DLPOA Board Meeting November 13 2008

Future Meetings will be at the city hall in Deer Park. Still at 6PM. Council Chambers, first room on the left.

15 attended this meeting, including nine board members.

Treasurer report: $8K checking, $46K Cds. Wrote checks to Salvation Army, newsletter, road signs.

Water level - does not seem to be as low as last year. This is about the nadir of the lake level.

Going to try to get bucks out of Commissioner Tony while he is still in office. This would be from the hotel tax fund that Tony has said we should be able to get a piece of.

Fish - still 15008 in Jim Santora's pen. Somebody else besides Jim has volunteered to provide space for a net pen.

PUD board member for district 1 lives in the narrows and attended our meeting. PUD spending - new tanks at suncrest. New septic dump reuse area at Valley. Used to be 13 septic tank pumpers in the area, now down to 6 who will use the facility. Apparently dumpers can dump sewage on private land. So they skip using the PUD facility. Yuck! County is considering a flow ordinance that would mandate that they use the PUD facility.

Road Safety - discussion of road signs. Red Flags are all stolen, but they are cheap, so it was suggested that we replace them next summer. Or reflectors thingies on the signs themselves.

Darrel Rung will plant himself on the road next summer and give a one fingered salute to everybody speeding. We still have a few more 20mph signs available. Unfortunately, aluminum recycling prices are quite low now....

No milfoil discussion this time, since we won't get paid any more this year.

Deer Lake Resort - PUD used power readings to figure out the EDU figure. From that, they said that DLR gets 47 EDUs, or 94 park model cabins (each cabin half an EDU). That has seemed to have scared off the potential buyer / condo converter that was interested in the property.

There is an application to change the Agar Road area from forest land (20 acre parcels) to 5 acre parcels. Larry Nokes would like to see 10 acre limits. Others wanted to control the type of dwelling that gets put on the land, since they presume nobody but trailer trash would want to live across the street from a dump. The PUD sewer stops at the Nazarine church. PUD has to serve water, but not sewer. A suggestion was made to write a letter to somebody opposing the 5 acre parcels. (Larry wrote such a letter the next day.) There is already an application for a boat storage building on that corner.

Bylaws - we had a lawyer look at our bylaws last year. Mr Meulink volunteered to review what this guy suggested, and head up a discussion at the next meeting, preparing for a vote at the annual meeting.

New DLPOA sign on north side. 35 X 75 ft area. See attached diagram. A rock about 8 ft by 4 ft would have an engraved map and directions. Powder coated steel or something, that does not require maintenance. And be impervious to vandalism. Need a place for a reader board.

Worry about the East side signs later.

Discussion of the beach associations. They would like us to provide a way for them to communicate among themselves. The people that we know about in these associations are:

Tamarack bay - bill balignetti

cedar bay - joe waltner

gardner beach assn - Mike Egan

pine bay - bob lee jr, pete horn

pebble beach assn - gary booth

wanakawin -

julius terrace - don straigis

haney's - gerry block, kevin shroder

The secretary / web guy will contact these people, will generate a web page for their use, and hope to get a line on just who the leaders of these associations are. We would also love for them to provide input to our board, if not bodies.

We will attempt to get our mailing list straight. The secretary will send out letters to people on the DLPOA and PUD mailing list that we are not certain about - people on one list but not the other, people with two mailing lists, and so on.

Nokes announced that wants to resign as president, of DLPOA effective June. Will remain on the board.

Jerry Groom might be a board member.

Done at 730

DLPOA board meeting October 9 2008

We had about 18 people attending, including all but one of the board members.

treasurers report - passed; minutes - passed

We had a discussion on the fish pens in the lake. The Fish & Game people deliver gobs of tiny fish to a net pen that a volunteer sets up in the lake in front of his beach. We had several people doing this in the past, but at the moment, only Jim Santora is doing it on our lake. Jim just got his 15008 (sic) rainbow fish today. He has been doing this for 17 years. He would be happy to show people his operation. Fish&Game will provide a pen, maybe. Volunteer supports the aerator, and fills the fish feeder once a week. Need to clean the net twice a year with a power washer. Net pens need about 15 ft of water. There seems to be at least four sets of nets available, and a few frames. Don't know who buys the food. Volunteer needs to go to a safety class (presumably so the fish do not eat the volunteer). Rodger Ferris volunteered to help raise fish.

Wood Cutting. There seems to be interest in restarting this. Need somebody to get and find out about permits, maps, locations, etc etc. Used to be Boise Cascade, now some sort of hippy wood company that sells the wood as green raised huggible stuff. Jerry Groom, a (current) non member of the board has agreed to birddog this.

Two new people have volunteered to serve on the board. Jerry Rasley has been coming to the meetings for some months, and now he feels that he has time to serve. Bill Meulink attended his very first meeting of the board tonight, and got voted into being a board member before he could figure out what the downside was. (Mostly the downside is coming to these meetings once a month, actually). Several of the board members now live in Spokane, so a discussion was had, warmly supported by your humble scribbler, that we might have some of the meetings that occur in the darkest winter in Deer Park rather than at the lake.

4^th July - try to get some Stevens County hotel tax money that Tony keeps talking about. 3^rd is a Friday this year, and will be when the fireworks are again.

September Road Cleanup - 620 lbs taken out. The weights are going down (from maybe 1500 lbs a few years ago), we think because people see that we are trying to keep it clean. Also, some individuals are doing cleanup on their own.

Newsletter should be out by Nov 1.

Road safety - generally people seem to have slowed down, due to the zillion road signs that are plastered on every tree, rock, squirrel and shrub. And the nasty things have crept over to the very calm East Deer Lake Road side now, but fortunately only in the narrows. Reminder - the East side speed limit is 35 MPH, which is different from the North road.

MILLFOIL!! Was discussed really heavily in our meeting, and that is our story that we are sticking to. Secci disk visibility is 27 ft now, up from 15 ft. about the time the sewer was put in. Mike Phillips does this observation a few times a year, from the same spot, over a bunch of years.

Water level - down may 25 inches this year, normal is 30 inches. We think part of the reason is, the water tables have been filled up over the last couple of years, so not so much of the runoff gets sucked directly into the ground any more.

Deer Lake Resort - PUD now says that a park model trailer is one half edu, down from one third earlier. They are currently doing research on how much sewage goes out now from dlr. All this will have some bearing on what a new buyer of DLR can do with the land if they want to condoize it.

Agar Road Deer Lake sign - we are proposing that we move it closer to public access area.. Do landscaping, get water, maybe even power to light it up. PUD right of way, they are OK with this. Big boulders, etched map of the lake, and logo. Metal cutouts of deer and stuff.

730 pm done, a new record for briefness.

DLPOA meeting September 11, 2008

Before the regular business meeting, we had a session with Doug Freeland, the guy who has been getting rid of the Eurasian Millfoil in our lake. About 20 people attended this session.

Doug runs a diving company that specializes in getting rid of undesirable weeds from lakes and rivers. He has 8 divers working for him, and they use boats that contain big vacuum cleaners so that they can suck up the weeds into a bag, which prevents weed parts from breaking off and floating around to start new weed patches. DLPOA has a grant from the state, administered by the county weed control board, and Doug is paid (currently) from that grant.

We discovered that we have Eurasian Millfoil in our lake last year. We fully expected that someday we would find it, since everybody else already has it. We have been actively looking for it for some years. Doug figures that what we found has probably been around for up to five years, but it takes that long once it is started for it to grow enough for it to be recognized.

Our lake has had a natural Millfoil forever. That stuff is OK, because the local animals chomp on it and keep it under control. The problem with the Eurasian variety is nobody local likes it, so it grows exponentially and eventually takes over the whole area. When there is enough of it, it mats out on surface, takes up all the oxygen, and kills out the local vegetation by hiding the sunlight. People have died in this stuff by getting caught in the mats. Boats get snagged, and the props get fouled.

While individual plants have been found all around the lake, and in fact the first one found was at the narrows, we believe that the initial start was at Deer Lake Resort. It probably came from a boat using the launch there. The resort swimming area is just full of it, in much higher density than anywhere else on the lake.

It takes a few years to start growing high (6 ft) but once it does, then it explodes. It populates geometrically. When pieces break off, it floats to somewhere else, then grows roots in the water, sinks, and starts growing a new patch.

There are several different ways to deal with it. Chemicals can be used in a last resort. Doug uses a boat with a vacuum cleaner, where divers manually dig up the roots of the plant and suck the whole plant into the cleaner, which traps it in a bag. DLR was very dense and this method would not work, so they brought in a bottom barrier to cover 5000 sq ft, which will kill it. No other dense population of milfoil in the lake elsewhere. Bottom barriers can be plastic sheets, held down with bricks and blocks. The problem with this stuff is eventually it tears apart, floats to the surface, and becomes a nuisance. Doug uses a porous, nylon weave material that will last years and years. You need to leave in down there at least 20 weeks. Because this particular kind of barrier is quite expensive, we lease the barrier from him on an as needed basis. DLR got 20 barriers in June, 30 July, 20 more in August. Each mat is 10 x 10 ft. or 100 square feet, so DLR has 7000 square feet of barriers. Next year, they will get moved to a different area, and a year after that, maybe pull them out.

The best way to continue the control is to get property owners involved, to search their area for plants so that the dredger guy can go directly there without looking all over the lake for the stuff. That cuts down on the time the professionals need to search for stuff by maybe a factor of 10. And so the cost.

Millfoil does not spread by spores or seeds, but segments. So you can pull it out yourself, but you have to get to the roots, and that requires diving gear because you really need to pull it up from underneath. We need to learn what this stuff looks like, and how it is different from really similar plants that are ok. Native milfoil has six pairs of leaflets per segment, and Eurasian has 15 or so. Native stands up out of the water, and the Eurasian just collapses into a blob. Local Millfoil leaves are more widely separated than the Eurasian. Usually the Eurasian has slightly different colors of stems. In our lake, the Eurasian is a reddish stem. Eurasian does not like sandy ground, but it loves rocks and mud. You normally do not find it in less than 3 ft of water - likes 6-9 ft to get started, and then grows out to a max of 20 ft. deep. You will not really see it till it is 3 ft tall. Once it mats, then it goes shallow. We are now finding that the Eurasian and native are hybridizing, and that gives you a plant that is even worse because it spreads even more easily. Its growing season is June to mid October. It can grow 6 inches a day in perfect conditions.

If we attack this problem now, then five or so years from now it should be just search and destroy of random plants. Which is to say, down from maybe 20k plants today to about 100 plants five years from now in the whole lake. We will never ever totally get rid of it.

Chemicals are a last resort, and very expensive. We probably do not need to do that any time soon, if ever.

The question was asked about natural predators. Grass carp will eat the stuff, but they eat everything else first, so fish and game is not really interested in putting them in a public lake. There is also a weevil that eats this stuff, but the milfoil grows faster than the weevils can munch it. Moose and cold water manatees also like this stuff.....

Mike Phillips is willing to travel anywhere on the lake where you think you have it. He knows what it looks like and how it differs from the good stuff. His number is on the officer page of our web site.

Can download a milfoil book from the internet.

Sue Winteroud from the Weed Control Board was also here. She administers our grant. We originally got $50K for five years, but that got cut in half, but with a provision for renewal. So our grant was $25k. DLPOA has to come up with a copay share of $3100, but that can be either cash or in kind (volunteers, or meetings). We have had lots and lots of meetings - the meeting tonight counts - so we have so far met $1100 of our cost. Doug's bills just this year are $20k so far, because we did not expect to find as much of this stuff as we did. So we will apply for another $25K next year, which will add to the $5K left over from this year. State funds for fighting this are drying up. It will probably come to requiring the property owners to kick into a lake fund, since there will always be some ongoing cost to fight this stuff.

Note that the work done by property owners searching their dock areas does count against the DLPOA copay. You need to get some instructions on what to look for, and more important what not to look for, and then keep records of how much time you actually spend splashing around looking for the stuff. Note that it is NOT recommended that you go and pull the plants yourself, unless a) you are a good scuba, not snorkel, diver and b) you have been trained by Doug in how to do this properly. You should mark what you find (small float with a nut or something for an anchor) and then call somebody.

Regular meeting

8k checking, bunch more in cds.

Dock demo days brought in $500. They demolished 22 docks

Pancake breakfast and annual meeting resulted in $2200 net

We really need board members. We are down to 7. Our charter allows for 16.

There was a discussion on if we want to continue with our 4^th of July activities. Apparently there has been some grumping in the peanut gallery about spending time and money on this.

4^th July donations completely cover the fireworks, and kiddy parade costs.

Do we want to continue it?

Still on the 3^rd?

Longer and bigger?

FISH - new batch of rainbow Oct 7.

No triploids. No silvers this year.

Newsletter articles due in Oct, sent out in Nov.

Road cleanup is sept 20

Horse poop property - what do we do with it and when. Apparently there are a couple of people interested in it.

There is a new development planned for the area of the garbage dump. These will be 5 acre properties. Should not be a traffic problem, dlpoa has no comments.

We started at 6pm, and ended at 8:55.....

DLPOA special meeting August 23 2008

Darrell Sauer and son were present to present their concept for developing their property on the Narrows. They bought 600 acres from the Lundies, then traded 200 acres of that for timber. This property is on both sides of the narrows.

They are planning on doing two separate developments. They will not be doing the building, only dealing with the infrastructure. Most of the buyers of the lots will have to dig their own well and put in their own septic system. Only a very few of these lots qualify for PUD service. None of these would be condos.

There will be eleven 20 acre parcels on the North side. They have already improved the road, and they are putting in power and phone. While it will be a gated community, there will be a trail around the edge of the property for public access. The building pads have already been put in.

The East side will have 160 acres, with 20 parcels max. There are already four 1-acre parcels and eight more 5 and 20 acre parcels platted, so no planning permits would be needed for these. Tribes, geologists, soil, fish, dnr - everybody has done a study and given clearances. The 1 acre parcels are in a bay that is full of wetlands, so they would probably qualify for PUD service.

He has had a lot of vandalism during the logging stages. And some of the riparian zones, people dumped rocks and trees, and other garbage in the creeks and along the roads. He is concerned about 4 wheelers and off road bikes on drainage areas on east side.

A lot of the discussion centered around access to the East side property, most of which is landlocked. When the Sauer family bought the property, the title companies certified that there were no easement restrictions on what is known as the Upper Road, more formally East Deer Lake Loop Road, that provides access to the property. However, this road goes through two other landowners' property, and at least one of them has written a letter that they would deny access through their property. Mr Sauer went back to the title companies, and now they are not so sure any more. Mr Santora, who lives in that general area and is on the DLPOA board, said that he investigated this question some time ago, and it was made very clear to him that the easements are strictly for mining and logging operations, and are very specifically NOT for ingress and egress.

The Sauer family believes that since this Upper road a) has an official county name and b) has allowed public access, at least for hiking and off road vehicles, for many many years, that this in effect makes it a public road. They might have been under the misunderstanding that DLPOA has some sort of legal, covenant like authority over the deer lake property, like a Home Owner's Association in planned communities have. We informed them that we have no such authority. They were very interested to interview people who live on the East side, near the narrows, and who have in the past used this road. The Sauer family do plan to sue somebody if no agreement on this can be reached, because without this access road, the development is toast. That somebody may well be the title company, or maybe some land owner.

The four 1 acre lots can be accessed by the private part of East Deer Lake Road, and so is not part of this discussion.

The general feeling by the few East side people attending was that this road was a good thing, because it keeps traffic off of the existing very narrow private East Deer Lake Road. While both ends of this road will be gated, the Mr Sauer said that they would provide East side people with keys or combinations so that they could use this road for their access, if they desired. It could also be used as an emergency exit during a fire or something. Their plan is to upgrade the Upper road, once that their access has been decided. However, it will not be paved.

The question was asked about docks for these 20 lots. They said that they plan to put in a marina with maybe 10 slips, but not 20. This would be for the East Side property only. It would be near one of the 1 acre parcels that they already own, but some permits would be needed.

About 400 acres between 395 and Agar Road will be developed - maybe 50 lots.

Our piece of land may not run to the street. It could be landlocked.

And milfoil was discussed.

DLPOA Board Meeting May 8 2008

Skip Wells, fire commissioner district 1, was a visitor. He discussed an upcoming Bond Issue. Our fire district had a complete review by some state agency. They rated us a 7, which is better than the 8A that we were. Lower numbers are better, and these things affect your fire insurance cost. Water systems here were not necessarily built for fire fighting. Some systems are weak (Springdale). Narrows ends of Deer Lake are also weak. Need a tie in across the narrows, which would somehow strengthen both ends. Conditions of fire stations, types of equipment, response times of people also factor in to the rating. Loon Lake is weak there. $5.7 mill bond will replace Loon and Suncrest stations. District office currently at Clayton, moving to Suncrest. Weekend response is weak. 2^nd ballot item is a levy lift - to $1.50/thous from currently 0.93/thous. That will get us to a more non volunteer staff. Doing all this puts us on the way to a class 6 rating. We do not have paramedics, but we have ILS people, who are more advanced than basic EMT people. 6 year sunset on this levy thing. Why put all this at Suncrest? Suncrest is where the bux and people are in this district - 40% of all evaluations now, 60% in a few years.

Tony Delgado - County thinks that more services should be at Suncrest also. Video courthouse, commissioners meeting area would be good. (The fire guy said essentially: not on his nickel). E. Deer Lake Rd widening starts in June - 22 ft to 28 ft with guardrails, $1.4 million (10% county). Hotel/Motel tax - could get some bux for our fireworks. Larry will look into this.

Larry Gunther, candidate for Commissioner - 1^st time here. 20 years as a school administrator. Retired 1998. Born and raised in Hunters. Now lives in Suncrest. Wants to promote and protect agriculture and timber. Property rights is a big issue for him. Hunter and fisherman. Can make the tough decisions.

Wes McCart, candidate for Commissioner, decided not to make a speech.

Shelly Short, candidate for state legislature. Also no speech. Both were applauded.

Treasurer: $14k checking, $45k cd. Will be spending on fireworks, picnics, demo days.

4^th July - Middle of the lake. Haneys is replacing their docks, and we have a chance to get the old ones.

Fish - Jim released his last week. Questioned on if ice fishing is a good idea. Fire department has no ice rescue equipment. General board thinking is that the early date is dangerous. Vandalism more likely because of lack of population. Pollution left by the fishermen.

Road cleanup and Kirkland chilli. May 17. Most help needed on Southwood Shores and Agar Rd.

Dock demo days - still need help. June 7. We have four docks already lined up.

Road safety - we bought 15 20mph signs. Going to post them mostly on the West side.

Water Quality - milfoil meeting to choose a vendor for surveying and controlling the millfoil from our lake. We like Doug Freeland, who did this for us last year.

Development - 4300 E. Deer lake rd - Julius terrace area. Condo being put in. Somewhere. Not much information. The big property on east side of deer lake has been resold.

DL Resort we hear is now down to 90 units, according to PUD.

D&O - Our treasurer did some shopping, and found some company that will insure us for $1300/yr, no general liability needed, but can get it for $1500 extra. Larry signed up for both at our meeting.

Meeting Ended 7:45!!!!

DLPOA board meeting April 10 2008

DOE Ken Merrill, from the Washington State Department of Ecology, gave a talk on Lake Hydrologic Factors. Which means, why is the lake at the level that it is? There are several considerations to be thought of when you ask such a question:

Wetlands buffer the runoff. If they are already full, then they can’t hold much runoff and it shoots out into the lake. If they are dry, they suck up the initial runoff and the lake does not get to see it.

Wind affects the evaporation from a lake – more wind, more evaporation.

There are several models of lakes dealing with springs and seepage. Our lake is Seepage With Flow Through – water comes in, but then seeps out at pretty much the same rate. The lake levels determine if water comes in or goes out of the lake. As lake level goes down, it draws off the groundwater. As it gets higher, it recharges the groundwater.

We have a downhill gradient, with water coming in at the narrows exiting near Wanakawin. At least, a study done several years ago suggests so. However, the hydrogeologist in Ken’s office does not think so, because the soil is all wrong in that area – it is all rocky stuff, not sandy stuff where you would expect the seepage to occur. The old wives tales were that water left here, and went to Loon Lake. The current theory is that the water that exits here goes to Dragoon Creek and misses Loon Lake altogether. 3.5 cfs (year round average) leaves as groundwater, 90 percent of that leaks out of the south east end of the lake. West side of the lake is very porous soil. East and south is not porous at all.

Re climate: The Global Warming Denyiers of the world would not like to see the data that has been collected, but we have lost about an average of 1 foot of snowpack water equivalents in the last 30 years. This has been on the decline since 1950. Average January temperatures have risen one deg over fifty years. Columbia River water flow has decreased over fifty years. Swep ==> Snow water equivalents – about thirty five inches of water in the snow right now April. High snow and high temps creates more erosion as this stuff melts faster, more organic matter then runs into our lake. Deer Lake has an 18 square mile watershed, which is to say, the area of snow melt that eventually runs into our lake. If you have logged off large areas of the watershed (look at our hillsides), your snow will evaporate faster than if you have a lot of trees holding things up. Less snow, warmer temps earlier in year, so snow is not available later.

You can have over a five ft variation in lake level in one year. Generally closer to a couple of feet. It is hard to be precise, because the data gathering of lake level data ended in mid seventies. Dlpoa could start gathering this data again – this could be very useful down the road.

Shoreline managment act – This is a State law, but counties implement the ordinances. It affects lakes larger than one thousand acres, which we are (slightly). This means that any development less than two hundred ft back from ordinary high water mark falls under the act. The big question is, and this was asked strongly from the peanut gallery, is where is that line? Nobody apparently will say. The way that this line is determined is you haul in a bunch of flunked out doctors (excuse me, professional biologists) and they actually determine this line by looking at the vegetation – certain plants would never grow in water, other plants love the stuff – and they stick a pole in the ground as a function of plants, not water measurements. This has not been done because nobody wants to pay for somebody to do this. However, this number affects a lot of what we are allowed to do with our property.

The question was asked about what could be done to hold the water into the lake – could we put a dam somewhere. A dam will not work to hold in the water, unless it was an underground dam. We asked who would regulate such a thing, and we got a whole list of Three Letter Acronims:

DOE. Shoreline, sepa, nat resources, ecology certification, core of engineers. And, such a dam would be horribly expensive, even if you could get all the bureaucrats to sign off on it.

That was the end of Ken’s quite interesting talk. This time, he actually hung around for a while after his talk. The last time he was here, he shared the billing with the tarring and feathering of the county tax lady, and after that just about nobody in Colville wants to come visit us any more.

Shelly Short visited us. She is running for state house of rep. She was the On the ground person for last couple of (Republican) congressmen. In those jobs, she dealt extensively with water issues, forest issues, etc.

Wes McCart, who is running for County Commissioner, was also with us for I think the third straight meeting. He was very helpful when some questions of water rights issues came up. There is the rumor that the state is thinking about suing everybody who has a well, as a way to finally adjudicate all the water rights in Eastern Washington. Wes said that there would be No limits for stock, and for up to half an acre of irrigation. If you use more than 2000 gal/day, then the state is interested in how much you really use, and what for. There is something called an Exempt well statute, which I don’t understand but which was discussed at some length. Domestic use is exempt. There will be a date of adjudication.

Tony Delgado, current county commissioner was also here. – The ATV stuff is on hold waiting till a lawsuit just filed by a bunch of treehuggers in Ferry county is settled. He thinks maybe June. At any rate, those roads that the county has already said you can use ATVs on, you can use. The hold is for new roads. All the roads around Deer lake (not Garden Spot or 395) are already on the list. Which means I am going to be on the hook for buying a new $7000 4-wheeler for my bride, who has been banging Tony’s head against the wall at every meeting he has attended to get this thing done. Thanx Tony. Ken Barker is the guy to talk to about ATVs. He is the head of the local ATV association. 233-2010. No license (or age limit) required as long as there are licensed drivers with the people who are under age or had DUIs or whatever.

Loon Lake wants to do some dredging. D&R will look into this for a couple of years, but he think they will allow it because in the distant past, a sawmill dumped tons of sawdust into the lake, and that is what is gunking things up. Other people said there were automobiles, refrigerators, probably the dead body or two, in there also.

State Fish and wildlife meeting – thurs/fri but public meeting is on Friday only.

Several people attended a PUD meeting on the sale of Deer Lake Resort. I missed a part of this discussion (I am of an age where I have to take lots of water pills) but I got the sense that while there is one PUD, that there are completely separate sewer systems under PUD, and that the Deer Lake and Loon Lake sewer systems hate each other’s guts over some squabble dating back to the time of the Hatfields and McCoys. Loon Lake controls where our effluent ends up, and apparently Loon Lake wants a contract stating that they can tell us where to shove it with two years notice. Anyway, this is now creating sword rattling because the Deer Lake Resort guy wants to create 180 (ed: later revised to 90) park model homes to start, and maybe more later, and Loon Lake is concerned about how much sewage will they will have to take from new development. There is a working number of 120 gal/day/unit, which is A LOT of crap, literally.

A discussion occurred again about D&O insurance. The problem of course is we gotta insure our 20 acres of swampland for $2500 before we can even be allowed to buy $1700 of D&O. Several options were thrown out on the table. One was create a Conservancy. Fish and Wildlife would become the custodians, and accept the liability, but we still own the property. Or sell it outright to fish and game. They are still willing to buy it. However, there is still the strong feeling among some members that all government agencies are a bunch of jerks, and as soon as they got it, they would start prohibiting all kinds of things, like kite flying and canoeing and Bambi blasting. Another suggestion: Make DLPOA an LLC. At least one of the local homeowners groups have done this. That way, if we get sued, they get the assets of DLPOA but can’t go any further than that. But that might lose our non profit status, and so that means taxes, and maybe no grants for milfoil, and ... The best suggestion I heard was to Sell the property to George Renner for a buck and let him deal with it.

Treasurer – 10K Checking + 45K CD. Q: do we have a budget? A: no. but we should probably do that.

4^th July – fireworks will be in the middle of lake this year. One of the bays is replacing their dock, and we can probably get it as a bang bang platform.

Newsletter – need to send it out by May 10 because of road cleanup.

Fish will be released end of April by Santora. Camp Cocktail has to wait till the lake gets to 60 deg to release their pens, which probably means next August. We will get 500K Kokanee (eg Mackinaw Food) dumped into Gardner Beach by the state June 9,10. Again, assuming that the ice is gone.

Cleanup and chilli feed – Saturday May 17

Dock cleanup Sat June 7 still.

Pancake feed Sun July 6

East Deer Lake Road will be closed (or at least one way pilot car stuff) from June to October to dig it up and repave it, and maybe make some of it wider. Will they pave down to my house? No such luck.

The question came up about what to do with DLPOA’s small property (the one conveniently next door to Mr Nokes) – what should we do with it? Sell? Larry would be happy to continue using it as a horse poop storage facility.

Road safety – maybe we need a big banner across the road telling people that there is a speed limit of 20mph. Hillyard does this. We decided to buy a bunch of speed limit signs, and poles, and put them up ourselves, which we are not really supposed to do, but which we have been assured by the county they would not do anything about. Call 800 572-0947 for sheriff dispatch if you are bugged by speeders.

Millfoil – we did apply for the weed control permit ($300) even though we may not actually use it, but at least we will have it if we need it. We are getting bids from 4 companies for survey, which is step 1 of the process. We (DLPOA) get to pick the winner. Permit good for one year.

Meeting went to 9pm once again. Windbags 2, commuters 0.

DLPOA Board Meeting March 13 2008

Meeting started at 6pm, our new time.
Attending: we have a quorum.
Visitors: Tony DelGado, county commissioner, and Wes McGart the guy running for commissioner, and Sue Winterowd.

Sue Winterowd is the Stevens County Weed control lady. She came to talk about fighting milfoil. We get a $50K grant from Ecology, but if it isn’t spent, it is lost. So the grant was cut in half, because most people do not need $10K/year. The county provides a request for proposal, which does not require bids, but the county lawyer thinks it would be a wunnerful idea to go out for bids. 2 projects: first survey the lake, then get rid of any milfoil found. Should not survey before water temp is 65 deg. Generally costs $3K for a survey.

She has been involved in milfoil issues on other lakes. Our current philosophy is not going the herbicide route, but to using divers. She really believes that the sooner you nuke em, the better your long term results will be. To do 24D herbicide, you need a permit, and that takes some months to get. So we should apply for that now, even if we end up not doing that. $300 for the permit. Because Loon Lake went to bat to use it, it is now pretty much allowed all over Washington. There are sometimes 24 hours restrictions on swimming, and drinking 400 ft from the application area. 10 day notice of application, then posting on day of. Application would probably be right after 4^th of July. All this stuff can get real expensive if you have a serious amount of it. Eventually you might need an Aquatic Plan to maintain your permit. To pay for it, you might need an LMD that can collect taxes. It can easily get into six figures.

Tony DelGado: ATVs. March 31 for another meeting on what roads are allowed.

PUD: gets $200K from sales tax. $100K for a study around Lake Spokane since a lot of development is expected to go in there. 160 acres purchased for their future expansion. $100K for the new septic plant at Valley – a place for local septic tanks to dump.

Plan to push a vote to bump sales tax by 0.3% for criminal justice. This failed in the past. Need more deputies because Spokane crime is drifting our way. We only have half the deputies that we should have. Prosecutor coming up with a work release plan, for area cleanup. Home at nights. Work at days.

Treasurer: $10k in checking, rolling our CDs. $1900 interest. $126 property taxes on the swampland.

Mr McGart told us his feelings about (against) the Y2Y bill.

Business meeting:

There are reports that some people have actually done some ice fishing, and have caught stuff. People were out in the middle of the lake. 18 inches of ice on opening day. Up to 20 deer have been out on the ice.

Next newsletter after the next meeting.

PUD: Mike Phillips, Jim Santora, Larry Twitchell, and Maurice Paul went to talk to Dick Price of PUD and Clay Whitehead (by phone). Specifications of 12 building sites per acre on resort sites is written into growth management act. Dick apparently did not know this. Means like 300 sites at deer lake resort. Could PUD handle all that? Limitation was the pond where all the crap gets dumped. But nobody really knows. If all resorts went to the max, increases sewer needs by 600 hookups.

Sub area plan for deer lake: buddy up with loon lake, but they are hung up in a lawsuit, and county does not have any money till 2010, plan might be approved 2014 at best. The potential buyers of DLR are asking for 180 units, for now. All this will probably be a done deal by 2014. The growth management stuff done by this county was actually designed to Encourage development, not discourage it, so we are not getting any traction with the county guys in fighting it. The thing that limits development are the SEPA reviews (State Environmental Protection Agency). We need to find out more about those things. County has still not received any applications about DLR or the developer in the narrows.

The suggestion is: get a committee together in DLPOA to get a copy of the Loon Lake Subarea Plan, and do some word smithing so that when the opportunity opens up, we have something to get moved along. Maybe communicate with the home owner’s associations of some of the neighbor lakes.

Other possibility is to edit the growth management document. But Clay is not in favor of that. Would cost $900 to get started, and probably thousands in processing costs.

Pebble Beach asked for our email list. We don’t know quite why. Unless there was some reason for this, we are not interested. They will make a presentation at the next meeting.

Jim Santora has contacted fish and game, and they are still interested in buying our 20 acres.

Dock demo – last year, 20 volunteers, 20 docks, 8 dump trucks of stuff. Sat June 7, sunrise point. Burn pile at salvation. Larry has a dump truck. We have a back hoe and another truck signed up. Need volunteers for this year. Think of it as a lake cleanup endeavor. $3/ft if they bring the dock to the point, $5/ft if we go get them.

The windbags won. We adjourned at 9pm, one hour longer than usual.

Next meeting by Ken Merrill, a State DOE guy, on lake levels.

DLPOA Board Meeting February 14, 2008

We have a Quorum, barely. About 12 people attended our meeting, including Wes McGart who came to our meeting again. He is running for county commissioner. He made the following points:

– Discussion of a sub area plan. There is a suggestion to join forces with Loon Lake, since they are well ahead on theirs, and we can share their efforts. However, Loon Lake is being sued, and so they cannot apply for any grant money until that is resolved.

– Growth Management – no land was taken out of farm production in Stevens county by growth management. One of only two counties that can state this.

– Water issues – Water rights are being transferred out of our county to counties in the south. (People from the south are buying property that have water rights in Stevens county, and then transferring those rights to their property elsewhere.) Olympia is discussing this issue. Olympia is also discussing water storage in our counties to capture the run off, like in canyons and stuff. Not Deer Lake. A PUD storage dam above Colville being discussed. A study is being done to see about metering wells in the area, because the Tribes feel they are getting shortchanged on their water rights.

– ATV issues – Lots of comments on what streets are legal to use these on. Mostly negative. There have been several meetings by the Stevens County Commissioners, and while they are generally supportive of ATVs on county roads, because of the public comments they are reducing the number of roads where they would be allowed.

General Meeting

4^th July – Our fireworks dock is in bad shape. Needs flotation and an extension. Still need a place to shoot from. Possibly load them up on shore and drag them out to the middle of the lake. Larry needs some help in setting up and pulling down.

Fish pens – haven’t lost a fish, except to a few mink. Release when water temperature hits 60 degrees. 25k silvers in one set of pens, another 25K of something else in another. New fishing rules allow you to grab more macks than before. Can start fishing through the ice March 1.

Water Quality – our milfoil grant cut to $25K from $50K, but we will get an extension to the time needed. We believe that we do not need the full $10K/year, and if you do not use it, you lose it.

Our April meeting will be on Lake levels – we have 24 years of data from USGS. Ken Merril and a hydrologist will be here for our April meeting, and maybe somebody from USGS. Impacts on the lake from weather, geology, etc. How to dam the lake. How to build up the berm. Effect of roads on the lake. This could be a very interesting meeting for those who want to fiddle with the lake levels.

Slash piles (along Agar road) – The plan was that somebody was going to chip them up and then burn them. They did not get chipped. Avista now will haul them out of here for a waste to energy plant.

Meeting Minutes – will now be put online, with disclaimers, in a timely manner, rather than be hidden for officers only. This comes about since some people have been emailing the things to about half the membership already. Note that these minutes will not be the Blessed minutes. That only happens at the next meeting.

School levy – The local school people would like you to “Vote Yes for Less”. Voting yes for the levy will keep the Loon Lake school district separate from Deer Park school district. If this levy fails, then you will pay Deer Park rates, three times what Loon Lake rates now are. Of course, the majority of use who would like to spend less, can’t vote because we don’t live here.

The state has hired a guy to identify commercial properties on the lakes – to get them to pay rent for their docks. It is not supposed to affect private docks. The survey is being done now. The state owns all the lake bottom, except for a few people whose property is old enough that they have a deed to the lake bottom near their property.. There are some such exempt properties on our lake, but most are not. Some of the property near the public access area qualifies, for instance. They are thinking of $500/year to allow you to have a commercial dock.

Development – Deer Lake Resort – because it is a resort, they could put hundreds of homes there. With essentially no permit hassles, because of the resort status. We have a letter from PUD where they said they want 130. PUD will only supply some much smaller number of hookups. But a lot of Deer Lake resort land is out of the PUD area, so they can use septic tanks.

D&O – in progress. It will cost $1700/year for the insurance, but because we own two parcels of land, that has to have full liability insurance before we can get the D&O insurance, which is about $2500/year. There was some discussion to revisit the idea of unloading the 20 acres and the small house to save this $2500 (times infinity, or for as many years as we own this swampland). This may be brought up to the membership again at the annual meeting.

We decided to move the Board Meetings to 6pm. This will start next month. A lot of the board members (and your humble scribe) commute in from and go back to Spokane for these meetings. Oncoming headlights are getting much brighter the older we get, and the deer appear to be much more numerous. There was some suggestion that if we start earlier, that potential windbags will have that much more time to core dump all over their favorite issues, and we won’t get out of here any earlier. To paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen in his debate with Dan Quayle, I worked for Kaiser Aluminum for 30 years, and I know windbags, and we are no windbags.

DLPOA Meeting January 10, 2008

We had a pretty full house, about 30 people on a crummy cold snowy night. The reason for the great turnout was two invited guests.

Prior to the main event, we heard from one of the candidates for county commissioner: Wes McGart. Land issues and Water issues are his two big things. Lives west of Springdale.

Our featured speakers were Clay White and Dick Price.

Clay White is the Stevens County Planning Director. Officially, Land Services. Mostly he showed up to get beat up on all the proposed development that we hear is going on in the Narrows. Mostly he said that nobody has submitted any requests for permits and stuff, and until somebody hands in some paperwork, he has nothing to do. So, since he could not talk about what will maybe happen, he was asked questions about what it is he can and does do.

The first question was about the Clustering Bonus under Growth Management. This allows for more units in a development if they are all clumped together. The developer gets up to a 200% bonus. 60% of the land has to be in permanent open space. Density bonuses – if the normal rules allow for1 dwelling/20 acres, clustering gets you 2 dwellings on 20 acres,

There were 13000 comments submitted during growth management planning meetings, totaling 18000 pages. We are a very large county, also diverse. So lots of people wanted to put their oar in. The result of all this was a Comprehensive (policy) plan, and a Development plan to implement that. What you can and cannot do is all spelled out in those documents. Stevens County has an Extensive web site – to find it, Google Stevens County, then Land Services. Info, maps, the comprehensive plan itself, proposed changes to it are all there.

http://www.co.stevens.wa.us/landservices/index.php

His office now offers a Fasttrack service – face to face meeting with a planner. Call 48 hours in advance, make appointment, goes over the checklist, application is complete when you leave. (Note that this does not guarantee approval, just that you will not have to keep going back 20 times to dot an I). They are here to help you.

So the question of enforcement of the existing rules came up. They don’t have anybody on board to do that yet, although they would like to get a full time person for this. Before hammering on somebody, if a problem exists or a complaint comes up from a whiney citizen, they try to guide you to the path of righteousness. Nicely. Then later, if no cooperation, they try to put the hammer down. They can issue stop work orders, and have done so in a couple of instances on our lake.

However, you will probably get much mor joy from the DNR or DOE people, who DO have enforcement people and who DO just love to come and ruin somebody’s day if they are filling up the lake or washing out the roads or some such. The bulk of the problems raised in this meeting should seem to be addressed to those guys, because the perps are for the most part not even using permits, or in many cases, a permit is not required.

On subdivision zoning and land use issues – Question – does the lake itself come into the equation. Answer – more interested in traffic density issues. Sepa process (whatever that is) – something that provides for hearings, appeals, decisions, etc etc for any large project. More boats on the lake is somebody else’s problem – like the sheriff. Property with actual water access could have these issues come up during the sepa process. Comments should not be just “I don’t want this”. Indicate why – runoff, traffic, whatever.

Anything with 10 or more slips is a marina. Shorelines Substantial Development Process would have to be followed – more hearings, appeals, decisions, etc.

But here is the real kicker in all this: Anything greater than 20 acres does not go to the land use office. State maybe gets involved. DNR gets involved for roads. Ecology gets involved with storm water issues. Private road issues goes through land use office, not public works. They have their own standards for private roads. They can ask “how do you get to that road” so you don’t have a road to nowhere, I guess. But Road Planning is also exempt for property over 20 acres. There are no filling and grading standards for private roads.

Subdivisions are anything over 4 lots. There is a process for subdivisions. But not for subdivisions over 20 acres, it appears.

Critical area ordinance – Anything you build has to be 150 ft setback from the water. However, there are processes to deal with land that can’t meet the setback -- buffer reduction can mitigate the impact. Vegetation can be planted. Storm water runoff is the big issue. If you aint got 150 feet, as a lot of property on our lake does not, then a variance can be allowed, and generally is.

Questions came up about Deer Lake resort, since it has been for sale for the last generation or so – It is not designated as urban, but being a resort, it allows for more intense development than other property might be allowed. Three are actually four designated Small Scale Resorts on our lake: Deer Lake Resort, Sunrise, West Bay, and Zack’s Shacks (wherever that is). These are called Overlay Zone type 2, and allow for limited areas of more intense development This allows for small scale recreation or tourist use, but NOT new residential development. So, somebody buying up Deer Lake Resort would not necessarily be allowed to fill it up with full time condos. However, the planning guys would look at the traffic implications and they at least might well approve it, as it would actually reduce traffic from what is there now.

There are no plans for a Sub Area Plan for Deer Lake in the near future. Loon and Long lakes would get theirs first, if any, because they have already applied for this. These things cost a lot of money and time, which the county aint got. And no, your scribbler does not have any idea what a Sub Area Plan is, but it seems like something a lot of people would like to have. Apparently Deer Lake tried this in the 80's, but there was no Growth Management Act then, so didn’t get one. Whatever this thing is, it is in Title 3 of the Development Regulations.

Editors note – I sent this to Mr White to get his comments and to let him check for any errors, but I never got a response back.

Dick Price, general manager, Stevens PUD. Overall Structure of the PUD: non profit special purpose district, public entity. 3 elected commissioners. Wade Carpenter is our guy. 16 full time people, 17 separate water districts from Nine Mile Falls to Kettle Falls, 6 sewer systems. Regular meetings of the board open to the public.

The PUD Sewer systems are Not designed for rural populations. Last board meeting, pud passed a resolution to NOT extend sewer into rural areas. That pretty much means anything outside of the various lake areas. Boundaries for the PUD were drawn when sewer was put in. If something is outside the boundaries, PUD aint going there. No PUD service to new developments outside that area. (That does not mean they can’t put in a HUGE septic tank.)

Redeveloping existing resorts – PUD will not provide a level of service more than twice the existing level of service. EDUs (Equivalent Dwelling Units) says that it takes three RV slots to equal one house. So if Deer Lake Resort has 21 Rv spots, that means that they have 7 EDUs, which means they can put in 14 Condos.

How far back from the lake are sewer systems required? That would be all the area in their boundaries. PUD says that they do not have the capacity for a big development. There are no county regulations about who has to be on the sewer or not, once you are outside the PUD boundaries.

The land being proposed to be developed in the narrows IS part of the boundary. Presumed 1 home per 20 acres, so they would go to 2 per 20 if they cluster. This land was all carved up years ago. It may have 10 assessed or possible EDUs, so they would be allowed 20 EDUs. They want 50 and PUD does not see any way to give it to them. There are also 130 vacant lots existing on the South Shore area of Deer Lake that have been promised sewer capability. There is only so much capacity available, so if a development showed up and wanted X EDUs, the 130 promised EDUs have to be included in the capacity calculations before you allow in the new guys.

Water CAN be extended beyond urban areas.

Commercial dock users will next year be charged lake leases. This would mean the resorts. It might mean people who rent their place out during the summer. Some state guy is already assigned to sneak around and finger these docks.

PUD is putting in a facility to take septic tank residue, near Valley. Opens in March. Private septic tank pumpers would use this. PUD will use this. It is twice over budget.

The question came up of who elects the PUD commissioners? Also, there is the question of Rate payers per Commissioner. State law says Commissioner districts must be equal in population. But everybody in the county votes, even city folk who do not use pud facilities. Title 54 rcw. So, of the three commissioners for PUD, there are like 300 PUD users electing two of them, and 5800 PUD users electing the third (ours).

That was the end of the invited speakers. We then had a short regular meeting.

We have a quorum.

D&O insurance. Before we can get D&O insurance, we have to have liability insurance on our 20 acres of swampland. It is only $1700 for d&o, about what was promised at the annual meeting. But it will cost anther $2500 for liability, incase some kid gets tossed overboard when their parents are canoeing in our weeds. Had we been able to unload this property three years ago to Fish & Game, there would be no problem. But we own it and have to deal with the fallout consequences. There was a short discussion about once again trying to unload it to get rid of the liability. Currently if somebody trips on that property and sues us, all the dlpoa members become liable. That idea was tabled, with the DLPOA treasury eating the extra $2500 for the next couple of years, while we contemplate our navels during that time to find a solution.

We set the time periods for upcoming events:

Spring Cleanup may 17
dock demo June 7
annual meeting June 14 firestation
fall cleanup – sept 20<

There was a discussion of 4^th July fireworks. Visibility problems where they were last time, but we don’t currently have a better area. Somebody asked if we could just all traipse over to Deer Lake Resort and oggle theirs instead of having our own, but we were told that they don’t use a licensed fireworks guy so he can’t get the really really good stuff.