How one Montana town turned around decades of pollution into new opportunities

Decades of work have turned Anaconda, Montana from one of the most polluted sites in the country into a greener, vibrant community.

The Anaconda Smelter Stack has been a towering landmark for the town of Anaconda, Montana, but it was also one of the factors behind the decades of environmental damage that is still being cleaned up.

Standing at over 585 feet tall, the stack was once used as part of the town's copper processing and spread heavy metals and arsenic over 300 square miles, destroying vegetation and killing animals.

But after more than decades of pollution remediation work by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other groups, the city has been on the rebound. Greener grass, cleaner homes, and even an 18-hole golf course have popped up in the last couple of years.

"So to have a lot of this vegetation coming back, it's really, really something neat," said Charlie Coleman, the former project manager for the EPA's Anaconda Smelter Remedial project.

And while Coleman and others said Anaconda's turnaround is a success story that can be replicated across the country, residents in other parts of the state that are dealing with similar pollution fallout say they need more work and resources.