Billboards in trouble

KELLOGG — The Bunker Hill Central Treatment Plant Upgrade and Groundwater Collection System project is moving right along, but it will be at the expense of some local landmarks.

The billboards that run along the eastbound lane of I-90 have been in place for decades, but they will have to come down for crews to complete the groundwater collection system portion of the project that is set to begin the coming months.

For those who don’t know, the groundwater collection system requires a 20-30 foot wall that will be built below the ground in-between I-90 and the Central Impoundment Area (locally referred to as the ‘slag pile’).

As contaminated groundwater runs off the CIA and makes its way toward the Coeur d’Alene River, the wall will stop its progress and a series of pumps will pump the contaminated water back to the Central Treatment Plant.

With the amount of work that will be happening in that area of land between the highway and the CIA, the billboards will have to come down.

The situation has not been received well by a few of the businesses who own billboards and either don’t want to see them go, or didn’t fully realize that they were responsible for them.

But according to the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, they were given plenty of time to take care of the situation.

Don Carpenter, a mine waste program scientist with the IDEQ, is hoping that the situation can still be resolved without the billboards needing to be destroyed and that salvage efforts are made.

On such a short notice, the project of removing them safely and keeping them whole may be difficult, but IDEQ did notify the owners of the project more than two years ago, first by announcing it in the March 2015 edition of their quarterly publication, “The Basin Bulletin,” and then by sending them letters in September 2017 with a 90-day notice that expired on Dec. 1.

“We sent the letters in September of last year to let the owners know that they needed to get the billboards down,” Carpenter said. “Those letters we sent were 90-day notices and we had hoped that the owners would respond by salvaging them. No one responded and I’m not sure why.”

The billboards are something of an anomaly, as they are out of compliance with several of the Idaho Transportation Department’s outdoor advertising regulations, but since they were in place before the regulations were set, they were granted a grandfather status.

This grandfather status is gone once the billboards are removed (even temporarily), which Carpenter believes could be one of the reasons that the owners are upset.

“(The Idaho Transportation Department) has regulations that govern where the billboards can go,” Carpenter said. “If they come down, then they have to reapply for permitting, and then make sure that they are in full compliance to with the regulations before they go back up.”

According to Carpenter, the IDEQ will eventually be taking control of the CIA, which should bode well for the billboard owners should they choose to pursue putting the billboards back up.

“Once the project is complete, the IDEQ will definitely entertain the idea of putting the billboards back if ITD approves the permits,” Carpenter said. “But they would have to be in full compliance and they would have to work around the newly installed groundwater collection system.”

Carpenter also mentioned that there is still a bit of time for the billboards to be salvaged, but they need to get moving now.

“If they are interested in salvaging the billboards, they need to contact the contractor,” Carpenter said. “The contractor will begin demolishing the billboards by mid-March and told us that they will be all gone by July.”

For more information on the Idaho Transportation Department’s outdoor advertising regulations visit http://bit.ly/2E49vuX.