Golf Course Blues

One of the more interesting things about being a blogger is that people contact you and tell you things. Since I have written extensively about the City golf course issue, I received information from a former golf course employee that I thought was both interesting, and fairly disturbing.

Apparently, our Park and Rec Department has been using an old part of the Anaconda Hills Golf Course as a sort of 'private' landfill for years now. Not too long ago, it seems that a state agency required the City to provide a maintenance building for their golf employees. They had been using an old barn, but the State insisted on a place where the employees would have heat andplumbing. The State condemned the barn that was serving as the maintenance building.

Our Interim Park and Rec Director Patty Reardon (whoops, I guess she's the "Deputy Director" now...although Deputy to whom is a bit unclear) allegedly suggested that the new maintenance building be built over a portion of the dump site. This idea was ultimately scrapped since the ground would be unstable and even further away from water and electrical than the condemned barn.

This fellow tells me, though, that the D.E.Q. investigated the dumpsite and while there observed city employees dumping garbage. After the D.E.Q. talked with City Manager Lawton the City hired Maxim Tech. to do a site analysis. (How much did that cost??!!?? See here, here, and here) When the D.E.Q. representative visited the site a year later he observed city employees were still using the dump. When questioned, the first City employee responded "But sir, we'll be back tomorrow to pick it all up." The second employee added, "Yessir...snicker...we'll be digging it all back up and taking it to the legal landfill in a day or two!" (Yeah, right!)

Our 'informant' has been carefully following the contracts list and some other areas listed on the City's webpage. So far City taxpayers have spent something between $30 - $40,000.00 thousand for the analysis of this dump site. Supposedly they pulled a 3000 lb. pump out ofthe dump.

In an article for the Tribune Ms. Reardon said the illegal dump merely consisted of some construction material with dirt spread over it for aesthetic reasons. The money for the analysis came out of the public works budget and the enterprise fund and, ultimately, out of our pockets.

The dump is located in a potential Super Fund site. You could see how this could develop into a huge problem. After all, the health and welfare of Montana citizens are being endangered by improperly operated landfills. How could a manager like Ms. Reardon not foresee the problems inherent in creating, using, and continuing to use an illegal dump? Assuming that what this fellow tells me is true, or even marginally so, it does not appear that this issue is being managed at all. Yet, like the huge loss of money on the remodeling project, our managers face no repercussions whatsoever (pats on the back don't count!).