EPA plans to clean up river sites

Two Spokane River beaches in the Spokane Valley near the Idaho state line will be scrubbed of heavy metals next year thanks to an influx of money to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from Superfund legal settlements.

It’s the first money to be spent in Washington state for the $359 million, 30-year Coeur d’Alene Basin cleanup of mine wastes from Mullan to Spokane. Most of the work so far has been centered on yard and recreation-area cleanups in Idaho’s Silver Valley.

“We are really happy that EPA is doing something for Washington state, like they promised,” said Washington Department of Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert. “We are very anxious to clean up these beaches to reduce human exposure risk and protect trout habitat.”

The project is good news for Spokane, said an environmental activist.

“We’re pleased there’s some money to clean up the river beaches in Washington,” said Mike Peterson, executive director of The Lands Council, a Spokane environmental group.

The EPA will start with two of 10 Spokane River beaches identified in the agency’s 2002 Record of Decision for the Coeur d’Alene Basin cleanup. The contamination was first detected in 1999 as part of a government study of how far Silver Valley mine wastes had spread.

Approximately $300,000 in legal settlements from polluting mining companies will go toward the Spokane River cleanups, said Cami Grandinetti, an EPA Superfund manager in Seattle. The two beaches are among 10 chosen for eventual cleanup in Washington.

The money will be used to cap or remove soils tainted with lead, zinc and arsenic at two sites just west of the Idaho state line: the Island Complex floodplain on the river’s south bank and the Gravel Bar Complex on the north bank at North Starr Road.

The work has to be done during low water flows, probably next September, Grandinetti said. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is doing the design work.

Plans include capping a contaminated path to the beach at North Starr Road, removing some tainted soil and revegetating with native plants to stabilize some banks, Grandinetti said.

The Superfund project requires a 10 percent match from Washington state, but details aren’t available because the contract between EPA and Ecology hasn’t been negotiated yet, said Flora Goldstein, toxics program manager in Ecology’s regional office in Spokane.

The eventual success of the Spokane River projects will depend on how well upstream contamination in Idaho is addressed.

More pollution is being added each year to an estimated 300,000 tons of lead already at the bottom of Lake Coeur d’Alene, recent studies show.

Tons of lead, zinc and cadmium from the Silver Valley are still flushing into Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River, according to a 2003 U.S. Geological Survey study. From 1999 to 2001, years of average streamflow, a half-million pounds of lead in contaminated mine sediment landed in the lake and nearly 48,000 pounds continued down the Spokane River, the USGS study says.

About 4,600 pounds of cadmium and 980,000 pounds of zinc – hazards to aquatic life – also left the lake annually from 1999 to 2001 and washed across the state line into Washington, the USGS said.

Local health district officials have posted warning signs at beaches near Harvard and Starr roads and at Plantes Ferry Park in the Spokane Valley. The signs tell parents not to let their children put tainted sand in their mouths and to wash kids’ hands before picnicking. Lead poses the worst exposure risk to children, and zinc is most harmful to fish and aquatic life.