By Katheryn Houghton, Kaiser Health News
BUTTE, Mont. — Steve McGrath stood in an empty lot a block from his home watching for dust.
In this southwestern Montana city nicknamed “The Richest Hill on Earth,” more than a century of mining left polluted soil and water that has taken decades to clean.
But at that moment, looking across the road toward Butte’s last operating open-pit mine, McGrath was worried about the air. “Here comes another truck,” McGrath said, pointing to a hillside across the street as a massive dump truck unloaded ore for the mine’s crusher. A brown cloud billowed into the air. “And there’s the dust.”
In the Greeley neighborhood, where McGrath lives, many people have a hard time believing the air they breathe is safe. A two-lane road separates the roughly 700 homes from the Continental mine, an open-pit copper and molybdenum mine operated by Montana Resources.
