Spokane

Cleanup study gets OK
Silver Valley officials want Superfund work delayed
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Benjamin Shors
Staff writer

Coeur d'Alene _ A House committee Wednesday approved an $850,000 study of the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to expand Superfund cleanup in the Coeur d'Alene Basin.

Silver Valley leaders immediately called for delays in EPA's $359 million cleanup plan while the National Academy of Sciences reviews the agency's work.

"Hallelujah," said Sherry Krulitz, a Shoshone County commissioner. "We're hanging our hat on whatever this study comes back with."

Krulitz, chairwoman of a new commission overseeing the EPA's work in Idaho, said she will recommend the commission delay portions of the cleanup until the two-year study is completed.

Environmental groups called the study an attempt to stall the controversial cleanup of 100 million tons of mining waste in North Idaho and Eastern Washington.

"This is very dangerous," said John Osborn, the Sierra Club's regional conservation chairman. "It raises red flags that this is intended to shut down the cleanup."

The conflict could test the power of a new Basin Commission, which the Idaho Legislature created to direct the Superfund work in North Idaho. Environmentalists in Washington state have protested the commission, saying it holds downstream residents "hostage" to Idaho decisions. Washington has one seat on the seven-member commission.

Funding for the study was tucked in the $91 billion Veterans Affairs/Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill. The legislation states that cleanup should not be delayed in the existing 21-square-mile Bunker Hill Superfund site, but stops short of preventing work delays elsewhere in the basin.

Washington environmental groups had pressured Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., to include language that the study would not delay the larger cleanup.

But Nethercutt, who sits on the appropriations committee, did not get the language inserted in the bill.

"I respect the concerns of our neighbors in Idaho, so I will not stand in the way of taking a closer look at the science," Nethercutt said in a prepared statement.

Osborn accused Nethercutt of trying to appease Republican colleagues in Idaho.

"This guy has been missing in action for eight years," Osborn said. "This is just unacceptable."

Last month, the EPA released its 30-year plan to clean up lead, arsenic and zinc from Mullan to Spokane. Idaho's congressional delegation asked that the plan be delayed until the scientific review was completed.

EPA refused, insisting that it was confident of its work and that the cleanup plan can be amended if scientific problems arise.

Environmental groups have said they do not oppose a review, but don't want the work delayed.

"We want a science-based cleanup, but we don't want further delays," said Neil Beaver of The Lands Council in Spokane. "This basin has been studied to death."

The study will review the EPA's analytical techniques in estimating blood lead levels in children, the methods used to estimate human health from mining pollution, and whether those risks come from sources other than mining.

"This is an important step toward getting the kind of answers that the people of the Coeur d'Alene Basin deserve," said Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho. Otter said he is "looking forward to the day when fear and conjecture will give way to irrefutable evidence" about the risks from contamination.

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