"Upstream mining has left a toxic legacy at the bottom of Coeur d’Alene Lake."
"Early this spring, a migrating flock of tundra swans flew toward a long and narrow body of water in North Idaho marked on today’s maps as Coeur d’Alene Lake, seeking a stopover on their way north.
From a few thousand feet, the birds would have seen the expanse of the lake, surrounded by forested hills and shaped roughly like a human arm. Near the elbow, they would have flown over the political boundary marking the edge of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s reservation, which encompasses the southern third of the lake. To the north, the swans, thousands of them, would have glimpsed the high-rises of the resort town of Coeur d’Alene at the lake’s edge, and the lake’s outlet, the Spokane River, winding west. They would have passed sandy beaches and rocky peninsulas dotted with marinas, parks, homes and resorts, and the Coeur d’Alene River, which meets the lake at Harrison Slough. It is an appealing place to alight — and a lethally toxic wetland.
Indeed, many of the swans stopped at the slough. There, they stretched their long necks under the water, digging into contaminated sediment with their beaks to root up edible plants and invertebrates. And then, just as dozens of tundra swans do every year, many of them died, poisoned by the lead and other heavy metals in the mud, a legacy of Idaho’s hard rock mining."
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