The Clark Fork’s plight has also garnered interest from Montana lawmakers, who have weighed in on the Smurfit-Stone remediation project so the state can have a larger, more coordinated voice when it comes to cleanup efforts. Ronald also noted that it’s unsafe to eat fish caught in a nearly 150-mile stretch of the Clark Fork downstream of its confluence with the Bitterroot due to toxins that accumulate in their tissues, many of which are believed to stem from the pulp mill site. We want them to put their foot on the gas and move this process forward.” “They’ve indicated they might be putting their foot on the gas. “We want to make sure the EPA really hears from the community,” Ronald added. In that sense, the Smurfit site is a ticking time bomb, and really, the only way to defuse it is to clean it up,” she said. “If the berm were to fail during the next flood-level event, these toxins would wash downstream. Lisa Ronald, western Montana associate conservation director with American Rivers, said the EPA has shown some interest in escalating its interest in site remediation - it recently committed to stepping up its sampling efforts - but would like the agency to demonstrate more urgency. “It’s just pulsing with nature and it’s a place of community connection and civic pride, so to be stripped of that by a four-mile swath of languishing industrial wasteland is just a shame,” Knudsen said. EPA has yet to tackle the problem despite compelling evidence that cleanup should start immediately.” Clark Fork Coalition Executive Director Karen Knudsen She notes that the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, upstream of the Smurfit-Stone site, has a similar legacy of industrial pollution, but the removal of the Milltown Dam and remediation of the site has helped Missoula become “River City,” with a vibrant recreational economy. 5 on a list of 10 - will spotlight both the contamination risk and what western Montana communities have to gain by working to remediate the site. Knudsen said she’s hoping the Clark Fork’s inclusion on American Rivers’ endangered list - it’s No. We think our river and our communities can’t wait.” What else you need to know: EPA has yet to tackle the problem despite compelling evidence that cleanup should start immediately. “Every spring since the mill shut down in 2010, we’ve had to keep our fingers crossed that nature will take it easy with spring run-off and won’t throw too much at these flimsy berms,” Clark Fork Coalition Executive Director Karen Knudsen told Montana Free Press. The Clark Fork Coalition, which started in the mid-1980s amid concerns associated with the pulp mill, says the pairing of topography and carcinogenic chemicals result in a “catastrophe waiting to happen.” Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the contaminated material and remove the nearly four miles of unengineered berms holding back the river from its historic flood plain. More specifically, it would like the U.S. Those landfills, wastewater ponds and sludge heaps are dangerously close to western Montana’s largest-volume river and leach toxins into the groundwater, according to environmental nonprofit Clark Fork Coalition, which has long called for federal intervention. The pulp mill operated northwest of Missoula for more than 50 years before Smurfit-Stone declared bankruptcy in 2010 and walked away from the sprawling site, which includes hundreds of acres of unlined ponds that were used to store wastewater - some of it untreated - as well as landfills and sludge ponds. Regis and Thompson Falls on its journey to Lake Pend Oreille in the panhandle of Idaho. The river is the Clark Fork, which flows from the Continental Divide before running through Missoula, Alberton, St. National environmental nonprofit American Rivers has included an iconic western Montana river in its 2023 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers, citing its proximity to the site of a former 1,000-acre pulp mill still rife with contaminants. Whoops! There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription.
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