Let's Act before it's too late.
Together, we can make the Clark Fork River healthy again at the Smurfit site.
We need to:
• Clean up the dumps.
• Remove the berms.
• Restore the floodplain.
Rigorous sampling of contaminated soil and water is critical to ensuring this vision for cleanup is based on sound science.
Smurfit-Stone mill site
Major flooding at Smurfit is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
A big flood on the Clark Fork River would sweep toxic waste stored at the shuttered Smurfit-Stone pulp mill downstream for hundreds of miles, threatening fish and wildlife, and harming the health and economies of downstream communities. A new study shows what happens when the shoddy berm that separates the site from the river fails.
Photo: Chris Boyer/Kestrel Aerial
Given extreme weather trends, it’s a question of when, not if, this will happen.
DANGEROUS NUMBERS:
Information gathered by environmental consultants in 2012 and 2014 indicate that the dumps contain toxic heavy metals and other contaminants, including cadmium, mercury, arsenic, selenium, lead, dioxins and furans. Over its lifespan, the mill produced an enormous amount of waste including:
local partners say:
