“The Pines At Haydenwood” is a leapfrog subdivision, proposed for the remote rural timberland on the east side of Hayden Lake, on a sensitive watershed. When attempts to negotiate with the developer about water rights failed, the quiet community filed formal protests with IDWR, and a hearing was scheduled. The developer lost, for failing to prove that:
1) there’s adequate groundwater for the subdivision,
2) existing senior water rights won’t be violated, and
3) Stump Creek won’t be harmed (a Class I Cutthroat Trout spawning stream that provides fresh water and young trout for Hayden Lake).
The land chosen for the subdivision, highlighted
in yellow, is in a remote, steeply
sloping watershed of Hayden Lake.
Within six hours of the state-ordered pumping test, the flow into Stump Creek dropped to 15% of its original flow. By the end of the first 24 hours, a neighbor’s household water dropped by more than half. And, the water levels in all three of the developer’s test wells dropped continuously throughout the 96-hour test, indicating that recharge to the aquifer never caught up to the discharge.
Jaws dropped, however, when the developers stood up at the public hearing before Kootenai County Hearing Examiner Lisa Key and said that the pumping test confirmed that there’s plenty of water and “no problems at all.” The community rebutted strongly, with expert testimony, and the Hearing Examiner’s decision was to recommend against approval of the application.
A peaceful 100 acre farm that
flanks the “Pines” land to the
west.
The big problem with developments like this one — and there are a lot of them proposed in Kootenai County — is that because they’re not directly on the shore of one of our lakes, the negative impact they’ll have on lake water quality is underestimated. If you care about your lakes, you need to care about development on the lake’s watersheds — the land that’s back from the shoreline, up the hills where the inflow comes from. The East of Hayden community has become quite knowledgeable about this issue and others that make it clear that “The Pines At Haydenwood” is a poorly conceived, wrong-minded project that is not right for the area.
