Epa Needs To Lift Its Heavy Hand

In the best of worlds, the Environmental Protection Agency would be doing Inland Northwesterners a favor by checking for metal contamination throughout the Coeur d’Alene Basin. The federal agency, after all, has the capacity to collect objective pollution data and push for remedial action, if it’s needed.

But we don’t live in a perfect world.

The environmental watchdog has a reputation for being arbitrary, heavy-handed and overzealous. Last winter, for example, EPA officials added Spokane to its short list of the nation’s worst carbon monoxide polluters. That action effectively lumped Lilac City, and its few violations, with such major pollution centers as Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix.

As a result, elected officials from Kootenai County, Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls are concerned about the EPA’s decision earlier this year to investigate contamination outside the Silver Valley Superfund site. Their tourism-dependent communities could suffer if parts of the basin were declared Superfund sites. They reacted understandably, maybe even wisely, this week by asking a federal judge to stop the EPA from expanding the investigation.

Already, Coeur d’Alene’s image has suffered from the EPA’s interest in the lower stretches of the basin.

In a May 4 article, U.S. News & World Report treated the basin as some sort of Love Canal Northwest. Predictably, it trotted out New York alarmist John Rosen, who has grabbed headlines by calling the Spokane River “a toxic soup.” This time, Rosen targeted Lake Coeur d’Alene. “As far as playing in the water or eating the fish,” he said, “I would not let a child near that lake.”

Commendably, reporter Michael Satchell did note that the lake meets federal drinking water standards, “and the more than 70 million tons of contaminated sediments at the lake’s bottom are not known to be causing any immediate public health problems.”

After years of dealing with bad publicity caused by a few racists, Coeur d’Alene area officials realize the national media aren’t friendly. An expanded Superfund study covering 1,500 square miles, from near the Montana border to Long Lake, again will attract national-media hot shots with their preconceived, sensationalized story lines.

The EPA, of course, should be concerned about heavy metals, not bad ink. But it also should limit its involvement to specific locales where there is objective evidence of a problem.