Let science guide lake management
Imagine our community without a thriving Lake Coeur d’Alene.
You can’t, can you?
Our beloved lake is the heart of the region: A recreational haven, an aesthetic escape, a natural wonder.
As has been documented over the years, the lake also harbors a century’s worth of heavy metals carried down from mining activities in the Silver Valley. Some of those metals have the potential to essentially kill this priceless, pristine water body. Fortunately, they’re also buried under protective layers of sediment.
Yet various interests are struggling to find agreeable strategies for something everybody wants: A healthy, thriving Lake Coeur d’Alene. As today’s front-page article by Jennifer Passaro illustrates, one of the simplest ways to protect the lake’s health is to dramatically limit the harmful chemicals that can seep into the lake from the shoreline. But apparently, it’s not so simple.
County regulations and ordinances for shoreline development include a 25-foot shoreline protection buffer, which is much shorter than most buffers around water bodies. Kootenai County is charged with enforcing shoreline rules and regulations, but its ordinance hasn’t been modified since 1973 — and the county’s population has quadrupled since then.
Adding to the challenge is the fact that the county has devoted scant resources to enforcing the ordinance, which prohibits removal of native vegetation, site disturbance, or building a structure other than stairs or docks.
Meantime, Gov. Brad Little is weighing options in finding an unimpeachable third party to thoroughly analyze the health of the lake and perhaps to recommend steps to preserve or improve the lake’s health. Sources contacted by The Press believe the governor will have something in place no later than the end of this year, though results would not be expected until significantly later.
Also in today’s paper is a submission by an organization called Our Gem Coeur d’Alene Lake Collaborative, a team of professionals working to protect local water resources. You’ll be seeing more from them, as they offer valuable information and common sense advice on ways we all can take care of our water resources.
It’s the belief here that the county needs to revisit its outdated shoreline ordinance and explore ways to ensure it’s doing all it can to protect Lake Coeur d’Alene. That’s not being done now, and its negligence is making a tenuous reality worse.
Most of all, science must be the guiding light in addressing challenges the lake faces. Political, business and personal preferences all must make way for whatever science dictates as best courses of action for the lake we all love — and need.