The waste site that time forgot: Phosphorus plant's fate uncertain

With all eyes focused on Butte's Superfund cleanup — including the Berkeley Pit, Silver Bow Creek, and the Parrot tailings — a waste site with the potential to impact human health has been left all but untouched eight miles west of town.

After nearly two decades of consideration, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to announce sometime later this year a major decision on the Belgian-owned Solvay phosphorus plant's nearly empty site.

The closed plant is a half-mile south of Ramsay Elementary School in Butte's Tax Increment Financial District, a special economic zone for industry. The TFID, called Montana Connections, is home to the rail hub Port of Montana, FedEx, and REC Silicon. Montana's only twin-screen drive-in theater is immediately east of the site.

The closed plant is a 150-acre moonscape of radioactive slag dunes, evaporated tailings ponds, and skeletonized industrial structures visible from Interstates 15 and 90. But the site's most dangerous feature isn't so visible: a 500,000-gallon concrete tank filled with white phosphorus sludge. If the sludge ever touches the atmosphere, it will explode and release a toxic gas.

Read more: http://mtstandard.com/natural-resources/the-waste-site-that-time-forgot-phosphorus-plant-s-fate/article_1ed352b2-752c-5a23-847d-d926b8e4ba41.html