Criminal charges filed over boat slip
Kootenai County prosecutors filed criminal charges Thursday against a Spokane businessman for dredging a boat slip without permits at property he owns along the Spokane River on Mother’s Day weekend.
Kootenai County Magistrate Judge Don Swanstrom found probable cause to file charges against Tom Hamilton after a brief hearing Thursday morning.
According to handwritten minutes of the hearing, Dan Martinsen, assistant county planner, testified that “We have issued many permits” to Hamilton in the past, but that on May 7 and May 8, Hamilton had the dredging done without a permit.
The criminal complaint signed by Swanstrom charges Hamilton with three misdemeanor violations of county code. One is work without a permit, the second is failure to maintain erosion control measures and the last is improper storage of sediment removed from the river. Each carries a maximum sentence of six months in the Kootenai County Jail. No court dates were set Thursday.
The county charges that Hamilton’s contractors stored the sediment at the riverbank when code requires it to be placed far enough away so it doesn’t wash back into the river. Staffers at two Idaho regulatory departments said there were additional restrictions on sediment handling for the Hamilton project because the Spokane River mud is contaminated by heavy metals that have been migrating down from the Silver Valley mine and mill sites for more than a century.
“Our job is to protect public safety, and that includes our environment,” Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said. “Planning and zoning laws have a purpose; it’s not just bureaucratic red tape. In this case, those laws were bypassed for someone’s convenience.”
Hamilton received a letter two weeks ago from the Idaho Department of Lands, outlining steps the array of watchdog federal, state and county agencies ordered him to take to restore the area of riverbank where contractors dredged an estimated 200 cubic yards of mud. He said he has been working to accommodate the agencies.
Mike Denney, area supervisor for the Idaho Department of Lands, said Thursday he has not received any response to the letter.
“I’ve hired every bloody expert I can think of. We’re doing everything they’ve asked,” Hamilton said. “I am surprised at this coming from the county.”
Hamilton, who is building a house along the river, said he intended to deepen a natural inlet for a boat slip instead of running a long pier across the flood zone to a dock. He said he and his architect, Spokane City Councilman Al French, had spent a year and a half clearing the project with county planners, the Idaho Department of Lands, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
They were racing the spring closure of floodgates at the Post Falls dam, scheduled for May 10, he said, to get the work done without losing another year to rising water levels in the river behind the dam.
Hamilton said he believes he had the go-ahead after French visited county, state and federal agencies on May 5, and Hamilton himself made the rounds May 6.
“There is no way I would do something like that and not have the approval of the agencies,” Hamilton said. He said he checked with Martinsen on the afternoon of May 6 and was told all the permits were issued except for the county’s and that one was expected the next morning. “I asked specifically if I would have to come back Friday morning and get the permit and do the bond and then go to DOL, and Dan Martinsen told me personally I would not have to go back and get it.”
Hamilton said his understanding of the conversation is, “I was done. All I needed was to pay money for the bond, and I thought we were OK.” Given the time constraints and his sense that everything was approved, Hamilton said he felt confident he could have the contractor fire up the bulldozers over the weekend and pick up the permits Monday.
Douglas said, “Permits are not just a piece of paper for bureaucrats signing off. That piece of paper represents checks and balances to assure that water quality is protected and that our wetlands are protected and our wildlife is protected.
“To allow these types of violations sends the wrong message – especially to the designers and developers who follow the law.”
French is not named in the criminal complaint, but Douglas said his office is still investigating charges against “co-conspirators involved in the planning of these very flagrant violations at 5:30 in the morning on Mother’s Day weekend.”