Two recent moves by members of the Idaho Legislature make us wonder how much our lawmakers really care about Idaho’s precious water resources.

    The first was the approval of a rule change by the Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee that eliminates the threat of dairy farms losing their operating permits from the Idaho Department of Agriculture if they are caught illegally dumping waste into streams and waterways.

    Polluting our rivers and streams will now simply bring a fine of up to $10,000.

     The rule change was possible because Idaho lawmakers passed the Dairy Environmental Control Act in 2014. The Idaho Dairy Association, which represents a $2.4 billion a year industry in the Gem State, pushed for passage of that law last year. During the senate rules committee hearing in January, dairy representatives told committee members that their industry was the only one in which a permit could be revoked because of an environmental violation.

    Those dairy folks didn’t mention that other industries don’t enjoy the luxury of a “voluntary” permitting system for Environmental Protection Agency standards. And they didn’t say that as of last fall, not one Idaho dairy had sought to receive a voluntary permit from the EPA.

    The committee also didn’t request any feedback from the public about removing the threat of having a permit revoked by the Department of Agriculture if dairies dump manure-rich waste into the state’s waterways.

    They did ask Department dairy compliance officer John Bilderback how many permits had ever been revoked in the past seven years.

    He said none. Bilderback added about three or four dairies are fined each year, but he wasn’t sure how much they were fined.

    The second slap at clean water in Idaho came from the House Resources and Conservation Committee this week, when it decided to push a bill that would open up Idaho’s most pristine rivers to suction dredge mining.

    Dredge miners use a powerful vacuum powered by a gasoline engine mounted on a floating platform to pull material off the bottom of rivers and run it through a floating sluice box to extract gold or other precious metals.

    The proposed legislation is an attempt to trump federal Clean Water Act protections with a new state law. It’s simply a way to tell the EPA to take a hike.

    Legislators on the committee had been told by the Idaho Attorney General’s Office that the bill is likely in conflict with existing state and federal law, but that didn’t stop a majority from giving it a green light. The initial vote was locked 9-9, but a voice vote held after a slight amendment was made sent the bill to the full Idaho House.

    The best part of the entire process was testimony given by miners who said ripping up river bottoms and refueling gasoline engines on floating platforms improves rivers.

    Critics of the practice say dredge mining is harmful to the environment for a number of reasons. First when suction dredges suck up gravel and sand at the bottom of rivers, they also degrade spawning beds for salmon and destroy habitat for insects that provide food for trout and other fish. Secondly, when sediments are sucked up in a dredge and spit back into the stream, a cloud of material is suspended in the water column as it moves downstream.

    If the dredgers are working deep sediments looking for gold, they also disturb layers that may contain elevated levels of other heavy metals like mercury, copper, lead and zinc — and put them back into the streamflow.

    Then there’s the possibility of fuel and oil leaks and the noise pollution from the dredge motors.

    It’s impossible to conceive that any of this would “improve” a river any more than lowering the penalty for flushing cow crap into a river system.