Butte will get to see the final design to make the Silver Bow Creek corridor a beautiful green space once the Superfund cleanup outlined in the consent decree is down.
“It’s such a unique opportunity to have 120 acres of green space right in the core of a community like this, and so the approach is to develop this to really maximize the benefit to the community,” said Land Design Inc. architect Stacey Robinson.
The space will include 8 miles of walking trails, parks and even an amphitheater. The design was a three-year project that include input from Butte residents during a series of workshops.
“People rolled their sleeves up and told us what they wanted to see, and this is the result of that effort, and it was very direct the response we got in those meetings, the meetings were passionate we got a lot of good feedback,” said Robinson.
The plan was done to find an aesthetic way of combining the remedy with the land use, with the storm water basins surrounded by green space. There’s a park planned with a fishing pond.
“If everything goes really well with the consent decree process we can start the construction on some features in 2020, and you’ll see us incrementally implement this end use features as we go through the project site,” said Atlantic-Richfield Project Manager Josh Bryson.
The plan is contingent on Butte Council of Commissioners approving the consent decree in the coming weeks.
