Project Losing Soil Silt From Development Goes Into Hayden Lake

The name of the new hillside development above Tobler Marina is mud to Richard Penn.

For weeks, thousands of gallons of chocolatecolored, silt-filled runoff have poured from the fouracre project, across his property and into Hayden Lake.

“At one point, the silt in the roadway was ankledeep,” says Penn, who owns the marina.

Such runoff adds nutrients to the lake which, in turn, promote excessive weed and algae growth.

Developers are scurrying to correct the problem but admit it will be months before it’s under control.

Erosion from new hillside homes into Kootenai County’s lakes is growing more difficult to manage, experts say. Poor education and weak regulations are adding to the problem.

“We’re seeing this a lot more,” said June Bergquist, a water quality worker with Idaho’s Division of Environmental Quality. A quarter of the 200 complaints her office reviewed last year concerned erosion from development.

Developers must submit storm water management plans to the county before moving any dirt. But a first inspection often isn’t required until building has been started - well after the problem is out of control.

On the hill above Tobler Marina, none of the four planned homes has been started. Developers have built a road and done some groundwork.

“People don’t realize that a little extra expense upfront could prevent these problems later,” she said.

Planners admit Kootenai County is partly to blame for the runoff that is draining up to 50 gallons of silt a minute near the marina.

Plans for the development in Cooper’s Bay were inadequately reviewed in May 1994.

“The slopes were too steep,” said planner Rand Wichman. That makes the hillside less stable and makes it hard for erosion-blocking grass to take root.

When planners caught their error, they stopped work on the project June 23. Commissioners then urged planners to work with project engineer Gary Frame.

Frame built a collection pond for the runoff and added bales of straw.

“I’m not a radical, but I do have some concern about people putting up a few hay bales and thinking that’s going to take care of it,” said Hayden Lake resident Earnest Fokes, who drives past the marina on his way home from work.

Planners skeptically OK’d the system last summer. But the area’s fine soils just run through the bales, and the collection system failed during last month’s heavy rains - as they feared it might.

“We didn’t make him do it right when we had the chance,” said Wichman.

Frame says he went above and beyond the county’s regulations, but the area is a natural drainage.

Water from other developments seeps onto his project and flows from there into the lake.

“You can’t just build a dam, because you’d need a Grand Coulee Dam and it would break,” he said.

Frame said the slopes were not a problem. Last summer’s dry heat made it impossible for grass to grow - even with regular watering, he said.

He has hired an erosion-control expert, who has rerouted some of the runoff. But that is “a Band-Aid approach,” said Bergquist.

“It’s going to be real rough going until we get some vegetation on that hillside” this spring or summer.