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Landowners say EPA botched cleanup, now they want a shot

Landowners say EPA botched cleanup, now they want a shot | iNFOnews.ca
This Dec. 13, 2016 photo shows the former Anaconda smelter smokestack behind a gate barring access to the contaminated site in Anaconda, Mont. Residents in the nearby community of Opportunity are suing for the right to clean the toxic metals left by the smelter from their yards and claim federal environmental officials and the smelter's owner have botched a 34-year cleanup. (AP Photo/Matt Volz) A

OPPORTUNITY, Mont. – Dozens of residents of a small southwestern Montana community say federal environmental officials have botched a 34-year environmental cleanup of the toxic metals in their soil, and now they want a shot at it.

The residents of Opportunity are suing BP-owned Atlantic Richfield Co. to force the company to pay for the full removal and replacement of all their soil down to 2 feet.

The residents live downwind of a shuttered smelter that processed copper dug up from nearby Butte for nearly a century. The Anaconda smelter’s 585-foot-tall smokestack spewed arsenic and other toxins daily until it was shut down in 1980, creating a 300-square-mile Superfund site.

ARCO and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency oppose the Opportunity residents’ cleanup plans, saying it would interfere with the EPA-mandated cleanup.

The case is before the Montana Supreme Court.

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