ACEC Awards Alta Science & Engineering Inc.

KELLOGG — It’s time to celebrate.

The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) recognized two projects completed by Alta Science and Engineering Inc. at the 2022 Engineering Excellence Awards luncheon earlier this month. The Government Gulch Limited Use Repository Project (GGLURP) received Honorable Mention in their respective categories. However, the Stormwater Controls Project Protecting Human Health Remedy (SCP) in the Upper Coeur d’Alene Basin received first place.

Chief Executive Officer and Principal Engineer Derek Forseth of Alta explained in an interview to the News-Press why these projects received such accolades and what they mean for the Silver Valley.

“One of the fundamental things that’s important to the clean up throughout the whole Silver Valley is you have to have a place to put the waste.”

After the Bunker Hill Superfund Sites 1984 listing, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ), Panhandle Health District, and local communities began the cleanup of a century’s worth of mining contamination across the basin’s ground and water.

“The box was an original 21-square-mile box superfund site in the heart around the smelter and there was only one spot in the repository to dump the waste.”

IDEQ selected Alta to design a new Limited Use repository. Alta designed the repository that created the fill needed for the safe, developable ground using an innovative solution. On-site, the design safely contained 225,000 cubic yards of contaminated material. Increased hazardous waste storage capacity by 25% and created more than 16 acres of safe, developable ground.

“This has to last forever. In perpetuity,” he said.

Alta increased the hazardous waste storage capacity by 25% and created more than 16 acres of safe, developable ground.

Forseth explained, “The reason it qualified for an award with ACEC is because it was creative, from the standpoint of not throwing more waste into the Page repository and creating something for the community. The community is important to sustaining the cleanup. At face value it’s a pretty simple idea, and administratively it wasn’t entirely complex, but it was a new idea of managing waste as part of the cleanup. And it really helps in the long term.”

The ACEC awarded the SCP with the Idaho Engineering Excellence Award Winner. Although the CDA Basin is thriving and vibrant, it also contains the Bunker Hill Superfund Site. This is one of the largest and most complex Superfund sites in the United States.

“The remedy for the communities is a 12-inch veneer of clean soil through all the yards and Right-of-Ways,” Forseth said. “This was about protecting that in the long term. The EPA, DEQ, and even as back as the National Academy of Sciences agreed that this is working. Blood leads are in a good place, so from a human health standpoint it was working. However, we all realized that this solution was vulnerable to contamination.”

Some clean barriers were found to be vulnerable to small storm events, so the EPA, IDEQ and CDA Trust issued a remedy protection program for improvements to the permanent stormwater and flood controls protecting human health remedies.

Alta was then selected to support this critical project, from initial design to construction closeout. Alta worked on finding stormwater and flood control solutions using the best technology and processes. Alta began to characterize the hydrologic and hydraulic conditions of 37 watersheds.

Alta then assessed channel cross-sections, vegetation, culvert crossings and bridge crossings to inventory the drainage infrastructure. Alta defined flood control alternatives ranked and rated by cost-benefit value by modeling and characterizing the flood risks and impacts on structures across time intervals.

This successful remedy protection program resulted in the completion of 25 stormwater and flood control projects.

“This is the most effective way of dealing with the stormwater. It really is kind of the belts and suspenders of supporting this for the long term. I really have to say hats off to the communities where the work is done. In Shoshone County, everybody had these projects, they were in everybody’s backyard.”