Site near Cataldo for mine waste opposed

A local environmental group and a highway district are opposed to the state’s plan to dump mining waste near Cataldo, Idaho, calling it a potential “toxic time bomb” near the Coeur d’Alene River.

Yet the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality said the proposal has been in the works for nearly three years and has included numerous public meetings. State officials say this is the first time they heard the groups complain.

The East Side Highway District plans to ask the Kootenai County Commission on Monday to intervene and stop the proposal to build a repository to store lead-tainted soil and other mine waste on the 19 acres just north of Interstate 90 across from the Cataldo Mission State Park.

Commission Chairman Rick Currie, who also serves on the Coeur d’Alene Basin Environmental Improvement Commission that has been included in the repository planning, said he will listen to the district’s concerns, but thinks the storage site is a good solution. Currie added that the county can’t stop the repository because the state has jurisdiction.

The highway district and Kootenai Environmental Alliance sent a press release to the media saying the repository site doesn’t make sense because the property floods and could destroy cleanup efforts and the protection of Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Coeur d’Alene River.

Neither Road Supervisor John Pankratz nor KEA spokesman Barry Rosenberg was available for comment Friday.

Highway District Commission Chairman Dick Edinger said the commission recently looked at the property and found standing water there. The state is asking for the site to have access off Canyon Road, which is overseen by the highway district.

“It’s just not a very good spot to put it,” Edinger said of the repository.

The groups suggest moving it to higher ground that a flood couldn’t disturb. And that’s the hitch. The DEQ’s John Lawson, a waste program scientist in Boise, said federal Superfund law requires all repositories be placed on property already contaminated. That means the state can’t put the repository at a higher spot.

“It’s a Catch-22,” Lawson said.

In the lower Coeur d’Alene Basin where a repository is needed, the only contaminated lands are those within the flood plain near the Coeur d’Alene River.

The marshlands around Cataldo Mission are contaminated because of flooding and the longtime practice of dredging, Lawson said. For decades, the state mandated that the mining companies dredge the river to remove mine tailings and spread the waste in the Mission Flats area. The practice kept the tailings from covering valuable nearby farmland when the river flooded. The dredging stopped in the 1960s.

Lawson said the state bought the 19 acres from a private owner last year. But before that the state started the process of having public meetings and making presentations to the Basin Commission.

Lawson said many people attended a March 2006 meeting at Canyon Elementary School near Cataldo. He also met with highway district officials but never heard their complaints. Lawson has also met with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, county commissioners and the state Transportation Department.

“I thought we were working together on this,” he said. “I’m sort of surprised.”

Because of the public meetings and residents’ concerns, the state conducted an intensive wetland study to ensure that it could build the repository without further damaging the river or adjacent wetlands, Lawson said.

The wetlands are already contaminated, but they still have value and support wildlife, and that’s how they will remain, he said.

He added that the state never would have picked the site unless Kootenai County agreed, which it did.

The state made sure that the design keeps the repository hidden from the view of the Cataldo Mission.

It could take up to 20 years to fill the repository with soil from contaminated yards in the lower basin and waste from other areas within the Superfund cleanup area. The state already has two other repositories in the basin.

The Mission Flats repository could potentially hold a half-million cubic yards of waste and dirt.