Too Close For Comfort Residents Say Airstrip Illegal, But County Won’t Close It

Larry Davis lives miles from an airport but can watch planes take off from his porch in Garwood, Idaho.

It has unnerved him for four years.

“It’s too close,” he said. If there ever were an accident, “it’d be all over for me and my house.”

Back in 1992 when Davis and his neighbors first saw a landing strip under construction near their homes, they were relieved to learn Kootenai County bans runways within 2,000 feet of homes. The county would just shut it down, they figured.

But four years later, pilots still use the makeshift airfield and county commissioners refuse to stop them.

“A few weeks ago, we had five planes land within three hours,” Davis said. “They were so close I could hear the people laughing. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

Neighbors are gathering petitions, soliciting help from a state senator and writing letters to Idaho’s attorney general. They’ve attended meetings and hired an attorney. Some say they’ve made 50 or more phone calls.

But commissioners maintain “complex legal issues” prevent them from taking action.

“Those folks would like us to sue and make sure no one ever lands there,” said Commissioner Dick Compton. But the county “doesn’t want to sink a heck of a lot of money into something we don’t think we can win.”

There are two problems, county attorneys say. The first dates back a decade to when the old crop-dusters runway slipped out of use.

In fact it was covered with so many 15-foot saplings that former Commissioner Frank Henderson said in a 1990 meeting that it no longer existed.

Once an airstrip has been abandoned for six months, it cannot be returned to use without a permit.

In 1990, commissioners approved the Bar Circle S Ranch, a residential development next door.

A year later, when residents like Davis and neighbor Diane Corsi were building their homes, the brush came down and the airstrip came back in.

Angry residents turned to the county. They said the old airstrip had been abandoned and, according to county rules, shouldn’t be allowed to reopen.

“It was discontinued,” argued resident Diane Corsi. “It was just a bunch of trees.”

But Terry Auten, part of a four-family partnership that owns the land, said the Federal Aviation Administration never stopped listing it as landing strip. Therefore, he said, it technically remained legally in use - even though the runway is only 50 feet from Davis’ property line.

Residents began fearing an accident. They saw tree limbs clipped by plane wings. They point to a 1995 Cessna crash in Kent, Wash., where the plane hit a tree while trying to land at a small strip and then tumbled into a home.

And they complained about noise.

“It’s like having a railroad in your front yard,” Corsi said. “The whole house shakes.”

Then, last year, a second problem arose.

In an unrelated move, Auten’s partners tried to divide their land. They were denied by the county and appealed. Commissioners settled the case by agreeing not to take the developers back to court.

County Attorney Scott Wayman now believes that the county would violate its agreement with Auten if it sued to halt use of the airstrip.

That has residents fuming.

“They’re telling us they gave permission to this guy to break the ordinance,” Davis said. “That’d be like the governor telling me I can go rob a liquor store. You don’t do that.”

For now, commissioners say they will encourage residents to take the runway owners to court, but won’t do it themselves.

Airstrip owners maintain the runway was there first and suggest the county shouldn’t have approved the neighbors’ subdivision in 1990.

Neighbors argue there’s no point in having ordinances if they’re not enforced.

And planes take off and land 50 feet from Davis’ property line - the one thing county rules were designed to avoid.

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