EPA also stabilized the soil to reduce the amount of tailings that was eroding into the stream. Overall, about 60 cubic yards of soil were removed and about 12 acres of soil were treated and stabilized. There are 3,866 abandoned hard rock mine sites across Montana. In addition, there are 3,137 abandoned coal mines in the Treasure State, according to DEQ.

DEQ Abandoned Mine Program supervisor pay day loans Autumn Payday loans echoed Roberts's comment about prioritization and the lack of money to address payday loans the problems out there. DEQ had been exclusively focused up until the 1990s on abandoned coal mine sites.

But when water's involved in a cleanup project, as it is with Fred Burr Creek, the costs can really go up, Coleman said. Located just 15 miles west of Fred Burr Creek, the Black Pine Mine was another old silver mine and pay day loans mill site. DEQ found elevated levels of mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, antimony, and manganese at the historic site. Selch previously told the Standard the old mine was the cause of the highest mercury concentrations in fish in the state.

South Payday loans Lower Willow Creek also has a fish advisory on it. That cleanup job is mostly done. But what left Dinsmore and others upset was the way DEQ left behind what looks like a wasteland of felled trees, placed willy nilly everywhere over the land DEQ dug up to get the waste out of there. There weren't enough trees to make a timber sale, and DEQ would have had to pay to bring in erosion control products. So leaving the trees was deemed by all the decision-makers as the right thing to do.

DEQ says there are restoration benefits to leaving the trees, but Dillon-based plant ecologist Richard Prodgers calls the tree debris "more fad than science. FWP water pollution biologist Trevor Selch said FWP will soon be updating the agency's fish consumption advisory, so details here could be a little different from what's available online.

FWP sampled fish in Fred Burr Creek in June 2016 and found mercury to be seven times higher in the fish than what would be expected in an uncontaminated stream. When eating fish from Fred Burr Creek, it is advisable for children and women of child-bearing age to eat no more than two trout per month. For men and women not of child-bearing age, it is advisable to eat no more than five trout per month. According to Ted Antonioli, local historian and geologist, the silver mines around Philipsburg were some of the richest mines in the late 1800s.

Those mines produced so much silver, Antonioli claims they contributed to a silver crash that occurred in the late 1800s. Fred Burr Creek is not the only drainage with heavy metals in the water. Nearby Douglas Creek contains elevated arsenic, cadmium, copper, iron, lead, mercury, and zinc. There was a silver mill on Douglas Creek. FWP water pollution biologist Trevor Selch said Douglas Creek is fishless.

South Fork Willow Creek, which DEQ recently completed a cleanup on, has had elevated levels of copper, lead, mercury, antimony, cadmium, and arsenic.

DEQ will monitor heavy metal levels in South Fork Willow Creek going forward. Fred Burr Creek has mercury, arsenic, cadmium, copper, lead, zinc, antimony, and thallium. The mercury, arsenic, and lead in Fred Burr Creek are considered to be at elevated levels, according to Trout Unlimited project manager Rob Roberts.