Panel OKs funds for Lake CdA plan

BOISE – Funding to implement a lake management plan for Lake Coeur d’Alene won unanimous support from legislative budget writers Tuesday after one North Idaho lawmaker withdrew his objections.

Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee that he’d “reluctantly” decided to back the budget plan developed by his North Idaho colleagues, Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, and Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover.

Toni Hardesty, director of the state Department of Environmental Quality, told JFAC last month that the $85,900 expenditure for a new state employee in Coeur d’Alene to get the plan rolling is “critical” to getting Lake Coeur d’Alene removed from the Superfund cleanup list.

Hardesty said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency won’t delete the lake from the Superfund list until the state and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe finalize and move forward with a joint lake management plan. Getting funding for the new worker, she said Tuesday, is “a real key milestone … in moving that lake management plan forward.”

The management plan is aimed at ensuring that heavy metals deposited into the lake from a century of mining stay safely encapsulated in the sediments at the bottom of the lake.

“I think this is pretty important,” Eskridge told his fellow committee members.

Keough told the panel, “I’m asking for your support. It’s a direction that we need to take to protect water quality, not only in the state but downstream as well.”

Initially, Harwood had worked up his own competing proposal for a budget for the DEQ for next year. It matched Keough and Eskridge’s, except for two items – Harwood left off the lake-management position and $90,800 in one-time funding for Rathdrum Prairie aquifer protection. The state has provided that one-time money each year for the last few years; it goes to the Panhandle Health District.

In an early morning work session, where JFAC members brief the committee on budget motions they plan to introduce, Harwood said he probably should’ve included the aquifer money in his plan. But, he said, “The lake management plan, I’m having a hard time with that.”

Keough and Eskridge huddled with Harwood after the work session, trying to persuade him to back their budget. He said he’d think about it, and then, just before the budget-setting meeting began, Harwood agreed.

“I think after our little conversation, we’re all pretty well together,” Eskridge said.

However, Harwood made his reluctance over the lake management plan clear.

“It seems like we’re getting in the shower and washing our feet first and then working our way up,” instead of starting from the top and working down, he said. “This lake keeps getting cleaner every year, and yet we’re going to start out working on the lake. I think we need to get to the point source first.”

Eskridge said, “Dick’s concern is the point source. I think we need to work them both together.”

The successful budget plan gives the DEQ a 1.7 percent increase in state general funds for next year. It continues the state’s involvement in the Coeur d’Alene Basin cleanup and the Coeur d’Alene Basin Commission that’s overseeing the work, and continues a position funded by BNSF Railway Co. to oversee the railroad’s refueling depot in Kootenai County, which is now closed due to leaks.

The company, as part of its conditions for approval of the refueling operation, agreed to pay for the position for 10 years.

The budget bill still needs approval from the full House and Senate and the governor’s signature to become law, but budget bills are rarely changed once JFAC sets them.