COEUR d'ALENE - Mining waste cleanup in the Coeur d'Alene Basin might be on pause for the wet winter season, but that doesn't mean planning isn't going on around the clock.

Representatives from state and federal agencies discussed top issues they're facing with Superfund efforts on Tuesday, at an update briefing in the Environmental Protection Agency's Coeur d'Alene office.

There was also some glowing about victories so far.

"It was a huge season for us last year," said Dan Meyer with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality.

Thanks to $15 million in stimulus funding in 2009, Meyer said, cleanup crews were able to tackle large projects in the upper basin that hadn't been prioritized before due to their size.

This included the contaminated parking lot of the Wellman baseball field, he said, as well as the Sather football field in Silverton, both of which had higher levels of metal contamination than many smaller sites.

Teenagers play regularly at Sather field, added Terry Harwood, director of the Basin Environmental Improvement Project Commission.

"I told the kids, 'You've got a nice new facility, so I want you to have a better season than last year,'" Harwood said with a chuckle. "And by God, they did."

The stimulus funding allowed the state to pack in three years of work in one year, Harwood added, allowing the remediation of 6.5 million square feet of contaminated soil.

It also provided work for 335 people, more than 80 percent of them local.

"People keep grumbling that the stimulus funds aren't working for the rest of the country," Harwood said. "But here, it worked."

Now Harwood is looking forward to another daunting task, he said: Helping agencies prepare treated regions for 100-year flooding, which could undo all that work and recontaminate every inch.

"Folks up there are concerned. Ten years from now, what's going to happen?" he said.

Flood barriers in Pine Creek and South Fork don't stand a chance, he added.

"The current levies look like someone brought in a bunch of gravel with a bulldozer," he said.

There is talk of replacing the levies or constructing new ones, but it depends on funding and the cooperation of various agencies.

"It's going to take awhile," he said. "But we need to get after it. We can't put in that investment only to have it wash away."

And there has been quite an investment, said Meyer, who boasted that the yard cleanups are nearly complete in the upper basin after 547 properties were remediated last year.

Angela Chung, Coeur d'Alene Basin team leader for the EPA, said the agency is working on a ROD amendment that would allow cleanup for an additional 300 sites.

"These would be for mining and mill sites, both of which have health and ecological exposures," she said of the risks posed by the contaminated soil.

Having enough space to dump the removed soil is important, too, said Andy Mork with the IDEQ.

He hailed the current plans of expanding the Big Creek respository by up to 200,000 cubic yards, which he estimated might extend the facility's life by another four years.

"It could get us a long way down the road," he said.

The EPA has also winnowed down two options for a new repository site in the upper basins, he added: Osborne Pond and Star Pond.

"Those are big tailings ponds, not duck ponds," Mork said, adding that the locations will be discussed at a public meeting in March. "This way we could stick more contaminated soil on material that's already contaminated."

East Mission Flats has the lower basin covered for awhile, he added.

"We won't be looking at that (adding another repository there) for several years," he said.