Nominate the Butte Watchdogs for grand marshal this St. Paddy’s Day

In 2003, Matt Vincent and I wrote a column begging to be named grand marshals of Butte’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Of course, we were just joking. We had no intentions of even going to the parade that year because it started at 11 a.m. That was way too early since we also planned on partaking in the St. Urho’s celebration the day before.

A couple of weeks after that column, Kevin and Joan Shannon were named grand marshals of the parade, and there could not have been a better selection. Of course, I might be a little bit biased because Kevin was a first-cousin of my grandpa Jerry D’Arcy, and he was one of my favorite people to ever live.

Kevin and Joan did so much good work in town, and the man who once referred to his mother-in-law as a “test pilot for a broom factory” might have been the best story teller to ever live.

He helped storm the beaches of Normandy, and he received a Purple Heart. He was also so Irish that he yelled at me for wearing a Chicago Bears sweatshirt when I visited him in a Missoula hospital room following a knee replacement surgery.

“What are you doing wearing that orange into my room?” he said.

So, even if Matt and I were serious about our grand marshal campaign, there was no way we could have competed with Kevin and Joan.

This year, however, I am being completely serious when I make a nomination for grand marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. I nominate the Butte Watchdogs for Social & Environmental Justice because nobody is looking out for the Mining City like that group.

The Watchdogs are made up of Sister Mary Jo McDonald, Mick Ringsak, Evan Barrett, Don “Moose” Petritz and Erik Nylund. They are stepping in to fight the fight that our feckless local government refuses to take part in.

In fact, they have continuously had to fight against our local government that time after time puts the financial needs of British Petroleum over the health and safety of the people of Butte and Silver Bow County.

The No. 1 objective of the Watchdogs is to make Butte a safe place to raise our children. That has been obvious with their fight for a Superfund cleanup that does not cut corners.

Last year, they derailed the “Dirty Dirt Train” that was rolling into town, looking to give the Silver Bow Creek corridor a half-assed cleanup that left “waste in place.”

Recently, the group has been fighting to speed up the removal of lead from properties in Butte. Late last year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced the expansion of the Butte Priorities Operable Unit and the drastic reduction of the allowable lead level from 1,200 parts per million to 175 ppm. However, the EPA followed the long-awaited admission that the lead level in Butte was way too high by proposing to give an additional 25 years to complete the cleanup and 15 more years to conduct testing.

That means 25 to 40 more years of poisoning the children of Butte. It means our children will be exposed to the lead for generations to come.

Such a criminally slow timeline is completely unacceptable.

So, you would think that Butte-Silver Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher responded to this ridiculous timeline by pounding on his desk and demanding that the EPA force British Petroleum, the responsible party, clean out that lead as fast as the multi-billion-dollar foreign oil giant can. Right?

Well, you would have thought wrong. Our chief executive responded with a series of fence-sitting comments and a comment letter that expressed more concern for British Petroleum’s bottom line than it did for the health of our citizens.

The only time the chief executive’s blood boiled was when he fought back against what he saw as an accusation that he is “in bed with ARCO” — even though nobody made any such direct claims.

The fact that he still calls it “ARCO,” which is short for the Atlantic Richfield Co., should set off alarm bells in the first place. British Petroleum bought ARCO a quarter of a century ago.

Calling it “ARCO” is a dishonest way of distancing the chief executive and other government officials from BP.

Butte-Silver Bow Reclamations and Environment Services Director Eric Hassler also expressed more concern about continuing the Residential Metals Abatement Program’s snail-paced cleanup than he did for completing the job in an expedited timeline.

When the official Butte-Silver Bow comment letter to the EPA — submitted during the now-passed public comment period — went before the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners, some of our commissioners seemed way more worried about offending the highly-paid Hassler than they did about sending a powerful letter demanding that our people’s health be the priority.

Even members of the group Citizens Technical Environmental Committee ran cover for BP by speaking against the Watchdogs at a recent Council of Commissioners meeting.

CTEC was founded to be “watchdogs” themselves, working to inform the public on the important decisions and policies that can be difficult to understand.

Instead, some members of CTEC have become “lookouts” for BP and our local government, helping muddy the waters of a misunderstanding public.

The fact is that British Petroleum has the money to get the lead out in five years, not 25.

Our local government should not care if the oil giant has to hire 10,000 contractors to do the job right and do it right now. It should not give one rip if such a spending spree puts a very minor dent in British’s Petroleum’s profit margin.

That every member of our local government is not screaming at the top of his or her lungs to do just that is hard to fathom. It is enraging.

People have asked why more people of the Mining City don’t pay attention to the subpar environmental cleanup Butte has received after more than a century of mining and smelting. Well, that is because too many just don’t know.

A series of back-room deals, lies, misinformation and attacks on real scientists have kept the ire of the public at bay. Truth speakers have been demonized and marginalized.

But the Watchdogs keep fighting. In fact, they are only getting stronger. For years they were a group of individuals speaking out. As of last year, they are an official organization determined to make a difference.

Sister Mary Jo has been a leading crusader for the children of Butte for her entire life. She is still fighting, even though she now spends most of her time in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Barrett and Ringsak spent most of their 60s and 70s putting aside their opposing political believes to speak out for the people of Butte.

Nylund, who recently had his right to speak out publicly restored after working almost two decades as a behind-the-scenes man for Sen. Jon Tester, is a fearless proponent for his hometown.

Petritz is fighting because he wants Butte to be a safe and healthy place for his grandchildren to grow up and raise families of their own.

He wants the same for your grandchildren.

The people of Butte should know about these Watchdogs. They should celebrate them.

More importantly, they should join them in their fight.

(For a taste of their work, click the link below to read the Watchdogs’ letter to the EPA regarding the lowering of the lead level.)

So, help me in nominating the Watchdogs for Social & Environmental Justice as grand marshals of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. Click here to submit a nomination by March 1.

Not only would that selection recognize some of the smartest and bravest people of Butte, it would strengthen their cause to protect the children of Butte for generations to come.

It would be a great way to tell the EPA, British Petroleum and our local government that the people of Butte mean business.

That right there is no joke.

 — Bill Foley, who never sits on the fence, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 or Bluesky at @foles74.bsky.social. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.