MILLTOWN, Mont. — Workers breached the old Milltown Dam near Missoula on Friday, allowing two famed rivers to begin flowing freely for the first time in a century.
With hundreds of onlookers, a large excavator removed the last bit of dirt just before noon and the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers began to flow through a channel near the concrete dam. The muddy water started as a trickle, and quickly became the size of a large creek.
“For the first time in 100 years, let her run!” Gov. Brian Schweitzer shouted to the workers.
It was a pivotal moment in the costly restoration of an area that anchors the nation’s largest Superfund site. Overall, workers are removing 2.2 million cubic yards of contaminated mud from behind the hydroelectric dam and will eventually dismantle the entire structure. The mud is the result of more than century of mining upstream in Butte and threatens fish and drinking water in the area.
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus reminded the crowd that author Norman Maclean had made this scenic stretch of Montana famous in his novel “A River Runs Through It.”
“We all know Montana is perfect, and today we are making it more perfect,” Baucus said.
The reservoir behind the dam will drop a dozen feet as water flows gradually increase in the channel. It was possible the water would flow solely through the channel as soon as Friday evening — and the dam’s control over the rivers would end.
“This is just the beginning of the breach,” said Russ Forba, Milltown project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
There is more work to be done, and the project is not without a downside.
The Clark Fork River downstream from the dam slowly turned brown as Friday wore on — the first sign that the breach will send thousands of tons of sediment into the river, killing some fish. The sediment is not tainted with toxins like the mud being hauled out from behind the dam.
Forba said the downstream fish would not be killed immediately, but would instead be slowly weakened by the steady flow of sediment.
Biologists said it will take years, but the fishery will recover and the trout will be stronger, allowed to migrate and spawn upstream into traditional habitat in the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers.
For that reason, conservationists, fishing groups and others have largely been behind the project.
Most of the $120 million cleanup is being paid for by Atlantic Richfield Co., which assumed financial responsibility for the Milltown Dam site after a merger with Anaconda Co. So far, workers have removed about a third of the contaminated mud.
Forba says groundwater will be clean again in four to 10 years.
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