Oficials plan for mine cleanup

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency met with local representatives in the County Commissioners’ Meeting Room Tuesday to discuss the final cleanup of the Iron Mountain Mine Site.

“In most cases it makes the most sense to try to put all of this project under a cooperative mitigation process,” Mineral County Planner Tim Read said.

The Iron Mountain Mine Site and the Flat Creek area may still contain mine tailings and heavy metals that may be hazardous to human health, according to Bob Wintergerst of the Forest Service.

Read said the EPA conducted a cleanup in 2003 that cleaned up “hot spots” of mine tailings. The cleanup included the replacement of Superior High School’s track.

“The concept is we’re going to do it one more time and then after that people won’t have to worry about it,” Read said.

According to Wintergerst, there could still be arsenic, lead-antimony and cadmium in the area and the Forest Service, the DEQ and the EPA are going to team up to make sure the town of Superior and the Iron Mountain Mine Site are clean.

“It’s better to cooperate now than try to work individually. We’re setting the preliminary work in line so we can see if we’re going to cooperate on this thing,” Read said.

Since this project is in its preliminary stages, exact numbers on funding and how the site will be cleaned up are not available.

“Funding responsibility needs to be determined and agreed upon before we proceed,” Read said.

The Iron Mountain Mine Site is owned by the American Smelting and Refining Company, a company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2005 in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The Forest Service has a pending claim against ASAR Co. for $500,000 for the cleanup of Forest Service Property near the Iron Mountain Mine Site. Wintergerst said since ASAR Company has lots of other claims, it is unclear as to whether or not they will get the entire settlement. He said they should know the exact amount of money they will have to conduct cleanup on Forest Service property in a few months.

Victor Ketellapper from the DEQ attended Tuesday’s meeting and said that DEQ would be looking at cleaning up the upper reaches of the Iron Mountain site.

Gwen Christiansen of EPA said they have plans on looking within the town of Superior for heavy metals and asked for Mineral County’s help organizing the cleanup.

“We’re trying to square the mechanics of this and view the internal paperwork so we can say, OK, we all agree here,” Read said.

Christiansen showed the group a map of areas the EPA would like to test. She added that these areas may or may not have any deposits of heavy metals and that people should not be worried.

“We’re going to come back in and look at things more intensely and discover if there are more materials out there that need to be taken care of,” Read said.

According to an article by DEQ, the Iron Mountain Mine was one of the most important properties of the Superior district when it was built. Its existence helped secure Superior’s position as the county seat over Saltese when Mineral County was carved out of Missoula County in 1914.

DEQ says the first claims made in the area were made in 1888 by Frank Hall, D. R. S. Frazier and W. A. Jones. After the three men shipped 10 tons of ore and made $1,400, James K. Pardee purchased the property.

When the Northern Pacific Railroad came through Superior in 1891, the hauling distance to the railroad was decreased to four miles and the mine prospered. The mine was operated by the Iron Mountain Mining Company until it closed in 1897.

Since then the property was purchased by ASAR Company and the company is being held responsible for the cleanup of the area.