City of Ponderay launches long-awaited Black Rock cleanup project at Bay Trail

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The city of Ponderay kicked off a project years in the making April 7, when crews began construction to remediate contamination at the “Black Rock” site on the shoreline of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail.

According to Ponderay officials, the long-awaited cleanup is being funded by a multi-purpose grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and additional funding through the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, marking the first phase of the city’s Front Yard Project, which is intended to establish a safe and clean community green space that also provides lake access for Ponderay.

“We are super excited about this,” Ponderay Planning Director KayLeigh Miller told members of the Sandpoint City Council at their April 2 regular meeting, during which councilors voted unanimously to approve a memorandum of agreement granting construction access to the site through Sandpoint-owned property at the water treatment plant.

Miller said the work is intended to be complete by mid-August, though the agreement allows for an October finish date.

While area residents have visited the Black Rock site for more than a century, cementing it as a beloved location for outdoor recreation and gatherings, its origin is as a slag heap from the former-Panhandle Smelting and Refining Company, which operated sporadically from 1907-’09. In 2012, a study revealed heavy metals — with a majority being lead — at concentrations in excess of EPA residential screen levels. The concentrated levels were found not only in Black Rock, but in the soils where the smelter structure resided until 1922. 

Following the 2012 study, Ponderay and DEQ partnered to educate the public about the dangers of the contamination, while searching for funding to clean up the site. The remediation project is intended to collect and remove the contaminated soils and bury them under a permanent subterranean repository.

Miller told the Sandpoint City Council that the materials will be encapsulated in an impervious or water-resistant fabric surface surrounded with drains to keep water from flowing through the containment area and “wrapped …within what I refer to as sort of a burrito of the fabric and the materials.”

The material will then be covered with about 12 feet of clean soil and a garden area planted on top to serve both as a feature and to discourage visitors from digging in the area.

A new breakwater trail will wrap around the front of the remediated Black Rock site to prevent erosion from the waves of Lake Pend Oreille and provide a connection to the existing Bay Trail as well as establish a new viewpoint.

As for the distinctive, namesake Black Rock landmark, the project includes covering it with a lookalike concrete cap with new safety railing.

“We decided to keep the slag pile since it is so iconic for the area, but wanted to provide that protection, so the walkway provides separation,” Miller told Sandpoint councilors. “It also receives a concrete cap on [it] that’ll be dyed black and stamped like stone to try to keep the original look. And then we’re preserving all the remaining historical features that are on the site out there.”

Miller added in a news release: “The project will make [historical features] more visible for visitors and the new internal trail system will lead users along the historic sites where there will be informational signage.”

Trail users are cautioned to expect some closures and other changes during the project, however. 

“The initial phase of construction will be a drastic visual change for those on the lake as the vegetation is removed to expose the contaminated soils for remediation,” Miller stated. “However, at the conclusion of the project the site will be replanted using native plants and will include reestablishing the purple lupine that bloom there each spring.”

Miller told members of the Sandpoint City Council that the only potential foliage to be removed along the trail itself will be branches that may get in the way of hauling, promising “minimal changes to the trail.”

Miller also said that about 450 loads of material will need to be hauled into the site, which will result in the Bay Trail being blocked to the public at certain times. 

“We’re trying to condense those haul days so that we can limit the closures on the trail,” she said. “Then, once we complete our work, they’ll be fixing the trail on their way [out] and providing a new ¾-inch surface on it, so it’ll actually be upgraded in the end.”

In addition to that, the agreement stipulates that Ponderay is responsible for repairing any damage to the trail during construction.

Those trail closure announcements will be made by the city of Ponderay, but Sandpoint City Hall will host a link on its website at sandpointidaho.gov directing visitors to those updates.

“The intent is that they’ll be minimal and will be communicated ahead of time,” said Sandpoint Public Works and Utilities Director Holly Ellis, though added there is no estimate on the number of closures.

However, she said, the agreement establishes work hours for Monday-Friday from 6 a.m.-5 p.m., intended to keep the weekends entirely free for trail use. In the case of closures, there will be signage and the contractor will be parking equipment at the trailhead.

“It will be very clear that it’s closed,” Ellis said, adding, “There will be kind of a physical barrier to those trailhead closures too, for safety.”

In its news release, the city of Ponderay stated that, “After years of exploring alternatives, the project team determined that the only viable option to move equipment and clean materials into the site was down the Pend d’ Oreille Bay Trail.” 

“Unfortunately, intermittent trail closures will be a necessary part of this project for the safety of the trail users. People and dump trucks don’t mix,” Miller stated in the release. “We’ve directed the contractor to condense the number of days that they import materials in an effort to minimize the trail closures as much as possible.”

Meanwhile, Councilor Kyle Schreiber asked how the project will affect the planned installation of paid parking infrastructure at the Bay Trail parking lot, which is part of a wider effort to institute paid parking in a variety of city-owned lots this summer.

“We’d probably hold off on installing a kiosk there just out of risk that it might get damaged by equipment,” said Sandpoint Planning and Community Development Director Jason Welker, “and there’s going to be such inconsistent access to that. To be honest, we’re not counting on any revenue forecast for this summer. … 

“In the case of that particular lot, there was proposed to be one kiosk there so that non-permit holders would have the opportunity to pay to park there,” he added. “My recommendation would probably be [to] wait until this work is all done before we even install that kiosk.”

The effort to clean up Black Rock received one of its first major boosts in 2020, when Ponderay was awarded an EPA Brownfields Multipurpose Grant, after which time the city began working with Alta Science and Engineering, DEQ and the EPA to design a project that both protects health and safety and serves as a community asset that continues the public’s historical usage of the site.

An anticipated trail closure schedule will be posted weekly on Ponderay’s social media and website at cityofponderay.org under the “News and Events” category.

To learn more about the project, go to cityofponderay.org/the-front-yard-project. For further questions or information, contact Ponderay City Hall at 208-265-5468 or email [email protected].