Let science rule over sentiment

Tons of waste from a century of mining in the Silver Valley now reside on the floor of Lake Coeur d’Alene. That’s a fact nobody denies.

What to do with all that stuff, however, is and probably will long remain a point upon which disagreement reigns.

The heavy metals in that waste are out of harm’s way in all that sediment, but if oxygen levels in the water fall below a certain point, some scientists say, those dangerous metals can liquefy. And if that happens, those scientists believe, safety to plant and animal life is jeopardized.

It’s a scary scenario for a lot of reasons, and not just environmentally. When the federal Environmental Protection Agency threatened in the late 1990s to include Lake Coeur d’Alene with the Silver Valley in one massive Superfund site, citizens began to realize the possible economic impact. What would happen with the important tourism trade? With home- and property-values? With the very morale of thousands of people who take great pride in living, working and playing here? What kind of stigma would such a designation create, and how poisonous might the designation itself become?

Thankfully, a host of agendas took a back seat to science. In 2001, the EPA, Idaho’s members of Congress, Gov. Butch Otter and others agreed that the lake did not warrant Superfund designation. Later, a commission was created to oversee a lake management plan.

Recent news from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, which owns the southern third of the lake, sounded alarms. In several spot samples from chain lakes and the Coeur d’Alene River — not Lake Coeur d’Alene itself — signs of oxygen depletion might be emerging, the Tribe said. The Tribe readily acknowledged that it’s too early to determine what’s really happening, and Thomas Herron, water quality manager for Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, referred to the report as “speculative preliminary data.”

While there’s no uniform agreement that liquefication of heavy metals poses a legitimate health threat or that it’s even beginning to occur in the lake, we seek agreement that only verifiable science will influence any lake management policy or procedural changes. Science over sentiment has been the guiding light throughout the long and exceedingly passionate debate over heavy metal residue throughout the region.

On July 14, 2005, for instance, a much-anticipated report by the esteemed National Academy of Sciences was released after in-depth study of the EPA’s efforts to clean up the Coeur d’Alene Basin. It found, much to the consternation of some anti-EPA interests, that the magnitude of remediation and the health model upon which much of it was based were appropriate. Criticism from that point forward went from a roar to a whisper. Such an intelligent, nonbiased approach will serve us all well as we go forward.