Craig To Ask Feds To Fund Basin Cleanup

Promising broad public involvement and a reasonable price, Sen. Larry Craig will seek federal money to clean up mining pollution in the Coeur d’Alene River basin.

“The senator hopes to have a bill together this year,” said David Fish, spokesman for the Idaho Republican. “The bill certainly won’t have a billion-dollar price tag. There will be an effort to prioritize (cleanup efforts) and get a broad base of support.”

A billion dollars was one well-publicized, and muchcriticized, estimate of the cost in earlier legislation.

Written by the Coeur d’Alene tribe and state of Idaho, it was one of two cleanup bills introduced last year by Rep. Larry LaRocco. Both died when the Democrat was voted out of office in November.

Fish acknowledged that, given the budget-cutting mood on Capitol Hill, getting any amount of money will be difficult.

“From a financial standpoint, it’s definitely going to be swimming upstream,” he said.

But many people believe that an infusion of federal dollars is the only hope for removing or covering up soil polluted by metals from historic Silver Valley mining operations.

“What are the alternatives?” asked Buddy Paul, head of a citizens’ task force that will report to Craig on what it would like to see in the legislation.

“Our goal is not to get a bill drafted, but to get something passed and signed,” said Paul.

Right now, federal money is being spent only on cleanup of the 21-square-mile Kellogg Superfund site. Some mining company money is going into that effort, and into stream restoration projects largely paid for through an industry settlement with the state.

Representatives of the mining companies, the Coeur d’Alene tribe, environmental agencies and others are trying to agree on cleanup priorities that could be included in a basin-wide bill, Paul said.

Another difficult issue, he said, is how much money the companies would contribute.

The citizens’ task force is part of a larger committee associated with the 4-year-old Coeur d’Alene Basin Restoration Project. That voluntary interagency group monitors cleanup efforts that are already under way, and sets cleanup standards.

If Congress appropriates cleanup money, one way it could be funneled is through a beefed-up version of the basin restoration project.

Craig’s aide in Coeur d’Alene, Sandy Patano, has been meeting with various interest groups to discuss legislation.

“We’re going to be pursuing this in a pretty aggressive fashion in the next couple of months,” she said.