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Down To Earth

Idaho Citizens Make Plea for Funds from Hecla Settlement

Today I received a press release from Bob McCarl concerning a hearing that will be held at the Federal Courthouse in Coeur d'Alene tomorrow at 1:30pm. Citizens affected by the Bunker Hill Supefund site will be on hand to hear the outcome of the $263 Million dollar Hecla settlement. Plaintiffs in the case, EPA, Idaho Stakeholders, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the State of Idaho and their numerous legal representatives will be present to support their claims in front of Federal Judge Edward Lodge.



The settlement ranks among the top ten settlements in Superfund history. Is it enough? Is it enough? Well, the money will be used to cleanup lead, arsenic and other heavy metals from their mining operations that have polluted 160 miles of the Coeur d’Alene River, its shoreline and downstream water bodies including Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River.

The Spokesman reported
about 150 tundra swans died last spring after ingesting toxic doses of lead in marshes along the Coeur d’Alene River and many of the river’s tributaries are too polluted to support fish.

From the press release:

Within the guidelines of the CERCLA law that established the Superfund program; the mission of the act is to protect the environment and human health. The Silver Valley Community Resource Center, under the direction of its volunteer director Barbara Miller, filed a Pro Se (independent) Motion request to be heard in the case on behalf of community members. The aim of the Motion is the establishment of a Community Environment Center that will offer universal lead screening, testing, and intervention; as well as provide support for economic, historical and cultural programs. Judge Lodge has ordered that public comment be allowed in this case. Many affected citizens wrote in favor of funds being set aside for community use. To date, no specific monies from the many millions spent on the Superfund have been set aside for community or environmental justice programming in the Silver Valley, although this case has been on-going for almost thirty years.

In recent years, EPA Region 10, headquartered in Seattle, has failed to abide by the section of CERCLA law that mandates community involvement. EPA has operated from a distance without truly engaging the families of the Silver Valley. This has left the people of the Silver Valley without a mechanism to seek collective damages outside of those funds directed to the valley by EPA administrators. As one valley resident commented: “The Silver Valley has become the poster-child of millions of dollars of wasted funds.”

Recent data provided by Sue Moodie of Johns Hopkins University and E.L. Evans published in the Science Direct Journal, “Ethical Issues in Using Children’s Blood Lead Levels as a Remedial Action Objective,” provides insight as to how children are being exploited in the Silver Valley by using blood/lead levels as an indicator of individual and community health. Moodie and Evans (in their article that will be published in American Journal of Public Health, argue that by using these measures without a systematic and transparent monitoring coupled with real remediation of the entire Bunker Hill site, EPA and Idaho DEQ are using a blunt measuring instrument that allows too many children and families to be exposed to toxic levels of lead. In effect, they argue, a small number of tested children are being used to indicate improvements in lead levels that require a much more systematic and transparent measurement of all valley residents, as well as extensive monitoring of soil, water and structural pollution that presently is not systemtically measured.

For the past two decades, the Silver Valley Community Resource Center has worked diligently to represent the needs of community members to federal and state agencies. Yet EPA and Idaho DEQ continue to pursue costly clean-up strategies that rely on short-term solutions like continued disturbance and transport of toxic waste and the construction of “temporary” toxic waste dumps; that ultimately to not provide any lasting protection of human or environmental health. As Dr. Gayle Eversole (a board member of SVCRC) states: “There is absolutely no doubt that the agencies are and have been closing out affected citizens.”

There are more than half a million residents living in the expanded Bunker Hill/Coeur d’Alene Superfund site that extends from the Montana border to the Columbia River. In spite of almost thirty years of intervention, toxic waste pollution is still flowing. The United States Geological Survey measure more than 160 metric tons flowed downstream on one day, January 19, 2011, when the Coeur d’Alene drainage was flooding.

All residents affected directly and indirectly by this Superfund site should attend the hearing on Thursday, September 8 at the Federal Courthouse in Coeur d’Alene. Many people are not aware that that toxic waste continues to flow out of the mine and smelter waste in the valley. We urge you to attend the hearing and show your support for funding a Community Environmental Center that will serve all members of the community. No greater justice could be served
.

I've been following the cleanup for years with the Eastern Mission Flats repository and the Silver Valley Community Resource Center have held the EPA accountable since before I was born.  the settlement marks a new era for the Coeur d' Alene Basin. The EPA has been performing cleanup work in the area since 1981 but despite all that time, the federal government is estimating $2 billion worth of cleanup remains.



Down To Earth

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