"The unnatural reservoir environment created by Milltown Dam creates a significant ecological risk to the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers - and to our native trout species," said Schmetterling, a fisheries biologist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The EPA's recently released report on the ecological risk posed by the reservoir - part of the Superfund cleanup process - does not address the fisheries issue, he said. "And it needs to."

"The dam has blocked the upstream migration of fish since 1906," Schmetterling said Tuesday. "The dam alone impacts the fishery. Its location at the confluence of these two major rivers has far-reaching effects."

The illegal introduction of northern pike, probably in the mid-1990s, has profoundly affected the reservoir environment, he said. And any Superfund cleanup plan for Milltown needs to take into account the pike and their effect on native trout, including endangered bull trout.

Based on 13 pike Schmetterling netted at the reservoir last Friday, the effect is substantial, he said. Of those 13, two had bull trout in their bellies, swallowed whole and not yet digested. Another had either a cutthroat or a rainbow trout in its stomach.

"That's amazing," Schmetterling said. "Even though it is just two fish, it represents a lot. Considering there are thousands of pike in the reservoir and I only got 13 and two had bull trout in their stomachs.

"These young bull trout are probably coming out of the Blackfoot, moving out of a tributary and down to the rivers to mature. But to get to the Clark Fork, they have to move through this reservoir inundated with pike. And pike are a top predator. They've basically eaten everything out of the reservoir, and now they're going after the out-migrants."

Pike also are moving into the rivers, upstream and downstream from the dam, Schmetterling said. They'll change those systems as well.

Removing Milltown Dam, as some conservationists and health officials have suggested, would drain the reservoir and greatly reduce the numbers of pike, Schmetterling believes. "Milltown has the spawning habitat for pike - the shallow, still-water areas with seasonally inundated vegetation. If you look at the rivers, the habitat isn't good for pike."

Schmetterling has an ally at the Missoula City-County Health Department, where environmental health supervisor Peter Nielsen also intends to ask the EPA to look at the pike issue as part of its ecological risk assessment.

Superfund managers, Nielsen said, "have substantially underestimated the ecological risks associated with Milltown Dam."

There is no mention in the report of the increasing pike population. Much of the water-quality data collected after an ice jam and flood on the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers in 1996 was not used. Only concentrations of dissolved copper were considered, not the total recoverable copper. And the report says events like the ice jam are unusual - when, Nielsen said, they are fairly common.

"Even if there were no effect from copper - and there is - there is still an ecological impact associated with Milltown Dam," Nielsen said. "Leaving the sediments in the reservoir has a long-term impact on the river. Leaving the dam there has a long-term impact on the river.

"And we have to do something about the pike."

Nielsen and Schmetterling intend to air their concerns at an informational meeting Wednesday (at 7 p.m. in Bonner School). The EPA's Superfund cleanup manager for Milltown - Russ Forba - will be there to discuss the ecological risk report, and to answer questions.

But Forba said Tuesday that he will not - and cannot - agree to add the pike issue to his report. The EPA is responsible for cleaning up the contaminants in the reservoir sediments: the copper, zinc, arsenic and cadmium washed downstream from mines and smelters in Butte and Anaconda over the past century.

"We are restricted to looking at the impacts on aquatic life from the contaminants themselves," he said, "not the problems associated with the dam being on the river. The northern pike are definitely an issue, but they're not one that we are allowed to discuss in our risk assessment. They're an issue that we don't have authority over."

"Definitely, David Schmetterling has a valid concern," Forba said. "But it won't be discussed by the EPA."

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