Businessman pleads guilty in dredging

Spokane businessman Thomas Hamilton has agreed to fill in the channel he illegally dredged in front of his Spokane River home near Post Falls.

As part of the agreement, Hamilton will plead guilty to one charge of construction without a permit and pay a $300 fine to Kootenai County.

The state of Idaho has given him until May 1 to restore the river, but Hamilton said recent rains have raised the river level by 4 feet, making access impossible to heavy equipment.

“Maybe they can throw me in jail,” he said.

“It’s all covered now. It’s all muck, it’s mud. Can you imagine the disturbance of soils?”

Over Mother’s Day weekend last year, a 150-foot-long natural inlet in front of Hamilton’s riverfront home was excavated.

Although Hamilton and his architect, Spokane City Councilman Al French, had filed permit applications with three different government agencies, none had been approved.

And only two days before work began, the two had been warned not to proceed.

The work deepened the inlet about 15 inches in most places, Hamilton said. Instead of dredging, he could have built a long dock stretching out into the river. Or he could have simply used the technique of many others living along the river, Hamilton said, which is to churn up the mud and silt with an outboard motor propeller.

“I was just trying to get it so I didn’t stir up the soils,” Hamilton said.

“There’s more churning that goes on in a given weekend out there than what I ever touched. … This was something I didn’t need to do. I was looking for a way not to impact traffic. I’ve been made out to be a crook and a jailbird, and all I was trying to do was help out the environment.”

The actions transformed the river’s clear water to the color of coffee and horrified some of Hamilton’s neighbors.

Government officials said the dredging could have covered downstream trout eggs with a suffocating plume of silt, not to mention that dredging without a permit is clearly illegal. His architect, French, also faced criticism.

French was named a defendant in the court complaint filed by the state of Idaho, as was Hamilton’s contractor, Clearwater Summit Group, of Hayden.

French has repeatedly declined to discuss the matter and has referred all calls to Hamilton.

Hamilton said French should be given a break.

“Poor Al. All Al was, was an agent,” he said.

Although Hamilton has agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge, he said he was told the charge would likely be wiped from his record if he commits no other crimes in the next year.

Officials with the Idaho Department of Lands and the Kootenai County Building and Planning Department could not be reached for comment Thursday.

An official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Hamilton faces no federal punishment if he complies with the conditions set by the state of Idaho.

Hamilton said the boat slip has cost him more than $100,000 in legal and technical fees.