County may tap Whitefish lakeshore regs

Once the revised Whitefish Lake and Lakeshore Protection regulations have won city and county approval, the county may use them as a model to fine-tune county lakeshore regulations, two planners told the county commissioners on Tuesday.

"Everyone in the county that has lakeshore property finds the existing [county] regulations cumbersome," county planner George Smith said. "They hopscotch all over."

Smith said that the work done by Whitefish Lake and Lakeshore Protection Committee and its chairman, Jim Stack, has gone a long way to consolidate and simplify regulations to make them easier to understand.

"We may well look at using [the Whitefish lakeshore regulations' as a model," Smith said.

Planning Director Jeff Harris agreed, saying that if it's possible to dovetail with Whitefish's effort, it makes sense to have continuity between the regulations used on Whitefish Lake and the county's 37 other lakes.

Stack met with the commissioners Tuesday morning to bring them up to date on the rewrite of Whitefish lakeshore regulations that's been under way for two years. The lakeshore committee will hold a couple of work sessions in March to address concerns about grandfathered structures and lawns in the lakeshore zone.

Once the committee makes a recommendation on the proposed rewrite, the regulations will go through a dual city-county approval process.

While the committee has chosen to retain existing regulations for lawns in the lakeshore zones - largely because of the contentiousness of the issue - the Whitefish Lake Institute has weighed in with a proposal that calls for a five-year sunset clause for lawns and lawn maintenance within 20 feet of the lake.

Lawns within the lakeshore protection zone that are maintained with fertilizers and other chemicals are harmful to water quality because they deliver nutrients and pollutants to the lake, Whitefish Lake Institute Executive Director Mike Koopal said in a position paper sent to the city and county. The shallow root mass of lawns also is ineffective in controlling erosion.

Nonconforming or grandfathered structures have been one of the biggest obstacles in getting a rewrite everyone can live with.

Proposed regulations would allow up to 50 percent of a nonconforming structure to be replaced through routine or necessary maintenance over a five-year period. All access stairways could be replaced as necessary maintenance with a permit and 25 percent of the siding or roofing could be replaced as routine maintenance without a lakeshore permit.

Stack said the committee hopes to move the proposed regulations through a final review and amendment process over the next month or so that addresses public concerns.

"Not all concerns or objections can be resolved," though, he said, "especially from those who simply oppose all lakeshore regulations and would like to turn the clock back 30 years."

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com