Environment

Breaking Down the Cleanup Areas

The Silver Bow Creek-Butte Area Superfund Site is massive, stretching from the Berkeley Pit and 10,000 miles of underground workings, along 28 miles of Silver Bow Creek, to the 3-square-mile Warm Springs Ponds. To tackle this “mega-site,” the EPA divided it into bitesize pieces, called Operable Units (OUs), each part of the damaged Silver Bow Creek Watershed ecosystem.

Cleanup progresses piece by piece, with the EPA reviewing overall progress every five years. The latest review, completed in August 2021, is available on the EPA’s website.