Feds File Suit To Clean Up Cda Basin Damages Sought From 4 Mining Companies For Effects Of Tailings On Environment

Four mining companies face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages if a federal lawsuit filed against them Friday makes them liable for harming the environment of the Coeur d’Alene Basin.

The U.S. Justice Department filed the suit in Boise, naming Hecla Mining Co. and Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp., both of Coeur d’Alene, Sunshine Mining and Refining of Boise and Asarco Inc. of New York.

Four former and current subsidiaries of the companies are also listed.

At issue are the impacts that 100 years of mine waste had on wildlife, fish and waterways of the Coeur d’Alene Basin stretching from Mullan to Lake Coeur d’Alene.

The suit deals with land outside the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site. The same mining companies named in Friday’s suit paid millions to help offset the cost of cleanup at the site.

The Coeur d’Alene Indian Tribe and several government agencies continue to examine the basin for signs of damage.

Mining companies admit that decades of mine runoff that settled in the basin hurt some wildlife - before modern tailings ponds and mine technology stopped the flows. But the damage is not nearly to the extent environmental groups charge, companies say. Groups such as the Idaho Conservation League point to some studies showing fish, birds and animals with high concentrations of metals in their bodies as cause for a damage judgment against the mining companies.

Friday’s suit should make the mining companies take notice, said Scott Brown of the conservation league.

Dozens of swans die each year in the basin from lead poisoning. And environmentalists say the metals harm other wildlife.

“It seems to us to be a good way to get the companies out of denial about the damage there,” Brown said. “They continue to maintain that the only proven damage to the natural resources are the lead-poisoned tundra swans. We think there’s wide-spread contamination.”

Show us the science that proves it, countered Holly Houston, executive director of the Coeur d’Alene Basin Mining Information Office, a public relations group backed by the mining companies.

“Apparently we’re going to call their bluff on this whole thing,” Houston said. “Eventually the question is going to become ‘What is the legal definition of injury?”’

The reproductive rates among animals in the basin remain quite healthy, Houston said, and environmentalists haven’t been able to prove otherwise.

Idaho Republican Gov. Phil Batt asked Attorney General Janet Reno in a letter and on the phone this week to hold off on the suit. Amy Kleiner, a Batt spokeswoman, said late Friday that the governor was “very disappointed that the suit has been filed.”

“There’s going to be a lot of money spent on lawyers that could have been used for cleanup,” Kleiner said.

Houston agreed. Defendants such as Hecla and Coeur d’Alene Mines haven’t been profitable this decade, and the cash they’ve set aside for basin cleanup will likely go to lawyers to defend the suit instead of cleanup projects in the basin.

In fact, a multimillion-dollar judgment could wipe out the companies financially.

Hecla, Coeur and Sunshine officials weren’t available for comment late Friday. Asarco’s representatives in New York promised to vigorously defend the suit.

Asarco also challenged the government to recognize its own role in creating the mine wastes. Government control of the mines to provide essential minerals during World War II boosted Silver Valley production near all-time record levels, Asarco officials said.

A Coeur d’Alene Tribe damage assessment of the basin should be finished sometime during 1997, and the bill could be in the hundreds of millions, said Bill Brooks, justice department spokesman.

The suit contends mining companies have dumped more than 70 million tons of waste into the basin, Brooks said. The government filed the suit only after mining companies failed to cooperate in negotiations established under a truce between the parties last fall, he said.

Brooks said the best ballpark estimate for basin cleanup could be $600 million. Some tribal figures stake the cost of basin cleanup at $1 billion.

Mining companies, Batt and others have been frustrated by being unable to see preliminary data from the tribe’s damage assessment. Brown, of the conservation league, said he’d not had any trouble getting data from the study.

Ironically, the suit will bring discovery laws into play that will ensure the companies see what they’re up against in the way of scientific studies showing damage from mine wastes.

“We’re confident that, once we get a look at their science, people will see that it contradicts itself,” Houston said.

, DataTimes