Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

From Dust Unto Dust In Kellogg Superfund Demolition Of Zinc Plant Brings Down Last Major Bunker Hill Structure

Three men in their 70s stood on a hillside in Government Gulch on Thursday evening and waited for part of their heritage to disappear in a cloud of zinc-laced dust.

The five-minute warning horn sounded.

“Fire in the hole,” Joe Hauser said in a low voice.

A few minutes before the big blast, a shaft of sunlight broke through the storm clouds, illuminating the skeletal remains of the seven-story zinc plant.

The building is the last major structure to be demolished in the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site. Demolition experts strapped 640 pounds of dynamite to its steel beams to bring it down at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Hauser and Art Bisaro were both 18 when they started working for Bunker Hill in the 1940s. They worked there until the mining operation buckled in the early ‘80s.

“We used to cut out paper sacks and put them on our heads to keep the dust out of our hair - when we had hair,” said Bisaro, who worked in the zinc plant for 12 years.

Hauser admitted feeling pretty emotional about watching the destruction of the old plant.

After all, it was part of Uncle Bunker’s legacy, unlike the towering smokestacks that so many people associate with Silver Valley mining operations.

More than just a company, Bunker Hill was the valley’s kindly patriarch for decades, employing thousands of people, loaning them money and helping put their children through school and college.

“They didn’t have to worry about a job,” Hauser said. “They knew they had a job with Bunker Hill.”

As John Davis, a KWAL radio announcer and former zinc plant worker, put it, the smokestacks were “like the last Hail Mary” of Gulf Resources & Chemical Corp.

Gulf Resources bought the Bunker Hill operations from The Bunker Hill Co. in 1968. A fire destroyed pollution controls five years later, so Gulf built the smokestacks to appease the Environmental Protection Agency by dispersing the smelter’s lead-filled smoke to a wider area.

The operations were shut down in 1981, and the area was declared a Superfund site in 1983. The bankruptcy of Gulf Resources delayed the cleanup of the site for several years.

The smokestacks were blown up in May. But their demise was merely the most visual evidence of cleanup, which is several years and millions of dollars from being finished.

The cleanup is largely funded by federal dollars, allocated by Congress. But every year the competition for those dollars becomes more intense. More Superfund sites nationwide are in the cleanup phase, said Howard Blood of the EPA in Seattle.

The zinc plant and other demolition projects at Bunker Hill almost weren’t funded this year, he said. Total demolition costs so far are $17 million. The cleanup work that’s left has been estimated at $50 million.

“We’d like to see this come to completion,” said Hauser, who sits on the local Superfund task force, “so other types of industry will come in here to create jobs for the people who live here.”

Joan Block, president of the Kellogg Chamber of Commerce, voiced similar sentiments.

“It’s just one step further to a new Silver Valley,” she said. “With the Superfund status hanging over us, there’s been a lot of negative publicity.”

In addition to ridding the Valley of that stigma, Block wants businesses to be assured that if they locate on the former Bunker Hill property, they won’t have to worry about pollution or liability problems in the future.

An hour after the plant was scheduled to come down, Hauser, Bisaro and another former employee, Eric Lassfolk, were still waiting patiently.

All eyes rested on the hulking metal-and-concrete structure as the final warning blast came and the countdown started.

One end of the building started to sink silently as the columns collapsed one-by-one. Then the gut-wrenching percussion of the blast barreled up the gulch.

An avalanche of dust billowed down a terrace of concrete foundations, and as the dust drifted away, a crumpled mass remained.

“Look at that dust,” Bisaro murmured.

The work crew’s radios came alive.

“It’s still bucking around here,” a demolition expert relayed from the site. “I hear popping and cracking.”

Part of the building still stood. But the Corps of Engineers, contractor Morrison Knudsen and subcontractor Engineered Demolition of Minneapolis agreed what was left could easily be “pushed over” later.

Security guards were advised not to let anyone up the gulch. As everyone left, a light rain started to fall, washing dust from the air.

, DataTimes MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition

Cut in the Spokane edition