HELENA, Mont. (AP) - High water undermined a stretch of a Montana highway, causing it to crumble and sending road crews Saturday to frantically make repairs.
Authorities closed both northbound and southbound lanes of Interstate 15 between Helena and Butte after the high water washed out a culvert running beneath the highway. Separate flooding about 160 miles (257 kilometers) to the west led water to bubble and pop in a pond that holds an abandoned pulp and paper plant’s industrial waste.
Crews were busy trying to fix the highway Saturday after closing it down the day before. Traffic was rerouted around the mountains of the Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest, adding at least 24 miles (38 kilometers) to the 68-mile (109 kilometer) trip between the cities.
Western and central Montana streams and rivers are running high due to the rapidly melting mountain snowpack and recent rainfall in the area. The rain, snowmelt and saturated soils have prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flood watch Saturday across a swath of central Montana, while rivers and streams in the western part of the state continue to flood.
One of those rivers, the Clark Fork, has displaced families from dozens of homes near Missoula and is now causing flooding farther downstream.
Near Frenchtown, 10 days of Clark Fork flooding has saturated the soil and pushed groundwater through the abandoned Smurfit-Stone Container site and its ponds that hold decades of waste. The site, which closed in 2010, is separated from the Clark Fork by a 2 ½-mile (4-kilometer) earthen berm, and officials suspect that toxic waste was dumped behind that berm for 50 years.
Officials said there is no imminent threat of a breach.
Murky water indicating potential toxic contamination has started bubbling out of three or four small volcano-like cones that formed in one of the shallow ponds, said Travis Ross, a water quality expert with the Missoula City-County Health Department.
“It indicates potential vulnerability of the structure,” Ross told the Missoulian.
Sara Sparks, who is overseeing testing and cleanup at the former pulp and paper site for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said officials planned to place fill materials like dirt and gravel in and around the pond.
“We are taking actions to alleviate any concerns that there would be a breach,” Sparks said. “It’s not like we believe today the berm will be breached, but we are taking action to address the boils to prevent a breach.”
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