“The BP Of The Pacific Northwest”
The David vs Goliath story in our backyard continues. In a press release titled “Flooding at Old Mission Repository,” the Silver Valley Community Resource Center urges citizens to contact the EPA in response to a controversial mining cleanup plan. If you’ve followed this story here, you know flooding is nothing new to the waste repository, which was designed near the Cataldo Mission to contain toxic soil in a, um, floodplain.
Witness this photo DTE took in late Spring of 2008:
Check this health warning sign in an area near the repository: 
Below is the press release:
As it has for at least the past five decades, flooding is occurring at the Old Mission toxic waste repository under development by EPA and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ). More than 2000 affected citizens have voiced opposition to this site since first learning of it from a news article two years ago.
Silver Valley Community Resource Center (SVCRC), a non-profit, grassroots organization that has been conducting outreach to affected citizens in the nation's largest Superfund site since 1986 called for an Inspector General's investigation in August 2007. The investigation was completed in June 2009. Warning was given to Region X EPA and IDEQ that grave concerns were directed to the flooding problem at the Old Mission Repository. "The flooding and the fact that the site is in a floodplain with no liner to protect leaching of the lead and heavy metals from flowing downstream has always been a environmental concern," Dr. Gayle Eversole, SVCRC board member stated. In 2007 SVCRC contacted affected citizens in the Coeur d'Alene Basin to awaken them to the facts of downstream pollution and contamination following announcement of the planned Old Mission Repository. Several environmental groups associated with the Superfund site, the Eastside Road District, and the Mayor of Post Falls, Idaho all contributed objections to the site location.
Lead exposure is an ongoing risk to children, adults and wildlife in the 1500 square mile Superfund site. In June 2010, Sue Moodie, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published yet another health study of the Bunker Hill site, addressing the stigma associated with lead exposure: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/jun/02/stigma-hampers-kids-blood-testing/
Rocky Hill, life long resident of the Silver Valley, knows what it is to live with lead exposure and health conditions related to the pollution. "I am bothered that EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, is not protecting us, the environment and are looking after themselves." "Where are the downstream people in Coeur d'Alene, Harrison, Spokane who are also the recipients of all this hazardous contamination, its the BP of the Pacific Northwest, the only difference is no one can see the damages of lead and other heavy metals."
SVCRC encourages all people in the Coeur d'Alene Basin and Bunker Hill Superfund site to speak out and call EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, 202-564-4711, Jackson.LisaP@epa.gov, and EPA Region X Adminstrator Dennis McLerran, 1-800-424-4327, mclerran.dennis@epa.gov, to call for a moratorium at the Old Mission Repository.
For more pictures and more information : www.silvervalleyaction.com
Check their Facebook page HERE.
