“It has been tested at less than one tenth of one percent of the time it’s been open,” said John McKee, of the Butte Natural Resource Damage Restoration Program who toured the Berkeley Pit in mid-October with Butte-Silver Bow County commissioners. “It’s never been run at a level and for a period of time that suggests it’s going to work.”

He said when he worked in building refineries, his company would do a substantial completion test to make sure it ran the way his company said it would. He likens the two 72-hour tests as an extremely abbreviated substantial completion test.

“There is no client I’ve ever built a refinery for who would have signed off on one tenth of one percent and (EPA is) asking our community to sign off on that. MR is not the culprit here. They’re the drivers of the system EPA said would work.

“But they’re cutting it too damn close. If this thing breaks loose it goes all the way to the Columbia River.”

The water treatment plant could not discharge water into Silver Bow Creek tomorrow in the case of a catastrophic event, like an earthquake, because lines into the pit to pull water to the plant are not connected. Half of the plant is down for maintenance, a process that takes about six weeks per side.