Public Hearing Called On Topsoil Removal Plan It Corp. Wants To Move 2,100 Truckloads Of Dirt To Cap Mining Waste At Bunker Hill

The Shoshone County planning and zoning commissioners will have a public hearing tonight on the practice of removing topsoil along the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River.

The meeting begins at 7 p.m. at the Public Safety Building in Wallace.

After taking public comment, commissioners will vote on whether to approve topsoil removal at the Lazy Teacup Ranch. IT Corp. is seeking a conditional use permit. The soil would be used to finish capping mining wastes at the Bunker Hill Superfund site.

County planning administrator Kenny Hicks said Tuesday that he won’t make a recommendation to the commissioners about whether they should OK the permit. He is recommending that, if they do approve, they impose some minimum conditions on the work.

For one thing, Hicks doesn’t believe removal should begin until June 1, 2001.

“It’s getting way too late in the season to do something like this,” Hicks said.

It’s too late in the season to plant ground cover, and wet winter weather could cause the stripped and sloping field to erode and inundate a house below the property, Hicks said.

The company plan calls for removing 42,000 cubic yards of topsoil, or 2,100 truckloads to be removed over 200 days.

The permit would apply only to the ranch’s upper hayfield. IT Corp. also hopes to remove topsoil from a lower field, but that falls within the suburban residential zone. County officials, who considers topsoil removal to be surface mining, believe it an illegal activity in the suburban zone.

Shoshone County is poised to sue the parties involved to prevent topsoil removal from the lower field, Hicks said. A similar suit, involving IT Corp. and two other fields along the North Fork, resulted in a judge’s ruling that soil removal is an agricultural practice and not mining.

The Idaho Department of Lands considers the practice to be mining and has issued permits for it on the Teacup Ranch.

In other business tonight, the commission will vote on whether to rezone the former Elk Creek Pond area. The pond, which has been filled in as part of a cleanup of mining wastes, is east of Kellogg and north of Interstate 90. The owner, Shate Ltd., is seeking a change from multifamily residential to general commercial.

“That would extend the existing general commercial zone from the Elk Creek store to the old Elk Creek School to the bridge at Moon Gulch,” Hicks said.

The planning commissioners will vote on both issues tonight, Hicks said. Their decisions can be appealed by the applicants or overruled by the county commissioners.