County urges ‘dialogue’ on repository

The Kootenai County Commission urged the state and a local highway district Monday to have better communication about a plan to dump mine waste near Cataldo, Idaho, but the county doesn’t plan to interfere with the proposal.

By this summer the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality expects to open a repository to store lead-tainted soil and other mine waste on 19 acres just north of Interstate 90 across from the Cataldo Mission State Park.

The notion irks the East Side Highway District Commission, which argues that the property would likely flood and release mine waste into the Coeur d’Alene River. District Chairman Dick Edinger told commissioners Monday that residents in the area don’t like the plan and the DEQ hasn’t responded to the highway district’s concerns and letters.

DEQ’s John Lawson shot back that he has met with District Supervisor John Pankratz and was surprised that the district sent out a press release without first calling him.

He added that the proposal had been in progress for nearly three years and has included two public meetings in the Cataldo area.

County Commission Chairman Rick Currie, during the quarterly meeting with local highway districts, told the group that the county doesn’t have jurisdiction over the repository because it is overseen by federal Superfund laws. Instead Currie recommended that the highway district officials sit down with DEQ and Idaho Transportation Department representatives to talk.

“Dialogue, I think, might be the key here,” Currie said.

Lawson invited the highway commissioners to attend the May 1 meeting where the state will unveil the design plans for the Mission Flats repository that could potentially hold a half-million cubic yards of waste and dirt. One regular pickup truck can hold about 1 cubic yard, Lawson said.

Edinger was disappointed in the outcome of the meeting and said it was obvious the repository was already a done deal. He said that the highway district likely will oppose giving the state access to the property off Canyon Road.

After the meeting, DEQ’s Mark Stromberg said that he thinks the highway district officials will feel better if they come to the design presentation. DEQ will make the presentation to the Technical Leadership Group, a subcommittee of the Coeur d’Alene Basin Environmental Improvement Commission.

Currie serves on the Basin Commission and has been involved in the repository planning. He thinks the storage site is a good solution.

Superfund law requires all repositories be placed on property already contaminated.

That means DEQ can’t take the highway district’s advice and move it to higher ground.

In the lower Coeur d’Alene Basin, where a repository is needed, the only contaminated lands are those within the flood plain near the Coeur d’Alene River.