Lakeshore regulations overhaul not yet ready for prime time

By RICHARD HANNERS

Whitefish Pilot

Revised lakeshore regulations for Whitefish and Lost Coon lakes are available for preliminary public review, but the final product will not be brought to the Whitefish City Council and Flathead County Commissioners until a few more issues are ironed out.

Whitefish Lake and Lake shore Protection Committee chairman Jim Stack told the city council on Feb. 2 that because the revised regulations are not complete, polling the committee members about their support might be premature.

Two other committee members addressed the council. Ken Stein said he opposed the new regulations as written, and Marcia Sheffels emphasized the importance of the committee’s work and the regulations.

“Whitefish Lake would not be the way it is now if not for the regulations and the work we did,” she said.

The committee will address concerns raised by several contractors and one person who, Stack said, is a leader of a group opposed to the city’s Critical Areas Ordinance.

Stack said the lakeshore regulations revision “is not a critical areas ordinance document.” The goal is to simplify the process into a user-friendly document so lakeshore property owners can avoid violations, he said.

The committee intends to present the final version to both the city and the county for approval, Stack said, regardless of how the ongoing dispute between the city and the county over the city’s extraterritorial planning jurisdiction — the so-called “doughnut” — area plays out.

Three lakeshore committee members are county appointees, three are city appointees and one is picked by the Whitefish City-County Planning Board. More than half the committee members must own property on Whitefish Lake, and most of the lakeshore is in the county.

The lakeshore regulations are spread across multiple sections in a complex document that evolved over the past 25 years, with administration by four different planning agencies, including the city and county planning offices and two planning agencies that no longer exist.

One controversial subsection governs grandfathered structures inside the 20-foot lakeshore protection zone. The problem is how to allow major repair work for such structures while telling someone else they can’t build a deck in the protection zone, Stack said. That section is likely to be amended, Stack said.

Among the changes in the revised regulations:

• The goal is to consolidate, sort, simplify and clarify regulations.

• The mean high-water elevation is corrected for Whitefish and Lost Coon lakes.

• A variance may be granted for projects that would “result in a general and universal public benefit.”

• Collected stormwater runoff must be terminated and filtered before it can enter the lakeshore protection zone, the draft clarifies.

• The difference between grandfathered lawns and new lawns inside the lakeshore protection zone is clarified.

• The distinction between public and private marinas is clarified.

• The draft also clears up the difference between rip-rap and retaining walls and establishes construction standards for them.