Public-Ramp Opponents At Water’s Edge

FROM SPORTS REPLAY page C2(Friday, July 25, 1997): Correction A hearing on proposed improvements to the public boat ramp at Liberty Lake is Aug. 6 at 9 a.m. The hearing date was incorrectly reported in Rich Landers’ column Thursday. In addition, the Spokane County hearing examiner has no authority to close down the access, said Chad Hudson of the hearing examiner’s office. It can only approve or reject proposed improvements.

Angling’s sweet land of Liberty began to go sour about 20 years ago. The bitter developments continue this week.

Some property owners would like to close the only public boat ramp on Liberty Lake. They smell the opportunity at a public hearing scheduled for this morning.

The skirmish is just the latest in a rebellion that has had revolutionary consequences for fishing.

Members of the Liberty Lake Property Owners Association (LLPOA) first emerged as a force against fishing when they exercised their right to free speech at a Washington Game Commission meeting in Spokane in 1984. They wore T-shirts, carried signs and towed along their children. The protest was orchestrated to make us sob over their pitiful future should the state continue its trout management program at Liberty Lake.

Up to that time, you might recall, Liberty had been among the state’s top three trout-producing lakes for 25 years.

That 1984 performance by the property owners was so well-planned, even local television crews showed up for the action. TV hadn’t been to a wildlife-related commission meeting before that, and I can’t think of an instance since.

LLPOA drummed up the crowd by distributing a flier urging lake residents to come to the meeting. The flier, however, included a particularly disturbing line.

“Your attendance is vital,” it said, “to stop this intrusion on our lake.”

Being a student of American history, I am aware the struggle for rights to access Liberty Lake has smoldered for some time, possibly as early as 1775, when Patrick Henry said, “Give me Liberty or give me death!”

But the flier was a milestone.

It was the first time the lake residents publicly declared Liberty as their lake.

In the interest of Liberty - and justice for all - fishermen tried to remind the commission that the LLPOA had bought only the property around the lake.

Sportsmen didn’t like the property owners claiming 700 acres of public waters, too. Neither would Franklin Roosevelt, who said during a 1934 fireside chat, “I am not for a return to that definition of Liberty under which … a free people were being gradually regimented into the service of the privileged few.”

The property owners said continuation of the trout management program that had been in effect at the lake since the 1950s would degrade the water quality.

This was ironic, given the Liberty Lake landowners were the first to threaten the lake’s water quality with their sewage.

The sewage problem was checked in the early ‘70s with a new treatment plant. About 85 percent of the facility was funded by public tax money.

Sportsmen’s license fees had been used to maintain Liberty’s trout fishery.

But the property owners prevailed.

The use of the organic chemical rotenone was nixed at Liberty Lake (although it’s still used with no serious water quality consequences elsewhere).

The fishery has been second-rate for 20 years.

Hope for better fishing at Liberty has been restored with the recent stocking of walleyes. But that program will be washed up if the landowners prevail in shutting down the boat ramp.

A hearing is set for 9 a.m. today in the Spokane County Public Works Building under the direction of John Nunnery, Spokane County shoreline administrator.

The state Fish and Wildlife Department must pass scrutiny of the public hearing for approval to spend about $175,000 to improve the boat access at Liberty Lake and prevent storm-water runoff from polluting the water.

The plans also call for improving parking and building a small dock, handicap-accessible fishing pier and vandal-proof toilets.

Public opposition to these plans could force closure of the access site.

You can bet that lake property owners will be there.

With only 273 public-fishing access sites in Washington, anglers can’t afford to lose a single one. Liberty once had four resorts and and a world-class fishery.

The boating public could lose what little is left with one pressured decision.

As Abraham Lincoln, put it, “Our defense is in the spirit which prized Liberty as a heritage of all men.”

, DataTimes MEMO: You can contact Rich Landers by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5508.