Cda Tribe Cleaning Up Lead Contamination Popular Cataldo Mission Picnic Area Tainted By Years Of Mining Runoff

Until recently, the picnic area around the Cataldo Mission included picnic benches, barbecue grills - and warnings about the lead-tainted soil underfoot.

“For over 100 years, these lower grounds have been contaminated by lead and other metals which have been washed down by the river,” the signs read. Visitors to the state park were warned to stay on the grass and trails, and not to let children play in the dirt.

Now the Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe is digging up the polluted soil, trying to clean up a site the Indians have long considered sacred. Over the past two weeks, earth movers have shaved off 1,000 tons of soil. Around tree roots, tribal workers have shoveled out the dirt by hand.

“We look upon the contamination as a great disgrace upon our ancestral grounds, where we lived and played and died,” said Tribal Councilman Henry SiJohn.

The tribe is paying for the $140,000 project with money from a 1992 cash settlement with two mining companies. Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. and Callahan Mining Corp. paid the tribe $350,000 in exchange for the tribe dropping its lawsuit accusing the companies of contaminating the Coeur d’Alene River Basin with mining wastes.

This summer, in a multiagency effort, workers also will clean up the highuse area around the Cataldo boat launch. That’s just downstream from the mission. Workers will cover contaminated soil with clean dirt and grass. They also will plant thorny bushes to keep people away from the danger. A small wetland will be filled in, so it won’t attract children. Total cost: $25,000.

The Jesuit mission was built by the Coeur d’Alenes 130 years ago. Many tribal members, their graves unmarked, lie buried in the mission cemetery.

In August, the tribe celebrates the Catholic Feast of the Assumption with a pilgrimage to the site. Indians camp out in teepees, tents, pickups and campers, celebrating with a free feast for anyone who shows up.

“We’ve been camping here forever,” said tribal councilman Norm Campbell, whose construction company is doing the cleanup work.

In 1992, some tribal members left behind their teepee poles for next year. High waters from the nearby Coeur d’Alene River washed the poles away.

“That’s when they realized this area gets flooded occasionally,” said Callie Ridolfi, a Seattle environmental engineer working on the project.

The same waters that carried off the teepee poles deposit lead and zinc and cadmium from old mining wastes upstream in the Silver Valley, she said.

“They asked us to sample, and that’s when we found the contamination,” she said. “The tribe felt they didn’t want their children playing in that sort of contamination.”

Some of the soil in the area contained lead in concentrations greater than 5,000 parts per million. The Bunker Hill Superfund cleanup upstream, by comparison, is trying to clean residential lawns to a level of less than 1,000 parts per million, Ridolfi said.

The workers are removing soil 6 inches to 18 inches deep, she said, and will replace it with clean soil trucked in from Spokane. They’ll raise the level of the site, so the river won’t be able to recontaminate the soil. Technicians will monitor lead concentrations there for years, said tribal press secretary Bob Bostwick.

The tainted soil is being shipped to a landfill at Roosevelt, Wash., a few miles north of the Columbia River.

The work should be complete by the first of June, Campbell said.