Mussels Take a Road Trip for Education

By Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate-

A mess of quagga mussels came up north Wednesday. But this ugly, smelly lump of exotic, invasive shellfish didn’t come on the hull of a boat. It came in Amy Ferriter’s suitcase, passing through airport security at Spokane International Airport.

It’s was a shellacked piece of mussel-infested pipe from Lake Mead that Ferriter, of the Idaho Department of Agriculture, brought as a show-piece for what can become of North Idaho’s lakes if we aren’t vigilant.

Ferriter is tasked with implementing the state’s new boat stickers and boat inspection stations . In just 90 days since the new boat sticker legislation was made law, the state has established 15 boat inspection stations across the state to catch boaters hauling the tiny invasive mussels in or through Idaho.

Ferriter joined Rep. Eric Anderson in meetings in Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint Wednesday to explain the programs and take feedback. They want this prevention effort to be a success, and so do we!

Kootenai County Residents Undermined

By Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate-

After years of toil, hundreds of hours of meetings and the input of many citizens and paid consultants, the volunteers on Kootenai County’s planning and zoning board came up with a plan for guiding growth in the county for the next 20 years.

The plan isn’t perfect, but it does reflect the values and desires of county residents as captured by the county’s consultants.

Overwhelmingly, county residents told the consultants that they wanted to protect their rural character, their natural areas and to manage growth to protect their quality of life.

Then came the last-minute salvos from “Citizens for Balance,” a special interest group representing developers, builders and realtors. Citizens for Balance recently delivered a their version of the plan to the county – one that devalues natural resources, rural protection and reducing sprawl.

This week, the three Kootenai County Commissioners began rewriting the draft land use plan based on the edits suggested by Citizens for Balance, while ignoring other public comments.

If Citizens for Balance gets its way, residents can look forward to the same old sprawl that eats up the countryside, increases traffic and pollution, and gradually destroys the quality of life. The commissioners should give the same weight to other public input if they are truly interested in balance.

State Deliberates on Blackwell Island Marina

Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate

Plans to upgrade the Blackwell Island Marina into an upscale Marina Yacht Club with 548 boat slips to accommodate everything from 60-foot yachts to dozens of Jet Skis were presented at a packed public hearing before the Idaho Department of Lands and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Thursday night.

Duane Hagadone, the Idaho tourism magnate who owns Marina Yacht Club LLC, watched quietly from the second row of seats that crammed the meeting room as his admirers, watchdogs and interested citizens spent three hours discussing the expansion plans.

ICL’s interest in the project was piqued by plans to dredge 121,000 cubic yards of lake bottom material from the marina basin and store it on a man-made island, an area known to flood.  That wouldn’t be much of a concern if a good portion of those sediments weren’t contaminated with heavy metals, such as lead, arsenic and cadmium, from the historic mining operations in the Silver Valley.

In addition to independent oversight of the complicated project, we asked that the state require the marina to provide public access to the boat launch and consider additional public access to compensate for the increased acreage the new marina footprint will take up on Lake Coeur d’Alene.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is accepting written comments until June 15 on the dredging permit.

Bye Bye Barry – Change of the guard at KEA

Photo by Spokesman Review

By Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate-

It’s been almost two weeks since Barry Rosenberg, the charismatic director of Kootenai Environmental Alliance,  stepped down and retired to his cabin in the woods.

Check out the Spokesman-Review’s recent profile of the long-time activist. Barry left KEA in good shape – the organization, which was established in the early ‘70s, has grown and is well-known as a defender of the forests, Kootenai County’s waterways, and, in recent years in particular, the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.
Barry may out of the headlines now, having turned operations over to the very capable Terry Harris, a land use attorney who moved here last fall from Maryland. Welcome Terry to North Idaho’s conservation community!

Interest Grows in Community Gardens

Photo by Jerry Pavia

By Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate-

Community gardens are sprouting up all over North Idaho this spring. Sandpoint Mayor Gretchen Hellar told resident gardeners to grab their shovels Wednesday after the City Council voted to allow a community garden on city property. The same day, manure was being dumped and spread on the new community garden in Bonners Ferry, organized by GROW (Greater Regional Organic Wellbeing), a new group that formed for the purpose of creating a place for people to grow their own vegetables.

And in Coeur d’Alene, Community Roots and others are building a community garden on an empty lot downtown, and all the planned raised beds are already reserved by interested local gardeners.

Community gardens have many environmental and social benefits – from reducing the amount of food being trucked thousands of miles to the supermarket to saving folks money – and it’s heartening to see the surge of interest in North Idaho.

Bike trails need to reach state government

By Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate-

Grassroots efforts at developing new trail connections are spreading like, well, grass roots in North Idaho. Folks in Spirit Lake think trails connecting their little lakeshore to Mt. Spokane are one of the keys to their economic future.  In Bonner County, a county-wide trails advisory group is creating maps of all the different regions with existing non-motorized and motorized trails to identify where new trails should go and to help county land use planners.

Also, the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail project  connecting Sandpoint to Ponderay and Kootenai is gaining steam with the help of the National Park Service trail planning expertise.  And in Kootenai County, the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization recently surveyed county residents on their opinions about trails as part of a non-motorized trail planning effort.

Despite all this interest and activity, state transportation officials and the governor’s office are unmoved – and continue to put trails and bike lanes at the bottom of their priority list, making it nearly impossible for local communities to access transportation dollars for these popular projects.

Money for Coeur d’Alene Lake

By Courtney Washburn, Community Conservation Director-

The legislative budget committee approved funding for the Coeur d’Alene Lake Management Plan. Whether the $332,500 comes from the state or a federal grant, it will be funded. We are supportive of the plan represents an agreement between the state and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and calls for voluntary measures to control nutrients and other pollutants from getting into the lake, and keeping heavy metals from historic mining operations trapped in the lakebed sediments. The cornerstones of the plan are constant lake monitoring and public education.

Aquatic Invaders

By Courtney Washburn, Community Conservation Director-

Some call them noxious invaders, some prefer invasive species or weeds, whatever you choose to call them everyone agrees that we don’t want them. Rep. Anderson (R-1) introduced HB 213 which would provide the much-needed funds to protect Idaho’s waterways. The proposed boat tag program would require boat owners to buy a sticker to fund to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species. The sticker would cost $10 for in state motorized boats, $20 for out of state motorized boats and $5 for non-motorized boats.

These freshwater, bivalve mollusks have invaded many lakes and reservoirs in states surrounding Idaho. They are small but bring a whole host of problems. They can destroy native aquatic ecosystems, water treatment facilities, dams, and irrigation equipment, just to name a few. They attach to any hard surface, including the shells of native mussels and turtles. Estimates show that the monitoring and control of zebra and quagga mussels would cost at least $94 million dollars a year.

To learn more about the spread of quagga and zebra mussels in the western US go to 100th Meridian Initiative .

Dozin’ for ducks

Susan Drumheller, North Idaho Associate

It’s nice to know folks are keeping an eye out for the wetlands in the Pack River Delta.

When the Idaho Fish and Game launched a restoration project this winter to restore habitat for waterfowl in the delta, the agency got some calls from concerned residents who feared the bulldozers were expanding the nearby Idaho Club golf course.  It isn’t what it seems, however.

In collaboration with Ducks Unlimited and Avista Corp., Fish and Game is trying to repair the damage done to the wetlands by years dam operations downstream.

They’re building up islands, installing engineered log structure to slow the flow of the Pack River and capture sediments, and planting trees and cattails. When it’s done, the delta should be a more welcoming and productive site for migrating waterfowl to nest and feed.

In fact, Fish and Game is looking for folks to grab shovels and help with the plantings in April and again in July.  Cabela’s is sponsoring a dutch oven cooking contest each day of the planting effort, and volunteers get to help choose the day’s winner.
Interested volunteers can sign up by calling Idaho Fish and Game at  (208) 769-1414.

However, not everybody up North is doing right by the wetlands.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 10 settled with eight developers and contractors over Clean Water Act violations at four construction sites near Sandpoint, Idaho. These first time violators settled EPA’s claims by agreeing to come into compliance and paying penalties ranging from about $7,000 to nearly $15,000 each.

Idaho mining company petitions supreme court…

By Justin Hayes, Program Director

The Los Angeles Times reports that Idaho-based Coeur d’Alene Mining Company is going before the Supreme Court in an effort to get approval for its proposed Kensington Mine in Alaska.

The company proposes to dump its mining waste in an alpine lake.  Lower courts have ruled that the plan, which would kill all of the fish in the lake, would violate the Clean Water Act.  The company hopes to convince  the high court that their waste should not be regulated by the EPA as pollution discharge, but rather by the US Army Corps of Engineers as “fill.”