Teachers, students evaluate nearly 100 reclaimed areas

By Justin Post - 08/03/2008

Randi Phelps, left, a 16-year-old Butte High School student, works with Willow Creek math teacher John Reagan to evaluate groundcover recently at the Rialto mine dump in Butte.

Teams of teachers and students combed nearly 100 reclaimed mine dumps in Butte recently for an annual evaluation process.

Their work will help ensure the nearly century of mining waste on the Butte Hill is properly covered with vegetation and healthy soil.

“One of the issues with leaving waste in place and having caps is that if you don’t maintain them, you can have problems,” said Sara Sparks of the Environmental Protection Agency in Butte.

Data collected by five teams of teacher/student pairs during the Butte Reclamation Evaluation System, or BRES, is being uploaded into Butte-Silver Bow’s database of reclaimed sites.

The information is used to determine whether a reclaimed area has issues such as erosion or weeds and helps determine where work is needed, and how urgently.

Matt Vincent, Clark Fork Watershed Education Program director, spearheaded the field evaluations between June 30 and July 18.

Public invited The city-county evaluated some sites last year, and this is the first time the public was invited to assist in the project.

Local students working with teachers from Butte, Willow Creek and Missoula evaluated nearly 100 of the city-county’s roughly 175 reclaimed mine dumps stretching from the Timber Butte area to north of Walkerville, he said.

That’s well above the 20 percent of all reclaimed sites that must be evaluated each year as stipulated in the Record of Decision, Vincent said.

“It’s to make sure that these caps are doing what they’re intended to do,” Vincent said. “It’s checking to make sure caps haven’t worn down to the waste material.” Capping standards Vincent said a variety of cover materials were used to reclaim mine dumps, and the evaluations help identify areas where additional capping is needed.

For instance, an area reclaimed in the 1980s might not have been capped to today’s standards, or with the same quality controls and minimum specifications, he said.

“That’s where the need to check on them comes in,” he said.

When deficiencies are identified during the BRES, the city-county develops a work plan that is submitted to oversight agencies such as the EPA for approval before the problem is fixed, Sparks said.

The evaluation process will continue forever with at least 20 percent of the sites checked each year and all sites evaluated at least once every five years, she said.

Randi Phelps, a 16-year-old Butte High School student, was among the students who evaluated the sites this year.

She’s interested in Butte history and wanted to help ensure the land where children play is safe.

“I wanted to come out and see what they are doing to promote a healthy community and I wanted to see what I could do to help,” Phelps said.

Charlie Larson, a 22-year-old history major at the University of Montana, teamed up with his mother, Jeanne Larson, a teacher at Montana Tech.

“It just amazes me when you get onto the hill and you look at how much has been accomplished,” Jeanne Larson said.

Students earned $500 and teachers were paid $1,500 for their work. About 85 percent of the sites “passed with flying colors” during the evaluations while the remaining 15 percent will need at least some work, Vincent said.

“That’s a vast improvement from the late 1990s when it was close to being the other way around,” he said.

Reporter Justin Post may be reached at justin.post@lee.net.