Stream Bridge

Montana Closely to the right, for the bridge! For the first time in over 100 years, the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers above Thompson Falls Dam will run free without blockage. The dismantling of the Milltown Dam on the Clark Fork, and the Stimson Dam on the Blackfoot, will open the two river systems to migrating fish up to their sources. Milltown Dam originally built for power generation, and Stimson Dam, built to stop logs from log drives, became a liability to communities along the rivers. Neither dam provided useful water storage nor electricity generation and prevented fish passage to their historic spawning grounds on tributaries. Restoring bull and cutthroat trout populations and restoring floating through the Milltown Dam site will go a long way to restoring our self-respect and resolving to never again allow a corporation to “lock a copper collar around our necks". Milltown Dam was built in 1906 by magnate William Clark to generate power for his sawmills at Milltown and Bonner. Montana Power Co. had its start here, as a subsidiary of mining activities, producing mine tunnel props for Butte. On November 10, 2000, cracks and voids of 12 to 18 inches were found in the dam and spillway. Water was seeping through and displacing fill, and settling indicated a catastrophic dam failure. Such a flood is easily possible considering the amount of denuded land in the two-river drainages above the dam. If the dam were breached, 6,600,000 cubic yards of toxic sediment would poison aquatic, terrestrial and human life down river into Idaho’s Lake Pend Oreille. In 1981, the Missoula City/County Health Department informed the residents of Milltown, Bonner, and Piltzville that their wells were contaminated with over 10 times the amount of arsenic that federal drinking water standards allow. Leaching from behind the dam are toxic mining sediments of copper, zinc, cadmium, lead and arsenic which are strongly linked to bladder, lung and kidney cancer. Wells were shut down and bottled water distributed. The project will begin by building a bypass channel around the dam, where the river is held temporarily while the dam is removed. When a dam is taken out, sediments are redistributed and that means trouble for aquatic life downstream. Some of the heavy metals will settle in the rocks in stream bottoms and release their toxins over time. During high water heavy metals will slowly move downstream and hammer resident fish. 2,600,000 cubic yards of heavy metal contaminated sediments are to be excavated from the reservoir and transported by rail to the Opportunity ponds, which were used by ACM as settling ponds for smelter waste. These are no longer ponds, but 7 square miles of mining waste 5 to 10 ft. high, containing high levels of copper, lead, cadmium, zinc, mercury and arsenic. Eventually a natural river channel will be constructed through the old reservoir and pass the tilted rock fault where the dam has blocked the Clark Fork River for 100 years. ALSO BY DENNIS BUCKMAN: com