Erik Nylund just might be the smartest person I know. He is also one of the best people I have ever known.

My 1993 Butte High classmate is a man who will always do what is right. He has a big heart, and he fights for the little man. He fights for children. He fights for whistleblowers who need protection.

Erik worked for Sen. Jon Tester for most of the senator’s 18 years serving Montana. While he did his work for the senator, he always had his eye on social injustices in the Mining City and beyond.

Because he worked for Sen. Tester, though, Erik was always doing his fighting behind the scenes. That is because he said he didn’t have his First Amendment rights to speak freely in public.

Sen. Tester lost his bid for a fourth term in November. While we lose a senator who did a lot for our state, we gained a free-speaking Erik Nylund. Not a terrible trade, if you ask me.

Erik recently went on a rant on Facebook about selling the Crazy Mountains to some billionaires, and his right-on commentary about the injustice it went viral. Hopefully it opened some eyes about the attack our state and country are under from these billionaire oligarchs.

Erik is also an officer in the recently formed Butte Watchdogs for Social & Environmental Justice. He is joined in that group with longtime Butte fighters Sister Mary Jo McDonald, Mick Ringsak and Evan Barrett. That group has led the effort to pressure the EPA to speed up the timeline for Butte-Silver Bow and British Petroleum to bring the Mining City down to the new acceptable levels of lead.

The EPA is giving them 25 to 40 years to continue to poison the children and adults of Butte. Erik and the Watchdogs want that to be more like 5 years. That’s because Erik has studied cleanups in other places in the United States, and he knows it can be done.

Erik has long been an ally in the fight for real Superfund cleanup in Butte. Now, he his voice is getting a whole lot longer.

Today is the first of two parts of this interview. Part 2 will drop later this week.

Today’s podcast is presented by Leskovar Honda, home of unbeatable service and the legendary 20-year, 200,000-mile warranty.