BUTTE, Mont. _ This is a town that Superfund rebuilt.

Faced with mining contamination similar in scope to the Silver Valley's, Butte traded conflict for cooperation in cleaning up its massive Superfund site.

In return, the city of 35,000 has leveraged Superfund dollars to clean up the mess, help revitalize the area and honor its mining legacy.

"When the mines closed in the 1980s, we had 22 percent unemployment," said Don Peoples, a Butte native and mayor from 1978 to 1989. "We went from there to an All-American city, and Superfund provided an impetus for it."

Now, the city is an example of cooperation among local residents, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and mining companies working to clean up a region plagued by contamination.

Butte persuaded the area's biggest mining company and the EPA to not only handle the mess, but also help finance a variety of local projects, from a mine disaster memorial to a 31-acre recreation complex.

"We used Superfund as an economic development tool," said Jack Lynch, a fourth-generation Butte native and Butte-Silver Bow County's chief executive from 1989 to 2001. Lynch is now Spokane's city administrator.

"We'd lived with the problem for over 100 years, and we felt we should be comfortable with the solution," he said. "We went from being spectators to being limited partners."

There are many similarities between Butte and Idaho's Silver Valley, where the EPA is finishing work on the Bunker Hill Superfund site and is planning an expanded cleanup of the Coeur d'Alene Basin.

At both places, mine contamination spreads more than 100 miles downstream.

Both are considered Superfund mega-sites, where cleanup could last another 20 to 30 years. At both sites, the EPA is concerned about human health risks and serious ecological damage.

But there are key differences, too.

In Idaho, politicians and many local citizens have fought the EPA for years. And the main Silver Valley polluter, Gulf Resources, went bankrupt -- leaving taxpayers with most of the cleanup job and a few surviving mining companies with the rest.

Butte has had a reluctant but cooperative partner in the Atlantic Richfield Co. (Arco), which bought out the Anaconda Copper Co. in 1977 and inherited its pollution liability.

The company has spent $700 million on the cleanup so far.

Arco doesn't like Superfund's retroactive liability rules, but will dole out $1 billion for cleanup and environmental mitigation before it's over, says Sandy Stash, Arco's spokeswoman.

"In Butte, we've improved the environment," Stash said. "People stop me on the street and compliment me."

Stigma less than feared

Butte's Irish bars, brick hotels and proud millionaires' mansions were almost swallowed by the Berkeley Pit, an 1,800-foot-deep defunct open-pit copper mine that stands as a stark symbol of unaddressed mining pollution.

In the 1970s, the Anaconda Mining Co. proposed expanding the pit and wiping out the city's historic center.

Butte balked at the idea.

"It was the first time Butte said no to the Anaconda Copper Company, a company that used our air and water as a free garbage dump for a century," said Pat Munday, a professor of technology at Montana Tech, a branch of the University of Montana in Butte. "Now, the bill is due."

The area was named a federal Superfund site in 1985 -- the largest site in the country.

The Berkeley Pit is filling with 28 billion gallons of water so acidic it melts boat propellers. In 1995, the pit killed 342 migrating snow geese that landed on its turquoise-blue surface.

Butte's underground aquifer, the sole source of the town's drinking water, also was poisoned by acid drainage from the huge mine.

Along the Clark Fork River, mining's marks can be seen in the green bones of dead animals, where copper has replaced calcium. Some of the worst threats are invisible, including arsenic in drinking water wells at Milltown -- a human health threat -- and dissolved heavy metals that harm aquatic life.

At first, Butte leaders were skeptical of Superfund, Peoples says. He recalls where the most vociferous opposition came from.

"It came from me," he said. "I said, `Over my dead body would Superfund come here."'

But he quickly changed his mind.

"The stigma wasn't nearly as bad as I thought -- and not nearly as bad as leaving cleanup undone," he said.

In 1987, Peoples was named one of the top 20 mayors in the nation for saving Butte from economic ruin. He wooed billionaire industrialist Dennis Washington, owner of Montana Resources Inc., to mine copper and molybdenum and keep paychecks flowing to 300 people during the Superfund cleanup.

Peoples' cleanup technology company, MSE Inc., is also a Superfund beneficiary, attracting U.S. Department of Energy and EPA grants to Butte.

It employs 200 people, many with advanced degrees, with an average salary of $51,000. The company also has a $4 million-a-year research partnership with Montana Tech to study cleanup techniques for water pollution -- including the toxic stew in the Berkeley pit.

With the closing of Montana Resources and the downsizing of Montana Power, Butte is struggling again. But Superfund isn't the reason for the downturn, says Butte-Silver Bow County planning director Jon Sesso.

"The environmental degradation that was here 15 years ago is being eliminated. Without Superfund, it's unlikely we could have done it," Sesso said. "When mining went down, environmental cleanup jobs helped us survive."

Cleanup money has helped Butte cap and contain its worst heavy metals pollution, protect streams and close 170 mine shafts.

Butte also set up an innovative program to address lead pollution in the town's old houses, yards, playgrounds and schools.

At first, EPA officials said Superfund couldn't be used to reduce lead paint, but the agency eventually accepted Butte's "pathway" approach to all lead exposure sources that might harm a child.

"We pushed hard, and EPA listened. Now, we're the poster child of Superfund," Sesso said.

Butte was named along with Arco as a responsible party for the cleanup because mine wastes were carried through the city's storm sewers. That gave local officials a place at the table in negotiations with the EPA and Arco.

Butte's leaders pushed for new structures over remediated land -- playgrounds, homes, a 31-acre recreation complex and the Belmont Senior Center, built over a former mine.

In Anaconda, where ore from Butte was smelted, Arco constructed a $20 million Jack Nicklaus golf course after residents said they'd rather use the contaminated property than fence it off.

They've also launched a $95 million cleanup of Silver Bow Creek, a 25-mile stream that flows into the Clark Fork River.

The Berkeley Pit's toxic contents and related contamination along the Clark Fork is next.

Politicians pushed for cleanup

Montana politics played a key role in Butte's Superfund success. In 1983, the state sued Arco for natural resources damages.

"For six or seven years, we did nothing, " said Rob Collins, an assistant attorney general in Helena in charge of the state's natural resource damages case.

"Then Arco moved for summary judgment, and we had to fish or cut bait. Arco was figuring the state politicians would back away. They didn't," Collins said.

The Montana Legislature gave the attorney general's office $5 million to pursue the case with a study of natural resources damages. The state settled a good part of the case for $215 million, plus $20 million in interest, Collins says.

The Salish and Kootenai tribes also settled with Arco for ecological damages in the Clark Fork Basin.

With the money from the state lawsuit, a $215 million trust fund was formed. The interest is being used for environmental restoration.

By contrast, the Idaho Legislature refused to give former Idaho Attorney General Jim Jones any money to prepare a $50 million natural resources damages lawsuit against Bunker Hill's owners, Gulf Resources.

Idaho settled with the mining companies for $4.5 million for a cleanup that's already cost $253 million and may require another $359 million over the next 30 years.

"That was obviously a bad mistake," Collins said of Idaho's decision. "Montana doesn't normally get out front on these things, but we did in this case."

Munday credits former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot.

"Racicot understood the public sentiment favoring cleanup at a time when lots of others didn't," Munday said.

Montana has worked amicably with the EPA at the state's 11 Superfund sites, says John Wardell, director of the EPA's Montana office in Helena.

But when Butte was included in the cleanup, some state officials worried it could impede Montana Resources' mining plans.

"We worked through that. The mine operated for many years," Wardell said. "It's been shut down for the last couple of years for economic reasons. It didn't happen in Butte that mining was driven out."

In March, Arco and Montana Resources signed a new legal consent decree, pledging $87 million to build and run a plant to treat the toxic water in the Berkeley Pit.

Montana Resources is a holding company with five other parties -- Asarco, AR Montana Corp., Dennis Washington, Montana Resources and Montana Resources Inc.

Montana Resources bought the mine from Arco in 1985, making it partly responsible for cleanup costs.

Treatment plant construction begins this summer. After 2018, treated water from the pit will be pumped into Silver Bow Creek.

`Embrace the cleanup'

In its zeal to clean up, Butte didn't ignore history. Many mine head frames still dot the landscape -- deliberate monuments to mining.

In nearby Walkerville, a hilltop neighborhood once populated by Irish miners, the Granite Mountain Overlook commemorates 168 men who died on June 8, 1917, in a catastrophic mine fire -- the largest death toll in hard-rock mining history.

That year, the mines were running at capacity day and night, straining to fuel America's arsenal during World War I. Near midnight, a miner's lamp touched an electrical cable, turning the 240-story mine shaft into an inferno.

"We used (Superfund) mitigation money for the memorial -- it was nearly a century overdue," Lynch said.

At Lynch's invitation, Sesso came to Spokane in January and urged the Spokane City Council to shape its own vision for how to deal with mine wastes flowing into Washington state from the Silver Valley.

"In Butte, we hear daily what Missoula thinks. We are the polluters. You are Kellogg's Missoula -- you have a very legitimate standing," Sesso told the Spokane officials.

He told them the Superfund project's most important stage is the detailed planning that comes after the EPA announces its chosen cleanup remedies. That decision for the Coeur d'Alene Basin is expected next month.

In their written comments to the EPA, the City Council says it favors an EPA-led cleanup and a thorough scrubbing of Spokane River beaches and islands contaminated by mining pollution from Idaho.

A comprehensive cleanup of the Coeur d'Alene Basin watershed will enhance the Spokane region's economic vitality, Sesso says.

"You should embrace the need to clean up," he says. "Do it and move on."