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Spokane.net »
Sudoku
 | Friday, May 2, 2003 |
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Idaho Kellogg clean enough, Hecla officials insist Kevin Taylor
COEUR d'ALENE -- Hecla Mining Co. hopes to persuade a federal judge that the Bunker Hill Superfund site is clean enough, and it shouldn't have to keep paying to replace contaminated soils for homeowners in and around Kellogg. Mining companies have paid millions of dollars over the last decade to replace lead-tainted dirt at a rate of about 200 front and back yards every year since 1994, as part of a federal court order to help remove toxic mining and smelting waste around the old Bunker Hill smelter. There are about 550 yards left to be cleaned up in the original Superfund "Box," mining companies estimate. Those properties have lead present at more than 1,000 parts per million, Peterson said -- the level considered unsafe in the Silver Valley. Government officials were hoping this year's cleanup plan would include Kellogg Middle School, the last school in the Box waiting to have contaminated soil replaced. Hecla's proposal on April 15 did not include the middle school. "They were supposed to do my yard this year," said Kellogg Mayor Mac Pooler. "Finally, I get in line to have my yard done and ... " A lifelong Silver Valley resident, Pooler said he can sympathize with mining companies because the cleanup has gotten more expensive than was envisioned in 1994. "But to leave us sitting here and not be cleaned up, that's not a fair deal in my view." Hecla and Asarco are the major players in the Upstream Mining Group, which for the last decade has been ordered to help pay for the cleaning of industrial wastes in the valley. Hecla and Asarco together have paid $44.7 million in the cleanup, Chris Pfahl, a site manager for Asarco, said in court documents filed in April. Federal attorneys, documents show, said the Environmental Protection Agency and the Idaho DEQ have spent $116 million on the cleanup during the same time. In another statement to the court, Dan Meyer, a Hecla employee and project manager for the Upstream Mining Group, argued that the target for safe blood-lead levels in Silver Valley children were met last year. "The question is, if we've already met the goals, why should we spend another $14, $15, $25 million to do these cleanups?" asked Albert Barker, a Boise attorney helping to represent Hecla in federal court. "That is one of the issues put before the court right now." Information presented by the Panhandle Health District last October, Meyer said in court records, showed 98 percent of the children tested in the "Box" had blood-lead levels below 10 micrograms per deciliter -- the equivalent of a speck of lead in a cup of fluid. The annual survey is conducted on a voluntary, almost casual basis. While it's hardly scientific, it offers a snapshot of general health trends. The level of 10 micrograms per deciliter is considered to be the safety threshhold for exposure to lead by children. Over the last several decades, the amount of blood-lead considered safe has gotten lower and lower. Medical researchers in the last couple of years have found that blood-lead levels as low as 2.5 micrograms per deciliter can be linked to loss of IQ in children under 6. A study published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine by Cornell University researcher Richard Canfield concluded "there may be no threshhold for the adverse consequences of lead exposure." "To say `We've met our goal, let's quit' -- that's short-sighted," said Jerry Cobb, the Panhandle Health District official who runs the annual blood-lead survey. "The whole thing about blood-lead is about prevention, not necessarily where you are today." The blood-lead levels are just one measurement of safety, said Angela Chung, an EPA project manager at the Bunker Hill Superfund site. Another "performance objective," she said, is overall cleanliness of the soils. Chung said residential areas in the Box have been divided into eight neighborhoods. Each one has to meet a community-wide average of 350 parts per million lead in soils before it is "complete," she said. "Smelterville is the only area where we certified them as complete," she said. For a variety of reasons, mining company participation in the cleanup was in disarray last year -- when the companies paid for only 100 yards -- as well as this year. One of the biggest factors, Hecla officials and goverment regulators say, has been a statement by U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge nearly two years ago that the mining companies were "entitled to some relief" in the cleanup, but since then he has never defined what he meant. The judge said he would wait to study the impact on mining companies from the EPA's expansion of the Superfund site to include the entire Coeur d'Alene River Basin and not just the 21-square-mile Box around the old smelter. Here's another factor: Asarco, involved in about 20 Superfund sites across the country, has been cutting its own deal with the EPA to create a national pot of cleanup money and be excused from specific projects such as the Silver Valley. On Feb. 3, Asarco and the EPA agreed that a trust fund of $12.5 million a year for five years would be created once the company sells its interest in the Southern Peru Copper Co. Hecla officials argue they are left holding the bag. "Hecla is willing to do our share, but others have to do theirs as well," said Vicki Veltkamp, vice president of investor and media relations for Hecla. "Hecla doesn't figure it's fair to pick up other's portions." Idaho Assistant Attorney General Curt Fransen said the consent decree signed by Hecla, Asarco and other mining companies called for "joint and several" liabilty. Even if some companies bailed out, he said, the remaining ones are required to pick up the tab. As various agencies argue, local residents are growing impatient. "Our stance as a city is, OK you've been in here 17, 18 years and we can see the light at the end of tunnel and let's get it done," Pooler said.
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