Sanders Beach line upheld

Private property rights won Tuesday when a 1st District Court judge ruled that the public has access to Coeur d’Alene’s popular Sanders Beach only below 2,130-feet elevation.

That means sunbathers and swimmers have a few less feet of sand to use than last summer, when the public could access any beach below the seawalls between 12th and 15th streets. Now the city of Coeur d’Alene must figure out how to mark the sand to show where private property ends and public beach begins.

Judge James Judd, via a conference call from Boise, said his September ruling stands, and the ordinary high-water mark is at 2,130 feet above sea level – the invisible line where private property ends and public land begins.

“For me to permit public use up to the seawall in light of my judgment is clearly a taking of private property for public use,” Judd said.

He rejected the city’s request not to enforce the mark until the Idaho Supreme Court makes a final decision. The high court has scheduled an August hearing, and a ruling is likely sometime in spring 2007.

The city wanted Judd, as he did last summer, to declare that anything below the Sanders Beach seawalls as open to the public until the high court makes a ruling as an assured way to keep the peace this summer.

The 2,130-foot mark isn’t obvious. Only one seawall is at that elevation, while the locations of others vary.

Coeur d’Alene attorney Mike Haman, who represents the city, said he may ask the Idaho Supreme Court to not enforce Judd’s 2,130-foot ruling until it makes a final decision.

Yet he said it’s more likely the city will honor Judd’s ruling and decide how to erect a physical barrier before the busy July Fourth holiday.

The uncertainty of the invisible mark prompted annual summertime squabbles between property owners and beachgoers, and ultimately caused the city and Kootenai County to file a lawsuit in 2004 asking the court to determine the high-water mark once and for all.

That’s what Judd did last fall with his 2,130-foot ruling.

Yet Haman argued that until the high court makes the final determination, it’s not economically feasible for the city to get a survey and erect some type of physical barrier. He added that such a barrier could also damage the aesthetic beauty of the beach.

That’s why the city wanted the entire beach open to the public until the high court makes a final decision.

Judd was unsympathetic to the city’s position and said it’s the same trespass concern that any private property owner faces with unenclosed land.

“Those are the problems you have with any boundary line,” he said. “It’s what the parties have to live with.”

Last month, Judd also rejected the city’s request to keep in place a temporary injunction that declared any beach below the seawalls open to the public until the high court rules.