MILLTOWN DAM BREACH A SUCCESS

Friday, March 28th at approximately 12:00 p.m., on what was a historic day in the state of Montana, Envirocon successfully carried out the breaching of the Milltown Dam. Now, for the first time in over a century, the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers are flowing freely and are one step closer to being completely restored to their natural state.

A crowd of hundreds gathered on the bluff overlooking the Dam while project personnel, various media and elected officials gathered below to watch the first rush of water pass through the earthen coffer dam that currently holds back the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers

According to Matt Fein, Envirocon Project Director, "This is a significant achievement and represents a beginning and an end. It is the culmination of over a year's worth of work on the bypass channel and the end of the Milltown Dam. Looking ahead, Fein says, "It also represents the beginning of the process to reclaim the floodplain of the Clark Fork River."

Final preparations for opening the Milltown Dam began last Wednesday when Envirocon workers finished removing the sheet piling between the earthen cofferdam and the rivers. Thursday and Friday, project staff excavated fill from the cofferdam and created a pilot channel to direct the rivers toward the area to be breached.

Envirocon was awarded the Milltown contract in June of 2003 and is scheduled to complete the project in 2010. In addition to breaching the cofferdam, Envirocon's remaining scope of work includes continued excavation and transporting of the impacted sediment behind the dam, demolition and removal of the remaining portions of the dam, and construction of the final Clark Fork River channel.

The Milltown Dam and Reservoir was constructed in 1907 to provide hydropower electricity for a large, regional sawmill. In 1908, a major flood filled the Milltown Reservoir with heavy metals contaminated tailings from a large, open pit copper mine located 100-miles upstream near Butte, Montana. Since 1908, arsenic leaching from the sediments in the Milltown Reservoir has caused a general degradation of groundwater quality which prompted the EPA to begin a removal action.