East Mission Flats, the Superfund cleanup storage site, is two miles west of Cataldo, north of Interstate 90 and across from the mission. It is a repository for the waste from the mining in Silver Valley. The site is adjacent to wetlands – though the EPA says it isn’t wetlands. This area contains the largest load of mine tailings in the Coeur D’ Alene basin, and the EPA is almost poetic in its description: “In the heart of the Silver Valley, down below heights with such old West names as Grizzly Ridge and Cougar Peak, lies a twenty one-square mile Superfund site, the nation’s largest.” Cataldo is well within the box – it’s eight miles from the epicenter, the Bunker Hill Mine. –  Frances McCue, from a wonderful book titled “The Car That Brought You Here Still Runs: Revisiting The Northwest Towns Of Richard Hugo.”

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