Outlet Bay dispute to endure
NORDMAN — Nobody is getting everything they want, but everybody is getting a something.
That is the balance Bonner County is trying to strike as it continues to navigate through the lengthy public access dispute at Priest Lake’s Outlet Bay.
The county is resolving to amend recreation maps to list the boat launch as a sportsman’s access point, indicating that it’s a public ramp with limited facilities.
Signs will also be erected warning users that there is no turnaround and their rigs are subject to being towed if they try to park overnight.
Bonner County Parks & Waterways Director Steve Klatt told the county’s Waterways Advisory Board on Thursday that the county, the Outlet Bay Owners Association and the Outlet Mountain Lessees Association are unable to agree on wording for signs at the launch.
Klatt said Outlet owners wanted exclusionary language and everybody else wanted more inclusive language.
“There is no wording that we could do that would satisfy them all so I think we have to go with the policy that if they’re all equally dissatisfied, we’re probably doing just fine,” said Klatt.
The launch sits at the end of a public road but abuts submerged lands leased by the Outlet Bay Owners Association, resulting in public/private friction for more than 20 years. In Idaho, the public has a right to be at the ordinary high-water mark of a waterway.
The county is not budging from its position that the facility is public, county Commissioner Todd Sudick said.
“We’re not giving it up,” said Sudick. “They’re going to have to deal with it.”
It’s hoped that the reclassification will subtly discourage the ramp’s use by some boaters. The launch is challenging because it has a lengthy approach and no turnaround. Landowners at the bay have been also known to park their trailers along the road as an elbows-out gesture to launch users.
Outlet Bay residents contend misdirected trailers have caused property damage in the neighborhood, but launch users counter that there has never been such a mishap. Klatt told the board the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle of the opposing sides.
“Somewhere in there I’m sure there’s been some damage to something, but exactly what the frequency is really I have no idea,” he said.
Betsy Hull, who manages U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recreation facilities in Bonner County, wagered that most of the trouble comes when boaters come to fetch their trailers.
“I am sure that when launches occur, it is probably fine. But at the end of the day — after many beers have been consumed — the retrieval of the boat may not go quite so well,” said Hull.
“That happens at the best of launch ramps,” waterways Commissioner Jim Kelly.