The Environmental Protection Agency

About the author: The Superfund program faced one of its biggest challenges at the site of the Anaconda copper-smelting operation in Montana's Deer Lodge County. Beginning in 1884, workers at the Anaconda mine dug and smelted an immense amount of copper ore, providing an economic boom to the region but leaving more than 1,500 acres in the surrounding hills and valleys denuded of vegetation and contaminated with toxic waste.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which operates the Superfund program, points to the Old Works Golf Course at Anaconda as one of its success stories. In partnership with ARCO, the property owner and the corporation responsible for Anaconda's mining operations, a plan was undertaken in 1994 to clean up a 250- acre portion of the site and transform it into a golf course (to be designed by...