Two Officials Stick To Their Aquifer Ruling Health District Unhappily Goes Along With Commissioners’ Decision

County Commissioners Dick Compton and Dick Panabaker stand by their vote to allow industrial development over the Rathdrum aquifer without requiring connection to a sewage plant.

It’s the first controversial vote made by the two rookie commissioners. Critics see this as a sign the board will give too much leeway to developers.

Last month, the two commissioners voted to change zoning on 150 acres near the airport to allow the landowner to put in machine shops.

The Panhandle Health District unhappily agreed Tuesday to go along with the decision by requiring that the developer haul chemical waste to a treatment plant.

“This solution is more cumbersome and makes our job exponentially harder,” said Ken Lustig, environmental health specialist for the district. “We can do it, but we don’t like it.”

Lustig isn’t the only one concerned by the controversial vote.

Health officials and planning commissioners say the decision violates the comprehensive plan and increases risk to the water supply.

Two planning commissioners threatened to resign last week when they learned of the elected officials’ vote.

Tuesday, the two sides discussed the decision but maintained their opposing positions. Compton said everyone is at fault for poor communication.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” he said. “The point is it’s a done deal.”

He also asked planning commissioners to bring disagreements to him before making them public.

Their initial concerns had been aired during a public meeting when Compton was out of town.

“I will not take you to task in the newspaper,” Compton said. “I would ask for the same courtesy.”

Resident Gertrude Hanson interrupted.

“This is not a boardroom, Mr. Compton,” she said. “If there are dissenting opinions, I want to hear them.”

She later said the commissioner had sounded as if he were “chastising his unruly children. These are adults who represent us. I don’t want him telling them what they can tell me.”

Compton and Panabaker argued Tuesday that the site approved for the machine shops lies in the flight pattern for planes using the airport - a bad place for residential development. Compton also defended his decision by pointing to the health district’s plan to require trucking the waste off-site.

“We’re all concerned about the aquifer,” he said. “I’m satisfied there are safeguards to protect it.”

Lustig, however, said those safeguards are designed to fix existing problems - not allow new ones to pop up.

“He’s using my technical explanation that it is possible (to truck waste) as an excuse to do something that’s not good planning,” Lustig said.

The county can’t force a developer to sign an agreement to hook up to a sewer plant, Panabaker said.

But critics said the commissioners had ignored other choices.

“If they don’t want an agreement, then you deny the rezone,” said attorney and former commissioner candidate Marc McGregor. “It’s simple.”

But that would give the landowner the ability to build homes there - a worse fate because the site is near the airport, Compton said.

Then leave the use as agriculture in the meantime, Lustig said.

“Is it (the role of planning) to facilitate a developer being able to do whatever he wants with his land?” Lustig asked. “Or is it to develop a tapestry that the community will be satisfied with in 20 years? I think it’s the latter.”