Legacy Of Lead Roads, Logging Help Flush Metals Downstream

Old mines, forest roads, logging and development will make downstream pollution worse for years to come.

Some residents also argue that current and future national forest timber sales - such as Barney Rubble’s Cabin, Skookum Two, Yellow Dog Downey, and Big Short - will make matters worse because they mean more logging and logging roads in the headwaters where floods begin.

The U.S. Forest Service says flooding and the spread of lead contamination depend upon many factors. Even with a moratorium on logging and logging roads, people living downstream of the Silver Valley can expect to be exposed to the metals-laden sediment for decades to come.

This logging-induced flooding begins moving lead downstream near Cataldo.

“We have combined the worst toxic mine waste from the South Fork with the worst watershed damage in a national forest - the watershed of the North Fork - in creating a truly world-class problem,” says John Osborn, a Spokane physician and a founder of the Inland Empire Public Lands Council.

Concern over heavy-metal pollution moving downstream is becoming a primary focus for the Lands Council, which first organized as a logging watchdog.

The Lands Council launched a “Get the Lead Out” campaign and began looking nationally for a director.

When it comes to flooding, activists and experts agree the most significant problems are the logging roads bulldozed into the North Fork country.

Roads rechannel rain and melting snow, magnifying erosion and starting mud slides, says Al Espinosa, who spent 20 years with the Forest Service as a fisheries biologist and now does natural resources consulting.

The mud and sediment eventually washes into the North Fork, filling that river and channels downstream, he says. As the river absorbs the sediment, the channel becomes more shallow and less able to handle flood waters.

The water has to go somewhere - often over the top of the river banks, Espinosa said. So the toxic metals are washed into front yards and onto beaches.

Ken Tilton, who lives in Cataldo, says his experiences are evidence that flood damage is getting worse, even with less precipitation. The 1974 flood pushed 14 inches of water into his house. The February 1996 flood, caused by half as much rain, sent 26 inches flowing into his living room.

Tilton worries that the Barney Rubble’s Cabin salvage sale is a return to the old days of clearcutting and the result will be more flooding and more heavy-metals in his front yard. “I try to get the clearcuts stopped,” he says.

Logging and road building, especially practices from the old days, exacerbate flooding, says Rick Patten, chief hydrologist for the Idaho Panhandle National Forest. But there are many other causes.

Much of the problem dates back to turn-of-the-century mining along the North Fork as well as the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, Patten says. Roads were built right up creek bottoms to get to mines and tailings were left in easily-eroding streamside piles.

As a result, “they grossly modified the stream channels,” he says. Roads also were built to handle homesteaders and people who head to the woods for recreation.

Vegetation that once kept flood plains and terraces intact has been removed by homesteaders, both historic and modern, Patten says. Stopping logging won’t end the flooding and pollution problems.

“You could make all of the watersheds wilderness and still see problems down in Cataldo for some time to come,” Patten says. The solutions include reclaiming old mine sites and “restoring the vegetation so important to the stability of stream banks, flood plains and adjacent terraces.”

But it can be difficult to find money to pay for restoration. A 1994 Forest Service proposal to eliminate 300 miles of roads in the North Fork never went anywhere because Congress wouldn’t pay for it.

With that attitude, says Espinosa, “the watersheds will get worse and the pollution levels will stay the same or get worse.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Ken Olsen Staff writer Staff writer Susan Drumheller contributed to this report.