Throughout its decades of production, the Anaconda Smelter contaminated the surrounding area with extremely high levels of lead, arsenic, zinc, copper, and cadmium leaching into the soil, groundwater, and surface bodies of water, making it a top candidate for cleanup under newly-passed CERCLA legislation. Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) purchased the company in 1977, but, due largely to a steep decline in copper prices, ARCO shuttered operations in 1980, leaving the Smelter Stack casting a long shadow across the future of the area. The Anaconda Smelter was operational for nearly a century under the Anaconda Mining Company.
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In 1919, ACM completed construction on the brick smokestack known as the Anaconda Smelter Stack, now the "tallest surviving masonry structure in the world" at about 585 feet. In 1902, ACM began operations at another smelter facility east of Anaconda called Washoe Reduction Works or the Anaconda Smelter.
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The Anaconda Smelter was one of the country's first Superfund sites, and its past continues to leave its mark on the modern landscape of Montana as cleanup operations on the 300-square mile site continue to this day.īeginning in 1884, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) began ore processing and smelting at a facility called Old Springs, next to the town of Anaconda. The Berkeley Pit, the Libby asbestos site, Milltown Reservoir on the Clark Fork River, East Helena, and more areas of mining contamination dot the Superfund Site map. In Montana, the mining industry has certainly left behind a trail of contamination and damage. Superfund, or Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), was established in 1980 to allow the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated, toxic sites around the United States while forcing responsible parties to assume the burden of the cleanup or reimburse the federal government for the cost in cases where no responsible party remains, Superfund covers the cost of cleanup. Montana is home to a whopping 17 federal Superfund Sites. The Berkeley Pit comes first to mind - Butte's infamous and oddly beautiful tourist site, featuring silent lookout points across a watery expanse of heavy metal-laden acidic water so deadly a fleet of warning cannons were installed to prevent birds from landing and dying on the placid surface of one of the most toxic sites in the nation.
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Yet, it is impossible to talk about Montana's mining history without acknowledging that many of the industry's legacies have left painful, dark marks on the Montana land and Montanans. Mining quite literally put Montana on the map. Patrick's Day in Butte, Montana, or seen the Anaconda smelter towering over the landscape from the highway, then you know Montana would not be what it is now without the mining industry. If you have visited her ghost towns, been to a St. Mining has shaped the Montana we know and love today.