CdA residents upset at extent of dike road logging

The city of Coeur d’Alene has removed about two-thirds of the trees along Rosenberry Drive to the dismay of some residents, who thought more of the towering pines along North Idaho College’s beach would be preserved.

“It really happened out of the public eye, even to those of us who live in the area,” Terry Godbout, a Fort Grounds resident, said of the logging.

Rosenberry Drive, also known as “the dike road,” has been blocked off during the recent logging operations, so members of the public are just getting a look at the work, he said. The drive is a popular destination for walkers, runners and cyclists, and the mature pines shaded a popular swimming and picnicking beach.

Godbout was part of an ad hoc city committee convened on the logging issue. He understood that about one-third of the 1,000-plus trees growing on the dike would be cut down to preserve the integrity of the flood-control levee, leaving about 700 trees. Instead, only about 330 trees remain, according to a count by newspaper staff.

Godbout said the magnitude of the logging shocked him, given past support from the City Council and the community for saving as many trees as possible. “This isn’t what anyone expected,” he said Thursday afternoon.

The logging occurred as part of work to certify the flood-control levee, which separates Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River from North Idaho College, the Fort Grounds neighborhood and the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

“We have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment to protect,” said John Bruning, a former City Council member who headed up the ad hoc committee.

Bruning said the scope of the logging grew as the levee work progressed. Given the intense public interest, city officials should have alerted the community that more trees would be cut, he said. About 350 dead or unhealthy trees had been identified for removal when the committee disbanded last April. Additional logging was later identified as necessary for the dike certification, Bruning said.

Stumps must be removed to meet the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ levee regulations. In some cases, that required removing a healthy tree next to a dead one, Bruning said. Additional trees were lost to erosion control and grading work needed for the certification.

But Adrienne Cronebaugh, executive director of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance, described the city’s approach as “cut now and ask for forgiveness later.”

“For me, it’s an issue of lack of transparency and lack of public trust,” she said of the additional logging. “We worked very hard to ensure that the city could keep the trees – it was what the City Council and the community wanted.”

Controversy erupted in 2011, when the corps told city officials the levee had to be clear-cut to comply with post-Hurricane Katrina regulations. If the city didn’t comply, it risked losing the ability to apply for disaster relief in the event of flooding.

The regulations sparked protests and lawsuits nationwide. More than 4,000 local residents signed the environmental alliance’s petitions to keep the trees, which U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador’s staff hand-delivered to the corps’ offices in Washington, D.C. The agency later softened its stance on trees on levees.

The city contracted with an engineering firm to create a plan for bringing the levee into compliance, while keeping trees where possible, said Keith Erickson, a city spokesman.

“We did our best to save every tree we could,” he said.

But for residents accustomed to seeing the waterfront framed by big ponderosas, parts of the dike road have a new look.

“I was a little surprised,” said Bruning, the former City Council member. “It will be different for a while.”