Yellowstone River tributary cleanup ahead of schedule

Huge strides were made this summer to clean up Soda Butte Creek, once considered the most polluted stream to enter Yellowstone National Park.

Despite the challenges of working in a wet meadow in a high mountain valley, reclamation of the McLaren Mill tailings site just east of Cooke City is a year ahead of schedule and under budget in its first year of moving dirt.

“The thing that makes the job fast is it was dry this year,” said Tom Henderson, of the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s Remediation Division.

The $20 million project is the most expensive remediation work the state has ever undertaken. Much of the project was funded through grants to DEQ from the Office of Surface Mining to conduct abandoned mine reclamation.