North Idaho Cities Fear Epa Crackdown Could Impede Growth New Metals Limits Could Mean Costly Changes At Sewage Plants

Wastewater treatment plants at Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden face costly improvements to meet proposed federal heavy-metals limits, city officials say.

Some even fear the limits could dictate growth.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limits to protect water and fish target mines, sewage treatment plants and other metals sources in the Coeur d’Alene basin from Mullan to the Washington state line.

But because treatment plants at the basin’s lower end - Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River - are the only sources of metals, EPA officials say they simply want them to stay at current concentrations of lead, zinc and cadmium. The plants also draw water from the Rathdrum aquifer; the mineral hardness of the water reduces the toxicity of metals.

But Coeur d’Alene wastewater treatment superintendent Sid Fredrickson said the EPA’s plan just sounds simple. Fredrickson estimated the cost of meeting proposed limits at $7 million.

“It ain’t cheap to guarantee that you can put out very low levels of metals,” he said.

Fredrickson disputes EPA’s estimates on the plant’s current releases. For example, levels assigned to Coeur d’Alene’s metals output exceed even federal water-quality criteria EPA now holds up as a goal. Cadmium exceeds the standard by 84 percent; lead by 30 percent; and zinc by 35 percent.

Post Falls Mayor Gus Johnson said the city would not have spent money upgrading its wastewater treatment plant over the last five years if he’d known it would lead to more stringent limits now.

“I’d be better off if I hadn’t worked so hard and (metals releases) stayed up there,” he told officials during a public meeting in Coeur d’Alene this week.

EPA staffers reassured plant operators that more residential customers signing on to sewer systems won’t change metals concentration. That means residential growth alone won’t be limited by EPA’s new rules.

A technical document backing up the limits said the kind of metals allowance given Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden “allows for future growth without the need to revise waste-load allocations.”

But an aluminum plant or other industry that discharges a lot of metals into the system could exceed legal levels, said the EPA’s Ben Cope, technical lead for the limits.

A resident told him that metals limits could have a chilling effect on the kind of growth cities encourage.

“You’re imposing on North Idaho that we can only grow in one way and it’s residential, not industrial,” said Clyde Shepherd, of the Spokane River Homeowners Association.