Trail’s First Stop Will Make Hikers Want To Keep Going

The first leg of the Fish Lake to Pasco trail may be scenic, but its destination’s a pit.

Using $500,000 in federal money, the city of Cheney is paving 3.5 miles of the old Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway Co. corridor from the town’s sewage treatment plant to a Spokane County park at Fish Lake. Crews should finish the work this summer.

Of the two trail ends, the sewage plant is the more attractive.

Grass grows waist high at the county park and hog wire sags between fence posts. The dock has floated away from shore and sunbathers lie in the hard-packed sand of the boat launch.

Strapped for cash and stuck with an illegal septic system, the county does little more than empty the park’s trash cans and maintain two Port-A-Potties.

“I’m telling you straight up, what you see here is dangerous,” fisherman Bob Anstine said Wednesday, as a herd of preteen girls climbed a cliff overlooking the lake.

Anstine, a regular park visitor, would like to see playground equipment to draw kids away from the cliff.

He’d appreciate a few picnic tables and barbecue pits, and maybe a small lawn for the sun bathers.

None of that is coming soon, said Wyn Birkenthal, Spokane County parks director. In fact, the park may never be improved.

Although the park is six acres, there’s no place that’s dry enough and big enough for an adequate septic system, Birkenthal said, so there’s no sense drawing more people who would overwhelm the portable toilets.

“Maybe it’s not the optimal public use right now, but it is being preserved” from private development, Birkenthal said.

The park also is mired in a legal battle.

In 1991, the county paid Tom Myers $295,000 for the former fishing resort. County officials agreed to maintain an open pit that was the sewer system for the park, and a trailer court and restaurant still owned by Myers.

In 1992, the Spokane County Health District ruled the pit on Myers’ property illegal. Last year, after several delays, the health district shut down the trailer court and restaurant so the pit could be abandoned.

Myers is suing the county for not maintaining the pit.

This isn’t the first time park plans fell flat at Fish Lake.

In 1966, the county paid $42,000 for 4.5 acres on the north end of the lake, announcing plans for a swimming area, boat launch, picnic tables and playground.

That land proved too marshy to develop.

, DataTimes