Mount Haggin Uplands/Anaconda Superfund

South of Anaconda, MT along the Continental Divide with the Big Hole River watershed, 5,000 acres of uplands and headwater tributaries on state-managed land is part of the largest complex of Superfund sites in the country.

The Mt. Haggin Uplands Injured Area was denuded by aerial emissions from the famous Anaconda Smelter, which deposited heavy metals (Copper, Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, Zinc) on nearby mountains. These emissions, together with intensive logging to fuel the smelters, removed a vast majority of the vegetation in the area.   Areas where water collected over the years have rebounded on their own, but other areas remained bare after 100 years.

The Big Hole Watershed Committee became an integral part of the restoration in 2014, when we contracted Watershed Consulting to implement a sediment capture and riparian restoration project on California Creek.  Pedro Marques, the Project Manager who was also leading the work under Superfund, became BHWC staff in 2016 and brought the management of this work with him.  BHWC and Watershed Consulting continue to lead the restoration of this area under contract with the State of Montana’s Natural Resource Damage Program.

The goal of our work:  Keep the sediment on the landscape.  That means growing grasses and shrubs on bare upland hills, eliminating gullies that transport sediment, and in active waterways, slow the water down and put high flows on the floodplain, where the valley bottoms can hold sediment and grow vegetation.

Visit our YouTube channel for more project videos.

Project Results

We have dramatically restored the largest sediment sources in this landscape, giving Mother Nature a big push that will allow natural restoration to take place.

Our results to date are being tallied, but they include many miles of gully pathways neutralized, over 500 in-stream structures installed to raise the height of our stream channels, and over 100 acres of bare upland slopes have been fertilized and are growing native vegetation.

Our progress on this project has been memorialized by a letter from the EPA officially acknowledging our Restoration and Remediation Work Plan as the guiding document for remedy and restoration activities for this area into the future.  Our work has also gained the attention of project managers from ARCO, who are beginning to follow our playbook in the restoration of lands they are responsible for, just across the highway!

People & Organizations Involved

Big Hole Watershed Committee

Natural Resource Damage Program

Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks

Watershed Consulting

RS Johnson Construction

Pioneer Technical Services

Montana Conservation Corps

Heli-Works Flight Services

Water & Environmental Technologies

Project Documents

Mount Haggin Restoration and Remediation Work Plan

Media Coverage

Dillon Tribune: Watershed committee works to improve Big Hole region

Project Photos

A flume tender with Sugarloaf in the background.

This may be a shot of the flume looking north toward the upstream portal of the tunnel near Little California Creek (and passing under the Li'l Cal ski loop)

Flume tender along main flume near the junction with a side flume coming from upper California Creek.

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