The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to analyze samples from local rivers to see how much contamination is from wood-processing plants, including the Smurfit-Stone pulp mill site.
During a recent meeting of the Frenchtown Smurfit-Stone Citizens Advisory Group, a few group members hit the highlights of a brief tour of the Smurfit mill site they took with Congressman Ryan Zinke and his staff on Sept. 24. During the tour, Zinke was told about a new development where the EPA has agreed to have some of their “displaced scientists” analyze several years’ worth of fish-tissue and water data collected from the Clark Fork, Bitterroot and Blackfoot rivers.
“When PCBs were brought up and fish tissue sampling was brought up - dioxins and furans weren’t really brought up, so in the end, it was kind of skipped over — the EPA said, Allie (Archer) said immediately that it’s really hard to draw conclusions that PCBs in fish in this river are from this site so the EPA doesn’t want to use their resources from this site to do that analysis,” said Brian Chaffin, Clark Fork Coalition executive director, who was present on the tour. “So Aaron Urdiales, director of Superfund and Emergency Management from the (EPA) region, said he was personally investing resources to bring a team of researchers from the EPA, generally displaced scientists from the Office of Research and Development, to do research on where the PCBs in the Clark Fork River are coming from.”
The EPA actually agreed to look at the data about a month ago, said Brian Bartkowiak of the Montana Natural Resources Damage Program. The Natural Resource Damage Program has monthly calls with the EPA to discuss state Superfund sites, and they’ve been talking about the dioxin, furan and PCB pollution in the rivers for the past six months or so. Bartkowiak said he sent all the data on fish tissue and river samples collected between 2017 and 2023 to the EPA the day before the federal shutdown.
“It’s been something that’s been pushed by both our management and (Department of Environmental Quality) management for some time now. You know, okay, if it’s not Smurfit, then where is it from?” Bartkowiak said. “It does seem like the EPA has finally found some resources to look at it.”
Initial fish sampling by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks in 2012 resulted in the first fish consumption advisory in the Clark Fork River. FWP then did additional sampling in 2018 and 2019, although the EPA was reluctant to use some of the results because certain EPA protocol wasn’t followed. Under pressure from the community, the EPA kept the results but said they would be “heavily qualified.”
Those two years of data produced results that led to a stricter fish consumption advisory in 2020. Due to excessive dioxins, furans and PCBs found in fish, people are to avoid eating any rainbow trout or Northern pike in the Clark Fork River below the confluence with the Bitterroot River and to severely limit the number of rainbow trout or Northern Pike eaten out of the Clark Fork and Bitterroot rivers above Missoula, depending on the size of the fish.
However, this summer, the Confederated and Salish Kootenai Tribes released a tribal fish consumption advisory that was even more restrictive. Driven mainly by the risk of PCBs, tribal members shouldn’t eat any fish caught in the Clark Fork River below the Bitterroot River confluence and shouldn’t eat any rainbow trout or Northern Pike caught in the Bitterroot or Clark Fork rivers upstream of the confluence. Because some tribal members are subsistence fishers, they eat fish more frequently, often eat the whole fish, and may spend more time wading the river, so tribal consumption advisories are more conservative than that of the state.
In 2023, Trout Unlimited and other organizations were awarded one of EPA’s Columbia River Basin Restoration Funding Assistance Program grants to sample water and fish tissue in the Clark Fork River from Butte to Noxon and in the Flathead River. FWP fisheries biologist David Schmetterling said the data from those tissue samples are still being processed at the state laboratory, although water samples from passive water samplers, which collect water contaminants over several weeks, have already been analyzed.
Based on the tissue results, the Citizens Advisory Group has tried for years to push the EPA to do more sampling in the Clark Fork River, because contaminated groundwater from the Smurfit site could be a source of contamination in the river. Dioxins, furans and dioxin-like PCB contaminants are the byproducts of pulp, paper or pesticide manufacturing and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system and cancer in people, fish and wildlife.
However, Smurfit isn't the only source of contamination. Wood-processing businesses exist in several places along the Clark Fork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot rivers, and they all likely pollute the rivers with dioxins, furans and dioxin-like PCB contaminants. Results from the passive water samplers show spikes in readings of dioxins and furans at a number of points on the Clark Fork River. Although there may be some telltale chemicals specific to some sites, it’s a challenge to parse out what proportion of pollution each site contributes. Researchers are waiting for the fish tissue data to possibly provide more information. It’s unknown whether the EPA would do additional sampling.
EPA project manager Allie Archer has repeatedly said the EPA’s only responsibility is the cleanup of the Smurfit-Stone mill site, which doesn’t include the Clark Fork River. That’s still the case. But this recent announcement of a separate effort is encouraging for the Citizens Advisory Group.
“This is a refreshing turn because it’s looking at a big picture,” Jeri Delys, Citizen Advisory Group member, told the Missoula Current. “I think there are a lot of displaced (EPA) scientists right now, and they might try to get some of them involved in this. It’s not part of the Smurfit cleanup, because it involves the Bitterroot and the Blackfoot. But that’s really refreshing, because they’ll look at it from a higher elevation.”
Elena Evans, Missoula City-County Environmental Health manager, was pleased the EPA might finally answer one of the group’s questions.
“Instead of saying ‘we’re just narrowing in on Smurfit,’ they’re taking the data we got from the bigger swath to actually look at whether Smurfit is contributing. Because for so many years, they were unwilling to look at it. But now, we actually do have PCB data, which is a good outcome of (recent) additional sampling, regardless of what happens to the rest (of the new data),” Evans said.
Chris Stark, CSKT Legal Department scientist, said dealing with the river contamination is probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Tribes’ rights.
“There’s a lot more regarding other things that the EPA has decided to skip over. That’s not acceptable to the tribes, and that’s why I was asking those rather pointed questions to Zinke’s staff. Because we need to get this going, and the game that’s been played to date is not making the tribes very comfortable,” Stark said. “This is a positive outcome - I just hope it’s real.”
The EPA couldn’t comment on Thursday due to the government shutdown that began at midnight on Tuesday. According to the New York Times, 89% of the EPA’s 15,166 remaining employees have been furloughed.
One of the things that came up in Thursday’s meeting is that no one knew who organized Zinke’s visit. None of the Advisory Group contacted Zinke or his staff - the trustees were told about it a week before. EPA employees told the group they didn't organize it.
Some advisory group members attended the tour, along with representatives of the EPA Region 8 and nonprofits including the Clark Fork Coalition and Trout Unlimited. Delys said the EPA representatives dominated the narrative during the tour, but Zinke asked pertinent questions of others on the tour.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.
