Stimulus funds benefit Silver Valley

Northern Idaho's Silver Valley is among 50 of the nation's most-polluted and hazardous waste sites that were chosen Wednesday to receive a share of the federal stimulus money.

Between $10 million and $25 million will be spent in the mining region to remove pollution from about 1,000 residential lawns contaminated by decades of mining and smelting, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said. About 100 more people will be hired to the existing work force of 125 to complete the work two years ahead of schedule.

"The whole intent was to create jobs," said Dan Opalski at the EPA's regional headquarters in Seattle. "This will allow the state to supercharge that program for a couple of years."

The new goal is to finish the project by 2013 instead of 2015, he said.

A century of mining and smelting for silver and other minerals in the narrow valley 50 miles east of Spokane created one of the nation's largest Superfund sites. The EPA has been working for years to clean up the pollution, which includes large amounts of lead and other hazardous materials that settled on lawns.

The EPA has already finished cleaning lawns in the Kellogg, Idaho, area, where giant smelters produced extensive pollution.

The lawn replacement program has now moved to outlying parts of the valley, from the town of Mullan to near Harrison, along the flood plain of the Coeur d'Alene River.

Rob Hanson of the state of Idaho said workers are ready to immediately begin the accelerated work, and that local residents are anxious to get their contaminated lawns replaced.

"Over the last few years we are getting cooperation rates of 95 to 98 percent," Hanson said.

It is not yet clear how much the accelerated work will cost, Opalski said.

While lawns contaminated with lead and other metals pose the most immediate risk to human health, it will take decades to clean up all the environmental pollution in the Silver Valley, Opalski said.

Nationally, the EPA on Wednesday announced that $528 million in stimulus money would be used to clean up the 50 sites in 28 states. The money is aimed at creating jobs for contractors, soil excavation companies, hazardous waste disposal facilities and labs that test samples.

In the Coeur d'Alene River Basin, past mining practices generated an estimated 70 million to 100 million tons of mining waste that spread throughout streams, rivers, flood plains and lakes. The contamination poses health risks, particularly to young children and pregnant women, due to exposure to lead. Ecological affects include sterile river regions and hundreds of birds deaths each year.

As a result of work already completed around Kellogg, the EPA and the state of Idaho have found a 55 percent reduction of blood-lead levels in children who live there. The number of children with elevated blood-lead levels is now less than 2 percent, consistent with national averages for similar communities, the EPA said.

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On the Net:

EPA Superfund site: http://www.epa.gov/superfund