Finally.

After decades of refereeing summer battles between homeowners and beachgoers, the city of Coeur d’Alene has said enough. In a move that could lead to a breakthrough in a waterfront imbroglio, city officials filed a lawsuit this week asking a judge to determine the ordinary high-water mark on Sanders Beach, the popular stretch of sand between 12th and 15th streets, east of Tubbs Hill.

The state of Idaho, and therefore the public, owns everything below the imaginary line.

We rarely support litigation. But Coeur d’Alene has everything to gain and little to lose by taking this action. At worst, the courts will decide that increasingly hostile East Lakeshore Drive owners do, indeed, own the beach across the street. At best, the courts will rule that the land is public and will say the barriers to public access must come down. Between those extremes, the court action, which should take years to resolve, could prompt cooler heads among the homeowners to negotiate some sort of compromise with the city that would allow perpetual public access.

City Attorney Mike Gridley, Mayor Sandi Bloem and Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas deserve credit for heeding the plea of the Sanders Beach Preservation Association to file the lawsuit. Without an acknowledged high-water mark, the city is helpless to react to homeowners’ requests to enforce trespass laws. Conversely, a decision in favor of the public would give the city authority to police and clean the beach.

The action comes at a good time – after homeowners became aggressive in trying to eject the public from what they believe are their beaches; after a summer full of tension in which Mayor Bloem helped break up a waterfront confrontation between a homeowner and beachcombers; after the city filed suit against homeowner Jerry Frank for erecting a makeshift barrier; and before a state Supreme Court decision on the legality of a chain-link fence that homeowner Jack Simpson erected seven years ago.

Until now, the city has been lucky that no one has been hurt in Sanders Beach incidents. But the climate on the waterfront is changing for the worse, with a new breed of homeowners pushing their private property rights and some members of the public insisting on their historical access. Until homeowners began erecting seawalls, fences and “private property” signs, the public had enjoyed unrestricted access to Sanders Beach since the 19th century.

The tension almost boiled over into a lawsuit last year when Frank allegedly grabbed an 8-year-old girl who was on his property. He’s now being sued by a Coeur d’Alene investigator who alleges he was falsely imprisoned this summer when he tried to serve Frank with court papers for the city in the matter involving the makeshift barrier. It wouldn’t take much for one of these incidents to boil over into violence.

The disputes will continue while the city suit winds its way through the courts. The city, however, has taken a giant step toward deciding who really owns what – and that will go a long way toward resolving this prickly situation.