EPA Cuts Hit Home in Butte and Across Montana

When Cleanup is Delayed, Communities are Left Behind.

In July 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency eliminated more than 3,700 staff positions nationwide.

Entire divisions were dissolved. Among them was the Office of Research and Development, the agency’s central scientific arm. Toxicologists, chemists, and environmental health researchers were left without assignments or clear directives. The effects of those cuts are now being felt in Montana.

Towns and cities across Montana will face serious impacts.

Butte remains one of the largest Superfund sites in the United States. The cleanup of the Berkeley Pit and Silver Bow Creek is long and complex. This work requires constant data collection, water sampling, and analysis.

These responsibilities fall to scientific teams based both in Montana and in national EPA labs. Findings have identified toxic metals in the groundwater, tracked underground plume migration, and held powerful polluters accountable.

Removal of these scientists weakens that process at a critical time.

Earlier this year, the EPA also canceled a $20 million grant that would have helped Butte build a resiliency hub. The proposal included a public shelter, cooling center, and recreation space to prepare the community for climate extremes. That project disappeared with little warning amid ongoing federal budget uncertainty. The land now sits empty.

Montana has fought for clean water, clean air, and the right to live without fear of invisible poisons for generations.

Residents in Butte have organized, testified, and demanded better. They've relied on scientists to provide technical support, enforce regulations, and rebuild trust. Those scientists are no longer in place.

EPA leadership has stated that science functions will be absorbed into other offices. Those reassurances are vague. The Office of Research and Development was responsible for conducting peer-reviewed science and serving as a check against industry influence. Loss of this division is not a reshuffle. It's a removal of expertise.

Butte is not the only Montana community affected. In Livingston, the former Burlington Northern rail yard has left behind chemical contaminants that continue to pose a risk to residents. The site was never formally designated as a Superfund location, although groundwater and soil remain polluted. Solvents such as tetrachloroethylene (PCE) and trichloroethylene (TCE) have been detected in the bedrock aquifer. Some homes may be exposed to vapor off-gassing from the subsurface plume. Indoor air testing and long-term monitoring have been incomplete.

The site in Livingston was never designated a Superfund location so it exists in a regulatory gray zone. That designation matters, because Superfund status comes with long-term federal oversight and dedicated scientific resources.

Sites without Superfund status rely on patchwork coordination among local, state, and federal agencies. The loss of EPA’s research division has only widened that gap.

Livingston is a reminder that environmental health threats do not always look dramatic. They move underground. They accumulate slowly. They don't respect property lines. Without independent scientific review, toxic legacies become invisible again.

Across Montana in communities like Butte and Livingston, scientific accountability is not optional, it's essential.

Without the ability to monitor air, water, and soil, communities lose access to basic protections. Montana understands what happens when science is ignored. We've lived through it. Residents of Butte, Livingston, Libby and cities and towns across Montana know that pollution is not theoretical. Cleanup cannot be left to chance. Partial solutions and political theater do not replace consistent, data-driven enforcement.

If you care about the future of the Clark Fork Basin, if you care about public health, if you believe science should guide policy, now is the time to speak up.

Montana deserves better than silence.

Contact Steve Daines at (202) 224-2651 and tell him you want your taxpayer dollars to fund EPA scientists who monitor and protect public health.