There's a lesson unquestionably to be learned by Gov. Butch Otter in the chilling finding that a Nevada mine's mercury emissions may have blown in from the southwest and landed in Idaho in volumes that are impermissibly threatening to human and wildlife health.
Until now, the governor has been indifferent to joining other Western governors in legal actions to crack down on air emissions. Is it because Gov. Otter believes Idaho is somehow immune to the problem of toxic air that afflicts adjoining states or is his resistance the result of live-and-let-live instincts as a libertarian conservative?
Now evidence is piling up showing that mercury emissions emanating from the Jerritt Canyon Mine near Elko are affecting Idaho's air and water. Tests by Nevada showed that the mine's mercury emissions in 2006 would be equivalent to 90 times the annual emissions of a coal-fired power plant proposed near Jerome that was rejected as a menace to air quality.
Emissions from the Nevada mine's processing system have been found in Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir, Idaho's premier walleye fishing spot, and in air near Twin Falls in quantities 30 to 70 percent above normal.
All this must sound unhappily familiar to Idaho old-timers who, if they were lucky, survived the downwind fallout from nuclear tests in Nevada in the 1940s and 1950s.
This is where Gov. Otter should come in.
Will he stand on the sidelines while the state bureaucracies in Nevada and Idaho slowly plod through investigations of the mine emissions and eventually propose a solution or penalties?
Or, will Gov. Otter recognize the mercury threat to Idahoans and ramp up action to stop further emissions?
Forget the Environmental Protection Agency as a tool. EPA claims it lacks authority over these emissions, a tribute perhaps to industry lobbyists who gutted EPA legislation.
What Gov. Otter does have at his disposal is the Idaho Attorney General's Office and the power to file a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop the dangerous spread of airborne toxic waste that poses a risk to the health of Idahoans.
Federal courts can be quirky, and the outcome of legal action is not assured. But one thing is certain: The weight of a state's lawsuit can be a compelling incentive for an industrial polluter to clean up its act or face a long, drawn-out court battle that could be even costlier.
However, this presupposes Gov. Otter has the stomach to become an environmental activist on behalf of the state's citizens, rather than clinging to libertarian theories that won't prevent mercury illnesses in a thousand years.
