Protecting and restoring the Clark Fork watershed since 1985

The Blue Copper Project, proposed by Falcon Copper Corporation, is a large-scale copper, gold, silver, and tungsten exploration operation on federal public lands approximately 20 miles west of Helena, Montana. The project sits entirely within the Little Blackfoot River watershed, with operations affecting Ophir Creek, Carpenter Creek, and Snowshoe Creek. Two of these streams (Snowshoe Creek and Carpenter Creek) are already on Montana’s CWA Section 303(d) list of impaired waters, with existing TMDLs for sedimentation, nutrient loading, substrate alteration, and habitat loss.

The Cabinet Mountains Wilderness provides refuge for native fish and wildlife and its streams flow with some of the purest waters in the lower 48. The Cabinet Mountains also potentially contain significant deposits of copper and silver. For decades, CFC has worked with partner groups and Tribal governments to ensure that proposed copper/silver mining projects don’t put these pristine wilderness waters at risk.  

The proposed Montanore Mine Exploration Project is an underground copper/silver project 18 miles south of Libby, on the east side of the Cabinet Mountains. If successful, this project will dewater the existing Libby Adit and substantially expand the network of adits and drifts within the Kootenai and Clark Fork watersheds across the next 8 years in preparation for a subsequent mining operation.

We’ve been tracking the proposed Sheep Creek Mine project – located in the headwaters of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River — since its inception, and we were among the roughly 500 concerned citizens and conservation groups that joined an emergency hearing in front of the Ravalli County Commissioners in December of 2025. The message was clear: the West Fork—an important headwaters of the Bitterroot River and the Clark Fork River watershed—is too precious, pristine and valuable to jeopardize. 

With prices of gold at an all-time high, many mining projects that were previously shelved are receiving renewed interest. This includes a potential gold mine project that could present a very real threat to the Blackfoot watershed. Great Plains Mining LLC (“GPM” -a subsidiary of Australian-based Sentinel Metals) purchased land and mining claims encompassing the Columbia Gold project in 2016 after the previous owners went bankrupt. The project area is located approximately 14 miles east of Lincoln on private property between the Seven Up Pete and Hogum Creek watersheds.

For years, CFC and our partner organizations have fought to protect Lake Koocanusa and the Kootenai River from harmful selenium pollution originating from Canadian coal mines. Montana DEQ spent nearly a decade gathering data and enacting a site-specific water quality standard for selenium meant to protect our waters and our wildlife from dangerous amounts of selenium discharged. In late 2021, Montana DEQ officially adopted the protective standard, which was subsequently approved by the federal EPA. However, DEQ’s good work was undone in 2022 when—at the request of the Canadian mining company—the Montana Board of Environmental Review (BER) backpedaled and nullified the standard.

CFC has worked for more than a decade to close the so-called “exempt well loophole” to stop unfettered depletion of groundwater resources. We won a Montana Supreme Court decision in 2016 that ordered the state to close this loophole to protect water supplies and water rights. Since then we’ve defeated numerous attempts to re-open the loophole or codify it into Montana law. However, problems remain with DNRC’s continued allowance of numerous exempt wells for some subdivision developments without any analysis of cumulative impacts.

CFC and our partners—including conservation groups, farmers, ranchers, municipalities and other water users—continue to fight proposed legislation that would enlarge the exempt well loophole yet again. We remain committed to protecting our water resources and water users from groundwater depletion caused by exempt wells.

Arrowstone Park, located in the Upper Clark Fork River sub-basin in Deer Lodge, MT, was heavily contaminated with mine waste sediments during the catastrophic flood of 1908. During initial cleanup in the late 1990s under the federal Superfund process, contaminated materials were capped rather than removed—a “waste-in-place” strategy intended to prevent exposure. Over time, however, human-driven erosion and natural processes have exposed buried contaminants, including arsenic and lead. These conditions have left local residents unknowingly vulnerable to contamination exposure at Arrowstone, Deer Lodge’s most frequented greenspace and only in-town river access point. Clark Fork Coalition has been working with Powell County and the City of Deer Lodge to advocate for timely contaminant removal, and to fund and implement a post-remedial restoration and redesign of Arrowstone Park based on community needs.