A free and open government needs real transparency if it is going to survive.

That transparency is also mandated in Montana law.

Yet, here we are fighting to make sure our local government is open when it comes to talk of Superfund cleanup in Butte, and then some.

The argument from those who oppose this transparency is basically, “We’re smart and you’re not. So, trust us.”

Well, excuse me if I side with the group that would rather peek behind the curtain instead of simply taking the word of the Environmental Protection Agency, British Petroleum/ARCO and the chief executive.

Those “watchdogs” are merely acting within their rights as citizens, yet they have been criticized, attacked and slandered.

In Montana, all meetings of public or governmental bodies, boards, bureaus, commissions, agencies of the state, or any political subdivision of the state or organizations or agencies supported in whole or part by public funds or expending public fund, including the supreme court, must be open to the public.

That is pretty simple and straight forward, but still seems to be so confusing for some.

When some refer to meetings that were supposed to be open to the public — but were not — as “secret meetings,” our chief executive compares them to Donald Trump shouting “fake news.”

Maybe we should just call it “alternative transparency.”

Whatever you call it, Montana law just might have been broken by the repository siting committee charged with finding a dumping spot for about 800,000 cubic yards of toxic waste from the Consent Decree cleanup in the center of town.

That committee includs members of the Council of Commissioners, ARCO, Butte-Silver Bow and the members of the public, and not one of the committee meetings was open.

So, the public had no idea that they were planning to dump that toxic waste in the old Dublin Gulch neighborhood and too close to homes in Centerville and Corktown.

We stumbled upon this plan by accident when my dad saw the chief executive looking at the Gulch. He didn’t like the answer when the chief executive told him that they were “just going to move some dirt around and fill some holes.”

That was the first time in a half a century that any official took interest in the Dublin Gulch, so we started to dig around a little. That digging led to the second time in the last four years in which a Butte neighborhood was up in arms about dumping plans. The first was near Timber Butte in early 2020.

By blowing the top off the most recent secret plan, we saved the Dublin Gulch from being buried forever, yet we still have to fight to keep the waste away from homes. We have to convince them that the Dublin Gulch is bigger than what they have marked on the map, too.

The transparency that was forced by some columns written by yours truly turned the attention to the Berkeley Pit as a better, more logical dumping site. It also got the chief executive to finally talk about transparency.

Three weeks ago, we were told the Pit was off limits. Now we are told they have been talking about it for some time. Of course, there is no record of any of those conversations. 

You see, transparency is more than just empty promises and words in a letter.

Another transparency issue centers on leaving waste in place during the cleanup. They call it grey fill, while others call it “dirty dirt” because it is contaminated. 

When people ask about this “dirty dirt,” which includes much higher levels of contamination left in place than other Superfund cleanups have received, they are summarily dismissed. 

We are told that we just don’t get it.

At the Oct. 11 Council of Commissioners committee of the whole meeting, a former employee at the Department of Environmental Quality spoke out in opposition of a resolution demanding transparency and citizen involvement.

“What role does the public actually have?” the former employee asked the commissioners. “How many people want to go to these meetings and argue points of hydrogeology or points of engineering.”

Translation: “We’re smart and you’re not. So, trust us.”

The right to open meetings doesn’t necessarily mean the right to participate in those meetings. People were asking merely to exercise their right to observe the meetings because we are the ones who have to live with this cleanup.

Three weeks after those comments, that transparency resolution was killed in a tragic comedy of confusion during a meeting of the Council of Commissioners. 

Even though it failed, that resolution introduced by Commissioner Jim Fisher led to at least a little more transparency. It led to an EPA meeting in Butte, and it led to presentations to the Council of Commissioners by BP/ARCO and the National Resource Damage Program.

More importantly, it exposed the lack of transparency in the process.

Still, the attacks and condescending dismissals continue.

In a guest editorial in The Montana Standard this week, a board member of the Citizens Technical Environmental Committee questioned the motives of the “watchdogs” of Superfund. He actually said “watchdogs” as if that was a bad thing.

Do these inquisitive citizens have to present their motive to participate in government decisions? Or should just caring about the environment they live in be enough?

It is fair, however, to question the motives of a CTEC board member who is questioning citizens for trying to participate in government. The CTEC is supposed to explain those complicated answers to the public, not question the audacity of the public for asking the questions in the first place.

The thing the writer, former DEQ employee, the chief executive, the EPA and ARCO are missing here is the good that could have come out of transparency in this process. It could have been good for them because openness benefits everyone without something to hide.

They want to just tell us that they think grey fill is OK to use, even if the NRDP decided otherwise in the highly-transparent cleaning up the Parrot Tailings. Or they just tell us that the waste-in-place plan was part of the Consent Decree — that complex 1,400-page document devised in secrecy and unveiled just a few days before it was signed in 2020.

I am not convinced that it was.

These experts need to tell the patronized public why the “dirty dirt” is OK to live with. They need to tell us why Butte should be fine with higher toxic levels than the rest of the free world.

They need to explain the points of hydrogeology and points of engineering that prove that this “dirty dirt” is safe, if it is in fact safe.

The irony here is thicker than the arrogance. If the waste-in-place plan really was safe, then we would have all been convinced of that by attending or reading about open meetings.

Transparency could have stopped the headaches caused by the “watchdogs” before they even began.

But those meetings, until recently, were all closed, so now we have no factual basis by which we can trust them.

All we know is what they are not telling us, and that right there tells us all we need to know.

— Bill Foley, who is running to be the next chief executive of Butte-Silver Bow, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.