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Imagine how glorious of a sight it would be.

You pull a lever on a giant catapult, and your old junk car goes flying high through the air. Then, it splashes down way out in the middle of the toxic waters of the Berkeley Pit.

It would be magnificent sight, and people would come from all around to get rid of their old cars.

That was a plan Matt Vincent and I put forth back in 2002. It was an idea that came from our good friend Tom “Ahoy” Malloy.

Vinny and I wrote a column about proposing a driving range for the Berkeley Pit. We thought charging people to hit golf balls into the Pit would be a great way for Butte to make some money off the world’s largest Superfund site.

Malloy was sitting next to us at Maloney’s Bar when we wrote the column, and he gave us the idea for charging people to get rid of their junk vehicles. It seemed like a great idea to solve a few problems while also having a little fun.

That was 21 years ago last June, and the water in the Pit was still far from the top. It would take a solid driver — or an 8 iron if you have the Herman Munster strength of Pat Ryan — to make a visible splash. Today, you could hit that water with a putter.

The Atlantic Richfield Company turned off the pumps that kept the water out of the Pit in 1982, making it the tourist attraction that it is today. As a cruel, ironic twist that you cannot make up, they shut the pumps off on Earth Day.

Shutting off the pumps saved the company money, and that seems to still be the motivation driving decisions today.

It was the worst decision this side of New Coke, and Butte has paid the price ever since.

It is beyond me how so many people who dropped the ball on the Pit went unscathed all these years. 

How did they let the water get all the way to the top — where we could see a potential disaster occur at any moment — before they started pumping water out and treating it?

Now they are using that water level as a convenient argument against dumping contaminated dirt from other Superfund sites into the Berkeley Pit. Rather, they would like to take all that toxic slime and cover up the old Dublin Gulch neighborhood of Butte.

That would be way easier for them. More importantly, it would be cheaper.

It is also completely unacceptable — no matter what argument they give us. The Dublin Gulch should be off limits. Our history and heritage are too important. So is our safety.

Leading up to a Centerville neighborhood meeting, which will be at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 17 at either the parking lot at the end of East Center Street or at the Centerville Fire Hall, representatives of British Petroleum and Butte-Silver Bow have been taking residents in small groups to try to convince them the Gulch is the right place to dump.

That is a better way to try to convince people of something than talking to a large group. It is, for a lack of a better term, a more secretive way to move things along.

Secrecy is where they thrive. Secrecy is why Butte has been getting the shaft when it comes to Superfund cleanup for the better part of four decades.

It isn’t that the people of Butte have settled for cleanups that are lesser than the ones given to Anaconda and Missoula. It is because people negotiating on our behalf have done so in secrecy.

On Wednesday, the Butte-Silver Bow Council of Commissioners will likely vote on a resolution demanding that this cloak of secrecy be removed. 

It is bad enough that our citizens have been kept in the dark all these years. It is shameful that those elected to represent those citizens have also been kept out of the loop.

No matter how the vote goes, we have to keep the pressure on our local government to do the right thing. We have to encourage them to tear up any and all agreements that have been negotiated in secret.

We have to demand that we get a cleanup of the center of Butte that does not involve leaving “grey fill” or “dirty dirt.”

You know what “grey fill” and “dirty dirt” mean, right? Those are fancy ways to say that the dirt is contaminated. Sure, it might be less contaminated than some of the other dirt, but it is still contaminated.

It was too contaminated to leave near Missoula and in Anaconda, so it should be too contaminated to leave in Butte.

Good enough should not be good enough in the Mining City.

You either clean or you do not clean. When you sweep your floor, do you sweep all of the dirt into the dust pan? Or do you sweep just the dirtiest of dirt into the pan and then just leave the rest?

When you wash your hands in the restroom, do you just wash one hand? Or do you just wash both?

You don’t just pick up the dog poop from one side of your yard and put it in the other.

We need to demand that they clean up all the toxic material in Butte. All of our citizens deserve as much.

The only way to do that is to end this secrecy.

Secrecy is the reason that we found out by accident that they are planning to dump that toxic material just a matter of feet from Foreman Park and only a short Par 3 away from houses.

The only reason we know about the secret plan from the secret committee without agendas or minutes — which violates Montana law, by the way — is because my dad saw some Butte-Silver Bow officials sniffing around the Gulch.

When he asked a question, he could see right through the dishonest answer. So, we started asking some more questions.

Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known about that plan until it was already enacted. The Dublin Gulch would have been buried without a word.

We have a simple solution for that dirt. It should be dumped into the Berkeley Pit. If that means pumping out more water so we can also have a meandering Silver Bow Creek flowing through the center of town — like the ignored order from former District Court Judge Brad Newman called for — then so be it.

Pay no attention to those selling toxic soil to individuals or small groups. We need to pack that Oct. 17 meeting and demand that they dump all that toxic material into the Berkeley Pit where it belongs.

Doing it with a catapult would be a very nice touch.

— Bill Foley, who still thinks a Berkeley Pit driving range is a great idea, can be reached at foles74@gmail.com. Follow him at twitter.com/Foles74 before that billionaire weirdo ruins it. Listen to the ButteCast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.