"Let 'er run"

Photos: Milltown Dam Breached, Clark Fork and Blackfoot Run Freely

By Matthew Frank, 3-28-08

A trickle of water breached the Milltown Dam around noon Friday, but it was a momentous trickle, the first time the waters of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers flowed freely at their confluence in a century, part of the ongoing Superfund cleanup and restoration project. Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester were on hand to witness the historic event, and hundreds of onlookers gathered at the dam and downstream to watch as a cloud of sediment and other long-buried debris ran into the Clark Fork. Photos by Matthew Frank.




The momentous trickle begins to flow.




Just before the breach, an excavator removes the last mounds of earth holding the water back.


Governor Schweitzer didn't say much, but he hollered just before the breach, "I'm gonna look out there and tell those guys for the first time in a 100 years, Let 'er run!"




Hundreds gathered at the Milltown Bluff Overlook high above the dam to watch.




Senator Jon Tester said it was ironic that the nearby Stimson lumber mill announced it was shutting down just a couple weeks before the dam was breached. A hundred years ago the dam was built to power the original mill.




The water quickly ran faster over the dam. Downstream, observers said the water level had risen more than a foot only 30 minutes or so after the breaching. [End of article]

I suppose people are just handspringing and cartwheeling over this, but I can't feel anything but sad. That mill and dam, and that little community, used to exemplify "Montana." Decent jobs, modest aspirations, pride in place and work doing something that mattered to America...gone now.

Dave,

I understand your point of view. I'm a blue collar guy and from a small town just like Milltown. I had similar feelings at first.

What I've come to realize is that Montana and all of the U.S. is changing. The losses to the economy from the the mill workers being gone has been made up for by folks like those from Envirocon reclaiming these and other sites.

I think we need to realize that the future will be a lot more prosporous for all of us if we gear ourselves and those around us towards this type of work.

Hi, I love dams because they are "arts" to me and I hate to see the dams breached, but at the same time I can understand about fishes migration and other reasons. One question came to my mind, why can't you build a man-made river with no concrete instead of fish ladder. We should experiment it for one year to see if the fishes divert from low dam to above or go around the dam. The dam owner(s) should pay for this because they put their dam in river. Please let me know what do you think of man-made river? Will it work? ( I hope so!) Thank Earl Jr.

It's an idea, but the purpose of a dam is to hold back water. If you build a river around it, the water is just going to flow around the dam and the dam serves no purpose. And, also, it was my impression that this dam was removed because it was no longer in use and was near failing, threatening to cause huge amounts of flooding and property damage. The main concern for removal wasn't fish, and the mill hasn't been in operation for quite a while. The only reason it wasn't removed sooner was that it was holding back contaminated sediment from mining upriver, with toxic levels of heavy metals, and they were worried about the implications of this washing downstream.