Residents of Butte, Montana, were alarmed at the site, according to eyewitnesses. The waste-pit that the birds crashed into is the largest Superfund site in the US. The Superfund program was created by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to fund initiatives that clean up toxic waste. The mining town is now growing worried that the copper- and acid-laden material may seep into waterways, as the pit nears capacity.
For some environmentalists the incident served as a call to action. "We need to be prepared, and they’re not prepared," former state legislator Fritz Daily commented following the news. Daily is concerned that officials have not considered what to do with the toxic waste, and how it plays into the town’s environmental, economic, and social future.
Cries for enhanced preparation have not fallen on deaf ears. "We’re going to really start digging into pilot studies and performance testing," Nikia Greene, an EPA official, said. The goal of such studies is "to determine what kind of upgrades, what kind of redundancies do we need," the official noted.
Butte was once the home to lucrative natural resources, including gold, silver, zinc, manganese, and copper. Some even called Butte "the richest hill on earth." The waste products of decades of mining, which ended in the early 1980s, is expected to reach a maximum threshold level of 5,410 feet by 2023. If the liquid surpasses this threshold by more than 50 feet, the toxic pit will overflow into the aquifers that the city uses for groundwater, according to the EPA.
"I’m very confident that whatever discharged water, however it’s treated, will not be allowed to be discharged if it affects Silver Bow Creek," Greene added. Silver Bow Creek is a local waterway that would be devastated if the pit is not decontaminated and controlled. Residents worry that Greene’s promise, that the sludge will not top the critical level, does not constitute a long-term strategy of how to deal with the issue. The treatment site may not ever be decommissioned, according to the EPA project manager. "I guess Superfund is going to be there for a long time," Greene said.
