Craig Bill Shifts Cleanup Authority Plan Calls For Advisory Panel To Work With Governor On Mine Pollution

Mining companies are counting on federal legislation to help speed the cleanup of the Coeur d’Alene Basin and save on court costs.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, plans to introduce a bill similar to the Coeur d’Alene Basin Environmental Restoration Act that he and fellow Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne co-sponsored last year.

“It’s definitely high on the agenda,” said staff member Mike Frandsen.

The act never went anywhere last session, but mining companies are hoping it will this year.

“The hope is that if you can get the House and the Senate, and the Republicans and the Democrats, to agree on legislation, that it would replace litigation,” said Holly Houston, a mining industry spokeswoman. “Otherwise millions and millions of dollars will just go to litigation itself.”

Frandsen said the revived bill probably won’t be introduced until this spring. No “sweeping” changes are anticipated in the bill, he said.

Last year’s cleanup bill called for the governor to appoint a 13-member citizens advisory commission that would develop a cleanup action plan with the governor.

The committee would set cleanup standards, calculate the cost of cleanup and determine what mining companies must do to be released from future liability for any damage done by the heavy metal pollutants in the environment.

When members of the Citizens Advisory Committee to the Coeur d’Alene Basin Restoration Project heard that Craig was reintroducing essentially the same bill as last year, some members urged Craig’s staff to re-visit the issue with the CAC.

“We had unanimously given Sen. Craig a list of things we felt were really important, derived from people all over the basin,” said Buddy Paul, CAC’s chairman. “The most important one was the recommendation to keep management with the tribe, the federal government and state partnership.”

Critics of Craig’s bill said it gave too much power to the governor.

Frandsen said that’s one part of the bill that might get some tinkering.

Critics also complained that the bill didn’t set up any standards for “how clean is clean,” and instead left that up to the advisory committee.

Environmentalists’ biggest criticism of the bill was the liability release section. Some feared it would let mining companies off the hook before the cleanup was finished. Supporters saw the provision as a fair way to divide costs between mining companies and the government.

Craig’s bill provided for a trust fund to be established for the cleanup, but only allocated $500,000 for development of the plan. Instead, the legislation relied on Congress to make annual appropriations for cleanup.

Congress may be more likely to act on the newest version of the Superfund reform bill introduced this week by Sen. John Chafee, R-R.I. Senate leadership named Superfund as one of the Top Ten bills of the session.

The Superfund Cleanup Acceleration Act of 1997, like the Coeur d’Alene basin bill, is designed to avoid costly lawsuits over pollution.

“Superfund was designed to clean up toxic waste sites, but instead has allowed litigators to ‘clean up’ in the courtrooms,” Chafee said at a press conference Wednesday.

The bill limits the number of sites that can be put on the Superfund list each year, and also eliminates cleanup liability for small businesses, small communities, non-profit organizations and certain waste-haulers.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a statement saying the bill didn’t greatly differ from last year’s Superfund bill, which the administration opposed.

A coalition of state governors had requested changes in the bill, fearing that states could wind up with too much of the cost burden for cleanup.

, DataTimes