Solutions

The National Park Service conducted a comprehensive, highly inclusive, five-year process to create a General Management Plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument. When implemented, the Plan would develop interpretive and educational programming at the Minidoka site. In addition, legislation is currently pending before Congress that would expand the boundaries of the National Monument in Idaho and add an important related site on Bainbridge Island, Washington, thus bringing more resources under protection and enhancing interpretive opportunities. This legislation complements legislation recently signed into law by President Bush (supported by the National Trust) that authorizes the creation of a $38 million grant program to ensure the protection of all ten Japanese Internment Camps. Unfortunately, funds for the program have yet to be appropriated.

Funding alone will not eliminate the immediate threat posed by the development of a 13,000-head concentrated animal feeding operation approximately 1.25 miles upwind of the Minidoka Internment National Monument. The impacts of CAFOs on air and water quality are both well documented and significant. In Idaho, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate CAFOs through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits as potential point sources for industrial wastewater pollution. Minidoka Internment National Monument and other historic sites and communities could be better protected through the enactment and enforcement of local, state, and federal permitting processes that are required to consider the impact these industrial facilities have on communities and historic resources.