Where there’s no smoke, there’s still fire

KELLOGG — Achieving safe and stable air quality in Shoshone County has always been a struggle. Environmental pollution has always been a factoring concern, but one that for a long time had remained one without the financial power to implement new systems, infrastructure and educational programs to impact the Silver Valley over time.

That began to change in 2015 when the west Silver Valley became a recipient of the competitive Target Airshed Grant through the Environmental Protection Agency. With work on the ground by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to invest the funds in wood stove replacement and other strategic air quality initiatives, many local variables contributing to air quality were chipped away at over time.

Educational programs both for adults and children in the school system raised more awareness about the air quality levels, and in 2020, an LED sign was installed in Smelterville to inform traffic along Interstate 90 what the air levels were at any time.

Dan Smith, regional airshed coordinator for the Idaho DEQ said that 2018, 2019 and 2020 air quality figures were submitted to the EPA.

“Every year, it improved,” Smith said. “For the first time in 25 years, we’re back in attainment with national standards.”

The grant was supposed to end in 2020, but Smith said the EPA has been generous in extending the timeline to utilize all of the funds by December 2023 so they were able to spend the money toward programs that optimized the results for the community in the west Silver Valley.

All of these programs and initiatives worked together in concert, and in 2021, Shoshone County was able to achieve attainment with the EPA.

Smith said it’s been incredibly satisfying to see the Valley’s air quality reach the national standard, and now, the hard work for the grant is all but completed. As one of the final uses of the funds, DEQ secured a permit and purchased an air curtain to be used by the Shoshone County Transfer Station, to safely burn tons of clean waste wood at a time.

“The cool thing is it prevents 88% of all of the smoke,” Smith said. Only heat waves will be visible to the naked eye during a burn.

The measure will not only save Shoshone County money by not having to haul waste wood, it will also eliminate slash burning in the Silver Valley.

“The only thing left to do is to write it up and submit it to the EPA,” Smith said.

Debut of new smoke-reducing technology

After word about the incinerator spread to other parts of the state, Solid Waste Department Director Richard Brenner said he’s already heard from other county programs interested in pursuing similar incinerators.

“It works really well. It’ll probably be running three days a week, we should be able to keep up with everything using it three days a week,” Brenner said.

This air curtain model can burn between five to seven tons an hour, although for the recent test, Brenner said they broke the machine in slowly with waves of burning on and off over the course of six hours.

“The test went great and the thing works. It‘s pretty amazing how hot that thing gets,” Brenner said.

The machine itself has been around for a long time, and air curtains are mostly used in mobile forestry sites as a disposal of waste wood because it’s definitely more difficult to achieve a stationary site air quality permit.

That road to acquiring a permit may be paved moving forward, now that Shoshone County’s device has become the first.

“I’ve had quite a few calls from other counties around here that are interested also now that we kinda took the first step, the next ones will be easier,” Brenner said.

Firefighters were present for an initial trial burn using the air curtain earlier this month, but Brenner would rather err on the side of caution before using the air curtain regularly, and the Department of Solid Waste is looking into hiring a local plumber to install a high pressure 2-inch water line at the transfer station in Kellogg.

“The machine works really well, it’s just that I'm not very comfortable not having water there, it’s not worth the risk. It’s there as a precaution. Once we have that waterline in, all of our green wood branches will start going in there,” Brenner said.