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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Uncle Bunker’s Facelift Cleanup At Smelter Complex Starts Slowly With Removal Of Contaminated Buildings

Men dressed in white decontamination suits picked over the skeleton of Uncle Bunker on Wednesday.

After 10 years and $30 million, the Environmental Protection Agency says major cleanup at the Bunker Hill mine and smelter complex slowly is beginning. Only half the money spent so far has gone toward on-the-ground work.

But the defunct industrial center - affectionately named Uncle Bunker by those who remember its glory days - now is getting a major facelift courtesy of taxpayers and mining companies.

This week, contractors began ripping down 20 wooden buildings laden with toxic chemicals. The demolition is slow and deliberate, so as not to stir up lead, cadmium, arsenic, zinc and other contaminants.

EPA project manager Earl Liverman watched the men from behind a wire fence. Their tough paper suits flapped from the freezing wind whipping through Government Gulch. Hillsides covered with stale snow are home to rotting buildings that once comprised the heart of Bunker Hill’s zinc plant.

“Conceivably, in 70, 80 or 100 years, this area should look like Wallace looks now,” says Liverman. Wallace, just 13 miles east of Bunker Hill, is largely untouched by decades of mine and smelter pollution that still soils a 21-square-mile area from Kellogg west to Pinehurst.

Work now under way at Bunker Hill is a small and relatively inexpensive step toward eliminating a mess that has chased away economic recovery from the Silver Valley. Over the next seven to 10 years, the whole skeleton will be picked apart for scrap material, then torn down, with waste going into a landfill to be dug on site.

The smokestacks, too, will come down, perhaps a year or so from now.

All toxic materials will be buried and capped with clean soil. Trees, ball parks and playgrounds - some day - are hoped to replace Bunker Hill’s eery landscape.

As demolition continues, air quality around Kellogg is monitored to make sure contaminants are not spread. So far, so good, said Larry Hudson, project manager for OHM Remediation Services Corp., the contractor for $5 million zinc plant job.

“We’re doing selected demolitions, so the highest hazards get eliminated first,” Hudson said.

Cleanup at Bunker Hill is bittersweet for Kellogg residents.

They’re glad to finally see progress in removing pollution for their community. But they’re confused by the authority wielded by EPA, an agency that enforces complicated regulations that make little sense to residents.

During Wednesday’s tour, for example, Liverman dramatically explained how employees must wear special suits, masks, two pairs of gloves and steel-reinforced boots to protect them from pollution.

Yet a few hundred yards from the highly toxic zinc plant, the Kellogg School District parks its fleet of yellow buses, with EPA’s blessing.

People like Kellogg City Councilman Todd Goodson now lament a lack of local control over cleanup measures.

And retirees who once worked for Bunker Hill now are fighting to keep their medical benefits from Gulf USA Corp., the bankrupt polluter whose insolvency has stuck state and federal taxpayers with most of the cleanup bill.

Earlier this month, EPA took over most of the cleanup duties performed by Pintlar Corp, a Gulf subsidiary.

Pintlar employed local people. Only a handful of them have been retained by EPA contractors.

Gulf is a former operator of the smelter and, consequently, considered the primary polluter at Bunker Hill.

Gulf is now fighting creditors, including EPA in bankruptcy court.

A hearing in the Gulf matter is scheduled for this morning in Coeur d’Alene.

MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition

Cut in the Spokane edition