Mike Peterson is Executive Director of The Lands Council, a Spokane-based environmental organization. One of their earlier projects was called “Get the Lead Out,” dealing with mining waste in the Spokane River.

Q: How long have folks in the Spokane area been concerned about mining tailings from the Silver Valley?

A: The Spokesman Review actually talked about the pollution coming out of the Silver Valley in the 1930’s, and they used that word “pollution.” Probably one of the earliest sightings of that word I had ever seen. So people have known about this for 80 years, that it’s really a serious problem, and that high levels of lead and heavy metals have washed down. But they particularly ended up in the Silver Valley, and lower levels, of course, end up here in Spokane every spring.

I think the EPA in a way has really fought against all odds to get something started up there. The mining companies certainly bear a lot of responsibility for the contamination here; and a lot of us have felt the state of Idaho didn’t do enough to protect the health of the children and the people who live up there and down here in Spokane.

There’s a basin commission tasked with cleaning up and doing what they can to clean up the Superfund site; and I think there have been delays within that Basin Commission. We’re hoping the county commissioners will be a little more forward looking and take some decisive steps. We have one representative here in Washington that is on that commission, a non-voting member, so we’re feeling kind of like down-winders here. We don’t really get to share in all the decision making; and yet we are sharing in some of the burden of the toxic metals down here.

Q: It does seem like the contamination in the Box is being dealt with. Is that your take on things?

A: The Box is a nice concept to think of, where you first prioritize helping the people out. Those homes that have lead inside the homes and in their yards are starting to get remediated. There has been a lot of work done. They still need to, in my opinion, go back to some of those homes, because the lead seeps back in. It’s in the attics, and so they haven’t thoroughly cleaned it up.

And then you move outside the Box into the areas downstream of there; and there are not only tailings, but, of course, the smelter pollution that flew in from the air and landed all over peoples’ yards. And so there is still a lot of work to be done just outside of the Box; and I think the EPA needs to make that a real priority.

If you are a one and a half year old kid and you’re looking at a two year delay in cleanup in your house, well, those are the critical growth years; and exposures to excess lead are going to permanently perhaps affect your ability to live as a regular human being. So that’s a tough one.

Downstream here, though, we have beaches that are contaminated at high levels, and they are working on a plan to clean those up. Those are between Spokane and the Idaho border. We also have fish. We have a lot of people in this area, Russian speaking, Vietnamese. Fish is a large chunk of their diet. That fish can have contamination in it; and there are certain areas where you are warned not to eat the fish. So we think those problems which are long term will slowly clear up if they do the upstream work to remove those leads out of our water system.

Q: Wasn’t a lot of Spokane built with the money from the Silver Valley?

A: Right, and I was actually going to say that, because it’s true. The mining legacy has its pros and its cons. I would agree with people who say that that money, all that silver, helped build some of the beautiful parts of Spokane and certainly brought a lot of wealth to this region.

The con part of it is that the mining companies dumped their pollution and so it followed the wealth right down the river. And then a lot of mining companies left. Those resources left, and they left without cleaning up the mess. And so that’s why we need things like Superfund to clean up the legacy of mining that the companies are not responsible for. It’s the new generations who have to pay for the wealthy good times of nearly a century ago.

Q: Has there been enough blood lead testing of children, in your estimation?

A: There are thousands of kids up in Silver Valley who are not being tested, and so I think that’s really an important thing. Lead really affects kids more than adults at those levels. That needs to happen as a priority. That takes money, it takes cooperation with health districts, and I don’t think we’ve seen enough lead testing.

Down here in Spokane, we also need to make sure kids are getting tested, particularly kids who are eating the fish and are vulnerable to the fact that their parents use the fish as their primary diet.

Q: If you had a magic wand, what would you want to see accomplished?

A: I would try to remove as much of the metal contamination which is above Lake Coeur d’Alene and up in the Silver Valley. A lot of it is dumped around Cataldo flats; and then every spring the flooding waters come in there and redeposit that into the water flow. I would remove those as much as possible, do some mitigation, get native plants back in there.

I would also probably put a boat weight, speed limit in effect, because when they take their boats up that river, it splashes up on the banks and you can just see it breaking off into the water.There’s lead, high levels of lead, in a lot of that sediment.

I would also do something about the rail line where we have seen some pretty high levels. They’ve kind of put a cap right on it where they have made it a trail, but there are areas where it crosses the lake near the St.Joe, where there has been some evidence of very high levels of lead.

So my magic wand would address where the rail, where the concentrate got shipped, and apparently splashed out, and a lot of that has ended up along the sides, and I would remove and put that in a safe place.

Looking down the road, the bottom of Lake Coeur d’Alene contains a lot of lead bearing sediment. Right now it seems fairly stable. I’m not suggesting whatsoever that we start going in and dredging, but we need to keep a close eye on that, and the chemistry of that lake, to make sure that doesn’t start coming back in algae and getting re-deposited in the water flow.

Down stream here we have beaches with lead contaminated sand. That needs to be removed, but it may get re-contaminated, so again, that needs to be monitored.

Some of the problems that come with this mining, the zinc, those levels they say will last over 1000 years. Zinc fortunately is not real toxic to humans, but it’s pretty hard on fish, and it also changes the chemistry in the lake and the river.
Downstream here, we’ve got to keep an eye on behind our dams. An upriver dam blew out a number of years ago that had a lot of lead containing sediment. That’s probably downstream behind the dams of Lake Spokane. So we need to carefully remove some of the material from behind these dams; otherwise, every spring a bit of that ends up downstream.

Q: Realistically, how do you see all this happening?

A: I think the vehicle for cleaning this up is the Superfund designation. Superfund has two mechanisms; one is the mining companies themselves, who are liable for this; they need to pay their share. Well, some of them have fled the country and they’ve moved resources and declared bankruptcy, and so that comes into the other part of Superfund, which is a publicly funded clean up plan. Congress has not renewed that and Idaho people did not vote to renew that. So Idaho politicians need to be responsible.

The irony of all this is that Superfund could bring in 30, 40 million dollars a year into this basin for cleanup that would provide a got of good paying construction labor, equipment operator jobs, and health industry jobs; and it could be a boon to the silver valley. It’s already brought a lot of money into the area. And if you match that with some economic developments, such as the ski area up there, you could actually transition from kind of the mining industry, which is so dependent on what silver prices are, into a more sustainable economy. Use Superfund money as a cleanup and as a boost to the economy.

Q: What do you say to people with those Say No to EPA signs?

A: There seems to be a strong anti-federal government feeling out in a lot of the northwest, and in the Silver Valley, it happens to be targeted to EPA. In other areas it might be targeted to the Forest Service or the Department of Energy. So there is this strain of rugged individualism that says we don’t like the government.

Ironically, Idaho receives a lot more federal payments per capita than most other states. They like the government’s money, but they don’t want the EPA telling them what to do. Is some of that denial? I kind of think it is. There is a culture of the mining industry. People had jobs there, so naturally they are going to be a bit defensive about the government coming in and telling them that they shouldn’t mine, or that they should clean up their mess.

But let’s think of the future and the kids, and then I think the EPA plays a powerful role in it.

Q: What role should the state of Washington play in all this?

A: Because the contamination flows downstream, and it is accumulating in our state, we need to have a say-so in how and how effectively it can be cleaned up. But there is another role. I think the State of Washington needs to step up to the plate with some money.

Because we have benefited from some of the Silver Valley, we should also share in helping to clean that up; and I think that would go a long ways to making our position on the Basin Commission and our role in negotiating with Idaho more powerful, if our state government kicked in some money for this cleanup.

Q: Twenty years from now, what do you think this area will look like?

A: I think the future of our region is largely dependent on our water, our healthy river. And I think it’s a wonderful river. I think the half million people of the Spokane Coeur d’Alene area deserve a very clean river; and I think we could all work together and find solutions, because this river can be cleaned up.

The levels are slowly dropping. Hopefully, twenty years from now, you can eat the fish out of this river. And hopefully your kids can play on the beach and be safe. That’s what we all want, I think.