Regardless, the stunted bug diversity doesn’t appear to be holding back fish. Perhaps that’s because those invertebrates are more sensitive to lingering toxicants, or maybe the insects that recovered first are outcompeting the later arrivals. The diversity of aquatic insects - aka trout chow - is still down by 10 to 30 percent. To be sure, not every creek-dweller proved so instantly resilient.
Rainbow trout have made nearly a full recovery in the creeks around Blackbird Mine. Today, Panther’s salmon run is self-sustaining. Chinook salmon began spawning in Panther Creek in the early aughts as well, a process that the state expedited - perhaps a touch rashly - by dumping in a load of hatchery fish in 2001. By 2002, rainbow trout were again present in all of the once-poisoned creeks now they’ve returned to full abundance. The first to bounce back were the salmonids, which recolonized streams as copper and cobalt concentrations waned. And as he and other scientists kept tabs on the afflicted creeks, they noticed some encouraging developments: Life was returning to the lifeless streams. Geological Survey, where he works today as a self-described “dirty water biologist.” But Blackbird Mine never strayed far from his thoughts. “We were among the first in the Upper Salmon Basin to attempt riparian fencing, before most people were thinking about it,” says Noranda attorney Bruce Smith.Īs the cleanup proceeded, Mebane changed jobs a few times, eventually transferring to the U.S. They also improved fish habitat, primarily by erecting livestock fencing along streambanks, to compensate for harm to salmon. They relocated sediment, built containment dams and, rather creatively, routed water through the mine’s tunnels to a treatment plant.
In the coming years, the mining firms pulled out all the stops. Finally, in 1995, the sparring parties reached a settlement: Four companies would pay $50 million to clean up the festering site. Blackbird had changed hands numerous times over the years, and its owners, Noranda and Hanna, were reluctant to pay for their predecessors’ sins. Photos courtesy of Joe Baldwin and Chris Mebane.īack in ‘92, Mebane’s grim testimony convinced the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to enter the fray on behalf of salmon, adding another player to the legal muddle. The evolution of Bucktail Creek, from copper-tainted mess to functional ecosystem. The waste tainted surrounding creeks, forming a “chemical dam” in Panther Creek: a wedge of polluted water, impassable to fish. As production ramped up, so did the accumulation of acidic tailings - nearly 10 billion pounds altogether.
The sordid saga of Blackbird Mine begins in the late 1800s, when mining companies first began digging tunnels and open pits to extract copper and cobalt. The damaged ecosystem has nearly returned to full health - a vindication of one of the West’s largest mine cleanups. Two decades later, however, Mebane and his colleagues have published a new study demonstrating a dramatic turnaround. “It was about as lifeless as you can get outside of an autoclave,” he recalls. When Mebane dropped test cages full of rainbow trout into Blackbird Creek, the fish were dead within 48 hours. Blackbird Creek was running bright red, Bucktail Creek was an eerie neon blue, and Panther Creek was nearly devoid of aquatic insects, never mind salmon. The first time Chris Mebane visited Blackbird Mine in 1992, polluted runoff from the mining site had created a toxic rainbow. Like Tweet Email Print Subscribe Donate Now