EPA moves into 2020 projects after landmark 2019

The Bunker Hill Superfund Site was featured in the Environmental Protection Agency’s annual accomplishments report.

Chris Hladick, the EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Northwest and Alaska Region, spoke highly of the work that has been completed and was very pleased with the efforts from his boots-on-the-ground guys.

“I’m really proud of the work our team has done, and that our partners have done over the last 30 years,” Hladick said. “When I look at the original pictures of the site and talk to people about what it was like when we started to where we are today, it’s been an amazing transformation. Of course, that doesn’t diminish the amount of work that’s left to be done.”

According to the report, which was released last Thursday, 2019 was a banner year for the EPA and its work in Silver Valley and surrounding areas related to the BHSS.

In 2019, EPA and its state, local and tribal partners:

• Cleaned up 33 residential and commercial properties;

• Continued with its cooperative Paved Roads Project, which now adds more than 550 road segments addressed since the project started in 2013;

• Removed more than 380,000 cubic yards of mine waste from the Old Success mine;

• Upgraded the Central Treatment Plant;

• Added a groundwater collection system;

• Hauled approximately 10,000 truckloads of contaminated waste to repositories for state disposal; and

• Closed and capped the Government Gulch waste repository, providing new level ground to support redevelopment.

EPA project manager Ed Moreen was on hand to discuss some of the work that will continue this year, as well as discuss the successes of 2019.

Moreen discussed the ongoing projects up the East Fork of Ninemile Creek, which includes getting the East Fork Ninemile Waste Consolidation Area ready to receive waste from Interstate Millsite.

Roughly 100,000 to 140,000 cubic yards of waste material and tailings from the millsite will be relocated to the consolidation area, which will help improve water quality, and protect the local ecology and people downstream.

“Last year, we spent over $42 million in the Coeur d’Alene Basin, a lot of that by the Coeur d’Alene Work Trust, a lot of it went to the work and construction of the new Central Treatment Plant and the new groundwater collection system,” Moreen said. “Last year was a big construction season, we won’t see quite that large of a number in 2020.”

After spending so much to complete the CTP and surrounding the collection system, the 2020 projection of $20 million seems like a drop in the bucket, but much of that will be on projects such as the aforementioned work up Ninemile Creek, as well as the completion of a long-running project.

Moreen estimates that 2020 may be the last year of the Paved Roads Project, just as long as crews can finish up the 39 different road segments that they have slated for this year.