The Governor's Restoration Forum in Billings this summer focused on the economic and community benefits of restoring and reclaiming Montana's spectacular but hard-used landscape.

Speakers repeatedly referred to the ambitious cleanup now under way in the Clark Fork River Basin, where decades of mining waste contaminated the river and adjoining lands and accumulated behind the Milltown Dam at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers.

Many are aware that the cleanup will remove the contaminated sediments behind the Milltown Dam, followed by the historic removal of the dam itself and a return to a free-flowing river junction. Less public attention has focused on the work under way to restore the rest of the basin, especially the diverse projects funded by Montana's Natural Resource Damage (NRD) Program.

Several federal statutes—most notably CERCLA, the Superfund law—include provisions for recovering damages for harms to biological and physical resources. Under these authorities, NRD lawsuits by federal, state, and tribal governments have sought millions of dollars in compensatory damages from parties held legally responsible for pollution and other environmental harms. These complex cases typically involve multiple parties, challenging technical issues, and many still-unresolved legal issues.

The State of Montana filed an NRD lawsuit against Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) in 1983 to recover damages for mining-caused injuries to the Clark Fork River Basin's water, soils, vegetation, fish and wildlife, and for the public's lost use and enjoyment of these resources. As part of a settlement in 1999, the state received $215 million, including about $130 million earmarked to restore or replace the injured resources.While the state's NRD litigation is not fully resolved, major steps are already under way to restore or improve the injured natural resources and the recreation opportunities that accompany them.

Montana chose to adopt a grants program to allocate restoration funds to government agencies, private entities, and individuals. The governor and state resource trustees decide which projects deserve funding with input from the Upper Clark Fork River Basin Remediation and Restoration Advisory Council, which includes ten citizen volunteers and five government representatives.

As of December 2005, approximately 50 projects had received funding totaling just over $38 million. (More information on the Montana NRD Program is available here.

Conservation groups and state agencies have applied Upper Clark Fork River Basin NRD funds to purchase conservation easements on basin ranches, restore native cutthroat trout habitat, and "renaturalize" damaged river channels.

Communities receiving funds have rebuilt damaged waterlines and acquired lands for open space and recreation. A university team obtained NRD funds to create a watershed education program for schoolchildren throughout the Upper Basin. Other project grants will fund research and assessment to better prioritize future work in the basin. In short, a variety of innovative projects have emerged in response to the diverse needs of the inhabitants of this 100-mile-long stretch of the Clark Fork River.

Many issues raised in the ongoing Clark Fork River Basin restoration reflect national concerns about natural resource damage assessment and restoration:

• What is the best way to address the diverse needs and concerns of multiple stakeholders in an affected area, including Indian tribes whose treaty-guaranteed resource uses have been impacted?
  

• What is the appropriate balance between assessing damages for past harms and fully restoring the impacted resources?
  

• In the face of scientific uncertainty and ongoing conflicts among affected groups, how can implementation be assured for the long-term health of the impacted environment and human communities?
  

• Under what circumstances is it appropriate to "write off" injured resources and seek to replace them with similar resources rather than attempting to restore them directly? And do these goals have to be mutually exclusive?

These questions are especially relevant in light of an inquiry currently under way in the U.S. Department of the Interior, the federal agency that oversees management of the majority of our public lands (excluding national forests).

Last year the Department convened a diverse group of experts in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Advisory Committee.

In its short two-year span of work, this committee is tackling issues such as the quantification of ecological damages, whether to emphasize restoration or acquisition of "replacement" resources, creative means of compensation for losses, and measures to ensure timely and effective implementation of restoration plans.

Committee members are looking at specific examples of restoration work under way throughout the country, seeking examples of what works, what doesn't, and where federal policies might be improved to encourage innovative and effective restoration initiatives.

The federal advisory committee should look closely at the Upper Clark Fork River Basin. Our locally crafted restoration projects offer lessons in how to move beyond the courtroom and onto the ground. While many conflicts remain about how best to restore the basin and its resources—especially how and where to allocate limited resources to get that job done—there is widespread acceptance that the fundamental restoration goal is the right one.

The groundswell of support for removing Milltown Dam demonstrated that bringing life back to the Clark Fork River transcends political, economic, and ideological divides. And what we do in the Upper Clark Fork Basin will provide valuable lessons for how restoration happens in other river basins throughout the country.

In an effort to explore and share the lessons of the Clark Fork River Basin restoration, the Public Land & Resources Law Review and the Public Policy Research Institute are convening regional and national experts for a conference on "The Law of Ecosystem Restoration: National Policy Implications of the Clark Fork River Basin Natural Resource Damage Program." This 30th annual Public Land Law Program at the University of Montana School of Law will take place at the law school on September 25-27, 2006. For full conference details, go here.

Those who register by Sep. 9 will get a price break, so don't wait too long.

Sarah Bates Van de Wetering is Senior Fellow with the Public Policy Research Institute at the University of Montana, which is a co-sponsor of the Public Land Law Conference.

She has studied, written about, and advocated for sustainable natural resource policies for the past twenty years through her work in Colorado, California, Utah, and Montana. Her most recent book, co-edited with Phillip Brick and Donald Snow, is Across the Great Divide: Explorations in Collaborative Conservation and the American West (Island Press, 2001).

She has two articles in publication this year: one on the relationship between land use and water law (in the Public Land & Resources Law Review, co-authored with Dan Tarlock) and one on the use of mandatory dispute resolution in federal environmental law (in the Journal of Environmental Law & Litigation, co-authored with Matthew McKinney). She serves on several nonprofit boards, including the advisory board for the Ruckelshaus Institute of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming.