Superfund

Episode 05: Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Fire

August 13, 2019 Nora Saks 00:37:11

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From Evel Knievel to a ‘Great Flood’ and on to the dawning of the Superfund era, Episode 5 looks at the origins of the government program designed to force whoever made the mess to clean it up.

Did you know that when Superfund arrived in Montana, it didn’t start on the Butte Hill, blanketed in raw mine dumps? Or even at the giant Berkeley Pit, left for dead and flooding with acid mine drainage. It started 120 miles downstream of Butte with tainted tap water at an old hydroelectric dam just outside the liberal stronghold college town of Missoula.

Learn more now with Episode 5: Out of the Frying Pan, Into The Fire.

Episode 04: We Gave It To The Pit

May 29, 2019 Nora Saks 00:41:23

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I live a mile away from the Berkeley Pit, the mile by mile and a half wide former open-pit mine, which is now filled with a 50 billion gallon toxic lake. Every time I visit, I leave hyper aware of the contradictions and compromises that go hand in glove with industrialization. I find myself wondering: who thought chiseling a colossal hole in the Earth was a good idea, and why? So today, let’s take a dive, figuratively, into open pit mining and some controversial decisions made late last century that changed Butte’s land, people, and environmental legacy forever. This is Episode 4: We Gave it to the Pit.

Episode 03: First And Last Warning

April 9, 2019 Nora Saks 00:35:57

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In August 1917, Frank Little was the victim of a grisly murder in Butte. Little was a labor organizer who came to Butte to unify and radicalize Butte’s miners in their fight against the Anaconda Mining Company for higher wages and safer working conditions. Most historians believe that the Anaconda Company was behind Little’s killing, but no one knows for sure. A note pinned to his underwear threatened, “Others take notice: first and last warning,” along with the numbers 3-7-77, the calling card of frontier vigilantes.

Episode 01: Butte’s Precarious Arrangement

March 5, 2019 Nora Saks 00:17:43

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Richest Hill episode 01: Get to know Butte, Montana, one of America’s biggest Superfund sites and one of Montana’s most compelling places. Richest Hill is a new podcast about the past, present and future of Butte, America, “the Richest Hill on Earth.”

Episode 00: Series Preview

January 9, 2019 Nora Saks 0:01:53

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If you don’t know Butte Montana, you might have heard it’s one of the biggest toxic messes in the country. But now the “mining city” is on the verge of sealing a deal that could clean it up once and for all. So how did we get here? What comes after Superfund? And who gets to decide?

Find out on Richest Hill, a new podcast from Montana Public Radio coming in early 2019