Connection: Not So Super

In Coeur d’Alene, where tourism is the No. 1 industry, local officials are upset with EPA plans to assess water quality in Lake Coeur d’Alene and other nearby waterways and possibly make a Superfund designation.

The water in Lake Coeur d’Alene, despite a lakebottom layer of heavy metals from a century of mining in the Silver Valley, is among the cleanest in the nation, the officials insist.

They worry that a Superfund designation would create a false image of the city.

“How do you get the word out that the water’s clean?” said Jonathan Coe, president of the Coeur d’Alene Area Chamber of Commerce. “If we never had any association with this, we would be far happier.”

Kerri Thoreson, who heads the chamber in nearby Post Falls, said the idea that Kootenai County water is dirty is a myth surpassed in audacity only by the falsehood that Idaho is full of white supremacists.

But tourists will see that for themselves when they visit, she said. “The best promotion is the bodies of water themselves,” Thoreson said.

Officials in Washington state, however, applaud EPA efforts to clean up the toxic metals. Silver Valley mine waste flows across the lake and into the Spokane River, showing up as lead hot spots on the Spokane waterfront.