone-Manning put so many boats in the water on Saturday. And why Hall will carry so many signatures to the Capitol later this month.
"The governor hasn't made up her mind yet," Stone-Manning said. "She needs to hear that the bulk of Missoula County wants this. And so does the EPA."
Stone-Manning believes the Bonner Development Group's ask-lots-of-questions campaign is "disingenuous" because it is designed not to provide the public with information, but to create doubt.
"The thing I find most unfortunate is that Bonner Development Group knows the answers to those questions," she said. "There are answers, and they know the answers. But it is easier for them to raise questions in people's minds than to discuss the facts.
"What the bulk of the community is asking for is change, and in order for change to happen, people have to be comfortable with it. And the best way to stop change is to raise questions."
But Stone-Manning is confident that community support is solid for dam removal and sediment removal, and will weather the last-minute blitz of BDG advertising. Two years ago, no one even talked about removing Milltown Dam, she said, and now people talk about it - seriously - every day.
"The tide has turned because the community made the tide turn," she said. "The people of Missoula County gave the agency and everybody involved the ability to see the potential. Dam removal, sediment removal went from a big wacky, scary idea to a pragmatic, realistic one. The community did that, and we're not done."