Butte mine waste repository chosen to store contaminated Superfund soil

BUTTE, Mont. — A 33-acre site northwest of the Berkeley Pit has been selected to store contaminated soil as part of the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund cleanup efforts in Butte.

The Butte Mine Waste Repository received official approval from the EPA and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) last month.

Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher says the location offers several advantages for the community. The repository already exists on unreclaimed land, while also allowing a path for crews to haul soil through the nearby open-pit mine, limiting travel on public roads. Its proximity to the Berkeley Pit also provides a key benefit.

"When you have storms or anything like that, that drains off and it reports to the Pit," Gallagher said. "That's a benefit to it, instead of reporting somewhere else."

"It just made it the most appropriate site for the community," Gallagher continued. "I think it may speed up the cleanup and progress things, and that's what everybody's looking for."

As part of the Silver Bow Creek corridor cleanup, an estimated one million cubic yards of soil will be excavated. That's in addition to all the residential soil set to be extracted, as the EPA hopes to remediate 100 properties in 2026.

Gallagher says the repository can hold all that material for now, but officials are already discussing locations for another repository to account for residential soil cleanup advancements years into the future.

"We'll start looking at sites immediately," Gallagher said. "We still have probably 20 years left, even within the repository that we have there, but we don't want to wait because we know we want to expedite."

"A lot more yards, a lot more residences moving forward; we want to be able to facilitate that," Gallagher continued. "We're going to work together with the agencies to try to get that done."

The mine waste repository will be put to use soon, as remediation work on the Diggings East project is expected to start in August.