Float-Home Owners Drift Into Limbo On Lake Cda

Four families thought they were avoiding an uncertain future by moving their floating homes from the state’s oldest park.

But the move itself is caught in the uncertainty swirling around two contested court rulings: one declaring that an American Indian tribe owns the southern third of Lake Coeur d’Alene; the other determining where private property ends and the public lake bed begins.

The Idaho Parks and Recreation Board in 1990 told the owners of 28 float homes that the structures must be torn down or moved from the park by 2010. The board reasoned that removing the homes would allow more park visitors to use Hidden Lake, at the southern tip of Lake Coeur d’Alene.

While most of the float-home owners still are pondering what to do, four last year purchased 20 acres of lakefront property just outside the park. They pounded pilings into the lake in front of the parcel and towed their floating houses into place, building floating boardwalks to link the houses with the land.

State law since 1974 has banned new float homes. But the law allows existing homes to be moved on the same lake, as long as the owners obtain permits from the state Department of Lands.

Bill Schnurr and the three other owners didn’t apply for “encroachment” permits until after they already had moved their summer homes from the park.

“I did not know that anything was needed,” said Schnurr, whose family has had a floating home on Hidden Lake since the 1880s.

The Department of Lands at first denied the retroactive permits, partly because the owners hadn’t yet received septic permits from the Panhandle Health District. The permit was issued after the families spent about $100,000 on a community sewage system, Schnurr said.

The state was close to approving encroachment permits when a federal judge ruled that the Coeur d’Alene Tribe owns the lower third of the lake, not including Heyburn State Park. That means the tribe, not the state, is responsible for deciding what can be built on the portion of the lake where Schnurr and his neighbors have their homes.

“It’s out of our hands,” said Carl Washburn of the lands department.

The tribal council has said it will honor existing permits but won’t have policies for issuing new ones until at least next year. Until then, it’s impossible to say how the tribe would respond to any individual cases, tribal spokesman Bob Bostwick said.

Schnurr said he’s “not the least bit afraid,” because he and the other float-home owners met all of the requirements to get permits.

“I don’t think the tribe’s going to care,” he said. “They’re reasonable people.”

Schnurr said it may be a moot point anyway, because the lake bed where the homes are anchored is more than 2,121 feet above sea level. A Kootenai County judge ruled in 1996 that everything above that mark belongs to adjacent landowners, not the state. If that’s the case, Schnurr reasons, then an encroachment permit wasn’t necessary.

But the more recent federal ruling declared that the tribe owns “the beds and banks” of the lake.

“To the best of my knowledge, the bank is where the water is,” Bostwick said.

The state is appealing both the 1996 ruling establishing lake level and last month’s ruling on tribal ownership.