Northwest States Clash on Control of Environmental Cleanup

Like neighbors bickering over dog droppings, politicians in Washington and Idaho are battling over who should clean up decades’ worth of mining pollution in the Silver Valley.

The pollution, including lead and arsenic, flowed into Idaho’s Lake Coeur d’Alene and entered Washington through the Spokane River, traveling all the way to its confluence with the Columbia.

All sides agree the river basin should be cleaned up, but they differ on the approach.

Idaho officials want more control and want the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency--especially its dreaded Superfund designation--to butt out.

A big reason is that mining jobs have declined, while tourism to northern Idaho’s lakes and ski resorts has become a big business. Idahoans fear that few vacationers will schedule trips to Superfund sites.

That makes many Washington residents suspect that Idaho is more interested in cleaning up its image than its pollution. Washington wants the EPA to largely fund and control the work.

“We cannot be dependent on Idaho’s legislators to protect Washington citizens, only Idaho mining companies,” Jeffrey Hedge of Spokane complained at a recent public hearing in Spokane.

The EPA designated a 21-square-mile area around Kellogg, Idaho, a Superfund site in 1983, and nearly finished cleaning it up. Environmental groups are now pushing for a much larger cleanup of the entire Coeur d’Alene River Basin.

The EPA is conducting studies and will decide next year if it should extend cleanup work all the way into Washington state, and whether to use Superfund trust money.

Two public hearings--on Aug. 19 in Coeur d’Alene and Nov. 14 in Spokane--drew many of the region’s power brokers.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, Sens. Michael D. Crapo and Larry E. Craig, and Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage, all Idaho Republicans, appeared at the Idaho event.

“We can’t spend the rest of our lives threatened by one Superfund listing after another,” Chenoweth-Hage told the EPA.

In late October, Chenoweth-Hage produced a report characterizing the EPA’s actions in the Coeur d’Alene Basin as “haphazard, negligent and dangerous.”

In what she called “the ultimate EPA employee retirement plan,” the agency wants a second, 30-year, cleanup of the basin, estimated to cost between $500 million and $3.8 billion, she wrote.

The EPA said Chenoweth-Hage’s report was full of errors and mischaracterizations.

The department defended its cleanup efforts around the former Bunker Hill mine in Kellogg, and said there had been a big decrease in the average level of lead in children’s blood in the Silver Valley.

That is viewed as an EPA success by many Washington officials, who want the work expanded into their state.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who chaired the Spokane event, said EPA must ensure that the health of people along the Spokane River will be protected.

“We see EPA as being the only body that can do a thorough, fair job,” added Jani Gilbert, a spokeswoman for the Washington state Department of Ecology.

That feeling is not universal. Republican Rep. George R. Nethercutt Jr., who represents the Spokane area in Congress, said “a Superfund designation would buy gridlock and litigation.”

Washington officials became interested in the issue only in 1998, when federal scientists detected high levels of lead, arsenic and zinc in a 90-mile stretch of the Spokane River, from Post Falls, Idaho, to Lake Roosevelt in eastern Washington.

The extent of the pollution is unclear, and it is not considered an imminent threat to human health. But signs have been posted along the river, warning that swallowing or breathing soil may pose health risks.

Lead levels in the Spokane River have been measured as high as 2,360 parts per million, well above the EPA’s residential cleanup level of 400 parts per million.

But swimmers, boaters and fishers continue to use the beaches and waters of Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River.

Shari Barnard, a former Spokane mayor and member of the state Board of Health, said 80% of the people in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin live in Washington state.

“The citizens of Washington and Idaho deserve safe beaches, safe fish to eat and a safe river,” Barnard said.

The mining industry is worried that EPA will demand it pay for most of the cleanup, and is pushing for local control of the work.

Laura Skaer of the Northwest Mining Assn. said the Superfund program is rife with waste.

“Of the billions of dollars spent on Superfund efforts,” Skaer said, “only 12% of these moneys have actually gone to cleaning up the environment,” with the balance spent on legal and consulting fees.

The U.S. Justice Department and Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe have filed a lawsuit against the three surviving mining companies in the Silver Valley, seeking about $1 billion for cleanup.

Kempthorne and other Idaho leaders are pushing a settlement proposal for $250 million, mostly funded by Hecla Mining Co., Asarco Inc. and Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. Talks are continuing.

Murray and the EPA believe Superfund dollars could be spent without the dreaded designation, thanks to a recent ruling in another case by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mark Snider, a spokesman for the Idaho governor, said the designation alone is not the problem.

“The governor does not want EPA to run the cleanup,” Snider said. “Turning the keys to the castle over to them is not the way to get this solved.”

www.epa.gov/superfund/