COEUR d’ALENE — It’s more or less fluoride free.

With the United States government looking to recommend lowering the maximum amount of fluoride in drinking water — credited with dramatically reducing cavities and tooth decay — Coeur d’Alene’s source hardly registers.

Of Kootenai County’s more than 100 wells, only 15 registered detectable levels, and those only barely.

In fact, none of Coeur d’Alene’s 10 wells registered traceable levels — and haven’t for a while. The state of Idaho even told the city it could stop testing so often.

So if the government follows through on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommendation in January to lower the fluoride level to 0.7 milligrams per liter of water come 2012 or 2013, Coeur d’Alene won’t have to do a thing.

“There’s nothing really lower than undetectable,” said Jim Markley, water superintendent. “Any change wouldn’t affect us.”

Undetectable doesn’t mean zero. It means the levels are lower than .2 milligrams per liter. The national standard since 1962 has been a range of 0.7 to 1.2 milligrams per liter.

The highest recording in Kootenai County, according to Idaho’s Environmental Quality Drinking Water Department, was 1.4 in Hauser Lake. Of the remaining sources that did register, most were between .2 and .5 milligrams per liter.

It all sounds ho-hum, but it’s not.

Fluoride in drinking water — because of varying opinions on its health effects and how much authority municipalities should have adding it to its supplies — is quite a fight.

And in January, the government said it planned to lower the levels after a study reported too much of it could be causing spots on kids’ teeth.

About 2 out of 5 adolescents have tooth streaking or spottiness because of too much fluoride, the government study found, and in some extreme cases, teeth can even be pitted by the mineral — though many cases are so mild only dentists notice it.

The problem is generally considered cosmetic, but other health concerns are out there, too.

A scientific report five years ago said that people who consume a lifetime of too much fluoride — an amount over EPA’s limit of 4 milligrams — can lead to crippling bone abnormalities and brittleness.

The DEQ and municipal water departments don’t take a stance on the health factors one way or the other.

But with pills and other methods available for those who want to consume fluoride, the role of a city in adding it to its supply has been questioned.

Sandpoint stopped fluoridating its water last year after citizens protested it to the City Council. The city had been fluoridating since the 1950s.

“It came down to the personal choice argument,” said Kody Van Dyk, public works director for Sandpoint. “The topic seemed to come up every two or three years, but in the past it was more about the health effects. Last year, it was more about personal choice.”

Fluoride is a mineral that exists naturally in water and soil. About 70 years ago, scientists discovered that people whose supplies naturally had more fluoride also had fewer cavities. Some locales have naturally occurring fluoridation levels above 1.2. Today, most public drinking water is fluoridated, especially in larger cities. An estimated 64 percent of Americans drink fluoridated water, according to the Associated Press.

In the recent government study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the splotchy tooth condition, fluorosis, is unexpectedly common in kids ages 12 through 15. And it appears to have grown much more common since the 1980s. But fluoridation has been fought for decades by people who worried about its effects, including conspiracy theorists who feared it was a plot to make people submissive to government power.

Markley called it “a hot button issue,” and one that took place in Coeur d’Alene in the 1950s.

The city fluoridated its water from 1952 to 1955.

At the Coeur d’Alene Water Department building off Ramsey Road are two folders filled with letters from the 1940s to 2009 to the city about the pros and cons of fluoride.

The controversy back then kicked into high gear after an Idaho Water employee got sick, and another one, leading a school field trip of the facility, reportedly told the children: “I hate to take you into this room because this is where your health department makes us put poison in the water for you kids.”

A citywide vote ousted the practice by a margin of three votes to one.

Today, Idaho is generally fluoride free.

Only Riverside Water and Sewer District, city of Lewiston and Mountain Home Force Air Force Base add minimal levels, according to Jerri Henry, with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality Drinking Water Program.

Coeur d’Alene’s levels are so low that it’s required to test each each of its wells every nine years.

So if the recommended federal levels are lowered in the next year or two — the Lake City’s supply is in the clear.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.