Deal Stretches Cleanup Of Streams To 8 Years Sides Work Out Compromise On Assessing, Addressing Needs Of 962 Stream Segments

Idaho and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached a compromise with conservationists that eases the pressure for cleaning up 962 stream segments throughout the state.

The agreement sets out an eight-year schedule for assessing the cleanup needs for each of the segments. The state has also committed to come up with the ways to actually improve the water quality within 18 months of each assessment’s completion.

Until the deal was cut, the state was under a five-year cleanup order issued by U.S. District Judge William Dwyer at the request of the Idaho Conservation League and the Idaho Sporting Congress. They claimed that the state was dragging its feet on complying with the federal Clean Water Act and the EPA had done nothing to speed it up.

“I suppose we could have held out for five years,” Conservation League spokesman Mike Medberry said. “But we felt at this point that eight years was an acceptable time. The state said it could do it, and we didn’t want to hold out on principle. We thought the best approach was to cooperate.”

The state was facing a spring deadline for submitting to Dwyer a schedule for dealing with the pollution assessment. The compromise was submitted to Dwyer on Tuesday for his acceptance.

It was only the latest example of the newfound cooperation between conservationists and the administration of GOP Gov. Phil Batt and the nation’s most Republican Legislature.

Cooperation resulted in easy passage this winter of surface mining reform and water quality revisions. Batt also compromised on realigning the Soil Conservation Commission for water quality improvements and fought, albeit unsuccessfully, for declaration of reaches of the Selway and Middle Fork Salmon rivers as outstanding resource waters to be protected from any water quality deterioration.

Medberry said that Idaho and Georgia were the only states in the nation under five-year court-ordered stream cleanup timetables, and the EPA has appealed the Georgia ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as unreasonable.

“This is a landmark victory for everyone who cares about clean water in Idaho,” Medberry said. “The next task is for conservationists to make sure that EPA and the state actually implement the pollution cleanup plans.”