One Bad Dock Can Lead To Three More

Will Pitman administers the Idaho Lake Protection Act for the state Department of Lands. Or at least that’s what his title says. But he’ll be ignoring the duties that his title implies if he unilaterally gives a Hagadone Hospitality executive the right to plop a giant private dock on Coeur d’Alene’s Sanders Beach.

For the second time this spring, Hagadone Hospitality is seeking approval to introduce a potential hazard near a swimming area. Recently, the company asked for permission to hook a floating dock for personal watercraft onto the Coeur d’Alene boardwalk. Now, Hagadone Hospitality and co-owner Jerry Jaeger want to build an enormous dock to serve Jaeger’s private new home and an adjoining company lot on The Coeur d’Alene Resort golf course.

Incredibly, Pitman sees nothing wrong with the plan.

For starters, the precedent that Jaeger’s dock would set is too dramatic to have been handled behind closed doors. Approval of Jaeger’s dock would make it impossible to refuse three other applications for docks along Sanders Beach - and forever change the Coeur d’Alene shoreline. Pitman’s agency has delayed action on the other applications until the state Supreme Court rules on a request for a dock next to City Beach. It should await that ruling before dealing with Jaeger’s application, too.

Meanwhile, Pitman should answer these questions: 1, Why wasn’t the public told about Jaeger’s application before the comment period expired? and 2, Why aren’t you paying attention to the comments from the city of Coeur d’Alene, one of the two adjacent landowners that was notified?

Coeur d’Alene City Council is very concerned about Jaeger’s proposal. In a letter signed by Mayor Steve Judy, the council said it “would object if construction or operation of the proposed dock potentially endangered swimmers or presented an attractive nuisance to those who would use the existing public access.”

The council also considered the dock’s length, 94 feet, as “an excessive encroachment into the public waterway.”

Octogenarian Art Manley, a former state senator who grew up swimming and fishing on Sanders Beach, correctly observed that the beach is unique - historically. For more than a century, Sanders Beach owners allowed people to use their property without a squawk. But some of the current generation of landowners aren’t as generous. One has thrown up a fence. Another has tried to build condominiums on the beach. A third had a beachcomber arrested for trespassing.

The public may not have the freedom to use all of Sanders Beach, as it once did. But it does have a right to swim in a public lake free of risk from boats and water scooters zipping to and from intrusive docks. Send this one back to the drawing board.