Nothing gets attention like that big hole in the ground at the corner of 3rd Avenue and Main Street in Roundup. Once the site of a gas station, it now has a 20 foot deep hole. A leaky diesel storage tank in the past caused the DEQ, the Department of Environmental Quality, to dig up a lot of contaminated dirt on Tuesday last.
Previous owners had to pay monies to the Superfund of the Federal Government to help foot this cleanup. Superfund is the trust fund set up by Congress to handle emergency and hazardous waste sites needing long-term cleanup. Constant monitoring of this site resulted in an excavation of the tank in years past and the surrounding dirt currently. The dirt will taken to a landfill north of Roundup where it will be left to decontaminate, per Mike Pratt.
According to Mr. Pratt, the plan is for this dirt to eventually leach those chemicals into the landfill, then into the groundwater, and at some point make their way into the Musselshell River, most likely in a highly diluted form. This process will take years, if not centuries.
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