Commentary

Success requires openness, funding
Our View: Idaho mining cleanup could be a model for collaboration.
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John Webster
For the editorial board

Toasting the moment with Coeur d'Alene lake water, government officials Tuesday launched a large environmental cleanup project that might help the Inland Northwest set patterns for a new economy and a new style of politics.

The new economy will include more tourism and other industries that flourish in beautiful surroundings. It also will include, our region surely hopes, a continuation of historic natural resource industries, operating with reformed methods and a modern commitment to environmental stewardship.

This new and more diverse economy will have to include more mature and collaborative political relationships. In place of the overheated screeching and suing between friends of industry and friends of the outdoors, we need action -- on-the-ground stewardship that cares for the land, air and water we share.

In the deal toasted Tuesday, there's a model for these new ways.

It is not flawless and there is much to be done -- particularly, the securing of funds.

But it did deserve a celebration and there may have been no better symbol than that improbable sipping of lake water, which openly confronted the exaggerated "river of poison" rhetoric that some environmental activists used in their struggle to get the next phase of mining industry cleanup committed to and under way.

Now, commitments have been made. A unique, cooperative process for cleanup governance has been created. An overly broad Superfund designation has been avoided. Credit for the plan goes to the states of Idaho and Washington, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, the affected North Idaho counties and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. These entities will be represented on an unprecedented "Basin Environmental Improvement Project Commission." The commission's scope includes:

•Phase two of the Bunker Hill cleanup in North Idaho's Silver Valley mining district.

•Implementing the Lake Coeur d'Alene Management Plan, whose aim is to protect the lake's water quality.

•Remediating heavy metals contamination at specific mining sites along the North Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River.

(Cleanup at 11 "hot spots" of metals contamination along the Spokane River in Washington state will be handled separately, by Washington state and the EPA.)

Funding for the commission's work is expected to come from several sources: the state of Idaho, lawsuit settlements with mining companies, Superfund dollars and direct federal appropriations. With the Superfund nearly out of money and locked in political debate over proposed program reforms, direct federal appropriations will be crucial in getting timely cleanup under way. To that end, help is needed from all members of the Northwest's congressional delegation. This is a time for friends of our region and its environment to back their talk with dollars so that a model, cooperative cleanup can occur.

Many industrial cleanups, from booming Tacoma to recovering Butte, have involved comparatively compact sites. The sprawling Coeur d'Alene Basin is a different story. Our cleanup involves a wide area and multiple governing bodies. The worst contamination is limited to hot spots rather than being spread everywhere.

Stakeholders include downstream residents of Washington, who lack an elected representative on the cleanup commission -- a flaw Idaho's Legislature ought to correct by granting a seat to a Spokane County commissioner.

If the project secures the needed funds and embraces the promised degree of openness and collaboration, Tuesday's agreement can be a turning point, toward a new and better way of caring for our surroundings.

John Webster/For the editorial board

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