Nancy Churchill questions the superfund declaration for beautiful Lake Roosevelt

Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is one of the most important and influential committees in Washington, D.C. Retiring Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers sent a press release titled “The Biden EPA is Divorced from Reality.” I couldn’t agree more, although for a different reason than the one given in the committee’s press release, which was about the EPA’s decision to allow California to ban gas-powered cars.

Another huge example of the Biden EPA’s disconnect from reality is closer to home on the border of Ferry County. On our eastern and southern border lies Lake Roosevelt, a beautiful National Recreation Area formed behind the massive Grand Coulee Dam.  A few weeks ago, the Biden EPA declared the “Upper Columbia River,” from the Canadian Border to the Grand Coulee Dam, an EPA Superfund site.

If you lived in the wild and beautiful Ferry and Stevens Counties and knew for yourself just how wild and how beautiful it really is out here, you’d be scratching your head in puzzlement. What pollution? Where?

The EPA Press Release was titled “EPA adds Upper Columbia River site to the Superfund National Priorities List to protect public health from metals contamination.” On X.com, the EPA Region10 account bragged that “This year @EPA completed cleanup at nine homes within the Upper Columbia River #Superfund site, in Northport, WA, removing 5,300 tons of lead-contaminated soil to protect young children and women of childbearing age.” 

I’m sorry but that’s not a big number. If you figure they use a standard 15 ton dump truck, it’s roughly 353 loads, maybe a truck a day for the year. Big Government is efficient that way.

Northport is a tiny, remote community of fewer than 300 people. Only around 85 homes in the community have allowed any remediation work to be done over the past 20 years. The rest of the surrounding environment is steep, undeveloped wild terrain.  One beach is closed on the upper river due to mining contamination. That’s it. That’s not enough to justify a superfund site. It’s not like East Palestine, OH. 

While remediation clearly needed to be done in Northport from pollution from the old Le Roi smelter, NINE HOMES with contaminated soil hardly justifies a 150 MILE-long superfund designation against the wishes of most local governments and citizens.  Unfortunately, that’s basically the only excuse that the EPA needed.  

Is a clean wild river a superfund?

Lake Roosevelt is 130 miles of beautiful and wild river reservoir, enjoyed by one million visitors a year for boating, fishing, hunting and camping. The water is safe to play in, meets most drinking water standards and the majority of the fish species are safe to eat. The water from Lake Roosevelt is also pumped into Banks Lake, which is another huge reservoir used to irrigate dry land farms in Eastern Washington.  The Columbia Basin System irrigates millions of acres of agriculture across much of eastern Washington. This river is the life-blood of eastern Washington economies for many reasons.

How can this 150-mile stretch of the Columbia River be BOTH safe and Superfund-level contaminated at the same time?  The Biden EPA is creating an invisible enemy of “soils contamination,” in a pristine natural area that easily supports wildlife on land and in the water. That’s what I call disconnected from reality.

Common sense environmentalism needed

Yes, everyone living in the Columbia River watershed wants a clean environment. We live out here because we love living close to nature and going out to hike, camp, hunt, fish, and boat. Furthermore, eastern Washington farming depends on the water in the Columbia River being clean enough to drink and use for irrigation. Don’t you think that if a Superfund site was actually necessary, then a large majority of the population would be fighting for that?

Yes, the town of Northport was impacted by old mining pollution. But an agreement to address the pollution and perform remediation has been in place for more than 20 years!  Much remediation already happened without any superfund designation. This “Superfund” is a way to funnel taxpayer money into “research” to “find” more pollution. The EPA is just going to ignore that nature appears to be doing pretty well out here without much human interference. Have you seen our massive wolf population? So many wolves must equal a thriving ecosystem, full of prey, right? That hardly seems like a Superfund-level pollution problem.

Follow the money, because somebody will be making money from the Superfund. The EPA press release notes that “Listing the site on the NPL will help EPA secure comprehensive and timely cleanup of the river and adjoining uplands and provide access to critical federal funding.”

In fact, many local residents and elected officials are concerned that “timely cleanup of the river” may stir up heavy metals and mining slag buried under decades of sediment, and CAUSE contamination of the currently clean water in Lake Roosevelt.

Smart solutions needed

Our country has made great strides in developing technology to protect the environment from heavy industry. Yes, mining technology needs continual improvement, so that going forward, we can mine safely without negatively impacting the environment. And yes, we probably need a treaty with Canada to specifically address the need for safer mining technology in the watershed.

But both Canada and the United States need a lively and robust mining industry, not a dead industry that has been killed by a delusional and out of touch EPA. It’s happened before in Washington, with the timber industry and the spotted owl. Oh, by the way, the spotted owl is STILL endangered due to natural competition from other owls, so killing the timber industry and all of the little logging towns was a terrible non-solution to the problem. Thanks EPA.

Hope for the future: Congressional Review, Lee Zeldin, and DOGE

To push back against this federal overreach, we need to take clear, decisive action.  Rep. Michael Baumgartner and Rep. Dan Newhouse should encourage Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to challenge the EPA’s decision and work toward removing the Upper Columbia River from the Superfund National Priorities List. This would give lawmakers the chance to carefully examine the justification for the designation and make sure decisions are rooted in both sound science and the realities on the ground.

Additionally, Rep. Baumgartner and other regional leaders must step up to amplify the concerns of impacted communities. They should push for balanced, science-driven solutions that respect the voices of those directly affected. Please contact Representative-elect Baumgartner, and let him know you’d like the Upper Columbia River site delisted and why.

On top of that, the confirmation of nominee Lee Zeldin to be EPA administrator could be a game-changer. Zeldin’s experience with environmental protection in the Long Island Sound shows he knows how to strike the right balance between protecting our natural resources and supporting economic growth. His leadership could help bring the EPA back in line, fostering policies that protect the environment without crushing local economies or exceeding federal authority. You could also contact Lee Zeldin and bring this issue to his attention.

And of course, it may be time to appeal to DOGE and work to get the EPA defunded or downsized. Local governments should be in charge of solving local problems. Taking some or all of these steps is critical to restoring public trust in the EPA and ensuring environmental policies are fair, practical, and grounded in common sense.

Nancy Churchill is a writer and educator in rural eastern Washington State, and the state committeewoman for the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on thinkspot,  Rumble and Substack.

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