State Starts Tailored Cleanup Officials Want As Much Local Information As Possible To As They Form Lead Plan

The state of Idaho kicked off what officials call an experiment in community-led mining pollution cleanup Thursday night.

During an afternoon open house at Canyon Elementary School and an evening session in Wallace, Idaho officials gave the public a look at the state’s methods for gauging lead risks.

Only a few people showed up at the elementary school, though the turnout was expected to be better in Wallace later Thursday.

Idaho’s strategy is to tailor lead cleanup to the Silver Valley, and state officials say they want as much local information as possible.

On Thursday, the state’s consultant on the lead study dug into what he called a key question: Of the lead swallowed and inhaled by Silver Valley children every day, how much is in a form that could hurt them?

That question is the center of the debate, said Ian von Lindern, president of Moscow-based Terra Graphics Environmental Engineering.

“This ends up being one of the most controversial problems to deal with,” von Lindern said.

Idaho is gauging the risks lead poses to people - especially children - in the Coeur d’Alene River basin. The state’s work is part of a larger effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to determine the extent of heavy metals contamination in the basin, and to plot a feasible plan for cleaning it up.

State testing since 1996 shows that 55 of 524 kids tested across the basin - or 10.5 percent - are above the national safety threshold for lead in their blood, 10 milligrams per deciliter.

That’s double the statewide average for kids living in older homes with lead paint, and 5 to 10 times higher than the statewide overall average.

State officials will focus the study on the effects of lead on the residents of 215 Silver Valley homes where they have blood lead data for children living there and samples showing lead levels in house dust and outside soil.

They also want to create a localized way to calculate how much lead is getting into area children’s blood.

A federal standard predicts that 30 percent of the lead kids take in actually makes it to their stomach, and into their blood.

That standard is a “default” number used if site-specific information isn’t available. At Bunker Hill, officials figured that only 18 percent of the lead they are exposed to is making it into local kids’ blood.

In 1999, one-tenth of Mullan children between 1 and 9 were over the national safety threshold when tested for lead in their blood.

Using the Bunker Hill standard, 8 percent of 4-year-olds were predicted to be over the safety threshold, but using the federal fallback standard, that number rose to 41 percent, von Lindern said.

“That alarms me,” said Matt Fein, of Hecla Mining Co. “It brings into question a lot of default values we might be using.”

But an EPA toxicologist at the open house urged the small audience to take the predictions with a grain of salt.

“This is kind of like predicting the weather,” said Marc Stifelman, a Seattle-based staffer. “It’s hard to predict for next week, never mind next year. Things change.”

The EPA and state must ultimately agree on a strategy to reduce health risks from lead and other toxic metals.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

COMMENTS

The state has extended the comment deadline on its lead study by a week, or until May 5. Send comments to: Kathy Johnson, Idaho Division of Environmental Quality, 1005 West McKinley, Kellogg, ID 83837.