Silver Valley Community Resource Center: Sound aolutions for the Bunker Hill Superfund site

Idaho Gov. Brad Little is calling for a third-party review of Lake Coeur d’Alene water quality. The Coeur d’ Alene Tribe has bowed out of lake management efforts. “Present solutions of cleanup are leaving the lake one of the largest hazardous waste repositories in the nation,” according to a CDA tribal spokesperson.

People of Idaho and Washington, it is time for public hearings and transparency to overcome the failures of the nation’s largest lead Superfund site. Make those calls, send emails to Gov. Little, it is our moral obligation to protect our children and care for the environment!

It is in the best financial, administrative and public interest of all stakeholders, including county commissioners, state officials, community leaders and individuals who are working together, to enact solutions.

Concerned citizens should contact the governor’s office, Governor@gov.idaho.gov, 208-334-2100, to voice support for the following solutions:

1. To support EPA’s mission, “to clean up the environment and protect human health.”

2. To hold public meetings throughout the Bunker Hill Superfund Site (BHSS) and accept additional data for solutions in its cleanup.

3. Shutdown of the 20-acre toxic waste dump at the Old Mission National Historic Landmark, Exit 39, Interstate 90.

4. Direct settlement funds for the establishment of the Silver Valley Community Resource Center’s Community Lead Health Clinic/Center.

In 2019, Idaho observed the Coeur D’Alene Tribe’s withdrawal from the Lake Coeur D’Alene management plan, which they have overseen for over two decades. This was an act of resistance and protest provoked by government agencies. The action was taken in part to ensure the safety of present and future inhabitants and visitors to the lake along with acknowledgment of the suffering of the people who are surviving the pollution from the past.

Hundreds, thousands of residents from Idaho and Washington, and tourists, should not be put at risk for the sake of money, health and avoiding a Superfund label and the stigma that follows. With a substantive, effective lake management plan, the Coeur D’Alene Tribe, indigenous communities throughout the BHSS, and environmental justice groups including the Silver Valley Community Resource Center will work together to provide the best assurance of health and safety to natural resources and the hundreds of thousands of those who live and recreate in the Bunker Hill Superfund Site.

Affected citizens and environmental justice groups throughout the Pacific Northwest – including churches, schools, universities and medical experts – advocate that the fiscally and morally responsible step is to stop the contamination at the source and to halt the current constant recontamination action, establishing ethical responsibility of ongoing lead exposure.

Since 1992, the SVCRC has been working with local, state, regional, national and international lead experts submitting volumes of lead health data, documentation and the organization’s own Children Run Better Unleaded Project. That project is the only proactive source in the entire BHSS to successfully accomplish the mandated laws for lead testing of children. In one of the most comprehensive health surveys conducted in the epicenter of the site, 80% of 252 households stated they would make use of a Community Lead Health Clinic. In one of the settlement cases resulting in the largest ability to pay those cases in the U.S., the judge decreed that “the public will continue to have input into the prioritization of the (settlement) expenditures.” As with the mandated community involvement, EPA CERCLA laws, communities, SVCRC and the CDA Tribe’s decades of community involvement have not been listened to.

Settlement funds will be used for reparation for the people in the Silver Valley.

The National Academy of Science 2005 study documented that blood-lead-level testing shows that children, families and recreationists continue to be exposed.

We request that the governor’s office review the technical and legal information collected from thousands of affected citizens and 80 concerned groups to rectify the mistakes of the past to ensure EPA is following the intent of the law. This cleanup is decades in the making. The time to act is now. We know how harmful lead is. We know substantive cleanup is not taking place. It’s time that the safety of all, especially those living in the epicenter of North Idaho, be seriously addressed with solutions of scientific rule of the law for environmental injustices.

For our children and their future, send letters, emails, phone calls to: Gov. Brad Little, telephone (208) 334-2100; email Governor@gov.Idaho.gov; regular mail: Gov. Brad Little, State Capitol, PO Box 83720, Boise, ID 83720, fax: 208-854-3036.