Annual Fund Sought To Protect Aquifer North Idaho Legislators Present Bill For $200,000 Share Of Sales Taxes
North Idaho desperately needs state money to make sure its water is safe to drink, three North Idaho lawmakers told their colleagues on Monday.
Reps. Wayne Meyer, R-Rathdrum, Hilde Kellogg, R-Post Falls, and Don Pischner, R-Coeur d’Alene, presented legislation to the House Revenue and Taxation Committee that would set aside $200,000 a year in state sales tax proceeds to pay for protection efforts for the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.
That underground reservoir is the sole source of drinking water for about 400,000 people on both sides of the state line. The federal money that paid for efforts to protect the aquifer - $1 million a year since 1988 - is gone.
Spokane County has agreed to kick in $30,000 a year toward the effort, and the Panhandle Health District is raising $20,000 a year through fees. But they can’t do it all.
A committee of business people, government officials, conservationists and others spent the past two years going through every piece of North Idaho’s aquifer protection program, and paring it down to the bare essentials. They’ve proposed a $273,000 program, with $73,000 being raised locally.
That’s down from $500,000 a year under the federal funding, which was secured by former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley of Spokane. That $1-million-a-year federal appropriation had been split 50-50 by Idaho and Washington.
Meyer, who along with Kellogg served on the committee that examined the programs, said, “We felt it was going to be more palatable for people to accept” if it was pared down.
“We want to know positively that this program is going to be funded, so it’s not a mystery every year as to whether we can keep it going.”
If the program runs out of money, much could be lost.
The 87 public water systems that now use water from the aquifer could lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in waivers that free them from costly testing requirements because the program is in place.
Plus, the aquifer could get contaminated. An aquifer contamination case now being cleaned up, involving the industrial solvent TCE, already has cost half a million dollars. That contamination came before the program started up to prevent it.
“Prevention is everything on an aquifer,” said Dick Martindale, aquifer program coordinator for the Panhandle Health District.
The programs, run by both the Health District and the state Division of Environmental Quality, include sewage management agreements, sampling, technical assistance, public education, a program that targets non-domestic wastewater and one that deals with management of specific chemicals to make sure they don’t get into the aquifer.
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