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February 15, 2012 in Idaho
EPA will slash CdA River Basin cleanup plan
North Idaho legislators want expedited end to Superfund designation
BOISE – The proposed $1.3 billion Superfund cleanup of a century of mining contamination in North Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene River Basin is being scaled back significantly, Idaho lawmakers were told Tuesday.
Instead of taking up to 100 years and costing $1.3 billion, the cleanup would last more like 30 years and cost about $736 million, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Director Toni Hardesty told the House Environment Committee. The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil the proposed changes today in Wallace.
“We were hopeful that they would scale that back significantly,” Hardesty said of the EPA. “It’s consistent with the comments that the state submitted, so we’re pleased.”
The EPA received about 7,000 public comments on the cleanup plan, which is intended to reduce the risk of heavy metals exposure for people and wildlife in the basin. It targets more than 300 old mine sites, along with polluted streams. But both the plan’s price tag and the 50- to 100-year time frame have been questioned by local residents and Idaho’s congressional delegation.
In addition to the drop in time frame and price tag, Hardesty listed several other major changes that will be unveiled in the revised cleanup plan, only some of which had been previously announced by the EPA:
• A $300 million project to install a plastic liner along the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River would be dropped.
• Active mine sites would be removed from the cleanup.
• Remote mine and mill sites that have been inspected and found not to pose a risk would be removed from the cleanup.
• The cleanup would focus away from drainages where water quality already meets standards, such as the South Fork above Wallace.
Hardesty discussed the scaled-back cleanup plan during testimony on a resolution proposed by Rep. Shannon McMillan, R-Silverton, calling for the EPA to end its Superfund cleanup and leave the Silver Valley within five years.
McMillan told the committee, “The valley has been decimated. Businesses by the hundreds are gone.”
Her son, Wallace attorney James McMillan, who drafted the resolution, told the committee, “We believe it’s time to say that enough is enough. The human health hazard has been diminished.” He also told lawmakers that the state never got to comment on the EPA’s “Record of Decision.”
Hardesty held up a thick sheaf of papers, saying, “Here are the comments that the state submitted.” She noted that agencies including the DEQ, the Idaho Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Homeland Security, and Idaho Fish and Game all weighed in.
She also pointed out that an $800 million trust fund, which came from settlements with the mining firms Asarco and Hecla, is court-ordered to be spent on the cleanup. “And $800 million cannot be spent in a five-year time frame in this particular geographic area,” she said.
Hardesty said the resolution, as written, calls on the state to reject a plan that hasn’t yet been finalized and “directs the federal government to do something they can’t legally do” – walk away from a Superfund cleanup without doing all the work.
Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said he wanted to pass McMillan’s resolution anyway. “The people of the valley are really frustrated up there with what’s happened over the years,” he said.
The resolution is a nonbinding, strongly worded message that the Idaho Legislature would send to Congress and the EPA: “The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has, for the past three decades, crippled industrial development in Shoshone County through its Superfund designation, based upon highly questionable scientific data,” the resolution states. “The EPA is now proposing a plan in which it will perpetuate its unconstitutional, economically paralyzing usurpation of state and local authority for another fifty to ninety years at an estimated cost of nearly one billion dollars.”
Said Harwood, “It wouldn’t hurt to send this back there and let them know how we’re feeling.”
The committee voted instead to hold the resolution indefinitely, with the possibility that it could be reconsidered.
Rep. Brian Cronin, D-Boise, said, “I think perhaps a more productive memorial would be one that … exerts as much Idaho control as we can over what is money in the bank, an $800 million trust. … Why not draft a memorial suggesting that this money be spent in Idaho for Idahoans using Idaho companies? I think that would be a step towards economic development. It’d be good for this entire state.”
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mikeln on February 15 at 2:36 a.m.
Take a nice long, cold sip of idaho water and fill the power of the lead flowing to your brain.
rosehips on February 15 at 6:38 a.m.
So the hillbilly legislator gets her way and the people of the Silver Valley will remain half wits for the rest of eternity. Sad.
SaxmanAlpha on February 15 at 9:58 a.m.
Rosehips - I believe that halfwits is giving them extra credit. Just being from north Idaho drops most of that population to “halfwit status.” Bring from the Silver Valley where lead exposure is a given, my guess would be that they are “quarter wits” at best.
rosehips on February 15 at 11:05 a.m.
you might be right, saxman.
RedCedar on February 15 at 11:25 a.m.
Did any of you geniuses in the peanut gallery read the article? Have you followed the process that led to this decision? I realize it’s fun to toss out cheap shots on a forum like this, but for what it’s worth, the EPA’s decision has nothing to do with the McMillan resolution. The EPA is just now announcing the results of the ROD amendment (look it up, braniacs), whose public comment period ended a year ago last fall, that being an amendment to the ROD that started the whole process 20+ years prior. That was the time to get all your comments in. Since then, they’ve been massaging the public comments, political influence, lobbyist pressure, and who know what else through whatever inscrutable bureaucratic sausage-grinder they use and have come up with a final plan that attempts to reconcile science, money, and probably politics.
The fact that a freshman legislator introduced a toothless resolution around the same time as the EPA’s decision was announced had absolutely no influence on the EPA’s decision, if only because the decision had already been made.
I might also point out that the EPA has $800 million in its trust fund for the whole superfund project, so it’s not a big surprise that they scaled back their proposal to just under $800 million. This isn’t the place to pick apart the details of what they should or shouldn’t spend that money on, since clearly nobody here has read their plan and can say anything specific about it, good or bad. It seems to me that $800 million over 30 years can do a significant amount of work, but from the tenor of the comments here if they had proposed spending $800 billion over 300 years it still wouldn’t be enough. Enjoy your peanuts.