Excavation crews begin work on Flat Creek project
Darin Haskins, owner of Haskin’s Excavation, stands next to a piece of equipment they will be using in the Flat Creek watershed. Trout Unlimited and the USFS hired Haskin’s Excavation to remove up to 6 feet of toxic mine tailings in a 1.6-mile stretch of the creek bed. (Photo provided)
Haskins Excavation has been working in the Flat Creek watershed since last fall removing toxic soil from the mining operations of years ago. Trout Unlimited and the USFS along with other grants and partnerships are funding this section of the cleanup.
Paul Parsons is the Middle Clark Fork Program Manager for Trout Unlimited and is deeply involved in the 1.6-mile stretch of the Flat Creek drainage clean up that is happening now. Haskins Excavation has several pieces of equipment removing up to 6 feet of contaminated soil and hauling it to a repository farther up the creek that they developed last fall.
If you haven’t driven up Flat Creek outside of Superior recently, you’re in for a surprise.
The creek bottom has been opened up where sunlight has probably never penetrated the soil before. Not far past the cemetery road turnoff, and for the next 1.6 miles, Haskins Excavation spent most of the winter remodeling Mother Nature as Trout Unlimited has stepped in to assist in the drainage cleanup.
In 2009 when the Flat Creek watershed and town of Superior made the Superfund list with the owner, mining company ASARCO, the EPA oversaw the cleanup of town and portions of the watershed, but as in cases like these, money ran out before the project was completed. Now, Trout Unlimited is working with the Forest Service to finish the job.
It’s a $1.3 million project that is getting off the ground two years later than anticipated and will cost $500,000 more than initial projections, as a result of potential liability hurdles that delayed the start date.
“Trout Unlimited is a national organization and many think we’re just a bunch of fly-fishing enthusiasts protecting trout habitat,” said Paul Parson, Middle Clark Fork Program Manager for TU. “And the truth is that most of us are, yet the TU mission is ‘To bring together diverse interests to care for and recover rivers and streams so our children can experience the joy of wild and native trout and salmon.’ That means that we are involved in assisting where possible the cleanup of streams and rivers that have been polluted, usually by old mining claims, so that the water sources return to the clean cold water that are tributaries into larger bodies of water. And in this case, Flat Creek which flows into the Clark Fork River.
The project design was completed in 2022 and was competitively bid for construction last fall. Haskins Excavation was selected as the contractor. Repository cell construction at the Wood Gulch site was completed last December. Through the winter, Haskins Excavating cleared the contaminated floodplain corridor vegetation with merchantable timber being sold to a local mill.
Currently, the Forest Service is providing approximately $1,200,000 to Trout Unlimited through partnership agreements. Through a grant program, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation is providing approximately $250,000 through a partnership with the Mineral County Conservation District and TU. Lots of moving parts to make this happen but all the agencies are familiar with the needed navigation and are working together very well.
This is just the latest in a series of projects Haskins has done with Trout Unlimited, including a project to install log jams on Sheep Creek, a Grand Ronde tributary in Oregon.
His work restoring Cedar Creek, a Clark Fork tributary, merited a Forest Service award and a trip to Washington, D.C.
“This project is a lot larger in scale compared to other TU projects we have done,” shared Darin Haskins, owner of Haskins Excavating in Superior. “We’ll probably have six to eight people working on this one,” he said.
When asked if he needed special equipment, Haskins replied, “We didn’t need to purchase equipment for this project, but we will rent haul-trucks. We rented a 26-ton truck to build the repository but for the stream area clean-up this spring, we have rented smaller German made trucks that will be more nimble and easier on the terrain than the larger trucks.”
Haskins attended a Heavy Equipment Expo in Las Vegas recently to check out the two larger trucks that they will be renting and made freight arrangements.
