In Northern Idaho, a Wealth of Silver Begets a Legacy of Lead, The Daily Yonder

When Barbara Miller was in elementary school, she covered her face while walking to class. “It hurt so bad to breathe. Your neck, your throat, your eyes,” Miller said. Doors that led to a breezeway got jammed with kids “[backing] up like cattle,” Miller said, because no one wanted to exit the school and enter the smog.

Smokestacks from the nearby Bunker Hill Smelting Complex, a facility that separated silver from impurities, pumped sulfuric acid and lead oxide, byproducts of silver refining, into the surrounding communities. The Bunker Hill Smelting Complex was the largest smelting facility in the world at the time of its construction in 1917. In the 1970s, irresponsible management of the smelter caused dangerously high blood lead levels among children in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of Northern Idaho, a region also known as the Silver Valley.

Since the 1980s, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added Bunker Hill to the National Priorities List (NPL), a list of communities targeted for hazardous waste mitigation, otherwise known as Superfund sites, the cleanup process has been fraught with disagreement over the future of the region. Many Silver Valley residents bear the burden of lead poisoning in the form of chronic ailments. 

And although blood lead levels have improved since the 1980s, contamination remains a concern among residents and public health officials. The future of the Silver Valley still hangs in the balance as the Bunker Hill Mining Corporation seeks to bring a more modern (and supposedly safer) version of mining to the region.

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