Superfund Suit Review Questioned Federal Attorneys Comb Documents Related To Hecla Suit Against Insurer

A team of federal attorneys spent Wednesday at the Kootenai County Courthouse poring over documents related to a lawsuit between Hecla Mining Co. and Continental Insurance.

The trip was either part of a fact-finding mission connected to a federal suit worth several million dollars or an attempt to lay hands on a few hundred thousand dollars left hanging in business-related litigation.

Hecla sued Continental Insurance more than two years ago after it refused to cover the mining firm’s claims on the cleanup at the Bunker Hill Superfund site. That case has been idled at Hecla’s request, pending outcome of a larger federal suit attached to natural resource damages in the Coeur d’Alene Basin.

“When we had claims in the Superfund site, we asked our insurance companies to pay up,” said Vicki Veltkamp, director of public relations for Hecla. “Most of them did. Continental did not.”

Hecla was named in the basin lawsuit, along with Asarco Inc., Sunshine Mining Co., Coeur d’Alene Mines and Union Pacific Railroad.

On Aug. 29, the Justice Department added 23 more companies to the suit, which claims mining and smelting activity in the Silver Valley resulted in pollution of 1,500 square miles of the basin. That same day, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe filed a request to add 13 more firms to a parallel cleanup suit against the mining companies.

No dollar amount has been attached to the larger suit, but representatives of the tribe and the federal government estimate cleanup costs will run into the hundreds of millions.

The Justice Department attorneys who traveled to Coeur d’Alene this week said they were under “strict orders” not to discuss pending litigation and were unable to provide names of supervisors who could address the case. Officials at the U.S. Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division in Washington, D.C., were unavailable for comment.

According to Veltkamp, Hecla already has paid more than $2 million in damages on the original Superfund case under a consent decree with the Environmental Protection Agency. The company had agreed to pay 30 percent - or up to $3 million - toward insurance claims connected to the 21-square-mile site that once housed the Bunker Hill smelter facilities.

Those payments and the suit against Continental Insurance are now on hold pending findings in the basin suit.

“So there doesn’t appear to be any reason for Department of Justice lawyers, much less three of them, to be looking over these documents,” Veltkamp said.

She speculated the government may be interested in taking a portion of any remaining payments if the case is reopened. The balance, however, would be limited to “a few hundred thousand dollars,” Veltkamp said.

Since last year, the Justice Department and mining companies named in the basin cleanup litigation have been “going through the discovery stage, where they give us stuff and we give them stuff,” said Holly Houston of the Coeur d’Alene Basin Mining Information Office.

Houston was unsure why the team of attorneys would focus on the Hecla vs. Continental Insurance files.

One of the attorneys referred to the Coeur d’Alene trip as “boring old document review.”

“In which case, it is a monumental waste of taxpayer money,” Veltkamp said. “The case has been postponed, so there’s no reason for Justice to reopen it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CLEANUP The Couer d’Alene Tribe and the federal government estimate cleanup costs will run into the hundreds of millions.