EAST HELENA, MONTANA—The last vestiges of the former Asarco Manager’s House in East Helena will end with a controlled blast and burn. Beginning on April 29, the Lewis & Clark County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) Bomb Squad and the City of East Helena Volunteer Fire Department will be conducting live training exercises using the outbuildings remaining on the site of the former Asarco Manager’s House in East Helena. LCSO Bomb Squad personnel will conduct controlled explosive breaching of doors and windows on the buildings. Following the County’s exercises, the City of East Helena Fire Department will perform “live fire” training with all buildings reduced by fire by May 11. According to Deputy Sheriff Cornish, Commander of the LCSO Bomb Squad, “This type of hands on training provides an invaluable opportunity for improving the readiness of our Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) personnel in responding to high risk situations, such as those involving hostages, armed stand-­‐‑offs and other types of incidents.” Fire Chief Golemon also emphasized the importance of such hands-­‐‑on experience. “Real-­‐‑life training allows us to provide the highest level of service to our community and ensure the safety of our firefighters. It’s not often that owners will allow emergency response personnel to practice blowing up and burning down their buildings. We are very grateful to the Montana Environmental Custodial Trust, the owner, for supporting these critical training exercises.”

According to Betsy Burns, EPA Cleanup Manager for East Helena, “It’s gratifying to see demolition move forward after several years of planning and studies. This work represents an important step in the clean up the former Asarco smelter.” EPA and the Montana Trust hope to remove the remaining on-site structures by the end of next year, leaving the 14-million ton slag pile as one of the last visible remnants of the Asarco smelter. Burns also advised that, “Folks may see construction on the western side of State Highway 518 just east of Prickly Pear Creek where power, telephone and water lines will be relocated to make way for construction of the temporary bypass channel for the section of the creek below smelter dam.” The Montana Trust has been working closely with the City of East Helena, NorthWestern Energy and Century Link on these utility projects.

The OSHB is the largest and newest building on the smelter property. In its heyday, the Asarco smelter produced lead bullion from diverse concentrates and ores from mines and facilities all over the world. In 1988 alone, Asarco received more than 200,000 tons of such raw materials—delivered by rail or truck, offloaded, stored in piles and then blended and mixed with fluxes to render them suitable for smelting. Before the OSHB was constructed in 1990, these operations took place in the outdoor storage yard or in a small, unventilated building, which generated significant, uncontrolled dust. The OSHB was designed to enclose and ventilate these operations in order to control dust emissions. The useful life of this behemoth structure was cut short after little more than a decade, when the smelter was shutdown in 2001.

The Montana Trust assumed ownership, management, cleanup and redevelopment responsibility for the ASARCO sites in Montana, including the former East Helena smelter, when the ASARCO bankruptcy was settled in December of 2009. The Montana Trust is cleaning up the East Helena site under the oversight of EPA as Lead Agency. Other Montana Trust sites include former ASARCO mines in Lincoln, Phillipsburg and Superior. The United States and the State of Montana are the beneficiaries of the Montana Trust.

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Read the full article by Director Cindy Brooks in the November 2012 Prickly Pear Junction.

For more information, please download the November 14 Public Meeting Notice and Invitation.

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