Crews begin two-year project to remove contaminated soils from Black Eagle

Beginning this week crews from Atlantic Richfield, under the direction of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), will begin yard cleanups in the community of Black Eagle to address lead and arsenic contaminated soils resulting from 80 years of smelting activities at the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) Smelter and Refinery Superfund site.

Crews will work 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Monday through Wednesday, and 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursdays. They will be working throughout the summer and intend to clean as many yards as possible before cold weather sets in. Care will be taken to minimize disruptions, but residents should expect to see machinery and trucks in town.

The ACM Smelter and Refinery site is located on the eastern end of the unincorporated community of Black Eagle along the Missouri River just north of Great Falls. The community has a long history of ore smelting and refining going back to 1893 when the Boston & Montana Consolidated Copper and Silver Mining Company first began smelting silver, copper and zinc, extracted from the mines in Butte.

The Anaconda Copper Mining Company acquired the property in 1910. Zinc smelting and refining activities continued at the facility until the early 1970s. The property changed hands again in 1977, when Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) purchased the site. Copper refining continued at the site until the plant closed in 1980.

Eighty years of refinery operations contaminated soil, groundwater, and surface water resources around the site. The refinery’s smokestacks ejected lead, arsenic, and other metals as waste from the refinery processes. Deposits from the stacks likely contaminated nearby residential yards.

In 2002 the EPA conducted a site investigation of the facility. EPA soil studies in 2007 and 2008 of residential yards in Black Eagle found about 45 percent of the yards sampled contained elevated levels of lead, arsenic, or both.

In September 2011, ARCO was designated a potentially responsible party (PRP) and agreed to lead a remedial investigation of soils within and adjacent to Black Eagle to determine the nature and extent of the contamination. In 2023 Atlantic Richfield agreed to clean up soils in Black Eagle at an estimated cost of $3.9 million

The cleanup is expected to take two summers to complete. Only properties where residents have returned access agreements will be affected. Crews are about to begin work at the southwestern edge of Black Eagle, working closely with home and property owners to clean up yards under individual site workplans (ISWPs). Lead- and arsenic-affected soils will be removed and replaced with clean topsoil and groundcover consistent with landscape material present in the yard pre-cleanup. Soils removed from yards will be taken to a repository on the former smelter site where they will be stored and addressed at some undefined point in the future.

"DEQ has partnered with EPA and the local community for many years, and we are pleased to see residential yard cleanups begin this summer," said DEQ Waste Management Division Administrator Amy Steinmetz. "The project will benefit the residents of Black Eagle and improve the safety of the community for current and future generations."

Questions about the cleanup project should be directed to Luke Pokorny at Atlantic Richfield’s liability department at 406-723-1832. For more information about the ACM Smelter and Refinery Superfund Site, please visit EPA’s Site Profile Page.

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Crews begin project to remove contaminated soils from Black Eagle