Published 8/20/08

Restoration work on two

Carter ponds to be done by mid-September

by JIM DULLENTY
News-Argus Staff Writer

Reconstruction of the two Carter Ponds north of Lewistown should be completed by mid-September, members of the Big Spring Creek Watershed Council learned Monday.

The council also heard that vandals are removing bollards from the city’s railroad corridor trail; it looks like it will cost a minimum of $250,000 to clean up the Berg Lumber site for industrial use; and a study to be done in a couple of years will reveal how well cleanup of Big Spring Creek is going.

Anne Tews, Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries biologist, told the Council that work on the lower Carter Pond is being done first. Crews have been reconstructing that dam since mid-July and last week installed new pipes for the water outtake.

The upper pond will be done next and work should be completed by mid-September, Tews said.

She told the Council the depths of the two ponds, which were favorite fishing sites until water drained from both ponds two years ago, will be about the same as before. The depth should assure there is minimum fish kill during the mild winter weather this area has been experiencing.

Lewistown City Planner Duane Ferdinand told the Council that vandals have been pulling up metal bollards (poles) at some bridges on the city’s railroad corridor trail. The bollards were installed to assure that only non-motorized traffic uses the trails.

“They were put in shallow and are fairly easy to move,” Ferdinand said. “There were four taken out in one day.”

John Turner, the city’s trail-builder, said the bollards should be placed more deeply in concrete.

Ferdinand also said the Department of Environmental Quality report on cleanup of the old Berg Lumber Mill site on Joyland Road is to be made public on Aug. 29. He said preliminary cost estimates for cleanup of the Penta contamination of soils alone will cost $30,000 to $50,000.

Preliminary estimates for cleanup of the site for residential use would cost from $430,000 to $24 million; cleanup for recreational use would be from $200,000 to $6 million and the minimum for industrial use would be about $250,000.

“It looks like 11,000 tons of dioxin-contaminated material would have to be removed, 52 tons of penta-contaminated material,” Ferdinand said.

These estimates would appear to mean that cleanup costs will exceed the value of the property, several council members said. That means, they said, the Berg bankruptcy trustee may want to give the property to the city, which can obtain federal and state grants to clean up the site.

Karl Gies, Council treasurer, said the city should “keep trying to get this.” He noted that Big Spring Creek meanders along the border of the property. Tews said the creek meanders for about a mile along the Berg property and that FWP owns most of the land on the opposite side.

Council members in the past have recommended that one use for the Berg site would be increased public access to the creek.

Mark Ockey, water quality specialist with DEQ in Helena, told the Council that a 5-year review of Big Spring Creek cleanup efforts will take place to determine how well the efforts are going. But Ockey said he was unsure when that review would begin.

Ted Hawn, a Council member, said such a review likely would take place in 2010.

Ockey said collection of data and cleanup efforts continue to “perk along,” pushed by the city of Lewistown and the PCB Advisory Committee.

Tews told the Council that FWP studies of fish tissue show there is no PCB contamination of fish in the creek. She said the cleaning of the fish hatchery raceways has helped alleviate this problem. She was referring to removal of PCB-laced paints on the raceways of the lower Big Spring Creek Fish Hatchery.

Ferdinand also told the Council that the bridge Fergus High School plans to install on the Eagle Trail, a section of the city’s overall trail system, has been ordered. Tews said for work of this kind on a stream, the school would need to apply for FWP permits.