Stop Toxic Dumping at the Historic Cataldo Mission

Stop Toxic Dumping at the Historic Cataldo Mission

To: Environmental and Congressional resources
Mission Repository Petition Information

"Who is going to be accountable if my children and grandchildren become lead poisoned?" Carla Madsen Bassemier, Cataldo, Idaho resident, upon finding out about the Old Mission Repository, Nov. 2007

Early on the morning of April 21, 2007 the families living near and in the nations largest lead Superfund site picked up the Spokesman Review and read for the first time that a toxic waste dump was going to be established by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ) at the Old Mission at Cataldo. These same families, citizens and groups could not believe what they were reading. For the next several weeks The Silver Valley Community Resource Center (SVCRC) did their best to find out what was happening. Ed Moreen, EPA official for the Bunker Hill/CDA Basin site, was telling anyone who asked that the site was supported by "everyone", including the Coeur d'Alene Tribe whose ancestors built the Sacred Heart Mission with Jesuit priests and established a reservation on the proposed toxic repository in the late 1800's.

Today the Mission is one of the few designated National Historic Landmarks in the State of Idaho. It sits on a hill purposely so to avoid the flooding that has gone on in the area every year since 1848 when construction of the old church began. It is also where EPA and IDEQ want to build a 60 ft., 600,000 cubic yard, and 19 acre (to begin with) toxic waste repository. In information acquired by a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, many now know these two agencies deceived certain individuals in the downstream areas, including the towns of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and Spokane, Washington, by telling them the site would only be 16 ft. tall and would be located at least 3 miles from the Mission. EPA and IDEQ continue to deceive certain individuals that there is a moratorium of the site when all the while they continue to develop the site in preparation for years and years of dumping. In the same information request both agencies acknowledge the existence of annual flooding and have no provided no evidence that the repository will have a lining. The agencies claim that a liner would not be any improvement for health and safety because "the liner will float", leading to greater leaching of deadly lead and other toxic mine waste, to be washed out and travel downstream to area rivers and Coeur d'Alene Lake.

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