Waste shipments to repository approved
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:34 AM PDT
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Soil contaminated by mining in the Silver Valley will be shipped to a new repository starting immediately, a top official for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.
The East Mission Flats repository, near Cataldo, Idaho, opened for business on Monday. The landfill is next to Interstate 90, near the historic Cataldo Mission.
The Idaho Department of Environmental Quality intends to dump more than 40,000 truckloads of Superfund waste at the repository. The material is metals-laced dirt removed from residential yards in the Kellogg, Idaho, area that were polluted by decades of silver mining in the valley.
‘‘There will be an aggressive monitoring program,’’ to spot any leaks from the site, said Mathy Stanislaus, the Obama administration’s top appointee on Superfund issues, in a conference call with reporters.
Stanislaus visited the Silver Valley in August, at the request of U.S. Rep. Walt Minnick, R-Idaho.
He decided that additional monitoring wells will be installed at the repository, including an ‘‘early warning system’’ that will alert officials if metals are migrating into the groundwater.
That early warning system will be installed by next spring, in time for the typical spring flooding in the area, the EPA said.
The repository started taking contaminated material from Superfund cleanups in other parts of the Silver Valley on Monday, said Angela Chung, EPA’s Bunker Hill Superfund team leader.
The repository is located across I-90 from Old Mission State Park on ground that is already contaminated with mine tailings. The park contains Cataldo Mission, a Catholic church that is Idaho’s oldest building.
The contaminated soil will be covered in a way to prevent erosion of pollutants into nearby waterways. Eventually, the pile of contaminated soil will rise 32 feet high, the EPA said.
