Keep shoreline buffers

If Kootenai County wants to locally direct its land use, then it needs to be proactive in keeping standards that support a wide range of benefits to Idaho citizens and resources. But the county commissioners want to revise ordinances to eliminate any natural vegetative buffer along shoreline properties.

The county insists on favoring a few shoreline owners while ignoring the wider property and ecosystem advantages of natural buffers. In Bonner County, setbacks are 40 feet along lakes, 75 feet on rivers.

Most everywhere, there are waterfront buffers because it’s a fact that they filter pesticides and fertilizers, decrease sediment that smothers fish habitat, reduce flooding by acting as a sponge and allowing rain to release slowly from soaked soils to recharge streams during drier times. They provide shade that helps keep water cooler, so supporting essential aquatic organisms and reducing loss of property from erosion.

By eliminating shoreline buffers, the commissioners show indifference to citizens that support enforceable measures to prevent waterway pollutants from negatively impacting water quality over time. Collectively, we are lake “owners” through the public trust doctrine, an affirmation of the state’s duty to protect the people’s common heritage of streams, lakes, marshlands and tidelands.

Julie Dalsaso

Coeur d’Alene