Pollution Signs Agreed Upon Wording For Beach Warnings Adopted After 10 Months Of Haggling

Words finally are forming on signs warning people about harmful metals along the Coeur d’Alene River between Harrison and Cataldo, Idaho.

Kirk Rade spent Thursday making the first of 30 postings slated to hit the beaches by mid-November, affixing bright yellow letters to one big aluminum-coated sign.

“It’s a pretty simple, straightforward job,” Rade, owner of Sign Solutions, said from a cluttered, well-lighted shop tucked behind his small house.

Sure, posting a bunch of signs seems easy. But the politics of heavy metals stigma over Silver Valley tourism stalled these postings for months.

State and federal officials have sparred all year over what the signs would say. Prompted by North Idaho business leaders, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s office edited warnings about eating fish and references to mining as the source of lead.

But after all the time spent haggling over words, the new signs ended up not much different from a handful of warnings posted since the early 1990s, health authorities say.

The signs advise washing off soil and dust, not cooking with river water and keeping children from playing in mud and eating it. Pregnant women and children under age 7 are most vulnerable to lead, which can cause mental and physical retardation if eaten or inhaled.

“After it’s all said and done, they’re pretty similar to what’s already been out there for the better part of a decade,” said Jerry Cobb, Kellogg-based environmental specialist for the Panhandle Health District. “Unfortunately, we had to waste a year on it.”

Kempthorne spokesman Mark Snider said the governor’s office wanted to make sure visitors to the lower Coeur d’Alene River didn’t get scared off.

“The 10 months of negotiations allowed us to properly inform and educate without alarming folks,” Snider said. “It was worth the time it took.”

Many of the sign changes requested by the governor didn’t take, such as removing “No mud pies” and deleting all references to mining.

But the state successfully nixed warnings about not eating fish bones and guts, an advisory meant for home canners who use whole fish. Cobb said the wording makes it clear that people should only eat fillets.

Kempthorne staffers also edited text from a health district advisory brochure that described mining as the source of lead and other metals.

The new brochure does mention mining as the source of the lead but no longer contains earlier estimates of how much mining pollution sluiced into the Coeur d’Alene basin, such as a sentence stating that more than 72 million tons of mine tailings from the late 1880s until the late 1960s.

The signs are the first strike in a much larger cleanup effort pending from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Last March, the EPA found high amounts of lead at 32 public-use areas along the Coeur d’Alene River above a 2,000-parts-per-million threshold that merits immediate action to protect human health.

The signs were proposed as immediate public health protections before a massive cleanup study comes out next year.

Sites include popular fishing, swimming and camping areas, such as Rainy Hill and Medimont, recently closed to overnight use, and the Elk Creek pond.

Spokane County health authorities posted warning signs within weeks of soil samples showing high lead levels along the Spokane River in Washington.

Warnings Three of the warnings are: Keep clean! Wash your hands and face before you eat anything. Wash toys, bottles and pacifiers if they have been in contact with soil or dust. Remove loose soil from your clothing, camping equipment and pets before leaving the area. Wash all items when you return home. Eat clean! Drink, cook and wash only with water from home or other approved source. Do not use river water. Always eat at a table or clean surface off the ground. Clean fish thoroughly and eat only fish fillets. Play clean! Children should play in grassy areas and avoid loose soil, dust and muddy areas. No mud pies.