A public meeting was held on August 2 by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency, regarding Flat Creek-Iron Mountain Mine Removal Action.

The cleanup project will be a combined effort between DEQ, EPA, and the Forest Service.

“We have massive deposits of tails and the reason we are going with this joint venture (between the EPA and DEQ) in cooperation with the state, is because it makes the most sense using one contract. It’s a mass of standard construction,” said EPA communications involvement coordinator, Robert Moler.

Once the big project is done, smaller tailing projects ranging from three to thirty cubic yards, will use small contractors.

Joel Chavez, DEQ construction manager, explained that the alternatives for the clean-up ranged from no action to nearly complete removal of the contaminated area. Balancing funds available with clean-up efforts, the recommended action is to remove a majority of the tailings, approximately 90,000 cubic yards, in the Flat Creek flood-plain. Not including waste rock piles. The tailings will be placed in the Wood Gulch repository with a four foot thick evapotranspiration cover.

The project will use up almost all available funds. There is approximately $3.5 million in the fund as a result of a 2009 bankruptcy agreement between ASARCO and the EPA, DEQ, and the US Forest Service. ASARCO was the last owner of the mine which began operations in 1888.

Flat Creek is located four miles northeast of Superior. The lower two miles of the creek are currently owned by the US Forest Service. The upper stream is owned by the Montana Environmental Custodial Trust.

The mine saw continuous production between 1909 and 1930, with peaks in the mid-1910s and 1920s. Since then, lessees have from time to time, opened the property. From 1909 to 1953, the Iron Mountain Mine produced 7,535,084 pounds of zinc, 5,385,741 pounds of lead, 5,274 pounds of copper, 389,355 fine ounces of silver, and only 19 fine ounces of gold. A lead-antimony sulfosalt in the zinc vein of the Iron Mountain Mine was described as unique in the veins of this area.

In 2009, The Flat Creek Iron Mountain Mine Superfund site was listed on EPA’s National Priorities List (NPL).