Montana site fouled by copper smelter to get final cleanup
A subsidiary of London-based oil giant BP agreed to finish its cleanup of a 300-square mile site in Montana that’s contaminated with arsenic and other pollutants from decades of copper smelting
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A subsidiary of London-based oil giant BP agreed to finish its cleanup of a 300-square mile (776-square kilometer) site in Montana that's contaminated with arsenic and other pollutants from decades of copper smelting, and to repay the U.S. government $48 million in response costs.
Under a legal decree filed Friday in U.S. District Court, the Atlantic Richfield Company committed to finishing cleanup work in residential yards in the towns of Anaconda and Opportunity. It also will clean up soils in the surrounding hills and address the remaining piles of contaminated waste at the site.
Arsenic and toxic metals spewed from a 585-foot-tall smokestack in Anaconda for nearly a century and the pollution settled into the ground for miles around. It’s the toxic legacy of southwestern Montana’s mining days, when copper ore processed in Anaconda was used to electrify the United States.
The “Copper King” Marcus Daly and the Anaconda Copper Mining Co. began smelting copper ore from Butte in the 1884. In 1977, ARCO purchased the Anaconda Co. and inherited vast lands polluted with arsenic, lead, copper, cadmium and zinc from ore-processing operations and stack emissions. Later, under the federal Superfund law, ARCO became retroactively liable for that contamination.
