EPA Proposes Lead Cleanup in Northern Idaho

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a sweeping $359-million plan Wednesday to clean up decades of mining pollution in northern Idaho near the historic Silver Valley, where children once had some of the highest blood lead levels ever recorded.

The proposal offers federal Superfund financing for much of the Coeur d’Alene and Spokane river basins between Montana and Washington, though it leaves state and local authorities to decide the fate of one of the premier tourist attractions in the Pacific Northwest, Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The full range of alternatives won’t be released until next week. EPA officials said their preferred plan calls for cleaning up homes and yards where lead still poses a health hazard and improving water quality in rivers and tributaries, many of which are home to endangered fish species. The plan would also remove poison sediments from waterfowl habitat and reduce the amount of lead that washes downstream from contaminated riverbanks.

The proposal addresses a region that for decades lay under a cloud of lead particle pollution from the Bunker Hill mine smelter and many surrounding mines, an area the EPA says extends through parts of 1,300 square miles. It falls far short of the $1.3-billion cleanup that would have focused on the entire Coeur d’Alene basin and attempts to strike a balance with Idaho residents who fear that a Superfund project on Lake Coeur d’Alene could devastate tourism.

Still, Coeur d’Alene residents who have opposed expanding the current 21-square-mile Superfund site in the heart of the Silver Valley said the proposal could leave them with a federal cleanup that spans decades and still provides no guarantees.

“The big thing is it doesn’t provide certainty of when their proposed action will end,” complained Brett Bowers of the Coeur d’Alene-based Community Leaders for EPA Accountability Now. “They’re proposing a cleanup that could span for decades, if not a century.”

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne had not read the report, but spokesman Mark Snider said the governor has opposed any Superfund cleanup in the Coeur d’Alene basin.

“It would basically be a 20-year public works project,” Snider said. “His [the governor’s] main point is, let’s clean up the box [in the heart of the Silver Valley] before we start expanding it to areas where it may or may not be needed.”

The Coeur d’Alene tribe, which owns the lower third of Lake Coeur d’Alene, has pushed for cleanup to reverse the devastation of lead poisoning on fish and wildlife.

Bob Bostwick, spokesman for the tribe, said the lake itself must be a key component in any remedial program.

“Our position has always been, and continues to be, that the lake has to have proper stewardship, it has to have proper management and it has to have proper protection,” he said.

Lake Coeur d’Alene, surrounded by golf courses and resorts and populated in the summer by boats and swimmers, has clean water but is underlain by contaminated silts.

Although there is no immediate danger, there are concerns that if overall contamination reduces the oxygen content in the water, it could be enough to unleash the lead pollution and pose a significant health hazard.

Mary Jane Nearman, environmental engineer for the EPA, said the agency proposes to leave management of the lake to a coalition of state, local and tribal governments that is already working on a lake management plan. If that effort is successful, the EPA would give up Superfund jurisdiction over the lake under Wednesday’s proposal.

“We’ve been trying to say loud and clear that the lake is currently safe and has been for recreation and human health uses. The beaches are fine,” Nearman said. “What we’re talking about is . . . water quality criteria for fish.”

Nearman said the residential cleanup would involve about 1,300 homes, most in the communities of Wallace, Mullan and surrounding canyons east of the current Superfund location at Kellogg. The EPA has spent more than $200 million cleaning up the Kellogg area, which had far worse pollution than surrounding communities.

The EPA is negotiating settlements with several mining companies but has only locked in settlements of $3.8 million so far.