Superfund and Mining Megasites Lessons from the Coeur d'Alene River Basin (2005) / Chapter Skim
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2 Historical Background
2 Historical Background
Pages 22-46
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From page 22... ...
. Until then, the few thousand residents of the area, most of whom were members of the Coeur d'Alene tribe living along the shore of Lake Coeur d'Alene, were able to enjoy the natural riches that this area provided.
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From page 23... ...
. Even at the beginning of the mining era, one prospector could boast of having caught 247 trout in one day's fishing in Placer Creek, a tributary of the South Fork (Rabe and Flaherty 1974, p.
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From page 24... ...
. The silver that attracted the miners gave the South Fork the name "the Silver Valley," but the ores were also rich in lead and zinc along with lesser amounts of other metals.
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From page 25... ...
Wallace was located not at a mine mouth but on a cedar swamp near the conflux of Canyon Creek and the South Fork, on the banks of which were the sites of numerous mining operations. Colonel W.R.
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From page 26... ...
. The Bunker Hill Mine resisted and organized the mine owners into the Mine Owners Protective Association to fight the unions.1 The Coeur d'Alene mining wars, which continued over the next decade, involved armed fights, assassinations, lockouts, the dynamiting of mine properties, the imposition of martial law, the use of federal troops to suppress the "insurrection," and the internment of hundreds of miners in squalid concentration camps.
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From page 27... ...
Mills located on hillsides deposited their tailings in gullies so that gravity and surfacewater drainage could move them down to the floodplains while winds winnowed the fine-grained particles and spread them over adjacent slopes and flat areas. Tailings from mills located in the floodplains were dumped near the mills or directly into the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River (Long 1998)
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From page 28... ...
. By 1900, mill tailings had reached Lake Coeur d'Alene and had affected as much as 25,000 acres along the South Fork and main stem of the Coeur d'Alene River (Long 1998)
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From page 29... ...
The farmers' problems undoubtedly were exacerbated by the damming of the Spokane River at Post Falls in 1906, which raised the level of Lake Coeur d'Alene, flooding the lower reaches of the Coeur d'Alene River and, as a result, increasing the rate of deposition and causing the river to flood over its banks and deposit tailings on the surrounding lands more frequently. The Mine Owners Association (MOA)
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From page 30... ...
. However, because the economy was booming, most towns quickly rebuilt, often improving over the former layout, and there was apparently little impact on mining operations.
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From page 31... ...
With this new equipment and better ventilation, the miners were able to tunnel farther and deeper. The massive Bunker Hill Mine, for instance, has about 150 miles of mining tunnels ranging from 3,600 feet above to about 1,600 feet below sea level (about 1 mile deep)
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From page 32... ...
The tailings from the flotation process were quite different from the jig tailings. They contained much lower concentrations of metals but, being much finer, were more mobile.
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From page 33... ...
. Ore production peaked around World War I at approximately 2.5 million metric tons per year and again peaked in 1948 at 3.2 million metric tons per year (see Figure 2-4)
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From page 34... ...
Company built a larger tailings pond west of Kellogg that expanded over the years to become the central impoundment area, which received most of the flotation wastes discharged since 1928 (Casner 1991; Long 1998)
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From page 35... ...
Such waters are called "acid rock drainage." The Bunker Hill Mine had the most serious problem. The Bunker Hill smelter also emitted substantial amounts of sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants that were discharged directly to the atmosphere.
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From page 36... ...
He investigated the effects of mine wastes on fisheries and other aquatic organisms in the region in 1932. He found that The polluted portion of the Coeur d'Alene River, that is the South Fork from a short distance above Wallace, Idaho to its junction with the North Fork above Cataldo, and the main Coeur d'Alene River from the junction of the forks to its mouth near Harrison, Idaho was found (July 1932)
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From page 37... ...
Public Health Service had 296 water samples from several locations in Lake Coeur d'Alene analyzed and found average lead concentrations ranging from 0.08 to 0.22 milligrams/liter (mg/L) , with the concentration generally decreasing from the mouth of the Coeur d'Alene River to Coeur d'Alene City.
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From page 38... ...
2) estimated that, in total, about 6 million metric tons (6.6 million tons)
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From page 39... ...
. The Bunker Hill Mining Company, for instance, increased its smelter capacity to 100,000 tons per FIGURE 2-6 Workers taking the Clague electrolytic treatment in the 1920s.
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From page 40... ...
Passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act in 1972 substantially increased the environmental pressures. But public attention was particularly aroused in September 1973 when the primary pollution-control device at the Bunker Hill smelter, the bag house, was partially destroyed in a fire.
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From page 41... ...
This study (IDHW 1976) showed that in Smelterville, adjacent to the smelter, 99% of the children tested had blood lead levels (BLLs)
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From page 42... ...
Although the company had bought and demol ished all the residences within one-half a mile of the smelter, the citizens of Smelt erville protested the proposed closing of the Silver King Elementary School which was also located within this area, even though monitors at the school showed lead levels in the atmosphere 10 times higher than the ambient air standard. There wasn't enough evidence showing the high lead levels would harm their children they argued, and when the question was put to a vote, 996 of the 1,127 ballots cast were in favor of keeping the school open.
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From page 43... ...
However, they found their other tools to be inadequate, and, in 1998, the agency announced that it was initiating the Superfund process for contaminated areas within the 1,500 square mile Coeur d'Alene River basin reaching from Montana to Spokane, Washington -- one of the largest Superfund designations in the country -- to be designated as OU-3 of the Bunker Hill Superfund site (Villa 2003)
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From page 44... ...
Presentation at the Third Meeting on Superfund Site Assessment and Remediation in the Coeur d'Alene River Basin, June 17, 2004, Coeur d'Alene, ID.
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From page 45... ...
Pp. 15-19 in Historical Files "South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River" Water Quality Bureau, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (as cited in Casner 1991)
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From page 46... ...
Megasites: The Coeur d'Alene river basin story. Columbia J
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