EPA is a bad word in Burke
Plans to expand the Superfund cleanup beyond the Bunker Hill 'box' stir resentment from those who blame the feds for the Silver Valley's decline

Benjamin Shors
Staff writer

Christopher Anderson - The Spokesman-Review Sophie Armbruster, 84, has lived her entire life in Burke Canyon. At the height of mining, there were 5,000 residents in the canyon, but now only about 300 residents remain. At a glance View more photos of Burke Canyon.

BURKE, Idaho -- Even the dead leave Burke Canyon. This is a not a matter of choice, but a dictate of space and geology. The canyon's walls are so steep, its floor so narrow, that a cemetery simply will not fit.

Sophie Armbruster hopes this will be how she leaves -- carried feet-first past the splintered remains of silver mines, the crumbling shells of once-bustling towns, down this ghost of a canyon to a distant grave.

Until then, the oldest resident of Burke Canyon -- a once-great mining center, now one of the poorest, most polluted reaches of Idaho's Silver Valley -- plans to stay.

"After 84 years," said Armbruster, "it is a hard place to leave."

So serious are the health and environmental problems here that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed buying out the canyon's 300 residents last year, an unprecedented step in the Northwest.

The response was nearly unanimous, and summed up by Armbruster's reply: "I told them to go to hell."

"I don't have all that much," she said. "But I don't want anybody to take what I've got, either."

This is the curious predicament of EPA's work in the Silver Valley. People living in some of the most contaminated reaches of the Coeur d'Alene Basin don't want it cleaned up. They distrust the government's work and feel the agency's environmental rules chased out the last of the mining companies.

"It is quite unusual," said Sheila Eckman, EPA's project manager in Seattle. "Most places want more cleanup, not less."

After the public outcry, EPA officials quickly backed away from the proposal to close down the canyon and move its residents.

"If people don't want to be moved, EPA isn't going to move them," said Dick Martindale, an EPA official in Coeur d'Alene.

But the mere suggestion that the canyon is too polluted to live in has left scars here.

"EPA just tells one lie after another," said Chuck Tirpik, who lives in one of the farthest reaches of the canyon. "I'd rather have a conversation with a grizzly bear."

To many in the canyon, where the population plummeted as lead and silver mines shut down, further federal intervention could be the canyon's death knell.

Ivan Linscott, a Stanford University astrophysicist whose wife grew up in the canyon, said EPA's plans were a "palpable threat to the heritage of our family."

"I have become part of a community of people who care very much about this little scrap of land," said Linscott, who has spent years restoring three 19th-century mining homes. "I'm here to tell you I'm not going to let it be torn down."

Much of the canyon has already been torn down.

Burke Canyon is where mining boomed, then busted, leaving a handful of people clinging to a crack in the Bitterroot Mountains.

The canyon sits northeast of Wallace, sliced into mountains as deep and dark as a mine shaft. In the winter, the canyon walls allow the sun only brief entrance -- sometimes three hours a day, often less.

Smaller gulches feed the canyon like arteries to a vein, funneling snow and water into Canyon Creek. The creek comes down from Cooper's Pass near the Montana border, whirling past pines and firs in a rush of whitewater. Above the abandoned mine sites, it is cold and shaded and thick with trout, and in the spring it is as noisy as a train.

In the 1920s, 5,000 people lived here, drawn by rich deposits of lead and silver ore.

But the harsh winters wore on people, then wore them out. People saved money to buy cars so they could leave the canyon, which had a tendency toward fires and avalanches. They moved to places with indoor plumbing and sun rooms.

The mines slowly disappeared, the last one closing in 1991. Today, a string of ghost towns clings to the creek, like headstones to the canyon's colorful past. Yellow Dog. Black Bear. Gem. Lower Mace. Upper Mace. Burke.

Toilets empty into the creek. Plastic wrap serves as windows in some homes. Others are constructed of railroad ties. A garden hose carries drinking water from a mine shaft to a handful of homes -- so few they escape drinking water regulations.

The creek runs quietly past these homes, as well as the remains of some 30 mines, picking up lead, zinc and cadmium along the way.

For a five-mile stretch, the creek is essentially dead. Metals in the water are 50 times above federal water quality standards, making it one of the most contaminated waterways in the Coeur d'Alene Basin.

In 1996, scientists placed rainbow trout in pure Canyon Creek water. Within four days, all died.

A canyon survivor

On her 1937 high school class list, Armbruster tracks the dead. She draws a line through the names with a final stroke, marking time and tallying headstones.

"It seems like the only time I get dressed up anymore is for a funeral," she said.

On a recent Saturday, she put on a blue dress with white dots, and a pair of sensible black shoes. She gathered her cane, and urged her cat, Kitty, to be good as she closed the door.

At a certain age, the death of a man is less a tragedy than a celebration. Dr. Bob Revelli, born and raised in Burke Canyon, died at age 82, and the mood at the Congregational Church in Wallace was respectful yet festive.

The funeral proved a rare reunion of Burke Canyon survivors, all of whom have left -- except Armbruster.

At the church door, a high school friend hugged her so enthusiastically she almost knocked Armbruster over.

"Did you ever get that mess cleaned up in old Burke Canyon?" the friend asked.

Armbruster smiled. But it pains her to hear the canyon denigrated.

"When I hear people say, `that old dirty Burke Canyon,' it just makes me sick," she said later. "I've seen a lot of changes, and a lot of changes that aren't good. But what can you do? The canyon has always been good to my family."

Her father arrived in the Silver Valley in 1903, at age 11. Eventually, he found work in Burke Canyon, installing ventilation in the mines.

Back then, Burke housed such legendary mines as the Star-Morning, Standard-Mammoth, Hercules, Helena-Frisco, Tiger Poorman and the Tamarack.

Homes and stores packed the canyon, built into the steep hillsides on stacked stone to keep the foundations from sloughing into the creek below.

"We had one of the best baseball fields in the Northwest," Armbruster said. "It had a covered grandstand with bleachers on both sides and a big concession stand. In the summertime, every night, we'd hurry to close down the store to get to the baseball game."

Dozens of bars and churches competed for the miners' souls. Space was so limited that when trains passed through the canyon, shopkeepers had to draw in their awnings.

Today, Burke Canyon has one retail store -- an antique shop with irregular hours run from someone's garage.

But even in its heyday, the oppressive snows and lack of light made the canyon a difficult place to live.

In 1910, a snowslide buried the town, killing 25 people. People poured out of the canyon, moving downstream to Wallace or Kellogg.

"A strange feature exists in regard to residents of Burke and Mace leaving the district," The Spokesman-Review reported on March 4, 1910. " . . . nearly everybody wants to get away except those who were most effected (sic) by the slides."

Dr. Revelli, Armbruster's high school classmate, left years ago, as the mines began closing. By the time of his death, he'd been gone for three decades.

At the service, friends and patients stood and offered quaint eulogies, of babies delivered by the good doctor and his enthusiasm for community fund-raising.

"Oh, I'd like to say something," Armbruster whispered. But she didn't, instead sitting in the pews, nodding her head at the Rev. Tom Truscott's eulogy.

"The shadow of death has passed over us now," Rev. Truscott said. "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. To despair, is to feel hopelessness. We will not be disconcerted by death, nor its possibility.

"These emotions are normal. They're OK. Death always carries with it that response."

And Armbruster said, "Amen."

Connection that's centuries old

Day after day, Canyon Creek pushes past barren gravel banks, through yellow-tinted pools, carrying 550 pounds of zinc into the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River. In the five miles of stream from Burke to Wallace, scientists have been unable to find any fish.

As part of EPA's $359 million proposal to clean up the Coeur d'Alene River Basin, about $34 million will be spent in the canyon.

Near the mouth of the creek, the agency plans to install a treatment pond, which it hopes will reduce the zinc to a third of its current level. Stream banks and mine dumps will be stabilized.

Above this, where Armbruster and a handful of other canyon residents live, EPA has few cleanup plans.

"It's not real practical to do a cleanup there," said Sheila Eckman, EPA's team leader for the Coeur d'Alene Basin. "The canyon is so narrow that recontamination is a real concern."

The canyon faces a host of other concerns. Lead levels in the soil are some of the highest in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin, and the metal has turned up in the canyon's children.

Sewage still flushes into the creek. In the 1980s, the local health district received money to add sewer systems to rural areas in Shoshone County.

"The good news is we sewered 100 percent of the county. Except Burke," said Jerry Cobb of the Panhandle Health District.

Property owners spread across the county refused to allow right-of-way for a sewer. Even in the canyon, people fought the increased costs and the need to upgrade.

About 50 homes continue to dump sewage in the creek, in violation of state law.

The only improvement, Cobb said, is that fewer people live in the canyon, contributing less waste. State officials continue to search for a solution, which could cost millions.

Residents scoff at the notion that living in the canyon is a health hazard. Generations grew up playing in the creek, and exploring abandoned mine tunnels.

"I don't know what they talk about when they talk about pollution," Armbruster said. "How I lived to be 84 years old when the canyon's so contaminated, that's beyond me."

In 1996, the Silver Valley Natural Resource Trustees oversaw a $3 million effort to restore fish to the stream. Yet today, EPA says, no fish live in the water, or are even able to migrate through it.

Burke residents say the cleanup did more damage than good, tearing down trees and turning up human waste and dust.

"It looks worse now than it did before," Tirpik said.

He claims he has caught fish from the creek for years, and blames the EPA for giving the canyon a poor reputation.

"They could find the fish if they just looked," Tirpik said. "You can't find fish driving by at 45 miles an hour."

The relocation proposal drew the ire of Tirpik, as well as Linscott, the astrophysicist, who lives in the canyon during breaks from his research work at Stanford.

Linscott and his wife have spent thousands of dollars renovating three family homes, built in the 1890s. During the last decade, they installed bulletproof glass in the windows to keep the snow from breaking them, restored the original wood, and uncovered wallboards where family members signed their names more than a century ago.

"They were definitely worth more torn down than standing," said Linscott, standing in his yard. "But there is a connection here that turns out to be centuries old. This is a community of people who will fight for the opportunity to stay."

It is not the first time there has been a conflict with governments in the canyon.

In 1890, after a mine workers' strike led to gunfire near the Gem mine, Idaho's governor declared martial law. Into a raucous and rough-living frontier canyon came federal troops. They stayed for four months, restoring order.

Throughout the 1890s, battles repeatedly erupted over labor disputes and government troops were called in. Armed men hijacked a train in Burke, rode it to Wardner and dynamited the Bunker Hill Mine. Federal troops imprisoned the miners in "bullpens" in the canyon and in Kellogg.

"We have taken the monster by the throat, and we are going to choke the life out of it," Gov. Frank Steunenberg said in 1899. "It is a plain case of the state or the union winning, and we do not propose that the state shall be defeated."

The union uprisings were crushed. But anger lingered in Burke Canyon.

On a snowy December night in 1905, Steunenberg opened a gate at his home, triggering a bomb that blew him 10 feet in the air, killing him.

For the murder, a Burke miner named Harry Orchard spent the rest of his life in the Idaho State Penitentiary.

Cracks in her resolve

Not even love could move Sophie Armbruster from the canyon.

At the outset of World War II, she postponed her marriage for four years rather than leave to travel the country with her future husband.

"I just couldn't see myself traveling," Armbruster said.

She had other chances to leave. Went to college in Spokane. Had job offers there. But when she finished, she returned to the canyon, to work as a bookkeeper in the mines.

After the war, Ralph Armbruster returned, and Armbruster agreed to marry him.

They built a house on a steep canyon hillside overlooking the creek. It was one of the few spots that received sun in the winter, and had room for a septic tank.

They both worked in the mines. Never had kids. Talked about going on vacation, but never went. Maybe Alaska, Armbruster says. Or Hawaii.

Ralph died three years ago, leaving Armbruster to wander the little house with a lifetime of memories. She packed his shirts into a suitcase. She still plans to take them to a charity.

It is a wild place in which to grow old. On separate occasions, Armbruster has watched seven elk feed in her yard. A mother black bear and two cubs recently knocked down her birdfeeder.

When a raccoon began lurking around her house, she set a cage trap. Instead, she caught her cat, Kitty -- the sardines lured him there, she says, and he has yet to forgive her.

Last winter, her driveway had to be plowed 31 times. It is the only way she can go to town for her basic needs. Groceries. Church. The doctor.

There are cracks in the resolve of the oldest resident of Burke Canyon.

Armbruster has a stack of brochures from retirement homes. When a new home opens, she writes for information. She says she's just curious.

After surviving the snows and the darkness and the closing mines, something far less ominous may chase Armbruster from the canyon -- her memories.

One Sunday in May, after St. Alphonsus Catholic Church let out, she took a slow drive up state Highway 4. Snow berms still bordered the road.

As she drove, every curve marked a memory.

"Between Wallace and Burke, there were three grade schools and two high schools in my time," she said.

"I peddled papers up and down this little old canyon. I used to have 200 customers."

She drove past the home where she and Ralph lived after their marriage. The roof sagged. Tires were piled in the yard, and Doberman pinschers patrolled the fence.

"I hardly recognize it anymore," she said. "I'm embarrassed to tell people I once lived there."

She drove past the skeleton of a Hecla Mining building, long abandoned. She drove past the bones of hotels, bars and brothels.

She drove past two signs -- spaced a half-mile apart -- signifying the beginning and end of Mace. So many homes once crammed the tiny town that it had to be divided into Upper Mace and Lower Mace.

Today, between the two signs, not a single home exists.

Up and back down the canyon, Armbruster pointed out blank spots that once held churches. Homes. A dairy. Towns. Gone.

"All I have left is memories," she said. "I don't know what I'm going to do with them all."

Armbruster knows the day's coming when she, too, will have to leave the canyon.

It will be a small funeral. Most of the people important to her have already passed on. She'll be buried in a grave with her mother -- to save money -- in a cemetery in Coeur d'Alene, a world away from the canyon.