Silver Valley Smokestacks Will Be Demolished This Spring

The Bunker Hill smokestacks - to some a monument, to others a monstrosity - will come crashing down soon.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it will blast both the lead and zinc smelter stacks, unused since 1981. Demolition is slated for this spring, most likely over Memorial Day weekend.

The blasts will radically alter the Silver Valley skyline, removing the valley’s tallest structures and extinguishing the powerful aircraft-warning lights that have pulsed above the area for years.

The news disheartened some who wanted the stacks preserved for history - or future industry.

“It’s a shame. They’re taking away a memory,” said Brenda Auld, who led a drive to save at least one stack.

“It was a landmark, whether they like it or not,” she said. “Without that finger, no one notices the hand.”

Others were pleased.

“It’s a new beginning. Right now, they’re doing nothing except being an eyesore,” said Billie Irwin, the city of Kellogg’s representative on the “Blowing Our Stacks” committee. The committee plans to sell raffle tickets, with the winner getting to push the explosives plunger.

“We’ve been fighting this environmental stigma for a long time,” said Irwin, referring to the oft-cited fact that Kellogg is the second largest Superfund pollution site in the nation.

EPA spokeswoman Krista Rave said the 715-foot lead smelting stack, close to Interstate 90 near Kellogg, will be dropped into a landfill south of the freeway. The 610-foot zinc stack, in a draw near Smelterville, will be dropped into a nearby trench, then covered, or broken up and trucked to the landfill.

Officials likely will shut down the freeway during the blasting, she said.

“If you’re driving along I-90 and you see these stacks falling, you’d slam on the brakes. I would,” she said. “Then you’d have a 20-car pileup.”

The concrete stacks were fired up in 1977 after construction costing $11 million. The columns taper from about 50 feet in diameter at the base to 21 feet at the top.

The stacks were part of the Bunker Hill mining company’s effort to cut down on sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of ore smelting. Older, smaller stacks allowed the acrid gas to settle in the valley. The stacks went cold when the mine shut down and declared bankruptcy in 1981.

, DataTimes MEMO: Idaho headline: Stack attack