Cleanup Of Coeur D’Alene River Spelled Out Removal Of Polluted Dirt Among Ideas To Restore South Fork

A state plan for cleaning up the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River calls for getting it as clean as the river is in Mullan, Idaho.

That’s one of the recommendations in a draft plan submitted to the Coeur d’Alene River Basin Commission on Thursday.

Charged by the state with coming up with a cleanup plan for the polluted Coeur d’Alene River basin, the 14-member commission has a tight schedule to meet.

By the end of the year, the commission is supposed to approve a set of cleanup standards for the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River.

Yet, until Thursday, the commission hadn’t even seen the state Division of Environmental Quality’s proposal for standards for the South Fork.

With so little time left, some observers are worried that the standards will be put together in an hurry, risking an ineffective cleanup.

The set of standards, referred to as the “Total Maximum Daily Load” or “TMDL,” spells out how much pollution the water can handle in a day without adverse effects on water quality.

In the South Fork, 90 percent of the problem comes from non-point sources.

Point sources, such as active mines, contribute only a small amount to overall pollution. According to DEQ’s plan, only four mines will be required to cut back the metals they discharge to the river.

Most of the reduction relies on clean-up of non-point sources, such as the removal of polluted dirt in the Smelterville Flats and along miles of stream in Burke Canyon.

The plan made public Thursday is preliminary and does not set a final goal.

Consultants for the state are currently working on a study to set standards specific to the South Fork, based on the assumption that fish are adapting to a certain level of pollution in the upper river around Mullan.

“There’s a point source there,” said Geoff Harvey of the DEQ, referring to the 2-1/2 pounds of metals that Lucky Friday Mine discharges each day. “There’s also 14-inch cutthroat trout there.”

The Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the federal Clean Water Act, must give its stamp approval to the total maximum daily loads.

But EPA officials are concerned that they won’t have time to thoroughly review the state’s criteria for the river, which are still being developed.

The state has to make a decision by the end of this year. Then the EPA only has 30 days to approve or disapprove it.

“It’s been noted by many people that there’s no time left,” said Earl Liverman of the EPA.

The commission has the same deadline to approve standards for Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River. At the commission’s last meeting, however, EPA officials said they could not accept DEQ’s standards.

First, they said, the standards for all sections of the river need to be submitted together. Secondly, the EPA needs more detailed calculations and data. Finally, the agency disagreed with DEQ’s reliance on dilution in Lake Coeur d’Alene to help meet the standards.

The current schedule was agreed upon by the parties in a lawsuit that the Idaho Conservation League filed against the EPA. The lawsuit complained that the EPA wasn’t making the state comply with the federal Clean Water Act.

While a new schedule could be negotiated, the conservation group is reluctant to drag out the process too long. At the same time, ICL’s Scott Brown said he’s concerned that the commission may just “rubber-stamp” the standards proposed by the DEQ.

In a letter to DEQ Administrator Wally Cory, Brown offered a six-month delay in approving the schedule if the state would include the EPA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the ICL in the technical development of the standards.

Members of the tribe and environmental groups have been frustrated at recent meetings by the commission’s reliance on information provided by the DEQ.

“There’s a sense among some people that DEQ is providing this information to the commission as kind of a one-sided deal,” said Norm Campbell, a commission member and Coeur d’Alene Tribal leader.

But George Brabb, a member of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the basin Restoration Project, said most of the data had come from scientists working for the Restoration Project.

“We probably have more data on this watershed than any other in the state,” he said.

At the last meeting, the tribe passed out reams of information gathered during the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is the scientific research that the tribe and federal government are using in their lawsuits against several mining companies accused of polluting the river system.

The commission was created last legislative session at the urging of Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, who’s sponsoring parallel legislation at a federal level designed to address the Coeur d’Alene River Basin clean-up and eliminate the multi-million-dollar lawsuit.

, DataTimes