Greenwire: The new director of U.S. EPA’s Montana bureau, Julie DalSoglio, came to her office in tragic circumstances: Last fall, the division’s former director, John Wardell, died after a climbing accident.
During that dark time, DalSoglio, then Wardell’s deputy, held the office together as its acting director, said Richard Opper, director of Montana’s Department of Environmental Quality. Recently, DalSoglio’s superiors in Colorado decided to give her the job on a permanent basis.
“When John died, she was on call 24/7 and got her staff the help they needed. It was an incredibly stressful time, and I don’t know how she did it,” Opper said. “We all expected her to be the heir apparent and are very comfortable with that. She’s fair, bright and very knowledgeable about the issues.”
DalSoglio spent 10 years overseeing Superfund program sites in Milltown, Anaconda, Libby and Clark Fork River. Those programs set some pioneering standards, she said.
“Milltown was the first ecological risk assessment in the nation … and we basically had a national team that was inventing how to do that,” DalSoglio said.
DalSoglio has plenty to keep her busy in Montana, she added. The bureau is negotiating Butte priority sites, figuring out what to do about arsenic and selenium plumes in East Helena, and working on a consent decree for the Clark Fork Basin (Eve Byron, Helena Independent Record, March 12). – PV