Avoiding a lake mistake

Lake Coeur d’Alene isn’t about to go dry.

Yet nobody really knows how much water is sucked out of the picturesque icon that covers 50 square miles, an oasis for boaters, swimmers and fish.

But some people want answers, especially with growth in Kootenai County increasing the demand for water. A handful of government officials, environmentalists and even some developers support the idea of a study to calculate the amount of water that leaves the lake each year in a variety of ways – from irrigation to evaporation to flows over the Post Falls dam into the Spokane River. They are even willing to help pay the cost.

It’s too early to know who would actually conduct the study, but supporters say the information would determine how much development Lake Coeur d’Alene could sustain before the water starts to recede, leaving docks dry, perhaps endangering fish, and ultimately sapping the recreation-dependent economy.

“If you don’t have a good handle on where your water is going and how much is going at a time, it may (come) back to bite you,” said Chip Corsi, regional supervisor of the Idaho Fish and Game Department.

He said the study would provide a water budget: How much goes out of the lake versus how much flows in.

“Then we can meet what society wants and what resources need to keep ticking,” Corsi said.

Until recently, not too many people cared how much of the cool, blue liquid was pumped from the 32,000-acre lake to supply water districts, irrigators, mills, waterfront homes and golf courses. For most, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the lake not filling with water each year.

Lake Coeur d’Alene’s lifelines are the St. Joe and Coeur d’Alene rivers in addition to smaller streams and creeks in the 4-million-acre watershed. The drainpipe is the Spokane River, which begins at Blackwell Island where U.S. Highway 95 crosses.

For nearly a century, the river’s Post Falls dam has made sure the lake is full, so there’s a ready supply for power generation – enough to serve about 9,000 homes.

The Idaho Department of Water Resources decides who can take water from the lake. Yet Idaho law doesn’t require the agency to track how much water is actually used.

“Until the last year or two there hasn’t been a perceived need to know,” said Regional Manager Bob Haynes.

That has changed with numerous requests for large waterfront developments, especially luxury golf communities with fat irrigation demands such as the Black Rock expansion that Kootenai County commissioners approved Thursday. The amount of water in the lake also has become a pivotal issue in Avista’s complicated, years-long attempt to relicense its Spokane River dams, including the utility’s Post Falls dam about nine miles downriver from Lake Coeur d’Alene.

Haynes said he doubts that the recently proposed luxury golf communities would have a significant effect on the lake’s water level.

“That’s a gut feeling,” he said.

Yet he still thinks people should know for sure, basing the conclusion on science instead of emotions.

Besides Black Rock, the county has approved Gozzer Ranch Golf and Lake Club near Arrow Point. There are two similar projects in various stages of approval.

A massive legal action called adjudication is in the works in North Idaho. About 20,000 people are expected to be drawn into the process, aimed at sorting out who owns the groundwater in the Spokane Valley-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer. Haynes said the study will investigate the entire drainage basin, including Lake Coeur d’Alene, and it might help determine how much water can be taken out of the lake each year.

Barry Rosenberg of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance is among those who think a separate study is needed on the lake alone. The adjudication could take a decade and answers are needed now, during the height of the growth boom, he said.

Jai Nelson, whose property borders the Black Rock expansion that overlooks Rockford Bay, questions how the county can approve any new developments that would take water from the lake without understanding the cumulative effect.

Nelson and Kootenai Environmental Alliance, which has been monitoring water permit applications for years, protested Black Rock Utilities’ request to change its permit to municipal use from irrigation. They feared the change would allow Black Rock to use more water.

Owner Marshall Chesrown argued he didn’t want more water, that the change would allow him to use the water he already has rights to on the 1,100-acre expansion, which includes another 18-hole golf course and 325 homes.

The two sides recently settled. Black Rock, which already meters its water use, agreed to report the readings to both KEA and the Department of Water Resources.

“If you don’t know where you are today, how can you know how many more golf courses and developments can be approved?” Nelson said. “How can you make an informed decision? That’s what astonishes me.”

Bill Radobenko, owner of ACI Construction, has done extensive work on Black Rock and is a development partner with Chesrown on other projects, such as Legacy Ridge in Liberty Lake.

Radobenko said he supports the study and is willing to help pay for it. He said he doesn’t believe that Black Rock’s water use has had any impact on the lake, referring to it as a “pimple on the elephant’s ass.” But he wants the facts so it no longer becomes an issue at public hearings for his company’s proposed projects.

Based on hypothetical calculations by his engineers, Radobenko said the lake would go down by only one-fifth of an inch if a year’s supply of water for all the proposed golf course communities around the lake was withdrawn at once.

Rosenberg said people can theorize about the effects of these developments, but it goes back to the point that nobody really knows. He admits he doesn’t even know if there’s a potential problem.

“But I sure would like to find out,” he said.

Greg Delavan of the Coeur d’Alene Lakeshore Property Owners Association declined to comment on the study proposal because he hadn’t yet heard of it. Nobody has approached the group for money for the study, Delavan said.

The Coeur d’Alene Tribe agrees it’s good to get a handle on water withdrawals and that people shouldn’t think the water supply is inexhaustible. The tribe’s administrative director, Robert Matt, said that smaller streams in the watershed are drying up sooner than ever before, likely for reasons that range from well-drilling to deforestation to development. That, too, could hurt Lake Coeur d’Alene’s ability to recharge, he said.

Matt said the key is to manage the lake cooperatively so all the government agencies use the same information. Currently, he said, the state doles out water permits while the counties approve development, and neither knows how much water is leaving the lake.

“The challenge is these things typically don’t come up until late in the game when there’s a decision to approve a 400-acre development,” Matt said. “That’s where the conflict comes from.”