Lack of funds for lake plan miffs tribe

Imagine a post card view of Lake Coeur d’Alene – twinkling waters surrounded by conifers and mountains. Now imagine you can flip the post card over and see underneath – an estimated 75 million tons of heavy metals creeping along the bottom from south to north.

Both of these imaginings are needed to make sense of a long-standing argument that has erupted anew between Idaho and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe over how to best protect the lake.

The tribe on Thursday accused the state of writing a plan to monitor the heavy metals and control pollution in Lake Coeur d’Alene with no source of money to implement the plan. The document – a draft was released for comment last week – was supposed to be a joint effort between the tribe and the state, but the tribe wanted the funding to be in place first. The state Department of Environmental Quality says it wants to get a management plan finished by the end of June, and worry about money later.

“I just got my hands on this document. It’s 296 pages,” said Alfred Nomee, tribal director of natural resources.

DEQ has asked for comments by today, Nomee said.

When it comes to the pollution-control plan itself, the tribe and the state are largely in agreement, people on both sides say. The difference comes down to finding funds to hire someone to oversee the plan and have a budget to do the work. These points were debated in a conference call on May 24 involving state and tribal officials, and John Iani, regional director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

State officials admitted there was no money, participants in the conference call said.

“It’s great to have a document, but if there is no money for oversight and implementation, the document sits on a shelf and what do you do with it?” Nomee asked.

Gwen Fransen, DEQ regional administrator in Coeur d’Alene, said the plan may attract money.

“We think it’s important to implement the best plan there is, and keep looking for dollars,” Fransen said. “It’s a work in progress.”

The sides have a history of conflict over Lake Coeur d’Alene. A perceived lack of state cleanup efforts fueled a fight that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which awarded the tribe ownership of the southern third of the lake in 1998.

The issue came up again two years ago, when the EPA expanded its Superfund cleanup of Silver Valley toxic mining waste to include the entire Coeur d’Alene Basin. Leaders in local business and in state government resisted the idea of the word “Superfund” being applied to lake. The agency agreed that if the state and the tribe jointly came up with a management plan to control pollution, the lake could be officially “deleted” from the world of Supferfund.

The tribe agreed reluctantly, stating from the beginning that it wanted a plan that had actual funding. When DEQ director Steve Allred sent out his letter and the final draft of the management plan last week without any funding source, tribal officials said they felt tricked.

“Our worst fears are being realized,” Tribal Chairman Ernie Stensgar wrote in a press release. “Idaho has not only broken its promise, we don’t think the state ever intended to keep it.”

If the DEQ pushes a management plan alone, it would only apply to waters where the state has sovereignty, the northern two thirds of the lake. Cernera fears this could lead to a push by business and political interests to have the state’s portion of Lake Coeur d’Alene scrubbed from the Superfund roster.

Iani was unavailable Thursday, but Sheila Eckman, EPA’s leader of the Coeur d’Alene Basin cleanup, said the agency would take a dim view of any plan that managed only part of the lake.

“I won’t say we wouldn’t consider it or discuss it, but it would be a pretty high bar,” Eckman said. She said the EPA insists any management plan must have funding and is willing to help find it.

“We have tried to assist them. The state and the tribe have to carry this one and get together on it. They are really in the driver’s seat,” Eckman said.