Montana site fouled by copper smelter for final cleanup
A subsidiary of London-based oil giant BP has agreed to complete the cleanup of a 300 square mile (776 square kilometer) site in Montana that is contaminated with arsenic and other pollutants from decades of smelting copper, and to repay the US government $48 million. in response costs.
Under an executive order filed Friday in U.S. District Court, the Atlantic Richfield Company has pledged to complete cleanup of residential yards in the towns of Anaconda and Opportunity. It will also clean the soils of the surrounding hills and deal with the piles of contaminated waste remaining on the site.
Arsenic and toxic metals have leaked from a 585-foot-tall chimney at Anaconda for nearly a century, and the pollution has settled into the ground for miles around. It’s the toxic legacy of southwestern Montana’s mining days, when copper ore processed at Anaconda was used to electrify the United States.
“Copper King” Marcus Daly and the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. began smelting Butte’s copper ore in 1884. In 1977, ARCO purchased the Anaconda Co. and inherited vast land polluted by the arsenic, lead, copper, cadmium and zinc from the ore. – processing operations and stack emissions. Later, under federal Superfund law, ARCO became retroactively responsible for this contamination.
Three years after Atlantic Richfield closed the Anaconda smelter in 1980, the US Environmental Protection Agency designated it a Superfund site due to risk to human health and the environment. The main concern was high levels of arsenic in the soil and water, a contaminant that can cause cancer and a range of other illnesses.
The company previously said it spent $470 million to clean up the site under multiple federal orders. The remaining work is estimated at $83.1 million.
People worried about damage to their health had long complained that the US Environmental Protection Agency had botched the cleanup. A tentative agreement to complete the work was first announced more than four years ago.
Montana U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich, born in Anaconda, said the site’s towering chimney is a symbol of both the hard work that built the community and the contamination that has gone on too long.
“Our water will be cleaner, our soils will be purer, our slag will be covered and our future will be brighter thanks to this historic agreement,” Laslovich said in a statement.
The chimney is now a national park that no one can visit due to pollution.
In 2021, Atlantic Richfield quietly settled a civil lawsuit filed in 2008 by 98 people in Opportunity and the community of Crackerville. They wanted the restoration damage to pay for a more thorough cleanup than ARCO provided under federal Superfund law. Details of this agreement were not disclosed.
Friday’s deal must be approved by a federal judge and is also subject to a 30-day public comment period. It was signed by representatives from Atlantic Richfield, the EPA, the US Department of Justice and Montana Governor Greg Gianforte.
John Davis, an attorney who represented ARCO, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the deal, nor did BP representatives.
