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The chief executive lectured me about holding up the Superfund process because I have been protesting plans to dump toxic waste near homes on the Butte Hill.

Then he reassured the audience at the May 15 Council of Commissioners meeting that “nothing has been decided” about dumping the waste that will be removed from sites alongside Silver Bow Creek as part of the consent decree cleanup. He said it will all be played out as part of a “public process.”

Well, it turns out the chief executive apparently does not understand the words “public process.” Also, it turns out that his words were very far from the truth. Everything had already been decided long before that May 15 meeting.

Two weeks before — yes before — the meeting in which British Petroleum/Atlantic Richfield Co. representative Josh Bryson and Butte-Silver Bow Superfund Operations Manager Erik Hassler gave an update on the repository siting committee, the two submitted the “final repository screening report” to the Environmental Protection Agency for approval.

(Click here to read the report)

Now we are at the mercy of the EPA to protect us.

That a county employee presented side-by-side with representative of British Petroleum in the first place tells us exactly who is driving the bus on this matter. Also, the unelected Hassler, whose job is funded by BP, does not have the authority to sign off on the future of Butte and Silver Bow County.

The report says that the Berkeley Pit is the preferred repository location for the waste. The stuff that is too toxic for the Pit, though, will possibly be dumped very close to homes in Centerville — even though residents of the Butte Hill have repeatedly voiced their opposition to that plan.

Four years ago, I helped lead the fight to keep the same waste away from the Timber Butte neighborhood. That was a surprisingly easy fight to win.

The fight to protect the residents of Centerville, however, has been a lot tougher. If you look at the houses in the two neighborhoods, it is not hard to see the difference.

Timber Butte is full of really big houses, some of which include indoor swimming pools and 20-foot-high Christmas trees. Centerville is full of small houses that were built by miners in a year that started with 18.

You see, environmental injustice is much easier to pull off when you are not dealing with an affluent neighborhood. That is exactly what this is, too, no matter what the chief executive or his bosses from British Petroleum say.

It is an environmental injustice.

Regardless of the wealth of the neighborhood, though, no person should have toxic waste dumped anywhere near his or her home. We should not have to say that, but here we are again.

This plan rammed through with basically no public input — and without approval from the Council of Commissioners — is environmental injustice added on top of more than a century of environmental injustice.

And this injustice was put into place in meetings that were not open to the public. Sure, they had two members of the public appointed to the chief executive’s repository siting committee. But since one is a resident who first exposed the plan to dump next to her home by Timber Butte, it is not hard to see that the two members of the public did not have much say on the matter.

I assume she was against dumping in any neighborhood, not just her own.

Remember, British Petroleum is driving the bus.

At the same Council of Commissioners meeting in which the chief executive lectured me about holding up the process, Commissioners Josh O’Neil and John Sorich lectured me about calling the meetings “secret.”

The premise of their lectures was that they knew the handshake it took to get in the door, therefor the meeting was not secret. Well, just because you are in on the secret doesn’t mean that it isn’t a secret.

The final report lists eight meetings from June of 2021 and the reluctant appearance by the chief executive and Bryson at a Centerville community meeting on Oct. 17, 2023.

(Bryson admitted in this meeting that he was only there because of the columns I wrote on the subject.)

None of those eight meetings were advertised as open meetings. At least they were not advertised anywhere readily available to the public. None of the meetings have published minutes.

That is not transparency. It is secrecy.

At the Centerville meeting, which came after my columns exposed the secret plan to dump in the Dublin Gulch and near homes in Centerville, residents at a packed Centerville Firehall made it perfectly clear that they do not want waste dumped by their neighborhood.

A couple of months ago, one resident of Centerville wrote a letter saying he would like to see the area above the Kelley Mine cleaned up. The letter did not say he wanted cleanup that comes with the caveat that we accept 850,000 cubic yards of toxic waste.

But Hassler took that letter from one person to mean that the residents of Centerville are split on the issue of dumping toxic waste in their neighborhood. That is simply not ture.

We all want that area above the Kelley cleaned up. In 2006, they called it the “Historic Mining Landscape Area” as a way to save BP money. They weren’t going to clean it up because it has historic value to show future generations how polluted we were.

Those negotiating on behalf of the people would have had an easier time selling us oceanfront property in North Dakota than they would selling the “Historic Mining Landscape Area” to the people of Butte. They only pulled it off because it was behind closed doors.

Well, that “history” is still poisoning us as it runs downhill with each drop of rain or snow runoff. It is also a clear violation of the Montana Constitution, which grants us all the right to a safe and healthy environment.

That waste should be removed. It shouldn’t have more wasted added and then covered with a thin layer of soil and wild grass.

As the leak in the cap at Copper Mountain Park and the exposure of arsenic at the Arrow Stone Park in Deer Lodge show us, their 18 inches of soil is not enough. It will be safe until the time that it will no longer be safe.

Plus, there is even more danger to the public during the time the waste is being dumped. It will not be covered overnight.

People on the Butte Hill should not be exposed to more toxic waste. The people still living near the toxic waste deserve to have that waste removed as quickly as possible.

They are being poisoned, and British Petroleum, the EPA and Butte-Silver Bow have known that for decades. It is also our local government that is playing a key role in holding up that cleanup, not the residents who push back against dumping in neighborhoods.

We are in dire need a government that will not be run by British Petroleum. We need a government that will represent the people of Butte and Silver Bow County instead of the needs of a multi-billion-dollar foreign company.

We need a government that embraces transparency and accountability. We need a government that will stop poisoning its people.

More than anything, we need a chief executive who truly grasps the concept of a “public process.”

— Bill Foley, who is running to be that chief executive, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com or (406) 491-3022. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74. Listen to him on the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.