Ponderay extends Bay Trail
PONDERAY — The city of Ponderay purchased an easement Jan. 19, that extended the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail about 650 feet. It was a purchase that was years in the making for the Bay Trail.
“The Bay Trail itself is really about connecting communities to the lake and connecting us to each other,” city planner Erik Brubaker said.
The permanent easement purchased for $40,000 offers a 250 foot extension to the 400 feet of Ponderay owned property, extending the Bay Trail about 650 feet. With the easement, the property is still owned by the Hall family, but the public will always be allowed to use the property or for the city to access the trail with any needed maintenance equipment. Ponderay purchased the 400 feet in 1993, and the new easement connects city property and the trail.
“They let people walk on it for years,” Brubaker said of the Hall property, adding the Ponderay property “has been landlocked from 93 until Tuesday.”
This purchase was just one of many purchases along the Bay Trail in the past couple of decades. The original informal trail runs the shore of Lake Pend Oreille, created by the building of armored banks by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the past 50 years. It begins near Sandpoint’s water treatment plant, crosses the railroad right of way, other private property, continues on land owned by the city of Ponderay, and ends at Black Rock, the site of the former Humbird Mill.
Sandpoint unsucessfully tried to purchase land from the Hall family in 1981 and 1991 after funding was denied. Between 1999 and 2002, a smaller parcel was successfully purchased. Brubaker said Sandpoint received a lot of negative feedback on the purchase, however, Ponderay is grateful the ball got rolling on the Bay Trail.
Sandpoint was "taking a leap of faith in an environment where the cities have not always worked well together" and it brought the communities together, Brubaker said. Sandpoint started the process, and Ponderay continued the process with its own purchase in its boundaries. The trail group had three years to raise funds for Parcel 4, which was part of the easement purchased.
In 2005, the Rails to Trails Foundation formed a committee and met with the property owners and the railroad about the land along the shoreline. In 2008, the committee became the Friends of the Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail, a spelling they took from historic French-Canadian. All three cities passed a resolution to support the Bay Trail and the county commissioners also showed their support.
With the help of the Friends, a grant was awarded from the National Park Service's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance program. The Friends also worked with the cities and Idaho Department of Environmental Quality to help secure a $650,000 federal brownfields grand, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for Black Rock. Brubaker said the Friends’ fundraising efforts and applying for grants was a huge factor in the Bay Trail success.
The grant evaluated the extent of the contamination and what efforts would be needed for cleanup and redevelopment. The contamination came from the completion of the Northern Pacific railroad corridor in 1896 and post-railroad industiral activities including lead smelting and refining activities, lumber mill operation and railroad coal dock facilities.
"Through all of that, one of the main outcomes was, there are areas of contamination but they are fairly contained and its only a small portion of the Black Rock poroperty," Brubaker said.
The brownsfield program helps communities clean up land that is not usable and Brubaker said the DEQ desperately wants to clean up Black Rock. They have spent time, money and energy already on the land.
"Once its cleaned up, that area would be devoid of its natural vegetation and a lot of its character," Brubaker said. "It really encourages the redevelopment of properties that would otherwise sit and be dirty and provide no value."