Suit Aims To Push Water Cleanup Groups Accuse Epa Of Not Forcing Idaho To Meet Clean Water Act

Environmentalists are again turning to the courts to propel federal regulators to clean up water pollution in Idaho.

The Idaho Conservation League and The Lands Council filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

The groups seek a court order that compels the agency to make the state of Idaho comply with the Clean Water Act.

More than 700 waterways throughout the state suffer from water quality problems, state officials say.

Federal regulators have OK’d only one-third of the pollution limits that were supposed to be completed by the end of 1999, according to the complaint.

Pollution limits for the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River, Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River were supposed to be approved in 1997, but are still pending.

Pressure from mining interests and the state of Idaho accounts for the delay of a controversial plan to deal with metals from mining waste in the Coeur d’Alene River, charged Michele Nanni of The Lands Council.

The environmentalists say their patience has run out.

“Every time they’ve given us a deadline, they’ve missed it,” Nanni said.

But a spokeswoman for the mining industry says the groups gummed up the works when they rejected a state proposal for metals limits in 1998.

The EPA also rejected the state’s metals limit - called a Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL - as not stringent enough to protect water quality.

“I really don’t know why these environmental groups would be complaining about EPA,” said Holly Houston of the Mining Information Office in Coeur d’Alene. “As far as I’m concerned, EPA’s been in their back pockets since the TMDL process began.”

Regulators had not seen a copy of the complaint Tuesday afternoon and did not want to comment on it.

Environmentalists have had good luck using lawsuits to press regulators in Idaho.

“It’s a powerful tool,” said Jim Werntz, assistant regional administrator for EPA in Idaho.

A federal court ordered EPA to get aggressive on water quality in 1996, leading to an eight-year schedule for water bodies statewide.

A judge ordered the state of Idaho to come up with a Coeur d’Alene pollution plan by the end of 1997. By the next summer, with no limits released, the two groups threatened to sue EPA, the agency with authority over the state.

Last April, citing the threat of a lawsuit, the EPA and state of Idaho jointly released a draft version of metals limits for the Coeur d’Alene River. Silver Valley residents and companies came out in the hundreds to oppose what they called impossible standards.

A final version was expected last year, then last spring. Now EPA officials say it will be out by the end of the summer at the latest.

Other limits - addressing streams too warm for fish, with sediment problems, or suffering from other water quality problems - are on a different schedule .

Another plan for Lake Coeur d’Alene is expected to be finalized by the end of this month, EPA officials said.

The 1972 Clean Water Act calls for states and tribes to identify waterways that don’t meet water quality standards. The TMDLs describe the total amount of pollution a waterway can hold and still meet water quality standards. Then officials allocate the amount of pollution each source can legally release.