Yellowstone Crude Spill Sparks More Landowner Lawsuits

By: Duane Craig

Landowners in Eastern Montana have filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil Corp. for property damage from last year’s crude oil spill that contaminated the Yellowstone River. The landowners claim damage to their property and livestock from exposure to the oil, and also claim Exxon had ample opportunity to shut down the pipeline and prevent the spill altogether. Another lawsuit by a separate group of landowners is pending.

A section of the pipeline that was installed in 1991 had been scoured by flooding over the years which eventually caused it to fail and spill 1,500 barrels of crude oil, investigators surmised. Officials from one town had warned Exxon about the risks on several occasions. Still, the company continued flowing oil through the pipeline even when flooding was predicted, according to the suit. Other pipeline operators had shut down their lines under the same circumstances.

The spill contaminated about 70 miles of Yellowstone’s banks causing more damage to property than all other accidents in Montana during the past 10 years. You can get more details on the story here, and here.

Cleanup Plans Adjusted at Montana Superfund Site

By: Duane Craig

In September soils testing begins in Black Eagle, Montana, at the new Superfund site called ACM Smelter and Refinery. The site was just added to the Superfund program in March 2011.

Heavy metals found in residential properties

According to a Great Falls Tribune article heavy metals have been found in some residential yards so the testing will begin with 90 properties. The investigation will be looking for lead, arsenic and cadmium, and other heavy metals. Later on, the investigation will focus on the places where refinery operations took place, and places where waste was dumped, including the Missouri River. Great Falls is right across the Missouri River from the site.

Some cleanup related to the site was supposed to happen earlier this year but didn't because it was decided the higher priority would be cleanups where people live. The earlier planned cleanup was supposed to be along an abandoned rail line that was used to run waste down to the river for disposal. That cleanup was delayed so it wouldn't interfere with reconstruction plans for Smelter Avenue.
This site has a long and colorful history including a celebratory story about the smokestack that provided much of the soil contamination in the area. The smelter and refinery operated from 1893 to the early 1970s, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's website.

Montana Basin Eyes Contamination Sources

By: Duane Craig

The Flathead Basin in Montana is a complex and sensitive watershed that may be seeing threats from septic systems, pharmaceuticals, personal care products and volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds.

Phase 1 assessment shows water contamination

Seventeen wells in the Evergreen area tested positive for VOCs and also had traces of chloroform, arsenic and uranium, according to a report in Hungry Horse News.com. As Phase I of an assessment of threats to the basin from increased human populations, the initial study by the University of Montana's Flathead Biological Station also found acetaminophen, sunscreen, bug spray and caffeine in the tested wells.

The wells the samples came from are relatively shallow and therefore are more prone to contamination from surface sources, noted the Flathead City-County Health Department and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality in reinforcing the idea that the county's water is safe for drinking.

There will be a Phase II study done to look at similar pollution characteristics with greater scrutiny. Lower levels of contaminants will be detectable because of the lab used for the specimen analysis. The underground water's connection to the river is particularly mysterious so the studies are expected to help reveal some of those nuances.

City, CVS Sparring With State Over Bozeman, MT Superfund Site

September 14, 2010 - Twenty-one years after perchloroethene, a dry-cleaning fluid and suspected carcinogen, was discovered under the Hastings Shopping Center, there still isn't a plan to clean it up.

The city of Bozeman and CVS Pharmacy are responsible for cleaning up the Superfund site, dubbed the Bozeman Solvent Site. But the two say a state regulatory agency overseeing the remediation is dragging its heels. And they're prepared to take the state to court if the process doesn't speed up.

"The city and CVS will no longer accept management behavior from the (Montana Department of Environmental Quality,) which does nothing more than provide lengthy delays and abusive, arbitrary demands, while imposing unreasonable costs upon the taxpayers of the city of Bozeman and CVS," states an Aug. 31 letter to MDEQ from attorneys representing the city and CVS.

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Brookhurst, MT Cleanup ‘Nearing Completion’

September 2, 2010 - A two-decade effort to address groundwater contamination at the Brookhurst subdivision near Casper could enter its final stage this fall.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed certain restrictions for two neighboring industrial properties it deemed responsible for the contamination. If those proposals go through, the EPA hopes to begin removing parts of the site from the federal Superfund list later this year.

“We are not at the total end, but we are nearing completion,” said EPA Remedial Project Manager Frances Costanzi. “The great majority of the work has been completed.”

The area received federal Superfund designation in 1990, four years after tests revealed pollution inside drinking-water wells in the Brookhurst subdivision east of Casper. Authorities tied the contamination to a pair of groundwater plumes that originated from the nearby Kinder Morgan gas compression plant and Dow Chemical/Dowell Schlumberger oil field services facility.

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Coal Ash Woe: The Tale of a Montana Town

June 17, 2010 - In the tiny Montana town of Colstrip, people knew the Moose Lodge well water tasted bad. But it would be years before the community learned why.

Waste ponds at a massive coal plant nearby had leaked over the decades, contaminating wells in residential neighborhoods and groundwater under cattle grazing lands, as lawsuits would eventually allege. According to an excellent investigation last year by The Center for Public Integrity (CPI), some who drank the well water got diarrhea; another resident stopped drinking her strange-looking tap water after her cat would no longer lap it up.

The contamination came from a coal plant, but not from the usual air pollutants.

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Questions Persist for Asbestos-ravaged Libby, Montana

May 24, 2010 - Gayla Benefield and Eva Thomson are sisters who have grown used to death. For two decades, they have watched asbestos from a nearby vermiculite mine strangle their parents, Thomson’s husband, an aunt, several in-laws and numerous neighbors and friends.

The sisters’ town, Libby, population 3,000, has emerged as the deadliest Superfund site in the nation’s history.

Health workers tracking Libby’s plight estimate that at least 400 people have died of asbestos-related illnesses — from W.R. Grace mine workers and family members who breathed in the dust they brought home in their clothes, to those who played as kids in waste piles dumped by the company behind the community baseball field. Some 1,500 locals and others who were exposed have chest X-rays revealing the faint, cloudy shadows of asbestos scarring on their lungs.

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Study planned to measure dry-cleaning fluid vapor levels in Montana homes

November 5, 2009 - The city of Bozeman and CVS Pharmacy plan to study whether vapors of a dry-cleaning fluid suspected of causing cancer have migrated from a Superfund site at the Hastings shopping center into nearby homes.

But city officials and environmental experts say residents shouldn't be alarmed about the indoor air tests for PCE, also known as perc. The study is part of ongoing testing at the West Main Street site.

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EPA declares health emergency in Montana

July 3, 2009 - Health officials say as many as 200 people have died and another 1,000 residents – nearly 50 percent of the population of this small city -- have been sickened by asbestos-related illnesses.

Last month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared a public health emergency in Libby and the surrounding area as a result of contamination created by asbestos mining in the region during the last century, and announced it will spend about $130 million to clean up the contamination and provide medical care in the region.

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EPA declares health emergency in Montana town

June 17, 2009 - The Environmental Protection Agency for the first time has determined there is a public health emergency in a contaminated community, targeting a Montana town Wednesday for immediate federal attention.

The announcement by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson involving Libby, Mont., will not result in an evacuation, but will require an extensive, home-by-home cleanup and better health protections for residents with asbestos-related illnesses. The EPA will invest at least $125 million over the next five years in the ongoing clean up.

Jackson called Libby a "tragic public health situation" that has not received the recognition it deserves from the federal government for far too long.

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Libby Montana: EPA Ordered Cleanup and Intervention is Dramatic 180 Degree Turn in Policy

June 18, 2009 - The Obama administration has a new take on the duties and budgets of the EPA, not only different, but startlingly so . . .

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Montana residents hire lawyer to test for contamination from railyard

May 4, 2009 - WHITEFISH - A high-profile trial lawyer from Billings will arrive in Whitefish on Monday, with a plan for detecting suspected railroad contamination in a trendy downtown neighborhood.

Cliff Edwards - who has more than a decade of courtroom experience uncovering Burlington Northern Sante Fe railway pollution - has announced his firm soon will begin environmental testing here, with several households already agreeing to play host to monitoring wells.

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Offers from railroad company worry Montana residents

April 13, 2009 - Residents of Whitefish, Montana are worried after The Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad company began knocking on doors and offering to buy homes and businesses that aren't for sale, while hinting that the ground beneath might be contaminated.

It's been long known that the Whitefish railyard is contaminated, and the recent offers made to local landowners is creating fear about their properties. As far as City Attorney Phelps is concerned, BNSF "wouldn't be buying properties unless they knew, or at least suspected, there was contamination."

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Superfund Cleanup Begins in Sunburst, Montana

April 1, 2009 - After eight years of legal wrangling and project planning, cleanup of a 19-acre petroleum plume beneath the town of Sunburst is finally under way.

Wedged between the elementary and high schools, the area was once home to the Texaco gasoline refinery.

The Butte-based company Water and Environmental Technologies hopes to finish removing toxic dirt from a square city block that is 20 feet deep by mid-April. Working 12 hours a day, six trucks are hauling dirt to an 80-acre farm northwest of Sunburst. There it will be spread out and tilled regularly, allowing the gasoline to vaporize.

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Montana asbestos trial opens

February 23, 2009 -

A federal prosecutor told jurors Monday that W.R. Grace & Co. knew for years that its products posed serious health hazards to residents of Libby, Mont., but the company hid the risks from workers and government regulators.

In opening statements at a major environmental crime trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kris McLean said the company and its executives conspired to keep those hazards a secret.

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Montana Senator Questions why EPA did not Declare Emergency in Libby

October 2, 2008 - A hearing was recently held on September 25 by U.S. Senator Max Baucus of Montana to question why the federal Environmental Protection Agency did not declare a public health emergency in Libby, Montana in 2002. Doing so would have provided more funding and manpower in cleaning up the contaminated town.

On April 9, 2002, an EPA spokesperson actually wrote that the declaration would be made within the next ten days. However, seven days later agency officials met with White House representatives and decided not declare the emergency.

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Neighbors sue over rail yard pollution in Montana

February 15, 2008 - hirty-two neighbors have filed a lawsuit against BNSF Railway over rail yard pollution they say has contaminated and devalued their properties.

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 24 in Lewis and Clark County District Court, alleges that BNSF is responsible for contaminating their yards and homes with diesel fuel, lead and other toxic substances by failing to contain and control hazardous materials at the Helena fueling station.

Many of the plaintiffs live or own property within a few hundred yards of the BNSF fueling station where, the suit alleges, the company dumped thousands of gallons of hazardous contaminants onto the ground. Those contaminants then migrated onto and under the plaintiffs' property, placing their "health, welfare and property values," in "serious jeopardy," according to the suit.

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Montana residents take power companies to court over well contamination and other issues

February 3, 2008 - Black and oily. Orange and brackish. Even slimy.

More than one Colstrip resident used those words to describe well water in their hometown. And they point their fingers at the Colstrip Steam Electric Station, alleging that the plant's discharge ponds are the source of the contamination.

The lawsuit, filed in 2003, was driven by two key complaints. Plaintiffs claim the plant's freshwater source, Castle Rock Lake, has leaked so much that it raised the water level under the town, leading to uneven settling and structural damage.

They also claim that the plant's discharge ponds have also leaked, sending a plume of contamination north of town into the nearby B&R Subdivision, down to the golf course and even into Armell Creek, which drains into the Yellowstone River, 30 miles distant.

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Polluted water could pose risks to residents of Billings Montana

November 13, 2007 - BILLINGS — Polluted groundwater beneath a Billings neighborhood could pose a long-term risk to residents, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The 140-acre underground plume southwest of downtown contains four “contaminants of concern,” including a solvent known as PCE, according to an EPA report released Monday. PCE, used in dry cleaning and other industrial practices, is believed to have been deposited decades ago.

The EPA has identified Big Sky Linen as the only “potentially responsible party” so far.

EPA officials could begin cleaning the site next spring and will be in Billings on Dec. 13 to discuss health risks. Cleanup could take several years at a cost of up to $7 million, The Billings Gazette reported in a story for Wednesday editions.

The biggest concern is that the pollutants in the contaminated groundwater are converting to vapor and seeping through the soil and into homes.

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EPA report details risks to Billings Montana residents who live above polluted groundwater

November 6, 2007 - Polluted groundwater beneath a Billings neighborhood poses long-term risks to residents living above it, but the immediate risks can be mitigated fairly easily, according to Environmental Protection Agency officials.

The 140-acre underground plume southwest of downtown contains four "contaminants of concern," including PCE, known formally as perchloroethylene, a solvent used in dry cleaning and other industrial practices, according to an EPA health risk assessment of the site.

The biggest concern is that the pollutants in the contaminated groundwater are converting to vapor and migrating up through the soil and into homes, where they might be inhaled.

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