The Atlantic Richfield Company and ARCO Environmental Remediation, L.L.C., collectively, Atlantic Richfield, have agreed to the cleanup of community soils—including both residential and non-residential yards and soil affected by the refinery’s operations—at the ACM Smelter and Refinery Superfund site in Black Eagle.

Under the proposed consent decree, Atlantic Richfield is required to pay for past response costs and implement a multi-million-dollar cleanup for community soils at the site, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Plans to cleanup the former smelter site in Black Eagle have been in the works for years and officials have been waiting on the consent decree for awhile.

County, agencies discussing details for potential use of Black Eagle site for Children’s Museum

The former smelting and refining facility, referred to as the Great Falls Refinery, operated for nearly 80 years near the unincorporated community of Black Eagle. The smelter and refinery’s operations produced large quantities of slag, tailings, flue dust and other smelter and refinery wastes containing lead, arsenic and other metals that contaminated soil, groundwater and surface water resources at the site, according to the EPA.

The EPA placed the site on the Superfund program’s National Priority List in March 2011.

The proposed consent decree requires Atlantic Richfield to implement remedial design and remedial action in the community soils portion of one of the site’s three operable units, OU1, at an estimated cost of $2,286,000 and pay $464,475.12 for past response costs incurred by EPA through Sept. 30, 2022.

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The site has three operable units:

OU-1 includes Art Higgins Memorial Park and the Black Eagle neighborhoods west of the former ACM property.

OU-2 is the former ACM site and stack area, Anaconda Golf Course and land along the river owned by Montana State, Northwestern Energy and Cascade County.

OU-3 is the Missouri River from 15th Street Bridge downriver to Fort Benton.

It’s the final EPA process needed before Atlantic Richfield begins cleanup, starting with the remedial design plans for each property, then the cleanup, according to Sandy Johnson, the superfund coordinator for Cascade County.

County selects prefered land use plan for former smelter site

Some remediation work was done in the Copper Creek subdivision behind the Moose Lodge years ago, Sandy said, and some soils were removed a few years ago when the water and sewer district was doing line replacements just above the Art Higgins Memorial Park in Black Eagle.

In 2020, Cascade County Commissioners selected their preferred design for cleanup of the OU1 site.

A 2019 county press release stated, “design ideas can help with the cleanup strategies outlined in the EPA’s Management Plan and might even help fund park improvements through cleanup activities,” according to a county release.

County selects preferred design option for Art Higgins Memorial Park

One of the goals in developing plans for future development and land use is to offer suggestions to the EPA for their cleanup plan and ideally, reduce costs if some development ideas can be implemented through the cleanup process.

The EPA announced the agreement in late August and it’s filed in federal court in Great Falls.

The agreement is subject to a 30-day public comment period and approval by the federal court. A copy of the consent decree is available on the Justice Department’s website.

Under Montana state law, the Department of Environmental Quality is separately required to put the proposed consent decree out for public comment, which will be available on DEQ’s website. The state’s public comment period will run concurrently with the federal public comment period.

Information about operable units, past time-critical cleanup efforts, and the site’s history is available on the EPA Superfund site page.

There have been discussions about using the Stray Moose property in Black Eagle as the future home of the Children’s Musuem.

The property is part of OU2 of the Superfund site.

Soil samples were collected previously under it’s current commercial use and when the museum proposed moving to the site, involved agencies wanted to do additional sampling since the proposed use involves children, Johnson said.

More soil sampling was conducted in June and lab results are expected this month, Johnson said.

It’s not yet been determined how the EPA would address cleanup of the site since it’s part of OU2 and remediation of that section of the site is a few years away, Johnson said.