Silver Lining Boosters Excited By Opportunities In Bunker Hill Cleanup

A lot less ugly and a lot more jobs.

That’s what Silver Valley boosters foresee as the environmental cleanup of the Bunker Hill smelter complex barrels toward completion.

Hopes are rising higher than the smokestacks that came crashing down two years ago. Thoughts are turning to what will replace them: definitely a business park, possibly a golf course. Condos, houses, offices, stores. A riverside greenbelt tying it all together.

“It’s kind of a new beginning down there,” says Margie Gravely Todd, director of the Silver Valley Economic Development Council.

Brenda Stinson, owner of Kellogg’s Silver Needle Inc., believes this will end up being one of the cleanest spots in the whole country. She figures that’s only fair.

“We stuck it out through all the bad times.”

It’s been 17 years since Bunker Hill shut down, taking with it the valley’s biggest source of paychecks and leaving behind a legacy of toxic metals.

In 1983, 21 square miles surrounding the plant was designated a federal Superfund site. That seemed to bring only the stigma of pollution, not the promise of improvement, to Kellogg, Smelterville, Wardner and Pinehurst.

But recent progress has been dramatic, as anyone driving Interstate 90 can see. Industrial buildings have been demolished, gulches cleared of toxic dirt. Thanks to tree planting and the absence of smokestack emissions, the highway corridor has been steadily “greening up.”

This year, there will be a renewed effort to get something to grow on those eroding terraces above the smelter site.

A convoy of monster trucks soon will resume hauling mining wastes from the Coeur d’Alene River flood plain. By October, 1.5 million tons of tailings will have been dumped on the Central Impoundment Area, where toxic waste has been stockpiled for decades.

Buildings can’t be erected upon that plateau of pollution. Once it’s capped, though, the impoundment could turn into an emerald centerpiece for the valley: a golf course.

The state of Idaho, which will oversee the sale of Superfund property, would love to turn over responsibility for landscape maintenance to a private company. One that’s shown interest is Eagle Crest, which operates Kellogg’s Silver Mountain ski resort but is better known for its golf course developments.

The Oregon-based Eagle Crest is doing an economic analysis, and Kellogg real estate agent Dale Brown hopes that firm ends up with the golf course. He’s eager to walk the fairways in four or five years.

But long before that, Brown expects to stride into the Silver Valley Economic Development Council’s new business park. The first building will open in the summer of 1999, he says. The 78-acre site is south of I-90, across from Shoshone County Airport.

“We hope to have a multifaceted business center, with warehousing, light manufacturing, office space, workforce training, an incubator,” Brown says.

Some companies already are doing business in the Bunker Hill area. SVL Analytical Inc., an environmental lab, has set up shop in Government Gulch. Whiteman Lumber of Cataldo bought a planing mill at Smelterville four years ago.

Banks are becoming more willing to lend money to businesses that want to set up shop in the area, says Ken Schueman, owner of the Super 8 Motel. It was more difficult getting financing five years ago, when he and his wife opened the motel, than when they recently refinanced.

Environmental issues aside, Schueman says the Kellogg area offers advantages. It’s relatively inexpensive, has big potential and businesses are greeted warmly.

“Some places you go, permitting is a big hassle, growth is a problem. The growth is a problem the other way here: We need more of it.”

Schueman expects a lot more businesses will be attracted to the site when the cleanup bustle ends in a year or two. The economic development council is pinning its greatest hopes on companies that are in the valley and looking to expand.

The Environmental Protection Agency will turn smelter-area land over to the state as quickly as possible, says EPA project manager Earl Liverman. People who want to buy it will make proposals to the Idaho Land Board.

The cleanup should be finished sometime around 2002. It’ll be another five years before the area can be officially taken off the Superfund list, says Jerry Cobb of the Panhandle Health District.

While getting the independentminded people of the Silver Valley to agree on anything is “like herding cats,” Cobb contends, they’ve developed a common vision for the Superfund area.

Smelterville signed on when it became certain that the once-polluted land could be developed.

“That’s our gold mine,” Mayor Bill Keller says. New business tax revenues could mean freshly paved streets for his hamlet of 243 homes, maybe even a police department of its own.

Kellogg has the biggest stake in the Superfund site, much of which lies within its boundaries. The City Council has zoned residential, commercial and light industrial areas there.

Cities rarely have such an opportunity to guide the future of a big chunk of land, Kellogg planner Walter Hadley says.

“It provides an area for us to promote growth, expand our economic base and provide affordable housing,” he says. “You’ll have the old town and the new town - new streets, new street lighting, new trees.”

Hadley is seeking grants to complete a recreational trail along the abandoned Union Pacific Railroad tracks that served the smelter.

Much of the property in town is owned by people from such places as Seattle, Vail and Aspen, who are waiting for the community to soar, Hadley says.

Meanwhile, a full-court press is under way to make the Superfund land attractive to businesses. Public health officials are promising something rare in the commercial world. It’s called certainty.

Businesses must follow some simple construction procedures that won’t disrupt toxic soil. In return, they will be free of liability for environmental hazards. The Panhandle Health District agrees to guide them through the process at no extra charge.

To spread that message, Cobb landed a $100,000 federal grant to produce a 12-minute videotape and a booklet titled “Silver Valley Prospects.”

Both products, to be released this summer, are the creations of planning consultant Tom Hudson. Now he’s working on an Internet Web page designed to entice businesses to the Silver Valley.

Hudson points out that the Superfund system for land development has been used successfully by such businesses as Silver Mountain, McDonald’s, Super 8, Chevron and Subway.

The building rules are “much more simple and inexpensive than anywhere I know of, especially in the Inland Northwest,” Hudson says.

“Environmental conditions are well-known, well-studied. And to the extent that there are any problems, a system is in place to deal with that.”

Cobb has been telling people for years that the heart of the Superfund site would be the best place to build.

“They said ‘Cobb, you’re crazy. You’ve been dealing with lead for too long.”’

As absurd as it may have sounded years ago, it’s true, Liverman says. “This area may become one of the region’s crown jewels.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo Grapic: The future of a Superfund site