County planners eyeing Whitefish lakeshore regs

Flathead County planning officials are considering using regulations under revision by the Whitefish Lake and Lakeshore Protection Committee as a model for lakes around the valley.

County planner George Smith said work done by the committee and chairman Jim Stack has gone a long way to consolidate and simplify regulations to make them easier to understand.

“Everyone in the county that has lakeshore property finds the existing regulations cumbersome,” Smith told the county commissioners on Feb. 17. “They hopscotch all over.”

County planning director Jeff Harris agreed, saying it makes sense to provide continuity between regulations used on Whitefish Lake and the county’s 37 other lakes.

Stack met with the commissioners to update them on the Whitefish lakeshore regulations rewrite that’s been under way for about two years. The lakeshore committee will hold several work sessions in March to address concerns about lawns and grandfathered structures in the 20-foot lakeshore protection zone.

The committee so far has chosen to hold onto existing regulations for lawns in the lakeshore zones, a hotly debated issue, but the Whitefish Lake Institute has called for a five-year sunset clause that would gradually eliminate lawns and lawn maintenance in the zone.

In a position paper sent to the city and county, Institute executive director Mike Koopal said fertilizers and other chemicals used to maintain lawns within the lakeshore protection zone can impair water quality by delivering nutrients and pollutants to the lake.

Grandfathered structures inside the lakeshore protection zone have also proved to be a contentious issue. 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. 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 that addresses public concerns over the next month or so.

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