Grounded houseboat towed away

COEUR d'ALENE - An unattended houseboat was hung up near Sanders Beach on Saturday, but the vessel had been moved by Monday morning.

The houseboat was reportedly old and weather-beaten, with a tin roof and paint peeling off the exterior. It came to rest in shallow water a few yards from the public section of the beach.

A Kootenai County Sheriff's Department deputy boarded and investigated the houseboat, according to Sgt. Matt Street of the Recreation Safety Section. The deputy found a newspaper dating back to 2007, but nothing else of note.

The boat's owner could not be determined.

Without a pilot, the houseboat had been drifting around Lake Coeur d'Alene for several days, at the mercy of weather and current. It was reported by Silver Beach earlier this week, Street said.

"The wind must've taken it," he added.

Around 10 a.m. Monday a small tugboat dislodged the floating house and towed it away from Sanders Beach, an eyewitness said. City of Coeur d'Alene Parks Superintendent Bill Greenwood said he checked the beach Monday morning but found the houseboat had already been removed.

"Normally, if it's on public land, we (the city) end up having to move any debris," Greenwood said. "Sometimes it's there one day and gone the next."

The sheriff's department fielded a second floating debris call over the weekend: On Sunday, deputies received word that a dock had torn loose on the fast-flowing Spokane River.

Street said the Recreation Safety Section had more urgent matters that required attention, so officers did not respond to the dock call.

"This time of year with a lot of runoff, that sort of debris is a pretty frequent thing," Street said. "In low water times, (docks stay) high and dry. And when the water level comes up, they'll kind of break loose. And a lot of times it just gets hung up on someone else's dock."

River detritus often stacks up by Greensferry Island, Street said. It will sometimes wend its way downriver to the Post Falls spill gates.

When the department responds to a dock call, deputies approach the debris on foot or by boat. They try to identify the owner of the dock by finding a permit number. Occasionally they will motor back upstream to search for the spot where the pier came free.

If no number is found, and deputies have no way of finding the owner, they usually leave the debris alone.

"There's not really any agency that exists that deals with the expense of moving it," Street said. It we can't find out who owns it, the question is, what do we do with it now?"

Private landowners are responsible for any trash that washes up on their shoreline, he explained. Had the Sanders Beach houseboat run aground on private - rather than city - property, the owner would have been forced to pay for its removal.

But instead of spending money, many property owners simply push the debris back out into the lake, where itbecomes somebody else's problem.

A tugboat service once hauled trash to a nearby bay, and then burned it all later, Street recalled. That kind of burning is now prohibited, though.

Street said he has seen huge rafts of floating trash.

"I've had stuff come up the lake that is probably 40 feet square, and it's just piled high with debris, and barrels, and old branches," he said. "If we find it, we try to (move) it our of the main navigational channels."

The ongoing January thaw could bring more debris ashore. Due to heavy rains and melting snow, Lake Coeur d'Alene's current level is around 2,129 feet, according to water data from the United States Geological Survey.

On Jan. 17, the lake was just under 2,126 feet.