LAND USE: Keep standards in place

If Kootenai County wants to locally direct its land use, then it needs to be proactive in keeping basic standards in place that support a wide range of benefits to Idaho citizens and natural resources. Commissioners want to change ordinances to eliminate ANY natural vegetative buffer along shoreline properties. Revisions show benefits to few new shoreline owners and big development, while ignoring the benefits of natural vegetative buffers to all other interests. In Bonner County, water setbacks are 40 feet along lakes, 75 feet along rivers. Most everywhere there are waterfront buffers because it’s a FACT that they:

Filter pesticides and fertilizers, decrease sediment from smothering fish habitat, reduce flooding by acting as a sponge, allow rain to release slowly from soaked soils to recharge streams during drier times, provide shade that helps keep water cooler supporting essential aquatic organisms, reduce loss of property from erosion. The list goes on…

The shortsightedness by Kootenai County Commissioners to eliminate shoreline buffers shows ignorance to other values including: existing citizens who continue to support all enforceable measures to prevent waterway pollutants from negatively impacting water quality over time.

As citizens within the state, we all deserve fair representation, without an erosion of “our” shorelines. It is a unifying concept in that we are lake “owners” through “The Public Trust Doctrine.”

“The public trust…is an affirmation of the duty of the state to protect the people’s common heritage of streams, lakes, marshlands and tidelands.”

JULIE DALSASO

Coeur d’Alene