Epa Study Will Include Spokane River Politicians, Industry, Residents Unhappy Silver Valley Superfund Study Expanded

The Environmental Protection Agency will expand its study of heavy metal contamination in the Coeur d’Alene Basin as far as the junction of the Spokane River and Lake Roosevelt northwest of Spokane.

In February, the EPA announced that it would study heavy metal contamination outside the 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site. Heavy metals from decades of mining have contaminated soils and water inside that area, and the EPA wants to see how much has been washed downstream.

“There is information that would suggest that there is a problem with the Spokane River,” Earl Liverman, an EPA representative, said this week at the annual meeting of the Spokane River Property Owners Association. He cited elevated levels of heavy metals found in soil. “There is a problem out there,” he said.

But the majority of the approximately 70 people who attended Tuesday’s meeting disagreed.

When Coeur d’Alene Mayor Steve Judy stated that the Coeur d’Alene Basin doesn’t have a problem, his comments were met with applause. So were remarks by Holly Houston, executive director of the Coeur d’Alene Basin Mining Information Office, when she decried the EPA’s expanded study.

Several in the audience interjected angry questions during Liverman’s presentation.

Some accused the EPA of “putting the cart before the horse” because the agency is already looking at plans to clean up the area.

Many were concerned over whether they could be held liable as individual property owners for the cost of removing contaminants from their yards should any be found.

“Ownership of a facility (an area where contaminants are located) inside a Superfund site carries with it the potential of liability,” said Cliff Villa, an attorney for the EPA. “It’s also true that ownership outside a Superfund site carries with it the potential of liability.”

Last summer, the agency sent letters to 80 mining companies asking for information on their mining operations dating back to 1880.

“If you never got a letter from us last summer saying you were being investigated, you don’t have much to worry about,” Villa told the group.

One man in the audience demanded to know if the EPA would send him a written statement assuring him that the EPA would not sue. Villa said the EPA could not do that, but also said, “We don’t go after residential landowners if they didn’t cause the problem.”

The Idaho Division of Environmental Quality admits there have been impacts from mining such as higher-than-normal levels of heavy metals in the rivers, said Ed Tulloch of the DEQ. But the state has no evidence of any harm to human health, he said.

“The state is not now a party” to the EPA’s investigation outside the Superfund site, Tulloch said. “We believe that there is another way to do things.”

The state is forming another cleanup plan that would be more voluntary and less litigious, he said.

Liverman said both the mining companies and the EPA could have conducted things better at Bunker Hill, but said that was not the issue.

“Do I want to wait for my two children - my son and my daughter - to come home leaded? No,” he said. “By God, if there is a problem, don’t you want to know?”