Postcard From the Edge of the Bluff: a View of the Milltown Dam Breaching

By Sutton R. Stokes, 3-28-08

	Caption: That excavator sure looked tiny from up on the bluff.

See New West’s photo essay on the breaching here.

“We’ve waited a hundred years, guess we can wait another ten minutes,” says a man in an orange cap behind me. But he doesn’t sound like he means it, and we end up waiting longer than that anyway.

It is 11:40 a.m. and I am standing in the large crowd ranged across the top of the bluff overlooking the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, which have been under human control or at least influence at this spot since 1908, when the Milltown Dam was constructed just below their confluence. But on this bright Friday morning in late March, that is all set to change. At the moment, the only thing holding the rivers back is a shallow earthen dike, soon to be breached by a bright yellow excavator with a very, very long arm. When that happens, the river water will enter a long trench, scooped and rounded out into the shape of a half pipe perhaps 75 yards long, eventually dropping down a steep bank and around the still-operating spillway structure into the main flow of the Clark Fork.

Yes, this is all set to happen — as soon as the politicians and government officials at the podium next to the white tent on the far side of the Clark Fork, several hundred yards below us, stop talking. Up here on the bluff, of course, we can’t hear a word — not even an occasional echo — and everyone is studying the ant-like figures below for clues that the show might finally be about to get underway. The greatest excitement is reserved for the movements of men in orange safety vests, but there are several false alarms.

“This is it,” someone yells, as a trio of workers suddenly starts moving back from the edge of the dike.

“I hate to tell you,” someone else answers, “but they’ve done that a bunch of times now.”

A portly man next to me gives voice to what we are all thinking.

“I thought this was supposed to happen at 11:30,” he says.

“Haven’t you ever noticed nothing ever happens on time in Missoula?” a woman replies. “Not basketball games or dam openings.”

I’ve been here since about 11:00 a.m., when I found at least 200 people already squeezed in along the orange plastic safety fence at the edge of the bluff. There are kids on shoulders and a few elderly people in camp chairs. Dogs in bandanas stare out from the back of the crowd, bikes lie beached on their sides. Expensive cameras and lenses bloom from voluminous shoulder bags. Later, on my way out, I’ll estimate the crowd at 500 or more, or close to 1 percent of Missoula’s population, with cars parked along the road for at least a mile down the hill, past the railroad tracks and to the edge of the golf course.

The top of the bluff is a muddy, grassy expanse, with most of the ice and snow gone except for a hard-packed slippery rind of white along the edge, right we are all standing, conveniently enough. As I shift position while taking pictures, my feet keep slipping, and I am glad for the safety fence. But some of the bystanders can’t resist the temptation to get just a little closer to the action.

“Sir, I’m from the state of Montana!” shouts a woman with “Alaska” emblazoned on her ear-warming headband. She is positioned by the fence with a small video camera on a tripod, pinned in place by the crowd. “I’m going to need you to come back on this side of the fence!”

A man in jeans and a leather jacket is out at the edge of the bluff, setting up a professional-looking video camera on a tripod.

“I’m from KPAX,” he shouts back.

“Congratulations, now get back on this side of the fence,” says the woman from the state.

A few minutes later, she notices two men who have clambered down to a rock outcropping thirty feet below the top of the bluff.

“I need you to come back up here!” yells the state lady. “That is not acceptable!”

“Jesus Christ,” says a bearded man behind me. “One of them’s already wearing a neck brace.”

By noon, as speaker after speaker mounts the podium, the crowd’s groans grow louder and more sour. The consensus among the bystanders near me is that it is to the mayor’s great credit that he is up here with us and not contributing to the delay by standing in line at the podium. We are momentarily excited when a man in a fleece vest leaves the podium and it stands empty for a few minutes, but he is replaced by a man in a green blazer. We can see flashbulbs popping.

“You’re not nearly as important as you think you are,” a woman mock-shouts down toward the VIPs. Another woman wonders aloud why the speakers don’t just post their remarks on the internet, “so anyone who gives a damn can just read them if they want.”

Governor Schweitzer is one of the speakers, of course, and someone spots the governor’s dog, Jag, who seems to be doing something furtive next to a tree. Down by the excavator, a bulldozer is making slow passes back and forth next to the dike, flattening out mounds of dirt as if bored. A red helicopter drifts slowly past the bluff, at our eye level.

The dike is wide and flat, so — in order to breach it — the excavator will have to dig a sort of ditch through it. There is cheering when the excavator finally extends its long arm to take the first bite. After the first few shovelsful, there is a long pause, and someone cracks a joke about union contractors and lunch time. Then the shovel is moving again, this time in earnest, back and forth across the dike.

At 12:05 p.m., there is no longer anything standing between the two rivers. “There it is!” goes the cry, as the first water starts to spill in. But the breach is more of a trickle than a flood, and it takes another seven minutes before the first gray muddy fingers reach the end of the trench and begin to uncurl into the Clark Fork, below the spillway.

After 100 years, the Milltown Dam is open.

For more like this, read the rest of the Missoula Notebook.