Many Questions Arise Over Trail Proposal Plummer-To-Mullan Route Designed To Help Clean Up Mining Waste

North Idaho residents jumped at the chance to learn about and comment on a proposed Plummer-to-Mullan recreational trail.

Four public meetings on the project yielded enthusiasm, skepticism and many, many questions. Will snowmobiles be allowed on the trail? Will cattle be fenced away? Who will patrol this thing?

“They’re very legitimate questions,” Dick Martindale of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday, when the final meeting was held in Coeur d’Alene. “We’re delighted with the turnout.”

There won’t be answers until later in the spring, when the EPA, the Coeur d’Alene Tribe and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation release a joint response. EPA will oversee cleanup of mining-related pollution along the trail. The tribe and state will manage it.

With interest so high, EPA officials decided Tuesday to extend the comment deadline from Feb. 22 to March 9. Letters should be sent to the EPA Field Office at 1910 Northwest Blvd., Suite 208, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814.

The first three meetings were at Wallace, Harrison and Worley - communities near the trail, which would extend 72 miles along the unused railroad right of way.

Union Pacific would pay for the $20 million project, including the cleanup of toxic metals left by trains during decades of hauling ore out of the mining district.

The agreement between the three groups and Union Pacific needs the approval of a federal court and the Surface Transportation Board. Planners want to start cleanup this summer and have the trail built within two years.

The meetings of the past week were informal open houses. The biggest turnout was in Wallace, where about 150 people crowded into the Elks Club. Many were riders of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles who want to keep using the old right of way between Wallace and Mullan.

State and tribal officials are considering that request, although people who live along the route are equally adamant that motors not be allowed.

The trail is meant for nonmotorized use: hiking, skating, cross-country skiing.

Joe Peak, a bicyclist who owns a restaurant at Enaville, expects the trail would bring more visitors to the Silver Valley.

“Most of the business people are very much for this,” Peak said Tuesday.

Most of the landowners aren’t.

“We want to know what kind of fencing they have planned, or if they have no problems with livestock running at large on the trail,” said Mike Schlepp, whose ranch along the Coeur d’Alene River would include a big chunk of trail.

“This raises some liability issues for all parties concerned … If people want to pet a calf, mama cow can be very protective.”

Dave Nelson, who manages the Morrow Ranch at Black Lake, also worries about fencing, about dogs that might run loose, about patrols that might not be adequate to stop vandalism.

He still shakes his head over the whole project.

“I find it incredible that the state of Idaho is running a trail down the middle of such a contaminated area. All the way along the trail, they’ll have to be signs saying stay on the trail.”

Trail planners have been explaining that metals will be cleaned up in the most frequently used areas. They acknowledge that the flood-prone river will continue to recontaminate that portion of the route.

Metals can be permanently removed in the area along Lake Coeur d’Alene, south of Harrison. But people who live beside that part of the route have been worried that they won’t have access across the trail to their docks.

Sharon Valek came away from the Harrison meeting feeling assured that she’ll still have access to the water. But she and her husband still worry they’ll lose their privacy.

“The trail does run right through our front yard,” she said.

But, like several other landowners interviewed, Valek is feeling resigned about the project.

“This isn’t what we really wanted to see, but maybe we’re coming to realize it’s going to happen.”