Folk Festival lineup; uranium found in local wells

The Montana Standard stretches the strings of a crazy, cacophonous news guitar this morning.

Mainstreet Uptown Butte, the primary community organizer for the Montana Folk Festival has announced a delicious menu of performers from throughout the world for the blockbuster July event:

This completes the lineup for the festival's six music performance stages that will run continuously throughout the weekend. Like the National before it, admission to all three days of the festival is free. The Montana Folk Festival is produced in partnership by Mainstreet Uptown Butte, Butte Silver Bow County, and the Imagine Butte Collaborative with programming and artistic assistance from the National Council for the Traditional Arts. Other partners include the Montana Office of Tourism, Gold West Country, Butte Convention and Visitors Bureau, Grant-Kohrs National Historic Site and the National Park Service.

Even closer to home comes this from the JeffCo Health Department in a report to its commissioners:

All the wells tested in Lewis and Clark, Butte-Silver Bow, Powell, Madison, Anaconda-Deer Lodge and Broadwater counties were sampled for uranium, with 18 showing results above the maximum contaminant levels, or MCL, for municipal drinking water of 30 micrograms per liter (ug/L). The highest concentration was 1,130 ug/l. Of 127 wells sampled for radon, 34 were above the 50 ug/L MCL, with the highest concentration at 45,000. The wells were tested by the USGS after rumors circulated in 2007 of elevated levels of uranium in a north Jefferson County residential well. When that well’s water showed uranium at 2,000 parts per billion, the USGS and the county decided that the testing should be expanded. Additional sampling of 40 more wells in Jefferson County that year found that five wells, or 12 percent, had uranium concentrations exceeding U.S. drinking water standards.

The wells tested remain anonymous. A source close to the study is confident that residential reverse osmosis removes most of the contaminants. Basin has three wells and recently underwent a treatment to "isolate" the copper being electrolyzed in the water supply. This blogger installed an in-line filter and has another laying in the basement ready to go tandem.

For someone who believes that the dissolved minerals, especially calcium carbonate, from groundwater is essential to mammal health it looks like trips to the spring up Sunnyside to fill jugs could become a regular occurrence. Maybe hipneck will add some insight to this discussion.

Libby continues to struggle with pervasive asbestos poisoning even after spending hundreds of millions in removal and remediation:

The vermiculite that came from W.R. Grace's Libby mine was shipped around the country for decades and sold as residential insulation under the brand name Zonolite. Tens of millions of homes contain the material, but EPA officials said Tuesday they do not believe any cleanup actions are necessary outside of Libby and Troy, where the material was widely used in gardens, homes and as backfill.

Headlines at indianz.com directed ip to a Chicago Tribune story from an outreach between students in the Cheyenne River Youth Project and Youth Crossroads of Berwyn and Cicero, Illinois:

Organization officials say service trips provide major benefits for at-risk youths by giving them the opportunity to learn leadership skills and confidence building and to have cross-cultural experiences. The reservation is the size of Connecticut and has a population of more than 14,000. The Chicago-area youths stayed at two youth centers operated by the Cheyenne River Youth Project. Julie Garreau, executive director of the Cheyenne River Youth Project and a member of the tribe, said more than 45 percent of the total population of the reservation is younger than 18. There were 17 youth suicides in 2002 and 2003 on the Cheyenne River Reservation. The organization also operates a 21/2-acre garden to promote healthy eating. Diabetes is a problem for many on the reservation.

Surprise! Epic flooding on the Mississippi River system winding through mostly red states is a result of failed water policy. Today on KCRW's To the Point:

The Army Corps of Engineers is trying to manage the Mississippi River, the world's third biggest watershed after the Congo and Amazon. Michael Grunwald writes about efforts to manage water resources for Time magazine.

For the record interested party supports Senator Jon Tester's Forest Jobs and Recreation Act because the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest is likely producing more methane than it is producing oxygen and aspen habitat. Restoration is essential to saving the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills.

On a clear day from the summit of Amazon Divide one can see twelve mountain ranges. Squalls obscured eight of them today.

Boulder Valley, Bull Mountain with Tobacco Roots in the background

The Elkhorns

Avalanche potential on the Occidental Plateau
behind that squall is the Continental Divide