CFWEP Restoration & Education Newsletter: April 09 Edition

The latest edition of CFWEP's Restoration & Education Newsletter is now available online (pdf format). Go to cfwep.org to download it and hear all the latest and greatest from up and down the Clark Fork Basin.

Community Rallies‘Round Silver Bow Creek

During a sunny April evening at the Butte Chamber Visitor Center on the banks of Blacktail Creek, Butte musician Mike Tierney sang about Evel Knievel while a group of eager Cub Scouts and other kids dove into sample buckets of live aquatic bugs from Blacktail and Silver Bow Creeks. Other youngsters drew colorful sketches on the sidewalks with the assistance of artist Shawn Crowe from the Butte-Silver Bow Arts Foundation. As the kids learned the basics of stream assessment, their parents and other local citizens learned about the past and future of the Silver Bow Creek restoration from local community members and agency representatives active in the restoration process. Through the work of the Citizens Technical Environmental Committee (CTEC), the Clark Fork River Technical Assistance Committee (CFRTAC) and CFWEP, Butte came together to show support for restoration at the Rally ‘Round the Creek.

While CFWEP was on hand to provide stream bugs and to run a mini-field trip on basic stream assessment, presentations on Silver Bow Creek by Ian Macgruder from Kirk Engineering and Jim Kuipers from Kuipers & Associates were the centerpiece of the Rally. Ian and Jim are the technical advisors to CTEC and CFRTAC, respectively, and they discussed the Superfund process, which is not exactly speedy, and potential recontamination issues to keep in mind as the community looks toward the future of Silver Bow Creek.

Historically, Silver Bow Creek was used by Butte mining interests as an industrial sewer to remove mine tailings wastes from the immediate area, causing them to settle in the creek channel and throughout the floodplain. The sandy looking material in the Google Earth image below is tailings.

Ongoing remediation and restoration has removed tailings from the floodplain and streambed. Clean soil is hauled in, and the channel is then rebuilt and revegetated.

Restored sections of Silver Bow Creek like this reach near Ramsay show vast improvement in terms of vegetation and water quality.

Different sites along the Upper Clark Fork River are being remediated and restored on different schedules. In an ideal world, the clean-up would proceed from the headwaters around Butte and Anaconda downstream to Deer Lodge and the Milltown Dam near Missoula. In reality, Superfund is a complex process that involves a lot of negotiating between the Environmental Protection Agency, the State of Montana, local governments, and the Potentially Responsible Parties, or PRPs, a technical term for the private companies liable for environmental damages.

Due to the nature of the Superfund beast, downstream sites like the Milltown Dam and portions of Silver Bow Creek are being restored prior to completion of work on the primary sources of contamination around the Anaconda smelter site and the mine dumps of the Butte hill. While a lot of good work has been done downstream and around the headwaters, because mining and smelting wastes in Butte and Anaconda are being left in place and treated on site, the potential for recontamination of Silver Bow Creek and the Clark Fork from surface runoff, while low, does certainly exist. CTEC and CFRTAC are committed to keep the communities of the basin informed of such issues as the restoration continues to move forward.

Restoration doesn’t occur overnight, and even when completed, monitoring and maintenance are necessary to ensure the long term health of the environment. By coming out to support the success of the amazing Silver Bow Creek restoration up to this point, and by looking to the future, Butte and the surrounding communities are cruising right along on the road to environmental recovery.

• Read about the Rally in The Montana Standard here.
• Get the latest Silver Bow Creek update from the Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality and the Natural Resource Damages Program here (pdf file).

Get Out on the River:CFWEP Seeking Spring Fieldtrip Volunteers

We are looking for watershed experts and interested local citizens to serve as fieldtrip leader volunteers for our school visits.

Spring 2009 Semester School Fieldtrips: 7th Grade
Thursday, April 23rd: Anaconda Middle School @ Anaconda
Thursday, April 30: Ramsay School @ Ramsay (7 & 8th grade)
Thursday, May 7th: Philipsburg School @ Philipsburg
Thursday, May 14th: East Middle School @ Butte
Friday, May 15th: East Middle School @ Butte
Friday, May 29: Deer Lodge School @ Deer Lodge (8th grade)
All fieldtrips run ~8:30am – 1:30pm

Fieldtrip Volunteer Training
Thursday April 30, 2009 -- 5 – 6pm
Location: Montana Tech Student Union Building
Hear what CFWEP is, learn about our school visits and gain the ability to be a fieldtrip leader using our protocols. Not required to be a volunteer, but will help you immensely. RSVP advised.

Additional opportunities available. To RSVP for training or for more information:
Jen Titus, CFWEP Field Coordinator
496 - 4691, jtitus@mtech.edu
Montana Tech Petroleum Building Room 003

Jen Titus is the Montana Water Educator of the Year!

In the world of environmental education, no one is doing it for the money. The work is its own reward, but a little recognition never hurts. Every year, the Montana Environmental Education Association (MEEA) honors those dedicated individuals who have gone above and beyond the call of duty with the Water Educator of the Year award. At the 2009 MEEA Conference in Helena on Friday, March 20th, the Clark Fork Watershed Education Program’s own Jennifer Titus received the Water Educator of the Year award before a crowd of teachers, administrators, informal educators, and state agency reps from Montana’s environmental education community.

It’s a good time for us at CFWEP to thank Jen for her hard work and commitment, and also to look back on all of the amazing things she has done not only for our program, but for literally thousands of students and teachers across Montana.

Jen came to the CFWEP in 2006 as an AmeriCorps Volunteer in Service to America (VISTA). At the time, CFWEP was a fledging program just getting off the ground. Jen took to CFWEP like a stonefly to clear, rushing water. She quickly put her own touches and improvements on the program’s curriculum. The lessons cover environmental science education and the environmental history of the Clark Fork Basin, the nation’s largest complex of Superfund environmental clean-up sites. Not only was Jen instrumental in developing the CFWEP curriculum, but she has also spent thousands of hours traveling across western Montana, visiting classrooms, delivering lessons, coordinating activities, supporting teachers, and leading field trips. Her teaching has always received stellar reviews from both teachers and students, and she is in great demand around the basin.

As part of her work, Jen has helped forge a network of expert volunteers and scientists from around the region, bringing them into classrooms and into the field, where they work directly with students as volunteer field station leaders and guest lecturers. Because of Jen’s dedication, thousands of Montana students have been exposed to biologists, engineers, geologists, foresters, and more from groups like Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP); the Forest Service; the Montana University System; the Department of Environmental Quality; and the Natural Resource Damages Program, to name just a few.

Jen’s work doesn’t stop there. She has also has been key in soliciting the support of several local chapters of Trout Unlimited (TU) and FWP to create a successful Trout in the Classroom program for eight western Montana schools. Under this unique program, classes receive a trout tank, paid for by a TU chapter, and trout eggs donated from FWP hatcheries. As the eggs hatch and the young trout develop in their classroom, teachers and students launch into a wide variety of topics, from biology to ecosystem studies. Jen personally travels to each school to set-up the tanks and show teachers and students how to maintain them, and she also spends a day with each participating class, leading them in a trout dissection with fish again donated from state hatcheries.

In the past year, Jen also took the initiative in creating an after-school science mentorship program at East Middle School in Butte (for more, refer to the science fair article in this newsletter). The program pairs students with scientist-mentors who help to guide and advise the students in creating and executing a research project for the local science fair.

While most of Jen’s time is spent working directly with students, she has also served the region’s teachers through CFWEP’s numerous teacher training programs. Through workshops and other professional development programs, Jen has shared environmental science curriculum materials, lessons, activities and information about the Clark Fork Basin environment with more than 100 teachers. After a few hours with Jen, teachers are much better equipped to return to their own classrooms and incorporate environmental education into their everyday lessons. Aside from the CFWEP core curriculum, Jen has also developed other environmental education lessons and activities that she is eager to share with teachers and students.


Her professional accomplishments aside, Jen is also an amazing environmental educator on a personal level. Her enthusiasm for the environment and for teaching is unmatched, and it is contagious, leading students and teachers to develop relationships with her outside of the classroom. Jen is always urging students to take action, to not only learn about their environment, but to work to promote its health. She never talks down to students, and she particularly excels at communicating the complexities of environmental science to students in language they can understand. Ask her about her Harry the Raindrop story sometime; it explains the water cycle in a way that makes it perfectly understandable to grade school students, and it’s a great little piece of storytelling.

We can imagine no one more deserving of the Water Educator of the Year award than Jen, not only for what she has done for CFWEP, but for what she has done for so many students, teachers and scientists in western Montana. Jen brings people together, and brings the environment to people in ways that are fun, relevant and educational. She truly deserves our sincere thanks and appreciation. Congratulations Jen!

CFWEP Restoration & Education Newsletter - Feb 09 Edition

The latest edition of CFWEP's Restoration & Education Newsletter is now available online (pdf format). Go to cfwep.org to download it and hear all the latest and greatest from up and down the Clark Fork Basin.

"A Missoula County Almanac" in the making?

University of Montana Environmental Studies graduate student Bethany Taylor is back with a new blog. In fulfillment of her Campus Corps volunteer position and supplementing the CFWEP's work in the Missoula schools with Milltown Dam and Clark Fork curriculum and activities, Bethany is assisting classes in learning about nature and environmental writing...read on!

I recently worked with some Missoula area 8th grade students in their Language Arts class. While this may not seem like the traditional venue for environmental science, it was a great chance to remind students that even if you aren’t a genius in Chemistry, there are still ways you can use your talents towards environmental preservation.
Here is a sampling of the students’ work:

The assignment “What do you think Nature and Environmental Writing are?” elicited a variety of responses.

From Elizabeth—“Flowing streams and gentle winds live silently and continue their varied paths as everything grows around them. A new obstacle is simply overcome by going over it or around it. A fallen tree in a creek creates a barrier and the water eventually finds its way around it and continues its way.
We, as humans, cannot go around our problems without paying them a visit later, but like the water we find a way to deal with it.
Similarities can be found with humans and nature and are easily conveyed through environmental writing. Take for example, our Earth, it goes through natural warming and cooling periods, almost as if it were sick. I am well aware that I do the same things. When ill, the body is overheated and sweats. The persperation then cools down and the body shivers, trying to warm itself? Could it be possible the Earth is the same?
I feel little through most environmental writing and can hardly bear to sit through while my eyes skim and re-skim the meaningless words.
However, if the writing was taken to a more creative level instead of the usual extremely seriousness, I’m sure it would be more interesting not only to me, but to many others.
Environmental writing is usually very opinionated and hardly even shows the other side of the story. It speaks the truth of things and tells you many things that you have no previous knowledge of.
I hardly find that this kind of writing affects me but I’m aware that my surroundings do. As winter approaches, a bear prepares itself for hibernation by filling up its fat supply. I prepare for winter by getting out my warm coat.
However, if there wasn’t a cold winter here I would prepare differently. Our environment affects how we dress, what we eat, and more.
Our animal friends face a much more harsh change than we do. Some travel long distances, others grow more hair and eat less.
There are many similarities between nature and our own life if only we look closer. Environmental writing looks very deeply into these and many more subjects, and I believe we could learn much from it.”

From Lauren—“I think that nature writing is any sort of writing that shows any connection to nature. Whether you are making comparisons between humans and nature, animals and nature, or nature and nature. So, you might read nature writing and not even know it because it doesn’t have to be direct. There is a large range of nature writing, and it doesn’t all have to be boring. Yes, it is possible for nature writing to be interesting and even enjoyable to read. But many people and teens wonder, ‘ok, so someone took the time to write a nature journal. What’s it to me?’ Let me explain the importance of nature writing.
First, it makes you more aware of your climate. Whether it’s your neighborhood or the world, nature writing gives you an insight to the issues of the natural world around us. What we need to change, what we need to stop, and what we need to fix. This kind of writing brings a level of awareness to us. It is possible to watch a movie or look up a website about global warming (or global climate change); a book better describes the situation to the reader. Or so that’s what my opinion is.
Next nature writing allows you to have more insight into other ecosystems. Although we all live in different locations and climates, the competition between humans and nature is ever going, just more prominent in some places. I think that it is comforting, subconsciously, to read about other people’s problems, just to be reassured that you aren’t the only one. Even if your issue isn’t nature related. It also makes me feel closer to the people who’s home you are reading about. That, despite the foreign ethnic backgrounds, you are both humans and both defy nature to live every day.
Finally, it is an experience nothing else can bring. Reading about something that is so different yet so similar to the ecosystem that you live in is something for everyone to experience because only when we make the connections will we be connected.
So, even though people might wave off nature writing, read it. It will be an experience unlike any other.”

From Braeden—“To me, nature writing it someone writing about their thoughts with nature. Like someone saying ‘I saw a cow’ isn’t nature writing, but someone saying ‘The great tree is a symbol of all that is harmony in the environments’ is nature writing. But to me, nature writing is a very dry subject. From the few chapters we read from “The Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold who dies in 1948 and was inducted into the Conservation Hall of Fame in 1965. I didn’t even know that they had a National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame. I mean, I’ve heard of sports Hall of Fame, but I’ve never heard of a National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame. So this whole National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame topic is pretty new to me. I don’t know how many people are in National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame but it can’t be that many. Anyway, back to nature writing. I still believe it will always be a dry subject to me. Maybe if there is a book about nature that is really interesting and has a plot then maybe it would change my mind and I might vote to induct the author to the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame. But until that happens, I will always think it is a dry subject. It doesn’t have a plot which I can’t stand in a book. It doesn’t have any action, or adventure, or comedy, which, again, I can’t stand a book not to have. I never complained about “The Westing Game” or the other book we read. But nature writing is pretty awful. I really wish we would switch to a book with more of a plot instead of reading “Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold, who was inducted into the National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame in 1969.
Still Nature Writing is a very dry subject, I don’t know how people can fill up whole books with ‘the rabbit was running across the field being chased by a dog. All of nature is going like clockwork right now.’ How someone could fill up 250 pages like that is beyond me. How someone could fill up a whole book with ‘nature is all in harmony, how beautiful.’ How someone could get published with a book without a plot and is so very dry frustrates me. I now have a new least favorite type of book: the plotless ones. This type of book infuriates me. This is what I think of your nature writing.
So now you know, next time let’s read a book with a plot or some action or adventure. Or we can read a book with comedy. Or maybe a book like “The Red Kayak” or maybe another book like “The Westing Game.” Instead of learning about National Wildlife Federation’s Conservation Hall of Fame. So there, that’s what I think of your “Nature Writing.” Take that society.”

Their next assignment was to write about a place that they would cry if it were destroyed, and what they would do about it.

From Malia—“There are many places in the world that I would cry if they got ruined. The most important place is though is my house. It is the most important place to be because it is where I have lived my whole life. Also, I have so many memories and I have all my possessions in it I would be so sad if my house burned down in a fire.
My house right now is the only place I have ever lived in. if I had to live in a new house, none of the rest of my life would be the same. I love my house so much, I would hate to have it burned down, because I have so many memories.
My memories in my house have been so abundant. Everyday at school, I have a new story to tell my friends. Some stories about my brother, my pets, my room. There is never an alike day in my life. Every day when I go home and relax, I just think about how much I love my house. I can still remember when I was five and my neighbor and I would play. We would go run outside, play on swingsets, do cartwheels, and play tag. There is so much in store for you when you have a house to live in that you love, and have your past in.
My whole life is in my house. I have my most valuable possessions, such as my iPod, phone, computers. But also I have more valuable things. I have a tree where my dog was buried. Also, there is my birth certificate, things from my younger childhood, and so much more that I don’t know how I could ever let those things go.
Everyday is a new day with new moments and memories. Every memory stacks up through the days, years, decades. If you appreciate your home, and life, you will be a great person. I love my life and everything that is important in it. I would cry if I lost my house.”

Malia wasn’t the only student who wrote about her house being the most important, which got into an interesting discussion about how the root of ecology is oikos, the Greek word for house, and what that means in terms of ecology and seeing the world as connected.

The final assignment was to write poems about where the students feel that they are from:

From Aaron—
“I am from a tennis court where I learned the game
I am from the black top where champions live
I am from Spokane where friendships lie
I am from Bozeman where sportsmanship lives
I am from Wimbledon where upsets roar
I am from the diamond where dreams remain
I am from the backyard and driveway basketball
I am from Great Falls where the biggest match becomes the funnest”

From Stacia—
“I am from the woods outside of my grandparent’s back door
I am from listening to the little birds and watching the squirrels when I was little
I am from little secret picnics that my grandma made me when I was young
I am from always being surrounded by protective mountains.
I am from playing on the swingset for hours in the hot summer sun.
I am from building teepees out of sticks and blankets
I am from making mud slides on the side of a hill
I am from climbing the oak tree and eating rhubarb out of the garden.
I am from just loving to be outdoors.”

From Braeden, (the same one who finds nature writing dry and plotless)—
“I am from standing on cold rocks in a creek
and running through meadows, sneezing with hay fever
from sprinting and tripping
and sliding and slipping
I am from running after what I thought was an ice cream truck
and then crying because I didn’t get any ice cream
from eating a large popcorn and puking at the movie theater
and thinking “shut up” was a bad word.
I am from watching “Dumbo” six times a day.
I am from Montana, and I always will be.”

They were a bright, cooperative, well-spoken and well-written class; my thanks to them and to their teacher for giving me the opportunity to work with them.

Underground Tale of the Pasty

The CFWEP hosted a teachers workshop for its Milltown Dam and Clark Fork Virtual Education Portal (formerly "the trunks") this weekend at the Bonner School in Bonner.

We were treated with 27 teachers, eager to learn and very interested in hearing the science, stories and lessons of the Upper Clark Fork.

Upon a few individuals request, below is the recount of the story behind the Cornish pasty: staple food of underground miners for centuries and one of the trademark tastes of The Mining City....enjoy the story, and your next pasty!

When trying to teach kids about subjects that might seem complicated, like science, it always helps to use anecdotes that relate to things they can easily understand. In working with the students of the Upper Clark Fork basin, helping them to learn the health affects of some of the toxic substances found in mining wastes, like arsenic, lead and mercury, I’ve made it a point to use Butte’s hallmark entrée, the pasty.
Of course, we all like to think of the pasty being as Butte as Butte can be. However, just like the mining that made our town famous, the pasty too hails from some place else. Cornwall, England. The rich tin and copper mines in this southwestern-most region of the Old Country can be traced to 2000 B.C. Mention of the Cornish pasty can be found as far back as the 1200s. Mining’s importance in their culture can be summed up with a common Cornish definition: “A mine is a hole anywhere in the world with at least one Cornishman at the bottom of it.”
When mining began to peter out in Cornwall in the late 1800s, the “Cousin Jacks,” as they were known, emigrated to the mining meccas abroad, like Michigan’s Copper Country and of course, Butte, to carry on their historic skills. They also brought with them the pasty.
So how do you explain the human health affects from heavy metals and arsenic through a hand-held meat and potato pie? It turns out that the Cousin Jacks didn’t eat pasties just because they tasted great and were more filling than most other lunches you could take underground.

Talk to anyone who’s worked below, or take a peak at a historic photo of the working folk from Butte’s heyday: Underground mining is a dirty business, perhaps the dirtiest of them all. A shift underground would cover you from head to toe and then some in the mine’s dirt, dust, muck and mire. And although they were mining copper, silver, tin, whatever the moneymaker happened to be in the rock, there came with it all the other geologic tagalongs not so desirable, like arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury, toxins that will eventually wreak havoc on a man’s health.
The two major pathways for these poisons to make it into our bodies is either breathing it in (inhalation) or eating it (consumption). Once a man went underground to work, there wasn’t any coming back up to the surface until the end of his day, unless he came up dead or maimed. In the days before respirators and dust masks, there wasn’t much a miner could do to keep from inhaling the metals-laden dusts, save for holding his breath – an impossibility over an entire shift. Many figured that inhaling the dust through the filter of a cigarette was better than nothing – even though there were “NO SMOKING” signs posted in the Butte mines in 16 different languages. And there certainly weren’t any faucets or trusted methods of washing away the grime from your face or hands before lunchtime.

Prior to the pasty, miners in Cornwall probably ingested an equal amount of poison for every bite of nourishment he ate. Chronic diseases from arsenic, lead, mercury and other heavy metals poisoning like cancer, ulcers and Mad Hatter’s disease were traced to the ingestion of these ubiquitous mining toxins early on. That didn’t mean a miner was going to stop eating underground. Hats off to the wives of Cornwall for fashioning a tasty solution to the problem.
The traditional Cornish pasty had a pinched crust much thicker than the ones on the pasties we eat today. The large, thick crust on the side of the original pasties was put on to serve as a handle, something the miners could hold on to with their filthy hands, while they ate the rest of the pie untouched and therefore, untainted with whatever might be clinging to his fingers.

Another note of difference between today’s pasty and the original is that the first pasties usually had rutabagas or turnips in them along with the standard meat and potatoes. Some wives added an extra treat: a compartment that held a fruit filling at one end to serve as “dessert.” When the miners were finished eating the filling, all they had to do was chuck the crusty handle and go back to work. It was also said that the throwing of the crust into the mines was a token of bribery or maybe even respect to the underground spirits or “knockers.” The knockers were blamed for knocking down big rocks, the “Duggans,” from above, under which many an underground toiler perished. The miners figured the ruthless spirits would be less likely to do so if their presence was acknowledged by the tossing of a tasty scrap of crust and perhaps a quick Hail Mary. There were well over 2,000 men who died in Butte’s underground mines over their operation. Only the knockers know how many pasty crusts were left behind and eaten.

So the next time you don’t have the time or facilities to wash your dirty hands before eating lunch, grab on to a pasty and don’t forget to leave the crust behind. Your body will thank you and so will the knockers.