River clean-up work has begun
Efforts to clean up and protect the Whitefish River from further pollution caused by decades of railroading in Whitefish began last week.
Workers from BNSF Railway's environmental consulting company, Kennedy/Jenks, began digging test pits on Aug. 26 near an interceptor trench installed in 1973 between the BNSF Loop bike path and the Whitefish River. The pits were the width of an excavator blade and more than a dozen feet deep.
One pit was dug about 20 feet past the western end of the trench, which is designed to prevent a diesel plume originating uphill at BNSF's fueling area from reaching the river.
On-scene coordinators from the Environmental Protection Agency's Denver office were on hand to take samples. The soil in the pits appeared to be very tight clay-like soils. Samples from the pits will help determine whether petroleum products are going under or around the trench.
The EPA notified BNSF in March that the agency had found the company responsible for the river contamination under the Oil Pollution Act, and the agency set a timetable for clean-up beginning Sept. 25.
In one scenario, metal coffer dams could be set up in places with contamination. Contaminated sediment and logs would be removed, and disturbed river bottom and banks would have to be restored. The clean-up orders extend from BNSF's upstream boundary to the JP Road bridge and include ensuring the interceptor trench functions properly.
From the mouth of Whitefish Lake to the U.S. 93 culverts, the Whitefish River is a slow-moving stream that recreationists can easily paddle in both directions. After more than a century of human impacts — from logging and railroading to sedimentation caused by City Beach sand and development along the lake and river — the river bottom is covered with a thick layer of muck which often contains petroleum products.
Retrievers at the Whitefish Community Foundation's Duck Derby on Aug. 22, who waded after little rubber ducks about 150 yards downstream from the Baker Avenue bridge, emerged from the river with black ooze coating their legs up to their knees.
State fisheries biologists agree that this section of the river is not great habitat for game fish. Trevor Selch, a fisheries pollution control biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in Helena, said there was evidence in a risk assessment conducted by Kennedy/Jenks of macroinvertebrate numbers declining because of diesel contamination.
Less bugs would mean less food for fish in that portion of the river, but FWP fisheries biologist Jim Vashro, at the regional headquarters in Kalispell, said no fish population studies have been conducted in that section of the river.
On Aug. 5, Denise Martin, a site response section manager for the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, addressed the Flathead Basin Commission at Glacier National Park's community building. She described a long history of pollution by the Great Northern Railway and BNSF and ongoing efforts to monitor and address a large underground plume of diesel in the 90-acre rail yard above the river.
In related news, the DEQ in May approved a final remedial investigation report for BNSF's 107-acre fueling facility in Havre. BNSF has recovered more than 185,000 gallons of diesel product from the groundwater there since 1989. A residential drinking well nearby that had become contaminated with vinyl chloride was replaced with a deeper well in 2007.