[ Music plays]
Narrator: The Coeur d’Alene River Basin stretches from its headwaters near the Idaho-Montana border
to the Spokane River in Washington.
The Silver Valley is a mining district within the river basin.
Ed Moreen: We are in the midst of the Coeur d’ Alene basin.
This district fueled the fight in two World Wars.
It produced the lead, it still produces silver, produces zinc that’s used in many, many products
that we use as a society.
Narrator: But the common past practice of discharging waste materials into the water and onto the land
contaminated the site.
Ed Moreen: You had a lot of mine waste that was transported downstream, was transported into the
floodplains that surround us here in the Lower Basin and was transported to Lake Coeur d'Alene.
Narrator: An estimated 100 million tons of contaminated materials have been distributed over thousands of
acres in the Coeur d’Alene River Basin - with visible impacts.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is working closely with Silver Valley residents and
local officials to clean up the river basin.
The agency began working with the community as part of its effort to reduce exposures to heavy metals.
The contamination posed a serious health risk, especially for children.
In the 1970s, blood lead levels in the area were some of the highest ever recorded.
Jerry Cobb: What they basically found was yard soils were high in lead. The air was high in lead.
The house dust was high in lead and there was basically a major problem here.
Narrator: After assessing the area for contaminants in the 1980s, the EPA listed Bunker Hill as a
Superfund site – one of the largest in the nation.
To successfully clean up the site, EPA needed active community involvement and collaboration.
Ed Moreen: The community in this case is a number of different towns that are incorporated
as well as areas that are unincorporated, and again
as well the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and other people that like to recreate in this area but don’t
necessarily live here.
Narrator: With the ongoing help of a neutral facilitator, EPA collaborated with the community to gather input,
address key issues, inform decisions and resolve any conflicts.
Jerry Cobb: Early on when I would talk to people I would tell them...
I’m born and raised here, I’m local. I’ve had family here 100 plus years.
And I told them, you really have two choices.
You can either get involved, come to meetings, learn, voice your opinion
or when that bus takes off you can run along behind it throwing rocks and bottles at it.
Narrator: The residents stepped up and formed a community-based task force.
Jerry Cobb: We took EPA's basic recommendations for outreach.
And one of the first things we did, we went to our local elected officials and said,
‘We would like to create some kind of a forum, some kind of a conduit, some kind of a platform.’
Our first meeting was in 1985.
We said, ‘Well, this is going to be a long-term project.
We need you to learn a bunch of acronyms.
We want you to work with us and we'll help you understand Superfund
and you can help Superfund understand the community.’
We said, ‘Please, we want people who can agree to agree, agree to disagree.
But no matter what, keep going.’
Narrator: Since the cleanup would not remove all of the contamination,
there was also a need to manage the hazardous material left behind.
The Institutional Controls Program was set up as a means of preventing and reducing exposure
to hazardous materials for decades to come through oversight, permits and approved disposal sites.
The program manages and regulates the process in close coordination with the community.
Community members voiced their opinions about priority projects.
At the top of their list: children’s safety at parks and playgrounds.
Jerry Cobb: We've got children coming to parks and playgrounds.
If they're not safe, we'd like to correct that.
We were moving dirt on local parks, playgrounds, road shoulders, some dirt right of ways to provide
clean oases for children to come in the summer.
Narrator: EPA and its partners continued working with communities, conducted health outreach and
launched cleanups in backyards.
During the remediation work, the Panhandle Health District kept a close eye on blood lead levels.
Jerry Cobb: And then finally, when we had more children on clean yards than contaminated yards, we started
seeing the real improvements in the blood lead numbers.
Once the yard soils were taken care of, house dust dropped, blood leads dropped.
And they remain down today.
Narrator: In addition to the health benefits, there were changes to the area’s physical appearance.
Jerry Cobb: There's been a lot of changes and almost on every front.
When I was growing up here, there essentially weren’t any trees on the hillsides,
they were barren.
So the hillsides now, people come in here and look around and say,
‘What's the deal? It's a beautiful community. You have trees. You've got everything.’
Narrator: Though it has not always been an easy process, residents feel and see the changes.
Jerry Cobb: And we worked real hard to make sure that we had as level a playing field
as we could for the local community.
And while there was some struggles, it's paid off.
If you look here in the background, you can see Morning Star Lodge.
Up on the hill, there's a brand new golf course.
If you drive around town, you'll see numerous condominiums.
Narrator: But the work is far from over.
Ed Moreen: There is a lot of cleanup that needs to occur in this basin still.
We have a river that continues to deliver on average 300 tons per year of lead to Lake Coeur d'Alene
because it's picking up those legacy sediments that lie in the river bed and the banks.
Narrator: The EPA’s next big action will be to tackle the contamination in the Lower Basin’s waterways,
floodplains, rivers and lakes.
To begin that process, EPA provided facilitation for the first of several forums in 2012, where community
members shared ideas for ways to clean up the Lower Basin.
Maureen Gilbert: These facilitated meetings were a catalyst for the pilot project in the Lower Basin.
I feel that it was necessary and needed at the time and I'm really happy that we had the
opportunity to do that.
Ed Moreen: We had a wide range of participants that submitted ideas, from industry to the local citizens,
to people that own recreational property, to contracting personnel.
In addition to that, we had a wide range of ideas for cleanup activities.
Narrator: The public process zeroed in on a local RV camping area where the river bank was seriously
eroding. The erosion was exposing campers to very high levels of lead and sending
contaminants downstream.
Ed Moreen: And what we found when we tested the riverbanks there is that there were very high in lead,
as high as 10,000 parts per million which is over 10 times our cleanup level.
Narrator: And so, at the community’s suggestion, the Kahnderosa pilot project began.
Led by EPA and implemented by partners, it focused on structures to control riverbank erosion
and decrease heavy metals exposure.
The pilot has proven successful.
In some other cleaned up areas, waterfowl are thriving again.
Tundra swans, which feed off the river plants, are showing decreased blood lead levels.
As EPA moves forward with the larger cleanup in the Lower Basin, consumer health education and
community involvement will continue.
Ed Moreen: We want to engage the community so that we understand their values and their input helps us do a
better job on our cleanup.
There has been a tremendous improvement.
And we look forward to continuing that trend, displaying dramatic improvements to water quality
and the health of people in this Valley.
It’s a gorgeous place and we want to see it be even more gorgeous.