Epa’S Plan To Come Out In Two Parts Massive Mining Pollution Cleanup Outline Will Be Released In December, Next Spring

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying the release of a massive mining pollution cleanup plan for the Coeur d’Alene River basin.

The agency announced Wednesday that instead of getting the whole plan out in December, it will release part of it in December and the rest next spring.

The delay gives citizens the chance to read through the reams of documents EPA is dribbling out on the cleanup, officials said.

It also comes after Washington state requested more time to finish studies into lead and other metals washing into the Spokane River from the Coeur d’Alene River.

Originally, Silver Valley residents and mining companies wanted the agency to finish the study as quickly as possible, agency spokesman Mark MacIntyre said.

“For the first five months, we heard everybody saying, `Get it done,”’ MacIntyre said. “Then all of a sudden, it started to turn into `What’s your hurry?”’

Folks in the eastern end of the valley still won’t embrace the EPA’s news, said Marti Calabretta, an Osburn resident who chairs a citizen task force advising the EPA.

Calabretta said she’s concerned the delay will add cost to an already expensive study and detract from Idaho’s efforts to broker a settlement on a huge mining pollution lawsuit.

“Meanwhile, the citizens groups will meet on a regular basis to attempt to understand the documents as they evolve,” she said.

EPA officials said the delay will not result in extra costs for the project, but could reduce them because fewer staffers will be needed.

An estimate for the cost of the study to date was not available from EPA officials on Wednesday.

The first phase of the plan, due out in December or January, will focus on human health studies and other scientific data that’s already available on metals found at residential and common-use areas in the basin.

The second phase of the plan is now due out next spring. It is expected to contain more technical information, mostly about the ecological risks metals pose, and will include the Spokane River data, said Mary Jane Nearman, EPA’s Coeur d’Alene basin cleanup coordinator.

The delay is part of the much-maligned agency’s attempts to break with tradition and give outside interests the chance to direct a solution, Nearman said.

“EPA generally goes off and does its own thing… maybe with the state and the tribes, then drops the end document on the table,” she said. “We’re trying to avoid that.”

The agency expects to release at least nine technical documents throughout this year.

The EPA started the cleanup study from Mullan to Lake Roosevelt in 1998.

The state of Idaho’s study of human health effects of lead is a critical part of the plan.

The state also wants its own, site-specific cleanup plan incorporated into the EPA’s proposal for dealing with pollution.

But the state’s top environmental official said late Wednesday that Idaho doesn’t support the “piecemeal” release of plans.

“There have been some discussion about whether or not we would agree to changing the schedule,” said Steve Allred, director of the Idaho Division of Environmental Quality.

“But we certainly are not in agreement with what they have announced.”

State health officials are still on track with their human health data for a December release, as planned originally, said Kathy Johnson, the state’s Kellogg-based Coeur d’Alene basin cleanup coordinator.