The truth about Beaver Dam Park

Well its election year and you know how that goes with politicians, they try to make themselves look like the best candidate for the job. I have seen this, this weekend at the ribbon cutting ceremony at the new park in Opportunity. Our shoe in CEO from Deer Lodge County stated she has been trying to get this park built for the last twenty years and was very happy to be part of it. This is not true, just a few years ago, the county and Connie Daniels where dead set against building a park in Opportunity. They gave the excuse of who is going to maintain the park, what are we going to do with the old school building, the ground may be contaminated, we don’t have enough money to buy the land and a variety of other reasons why this park should not be built. At that time, the Anaconda school district was trying to decide the fate of the old school in Opportunity. They decided to sell the property to the highest bidder. The Opportunity Citizens Protection Association, which was formed, to help the community understand the superfund and to inform the citizens of Opportunity, of what was happening in and around their community as far as superfund goes, took the initiative to try to stop the sale of the old school grounds. They even went as far as to put up a 1000.00 bid on the property, to try to save the last open space in Opportunity where people could go to relax and have a picnic or whatever they choose. OCPA tried to convince the Anaconda School board, that it would be for the best interest of the county, to turn the property into a nice park for the citizens of Opportunity and Deer Lodge County.  The school board wanted OCPA to present a plan for building a park on the property and if the plan looked good enough, they would give it to the people of Deer Lodge County to build a park. This was a step in the right direction but funding was going to be a problem. Deer Lodge County was not going to spend a dime on the project, so they told us if we wanted a park, we would have to come up with funding to build it. OCPA negotiated with Atlantic Richfield Company to see if they could help fund the project.   Arco told the members of the Opportunity Citizens Protection Association, that they would donate 50 thousand towards the project. This money was tied up while ARCO and Deer Lodge County negotiated a land swap.  Finally the money was released for the park but to this day, OCPA does not know where the money was spent. Deer Lodge County told us that the 50G would be used to buy the land. It wasn’t until the ribbon cutting ceremony, that OCPA  found out that the County, got the whole thing for 10 dollars. Where did the other 49,990.00 go? Shortly after this, Max Baucus and the Baucus fund, along with Montana Department of Transportation, set aside 5 million dollars for parks and trails in the Milltown area. . . The Missoula County Commissioners decided that since Opportunity was going to receive the Tailings from Milltown, that they should be entitled to half of the 5 million to build the park in Opportunity.  This fund was a matching funds type of grant that would require $1.00 to be sent in for every $7.00 received.  So  the 50 grand ARCO donated to the park, could be turned into 350,000.00 by matching the money through the Baucus fund. Connie Daniels and Dan Villa came to one of OCPA’s meetings and informed us of the news from Missoula County and told us that 2.5 million would be used on our park. After the meeting, Dan Villa informed us that we better have a bunch of bake sales if we planned on getting any of the money. As it turned out, ALL of the trails and roadways built in the ARCO waste repository behind Opportunity could be used for matching funds for the project. Now that there was money involved, Deer Lodge County jumped right on the band wagon.  So instead of 2.5 million dollars to be spent on the Opportunity Park, 1.2 million was spent. The county told us that the rest of the money would go towards trails in and around Anaconda. Opportunity was cheated out of over half the money allotted for our Park. The park that was built is first class and everyone loves it but that isn’t the point I am trying to make. We could have even had a nicer park if all of the money like the 50 grand and 2.5 million would have been spent on the park. It’s sad that things like this happen but we all need to fight for what we believe in and not let a few politicians get in the way. Thank you Missoula County and Senator Baucus, for the great Park in Opportunity, without you, it would not have happened…