EPA Puts Idahoans in Charge of Cleanup

Federal, state and tribal representatives signed an unprecedented Idaho plan Tuesday that puts local officials in charge of one of the country’s largest Superfund cleanups.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman presided over the signing ceremony in a conference room seven stories above Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The pending $359-million Coeur d’Alene Basin cleanup plan does not anticipate listing the lake itself as a Superfund site, although numerous hot spots of mining pollution will need to be scrubbed, she said.

Wastes from more than a century of mining in northern Idaho’s Silver Valley have washed down the Coeur d’Alene River into the lake, the headwaters of the Spokane River, which flows into Washington state where it meets the Columbia River.

An agreement signed by federal, state and tribal officials establishes the Coeur d’Alene Basin Commission, which will direct cleanup efforts called for in the EPA’s decision, due later this month.

The decision affects areas of the 1,500-square-mile basin outside an existing Superfund site.

The five-member commission is composed of three Idaho elected officials, EPA Regional Director John Iani and a representative of the Coeur d’Alene tribe in Idaho. Washington state will have a nonvoting member, appointed by the governor.

President Bush “believes very firmly that not all wisdom resides in Washington [D.C.], that the best solutions to problems often come from those people closest to the problems,” Whitman said before Iani signed the agreement.

The agreement was toasted with glasses of lake water.

“Lake Coeur d’Alene is safe. We will continue to ensure that the standards are met,” Whitman said. “We are confident that, with the plan for the lake, it will continue to get cleaner.”