Billboards A Blight On Idaho Border

(December 1, 1995, page B10, Editorial page.) The report of Lady Bird Johnson’s death, in Thursday’s editorial, was greatly exaggerated. The former first lady is alive.

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And upon entering Idaho from the Spokane area, that impression used to be of mountains, forest and prairie.

Soon, that rural vista will be obscured by at least five billboard towers, three stories high, every 700 feet. Such large billboards aren’t allowed in Washington, just a few hundred yards away.

Impression? Welcome to “scenic Idaho” - not.

Kootenai County commissioners, with a big assist from Attorney General Al Lance’s office, effectively destroyed the port-of-entry view by approving the monstrous billboard support towers.

Nice job, commissioners.

Last January, the commission sold the county’s birthright for a pittance in personal property taxes with little fanfare. The Kootenai Environmental Alliance offered token opposition in a written complaint: “A line of billboards from the river to Pleasant View Road would be a real eyesore.”

You had to read the small print in public-meeting notices to realize that N.A. Degerstrom of Spokane wanted a zone change to light industrial so his land could sprout billboards. At 65 miles per hour, that’s one every 9 seconds.

Most people don’t have time to read small print.

The commissioners should have made a point to alert the public about this important issue - particularly after all the local fuss about billboards this decade.

In the last five years, the cities of Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls have imposed moratoriums on billboard construction. Ex-Coeur d’Alene councilman Steve McCrea called them “visual pollution.” Post Falls Councilman Scott Grant said the spread of billboards along I-90 “poses an imminent threat to efforts to establish a more attractive community.”

In a 1993 advisory vote, 78 percent of Post Falls said it didn’t want any more billboards.

The Attorney General’s office shares in the blame for “billboard alley” because it manipulated the rules to make the billboards fit federal Highway Beautification Act rules.

Federal regulations forbid land from being rezoned for light industrial use solely to erect billboards. But Lance’s office decided that the property indeed was light industrial because neighbor Jacklin Seed Co. parked company trailers there.

And the dastardly deed was done.

Lady Bird Johnson must be turning in her grave.

In the late 1960s, the former First Lady fought to prevent exactly what’s happening now on the western edge of Post Falls - at an area, ironically, known as Pleasant View.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board