With all the collective caterwauling going on about the manifold evils of dams these days, you’d think that a polluted mining and dam site being cleaned up would make big headlines.
Guess that’s not always true.
The Mike Horse Dam (tailings impoundment), contained in the Upper Blackfoot Mine Complex (UBMC) area, has been taken down this fall (breached around Labor Day) and efforts continue to truck out the 75 years worth of collective mine sediment and assorted mess.
The Helena Independent Record ran a nice piece about it today here.
The drainages impacted by the work are part of critical headwaters of the Blackfoot, and the old tailings dam and impoundment were known to be seeping for years.
Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality has put together a nifty interactive virtual tour detailing the issues and solutions in play for the UBMC; that’s a screen grab of one of the pages above. Great imagery and maps make it worth a look; see it here.
Some dam news can be damn good news for the Blackfoot.
