CSKT pushes river cleanup as Smurfit data is delayed
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) With summer drawing to a close, the Environmental Protection Agency still hasn’t analyzed the most recent contamination data from the Smurfit-Stone mill site. So the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes want to include more work in the Clark Fork River.
On Thursday, after cancelling meetings in June and July due to delays in processing samples, the Frenchtown Smurfit-Stone Citizens Advisory Group learned they still wouldn’t get much updated information from either the EPA or the state on contamination related to the Smurfit-Stone mill site. In both cases, the data processing has gone slowly. That leaves not only the Advisory Group in limbo but also members of the CSKT who are wondering if they’ll ever get to fish in the Clark Fork River again.
EPA project manager Allie Archer said she’d finally received the last summary of data this week from the five sampling events in September 2023 and October 2024, but her team hasn’t had much of a chance to go through it. Archer said she’s still waiting for data from work this June that sampled groundwater to investigate the mobility of toxic metals in the groundwater to the Clark Fork River.
“As we’ve just received those reports, I need to work with the site teams to understand their review timelines and give you guys a concrete timeframe to see that information,” Archer said.
When pressed by the advisory group, Archer said the reports probably wouldn’t be ready to be released until probably November. But people interested in the raw data could email her to get copies of the summaries.
Trevor Selch, Fish, Wildlife & Parks fisheries pollution biologist, had also planned on presenting information on an updated fish consumption advisory based on fish tissue collected in 2023 as part of a study of contamination throughout the Clark Fork River and down the Flathead River past Noxon. The tissue analysis was funded by an EPA Columbia River Basin Restoration Funding Assistance Program grant.
However, Selch has also run into delays due to Department of Environmental Quality laboratories needing to run quality assurance tests on the tissue samples. He hoped to present the data in the next few months.
So instead, Selch reviewed recent water sampling results and the events that led to the state’s 2020 fish consumption advisory. Due to excessive dioxins, furans and PCBs in fish caught in 2018-2019, 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.
Then a little more than a month ago, the CSKT released a tribal fish consumption advisory that was even more restrictive. 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 have to be more conservative than that of the state, said CSKT legal staff scientist Mary Price.
So the EPA chose guidelines, driven mainly by the risk of PCBs, that determined that 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. They are also to avoid eating rainbow trout caught in the Blackfoot River downstream of Ovando.
What bothers Price was that PCBs are keeping tribal members from eating fish, but the EPA has said that the Smurfit-Stone site is not a source of dioxins or PCBs in the river.
“Somehow, the Clark Fork River has become separated from the terrestrial part of the site. There seems to be this attitude and perception developing that, somehow, the site is only what you see on the ground. The site was designed and built to incorporate the Clark Fork River as the discharge source. I have yet to see a pulp or paper mill that was not built next to a river - that was intentional. We kind of need to keep that in mind,” Price said. “I’m a little frustrated by the Clark Fork River always being set to the side. For the Salish and Kootenai Tribes, that is what really matters here. Their rights are in the Clark Fork River.”
Price is looking forward to Selch’s fish tissue data because it might identify the source of the pollutants. That’s a good first step, but the river needs to be cleaned up too, Price said. But the EPA has repeatedly said its only responsibility is cleaning up the Smurfit-Stone site. Price said the EPA’s responsibility should extend to the river.
“The fish consumption advisory that the tribes have issued is not a solution to remediation on the site; it’s not an institutional control for remediation. It’s a self-protection mechanism. Because until that river is cleaned up and the fish are no longer contaminated, the tribes have no choice but to tell the tribal membership that they should not eat any fish out of the Clark Fork River,” Price said. “So what are we going to do about it?”
State Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, said the Treaty of 1855 gave the CSKT the right to fish in “all the usual and accustomed places” that they fished prior to signing the treaty with the U.S. government. That includes the Clark Fork River. Now, if the EPA doesn’t clean up the river, the U.S. government is robbing the tribes of their rights, Curdy said.
“So to the EPA, I think the ball is in your court. I think it’s up to you to step it up,” Curdy said.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.