DLOA meeting Nov 8 2007

WE HAVE A QUORUM!!!!

Tony Delgado, county commissioner – Stevens county finally passed the ATV ordinance. The roads around Deer Lake are on the approved list. You do need a sticker on your ATV. Single file, lights on. 35MPH top speed. Helmets. You do not need insurance on the ATV, but it is a good idea. Must have a regular driver’s license. This thing is going to cost me thousands of dollars, since my family has been waiting for this for two years now...

--Moratorium for subdivisions down to 5 acres has been lifted. County is being inundated with requests.

--Fish & Game meetings will be held in Colville 2nd & 3^rd of May at the courthouse. Y’all come. It is rare that they get east of Lake Washington.

--Potentially Dangerous Dog ordinance is getting close. There has been a Dangerous Dog ordinance. Will not control barking dogs.

--Growth Management – lawsuits with Loon Lake finished. LL can now subdivide down to 1 acre. Deer lake is still now 20 acres, but the Growth Management may have cut that down to 5 acres. We will check this out.

--Transportation meeting – Tony brought up the Loon Lake 4 corners intersection. DOT is uninterested, but Tony is pushing some studies anyway. He would like to get a speed reduction there, maybe down to 45MPH.

--395 is one of the most deer prone hiways in the nation. Tony is pushing for an increased doe season in a 1 mile corridor around 395 to reduce the population.

Newsletter has been sent out.

25000 fish being raised in our pens. Kokanee. Spawn every 3 years. 18-22 inches when grown. 4 year fish get up to 26 inches. 300K tiny kokanee will be dumped next spring, but we expect them to be mostly fish food. Fishing opens up march 1 next year, and increased limits on bass and stuff will be in effect.

Membership – we need more board members.

Dlpoa Property Survey – Survey of the narrows will cost up to $3k. This is needed so that we know where our stuff ends and the developers stuff starts.

Road safety – you can put your own 20mph sign on your property. Mr Rung suggested that we put fluorescent cloth on these signs. Maybe flashing beacons on the top of the sign. Get the signs noticed. Most of the concern appears to be around the Nazarene and Salvation Army camps. 800-572-0947 goes straight to Stevens county dispatch. Get a license plate and call if you see speeders. It worked this summer.

Dock demo days – we need a backhoe for next year. And a dump truck.

DOE guy will come talk about water in March. A hydrologist will be here then to explain how the lake functions, were water comes from, where it goes to. Where is the high water mark? How to establish one – courts? Probably cannot raise the dyke, but we could raise the culverts. Is there a wet and dry cycle?

Larry calculated what irrigation might do to lowering the lake, and he figures something in the range of 0.1-0.3 inches per year. There is some evidence that the water table around the lake has been going down over the last umpteen years.

Water Quality and Millfoil. Surveyed whole shoreline. Found only four plants. One not in the swamplands.

done at 8:30

DLPOA meeting October 11 2007

There was No quorum, so nothing here counts. Mostly we discussed various issues.

Visitors to the meeting were Clyde Innes, Rodger and Gae Stroud, Brian Humphrey, Don Davis, and Dennis and Bonnie DeMattia. Board members attending were Larry Nokes, Mike Phillips, Mike Egan, Ken Ring, Jim Santora and Maurice Paul.

Milfoil - Mike Phillips went to a grant meeting to score some bread for Early Emergence Milfoil Eradication. Our grant starts jan 1. We will have to pay for this year's effort (about $3K). We will get a $50K total grant, spread over 5 years. We have to pay 12.5% of the costs. After year 6, we have to reapply, and then you only get a portion of the then available money. The grant pays for pulling weeds and weed surveys. The County weed department oversees all this.

A Sooper sucker will be here the week of Oct 20 to pull weeds in the narrows. We will also survey more of shoreline. The grant allows us to hire local people (at like $10/hr) to do these surveys, and the county will pay to harvest. We of course are also happy to have volunteers do this stuff. Training will be available.

Newsletter - by Nov 1.

Clyde Ennis, who lives at sunrise point, started a spirited discussion on the lake level. He has lived here since 1964. The Lake level slightly higher this year than last year. Do we need to monitor who is drawing water from the lake - lawn watering, etc? How much does this draw down the lake every year? The subject of a gate on the overflow came up again. Larry Nokes said that there was no overflow this year. Flushed for three weeks last year. We started out 8 inches lower at beginning of summer, ended up a foot higher at end, compared to last year. We don't know why that much less water left the lake this year over last year.

It is illegal to dig a hole in the lake - even with a shovel. The lake seal is very thin. If you penetrate that, the lake will flush through that hole. We have had instances of people doing this, and they had to hire people to cap the holes.

It is illegal to pump water from the lake without a permit, and there have been no permits issued since 1972. It is questionable that many earlier houses had permits. Now we have a sewer that is taking essentially lake water and flushing it to the sewer down towards Loon Lake. There is probably a zillion gallons being lost by this manner.

Several long timers at the meeting are certain that the high water level is way down from the 1980's and more so from the 1960s. There is a dyke in front of the culvert that actually controls the outflow. Is that dyke lower now (due to degradation) than it used to be? Is there percolation before you get to the dyke? We don't know. Would it help to have an adjustable overflow controller? We have 18 square miles of watershed. That is all that there is to fill up our lake. We do not have an inlet creek or river. There are some springs that add water to the lake.

The Condos. Owner of the condo property wrote a letter to PUD - wants PUD hookups. PUD needs to make some sort of political decision, but said that it would be no technical problem. $7500 per lot hookups. There would be public discussions on this. DLPOA is not as an organization taking a position on all this, but is encouraging interested homeowners to attend meetings, and provide information to these commissions.

DLPOA Board Meeting September 13, 2007

George Renner will give up the treasurer post. Mike Eagan was named treasurer, voted on, and accepted. Treasurer report: $8K in checking, $47K in CDs. Actually $2K to the good this year.

Last meeting notes and annual report blessed.

4^th of July - lots of people could not see them. The firework techs are willing to do the middle of the lake again. But we don't have decent docks to plant in the middle of the lake. Need a dock 32X48 to do it right. About $25K. Existing docks from dock demo days don't float high enough. One possibility: if somebody kicked in half the cost, they could keep the dock at their place 363 days of the year. We will make a suggestion in the newsletter to see if we can get 2 or more takers for 8X48 ft sections. Could try to repair the ones we got, but that still aint enough acreage. A gentleman who has access to lots of 55 gal plastic barrels offered them to us to get the crappy docks floating. A gentleman who is a carpenter offered to donate some time. Ask in newsletter to see if anybody will donate some shoreline for a few days.

Fish - released early because of warm water. Will get more when the water gets to 60 deg. Ask in newsletter to see if anybody will take a fish pen. Need 14 ft of water.

Cleanup - Sept 22. No chilli this time.

Membership - need somebody to birddog.

Demo dock - Bill is out of town a lot this year, need a new guy to deal with this.

Emergency services - Mark Veck is the new District 1 fire chief. He is very interested in the condos, since one of the requirements for building stuff like that is that the fire engines can somehow get to them when they are smoking.

DLPOA property near Salvation Army Camp - issue is now dead.

Narrows property - will be getting surveyed, since the Condo people have been slobbering at grabbing some of it for their lake access.

Road Safety - speeding still going on at n deer lake road. Suggestion - have a lot of home owners buy 20 mph signs. Lots of them. Up and down the road. We have a radar gun available. But people blast it with shotguns. Crosswalks - We would like to have some near the resorts, but the county won't do it ( if they put them in for us, then they gotta do it for everybody in suncrest and everyplace else) and they won't let US do it. Traffic cones get stolen if you put them out.

Water - we do have Eurasian Milfoil, in the narrows. Confirmed by state lab. For small areas, a diver gets a sooper sucker and sucks up everything in the area. $1200 / day for the sucker boat. Grows slowly at first, then after about 6 years it explodes. What we found was about 2 years old. Will never get rid of it, but can control it. But takes bux. Can get a State Grant (75state/25us) to get started on control. County will not help. Loon Lake spent $40k, and continues to spend money yearly for control. Eventually to control it, you start a Lake Improvement District (costing homeowners maybe $1/foot) to do the continuing control. Motion made to spend $3k now for the sooper sucker and divers, and apply for a grant money. Passed. Milfoil does not grow below 30 ft, which helps us compared to Loon Lake which is shallower. 24D is a chemical solution that may happen later on if we can't control it now.

Maps - paid for 20, got 14. DLPOA will try to encourage Sondra Collins to deliver what got paid for.

Condos in the narrows - 200 acre parcel on west side, subdivided to 12 20 acre lots on the mountainside, $200k/lot for bare land. Pads are already cut and staked. Great views of Spokane, even. There is also 400 acres on the east side that the same guys own. Zoning and growth management would allow 80 units on the 400 acres. If they cluster the houses, and dedicate 240 acres to no development, they get a bonus in the number of units. They would need a separate road from the one that exists, because the existing road is private. As yet, no permits, etc. First thing is an environment impact statement, then they need lake access. Their land on the lake is wetlands. DLPOA needs to be the eyes and ears of the lake, so that when these guys make applications, we can go raise heck. Motion passed to get a survey on our property so we know where we are, where they are, etc. Make sure that our survey is recorded in Colville. $2000 max. BB will get a surveyor.

Flyer - 150 emails returned. Getting database started.

D&O - need to insure our land as well, which is even more than the D&O insurance itself. Too bad we still own those crappy wetlands on the narrows.....

DLPOA board meeting May 12 2007

The Minutes snuck through again. Bank account $54K, most in Cds. Fireworks are mostly paid for.

Still no home for the fireworks. Looking for a permanent used dock for this and future years for the fireworks.

Need cookies for the kids parade.

Chili Feed and road cleanup this Saturday.

Annual meeting - DLPOA supplies condiments, sausage, buns.

Pancake breakfast - need counter people.

The Building - Station 5 is not on a sewer. (It is across the street from the mandated area.) If dlpoa would fund a sewer, maybe station 5 could be the community center. Salvation Army unlikely to allow use of their land for parking, and we would need parking to have a community center. Other thoughts - storage center?

Traffic - Sheriff presence is the big thing for traffic control. Local sheriff deputy made a formal request for presence, and in the next couple of weeks, they have shown up. Nokes suggested we write down license numbers and barrage the sheriff dept with them. School busses seem to be a big part of the problem.

East sign - long discussion of how much to pay the high school kid that mows the grass in front of our sign. He has us by the short hairs and knows it. He controls the water for the grass that needs to be mowed.

Weed control - to get a permit, the weed guy needs an association to cosign with him. Do we want to be the cosponser? There are half a dozen agencies with their ore into this, and even our participation may not be enough to make this happen. A vote was taken. We decided not to be a party to this, since a) this will not benefit the whole lake, just a few owners, and b) the potential liability for us.

A new weed killer - Milestone - $15/acre, last three years - to kill dandilions, knapweed. No licence required, 2 gallon max. Available at Big R.

Dock demo day - have a backhoe and dump truck.. Need chain saws. And a tow boat. Pinelow has a small dump truck. Have to stack the logs for burning at Camp Gifford back 40..

Fishing - croppie, perch, bass,macks. Opening day was dynamite.

Splake - a cross between macks and brook trout. Brookies with sharp teeth. Aggressive like macks. (Editor's note - we caught one the next weekend.)

D&O Insurance - Mike Saubb, esq. Formal proposal to increase the dues to cover this insurance. Our annual budget is about $6k, dues bring in about that. Insurance would cost another $2k. Also we need Liability insurance on the 20 acres.

Bylaws - the same lawyer looked at those, and suggested a bunch of changes. We (meaning moi) will get the suggestions printed up, and Larry Twitchell and Lee Baily will look them over.

Made plans for the spring cleanup.

DLPOA Board Meeting April 12 2007

Larry Nokes - fireworks. 25 minute display, July 3. Still have a problem as to where to shoot them off from, since we got kicked off the point of land used last year. We are going to go grovel for a while, and if that don't work, look for a spot across the lake (southwood shores area). Several of the officers indicated that they got notes from people who would rather the fireworks be on the 4^th, as George Washington preferred. However, a) we gonna save a pile of dough by doing it on the 3^rd, and b) it is already set in stone for this year.

George Renner - treasurer report. We have $56k liquid cash. $12K of that is in checking, with the rest in money markets. $30-50k in property value (2 properties). Some people are paying dues twice, because we include the dues envelope in two of our three newsletters. They would like us to not include a second envelope in their newsletter if they already paid their dues. The newsletter guy about swallowed a frog when this was suggested, since the logistics to deal with that are way more than we are set up to do. The newsletter guy only has member names and addresses, and does not have the bux information that the treasurer has. Part of this is separation of church and state, and part of it is we don't have a multi zillion dollar multi user networked Oracle database.

Several non board members showed up, and were immediately hammered on to become new board members. Two of them accepted our gentle nominations: Ken Ring and Mike Eagan. Ken appears to be somewhat retired and would like to help the community. Mike will represent the home owners group that has that really really nice wunnerful to die for, I wish I could use it, private boat launch that you see on your way to Deer Lake resort.

We discussed the relocation of the Agar Road DLPOA sign (the one at the intersection of Agar Road and North Deer Lake road) to the Y near the public access area. The present location is difficult to maintain, impossible to provide water or lighting. By moving to the Y, we can generally clean up the area, and provide for better directional signs. We think it is PUD property. We can get water for landscaping and power for lighting. We would have it lit at night. Would brighten up the whole area. Need county buy in, PUD buy in. We do not think that this will be a problem. Somebody in the meeting who was nodding off got assigned to start this process.

There was a discussion of speeders on our roads. A number of our board members believe that, at least on North Deer Lake Road, with its resorts and winding narrow roads, that they observe a lot of people who are really going too fast for the conditions. All board members are encouraged to call the sheriff department once a week to complain about speeders. Maybe that will get some sheriff presence. At least one Sheriff deputy actually lives near the Y, so some complaints might do some good. Somebody suggested speed bumps, but they do not work because of snow plows. Speed dips maybe would work. Radar guns and signs are available, but if you leave them out, they get ripped off. We actually have access to one of those radar gun / speed showing signs, but because of the juvie problem in some areas, we can't leave them out.

The lake has already dropped two inches from its high point. We think that the subsurface got saturated last year, and so this year we will not lose as much to the ground sucking water from the lake as we did last year. We are 21 inches below high water mark now, and we got to 6 inches below the normal high water mark last year. There is no culvert overflow this year so far, and we do not expect there to be any.

Fish - Mr Santora released 15000 rainbow trout that were 4.8 to the pound (6-8 inches). The state will be dropping 5000 or so more rainbows. There are 27000 silvers in a pen ready to go. These will probably be the last ever, since they quickly turn into fish food for bass and mackinaw. These will be dumped into the middle of the lake, like last year, in the hope that some of them can escape getting munched. They will be released probably in a few weeks.

Zoning - the county ordinance work is pretty much done. If you have not voiced your concerns, it is too late. New houses will have to be mostly 20 acres, a few 10's and fewer 5's. Cluster development - a large parcel can put a bunch of homes in one area, leaving a lot of open space elsewhere -- will be allowed. Existing resort areas can do almost anything they want. Deer Lake Resort may be close to being sold and converted to condos. These have no land area restrictions. Asking price is $3.5M. We understand that the ramp is not part of the deal. There are two other official resorts on the lake, even if they are not currently operating, that fall under this rule.

Dock demo days. There is a ton of stuff in the narrows. At least 7 docks. Our fireworks docks need some serious work. We really need to get something permanent for the long haul. Need like 10 x 70 ft. Fireworks are not harmful to the dock. We are thinking about maybe letting somebody use it for all but that week, just to have a place to store it.

Dlpoa Property (near Pinelow). Darrel Rung: Do we really need it? What for? Isn't it nice to have some bux for when we get milfoil or something like that. It is estimated that it will cost $10k for maintenance per year. Nokes - could have an emergency vehicle or equipment stored there . Maybe give it to fire department or somebody for that use. Mrs Block indicated that the existing fire department building was built for use as meeting rooms. People could always use that. We have no insurance as yet. We would need parking from salvation army to get any kind of approval to use this property for a meeting space.

Newsletter material needs to be in by May 1.

Pancake Breakfast Sun July 1.

Fire - still can burn debris this year. But maybe not in future years. It is very likely that the state will prohibit essentially all fires state wide in the near future. The county will probably get anal like Spokane county now is about fires, and do that real soon.

Mike Phillips showed a satellite picture of Deer Lake. It is about 16X20, would cost about $90 plus frame. A newer one will be available soon. These will be shown at the annual meeting, and people will be able to sign up to buy them. Cash on the barrelhead, in advance.

D&O Insurance - After consulting a friendly (eg Cheap) lawyer, we find that we have three options. A) Do nothing, and someday get really screwed. B) self insure the organization by changing the bylaws to have all the members be assessed to pay for any lawsuits. Anybody who is a member of, or who has heard of, the Catholic Church lawsuit problems laughed that out of the room. Or C) purchase d&o insurance of $1700/yr. That would require a dues increase of five bucks a year.. A proposal was made to increase that by 10 bucks, the extra going to the fireworks. Right now we get 45% of all home owners on the lake paying dues, and 60% of those contribute to the fireworks. The $10 proposal did not seem to get a lot of enthusiasm, essentially because we just increased the dues a couple years ago, and we would like to let those who really want to contribute to the fireworks, do so, and not make anybody fork over for them. However, we will ask the membership at the annual meeting for the extra Abraham Lincoln, and then go purchase D&O insurance for all the hard working board members.

DLPOA Board meeting March 8 2007

This meeting was primarily an evening of presentations for a wide audience, followed by a smaller board meeting. The Presentations were quite heavily attended, with probably 30 people showing up for parts 1&2, and somewhat fewer for part 3. Pretty much everybody bailed after that, so we did not have a quorum for our board meeting, so technically these minutes do not count.

Presentation Part 1: Tom Wimpy, PhD, On weed eradication

All the weeds in our lake seem to be native, so far. Tom runs a weed eradication company, uses an herbicide (Diquat) to kill off the weeds around the docks and swimming areas. This would cost about $300/property, if several property owners will sign up for the service. There is a maximum limit on how many properties he is permitted to do. This process usually works for more than a year. There is no effect on fish. You need to hold off drinking for one day, irrigation for three days. He prefers to do this in the June time frame.

Inland Water Pest Control and Consulting. 509 535 3035 wimpyth@hotmail.com.

Part 2: Assessor office , Kiki Welfel 685-0658

It became apparent that most of the audience came prepared with stones and rotten eggs for a meeting with the representative from the county Assessor's office, Kiki as she likes to be known. She brought a fabulous map of the lake which Mr Nokes latched onto, that shows all around the lake how property values (actual selling prices) have soared over the last three years or so. As a rough rule of thumb, you can figure that the worth of your property is $6000 per frontage foot, if you are actually on the lake. (This is Real Cheap compared to the Legacy lakes in the area, like Priest and CdA.) She started to do her song and dance, and pretty much got trampled by questions, comments, shouts, innuendos and raw naked emotions from the peanut gallery.

What she did get to say, before everybody started beating up the messenger, was that property Assessments and property Taxes do not necessarily go hand in hand. Many of us have had our property values go up by factors of two or three (or much more in Southwood Shores), but the taxes on the property generally did not go up by anywhere near the same amount. The Assessments are calculated by essentially looking at what the houses around you sold for, and then looking at any improvements you might have made to your house. The Taxes are summed up from all the tax districts that your house happens to be lucky enough to be a part of; each of these districts has its hand out, and hands you a tax rate, which is multiplied by your Assessment, and that gives you your tax for that district. Add up all the taxes for all the districts, and that is what you hand over to the County Inquisition.

If that were the case, then your taxes probably would go up linearly with your assessment. However, each district is by law limited to how much blood it can squeeze out of the local turnips, and how much of an increase it gets each year. In practice, with assessments rising everywhere, the various tax Rates go down, and so your taxes are in fact Not linear.

HOWEVER, the limiting law does not apply to a particular House, only to the District. So if you are unlucky enough to have a few districts that include a lot of property that is not going up, then you get hammered so that the district gets its full pound of flesh. So, it is complicated.

There are some exemptions and deferrals that certain people can get.. Those will be on the web site. Someday. The obvious one is Senior exemptions - freezes the value of a house. You have to be 61 years old, $35K income max. Great deal if you qualify. One almost nobody had heard of, was a Widows of Veterans exemption. This is a Grant, actually, that pays your property taxes for you. You have to be 62, income less than $40K, and of course, had been married to a vet who has now gone to his great reward.

We then got into a barrage of heated pronouncements and some questions on people's personal tax questions and problems. I can't type fast enough to keep up with all the flames, so just be known that it was, well, lively. Mr Nokes tried to keep things on track, which was to talk about HOW the assessments are done. There was one of him and 10 of the others, so ....

There were discussions of assessments being unconstitutional, crappy benefits from taxes paid, whether year round property should be taxed more than summer only property, Bad Seattle people buying up our land sight unseen for outrageous prices, Even Badder Californians (your humble scribe would be an example) of paying even more obscene amounts, Martians (no, sorry), were there windfall profits to the county with all the largess that it is getting from us po country folk with $600,000 McMansions, and do you really think anybody would be dumb enough to actually pay that outrageous assessed amount for the crappy swampland that we have had for three generations at our end of the lake? (Answer: yes. See Californians, ibid.)

Property is evaluated every four years. You can appeal every year, but this year's appeals are closed. In July appeals will open for 2008. Under some circumstances, she will come out to the property, but she usually does it over the phone. (In my case, by letter.)

When she was finally able to bail out of the cacophony, about 60% of the audience left too, and a bunch of the rest were thrown out by Mr Nokes since they were still going on about the unfairness of it all and how grandma was going to end up in a poorhouse somewhere after she got her house confiscated by the sheriff.

Part 3 - Ken Merrill Wa DoE 509 329 3515 kmer461@ecy.wa.gov

Mr Merrill, who was also with us last month, made a powerpoint presentation of the ecology of a lake. A major fact that you have to understand is that lakes stratify, and that they do it differently between winter and summer. There is a Temperature Density relationship - Water gets more dense the colder it gets, until it gets to 4 Deg C, when unlike any other material, it then starts to get less dense as it gets colder. Only because of that, does Ice Float. (As an ex Chemist, it is very interesting to observe a bottle of Acetic Acid, freezing point of 16 Deg C, whose ice starts to form at the Bottom of the bottle.)

He had a bunch of charts to show all this, but essentially you can divide a summer time lake into the Top layer (epilimnion) where the water temperature is about the same as the surface; the thermocline (metalimnion), where the water temperature gets linearly colder as you go down in depth; till it reaches a maximum temperature (and density) in the area known as the hypolmnion.

(For an interesting web site on all this, go to faculty.gvsu.edu/videticp/stratification.htm).

The warmest water is at the top during the summer. Winter time, however, colder water is at the top, with the ice, and then 4 deg C water as you go deeper.

Our Thermocline starts at about 20 ft, goes to 35 ft. Phyoplankton (plants) are in the epilimnion. And take up all the nutrients. Algae is part of the phytoplankton, and it blooms, dies, and then sinks, along with everything it gobbled up, which is a lot of phosphorus. The Phytoplankton gets chomped by little bugs, and then the fish eat the bugs. Too much nutrient gives you too much growth (algae blooms). But nobody eats the algae, not fish, not bugs.

Phosphate (PO4 ion) enters the lake from external sources. The dead stuff goes to the hypolimnion, and then decomposes and can use up all the oxygen in that layer. There is no mixing between the layers during the summer. When all the oxygen is used up by decaying material, the sediment starts releasing phosphate back into the system from the sediment. Anoxic lakes liberates a lot of ammonia, (loon lake), and have no oxygen in bottom. So far, we have not got to this state. Our hypolimnion still has oxygen in it all summer long, and so the decomposed material pretty much just sits there on the bottom of the lake. For now....

Pet feces are a big supply of phosphate. Lawn runoff is another big source. Bad septic systems (not here). Bad Road design and maintenance creates runoff of dirt material, which is very high in phosphates.. Logging will dump loads of phosphates into a lake over a period of five years. Lakes cycle their water over time, thus cleaning it out, but at Deer Lake, we have a 9 year cycle.

Every little bit of, well, crap matters, and anything contributing phosphorus should be reduced as much as possible. controllable sources include things like pet waste, landscape desigh, landscape fertilizer, good irrigation management, and stormwater from roads.

Part 3.b Doug Piniel. Shorelands

Doug also works for the govmnt as a self described tree hugger, and gave a presentation of how you the home owner can help prevent phosphates from getting into the lake. In effect, bag the lawns, or at least bag them close to the lake. Provide buffer strips between your lawn and the lake so that nutrients get gulped up there before going into the lake. Get rid of the geese and geese poop. Private boat ramps are huge entry ways for the surrounding area to dump phosphate into the lake.

Solutions: renaturalize the shoreline. Slow runoff. Filter nutrients. Provide habitat for wildlife. Get rid of the geese. Buffer strips at the waters edge, to separate off the lawns and stuff. Stop mowing raking and weeding. Native plants will reestablish naturally. Keep native water plants growing where possible. If you don't want them growing around your dock or swimming area, at least let them grow in other areas.

It should be pointed out that a member of the audience who has experience in lawn maintenance seriously disagreed with the idea that fertilizer would be a big contributor. He said that all the fertilizer gets trapped by lawns and plants in their roots, and that spring runoff is a surface effect that does not provide a lot of phosphate load to a lake. Fertilizers have very little phosphorus in them, being designed mostly to provide Nitrogen to the soil.

The presenter disagreed. Doug said that most people overfertilize by a factor of 20. While Phosphates are tied up by plant roots, that is only until the soil receptors are saturated, then n and p are mobile. All it takes is micrograms of n and p in the water, and you get toxic concentrations for the fish. It takes only a very small amount of phosphate to cause all kinds of problems in a lake.

Board meeting - everybody left to go watch the cougs game, so we did not have a quorum.

Bank balance - $9900 +.

Property: Larry is in discussions with the salvation army camp to let us use some of their space for parking.

4^th July - Carpenter property, where we launched the fireworks last year, will not let us use it this year. We hope that we can move our launch dock across the lake.

Letter from Ken Ring - wants to be a member of the board. We all said Yeah!

Tony Delgado, one of the three county commissioners, made a presentation.

• There will be a maybe final development regulation meeting next Tuesday (March 13). 2 commissioners are in favor of 10/20 acre lots, but Tony wants 5 and 1 acre lots to be allowed. There have been several such meetings, and only 3-5 citizens show up. The board about swallowed a frog when Tony said this, since we have been assuming 20 acres minimum for the hillsides around the lake. Now things are on track for the 1 and 5 acre minimums, which brings traffic, more Californians, etc. 60/40 development - 60% kept natural, develop the other 40%. Cluster development will happen sooner rather than later on Deer Lake if this passes. (Kiss your hillside good by.)
• Ordinances are being discussed relative to potentially dangerous dogs that will allow the sheriff to get involved, which in our county apparently they cannot do now. (One member of the board thought that a 30/30 was the only ordinance he needed for such problems.)
• The legislature now allows county commissioners to pass ordinances to allow ATVs to use county roads. This is being discussed by our commissioners, and we expect to follow Ponderay county's lead. You would have to be 16 years old, with a driver license. Ponderay lists roads you Can ride on, we will list roads you can NOT ride on. Can cross major roads single file, not at an intersection, but not ride on major roads (like 395). Ken Barker on our lake is pushing this. Not yet approved - maybe by this summer. Have to ride on side of road, 35mph max, except when passing a house, 10mph to prevent dust. Tony said that the other two commissioners wanted this to pass more than he did. (My scribette wants it even more than that.)
• Exotic and dangerous cats - there will be an ordinance against lions and tigers, oh my! Apparently this is a problem on Long Lake.
• Got state money to buy sheriff cars. Have 21 patrol cars in the county now. Will get 11 new ones to replace junkers.

We had a rambling discussion on high water mark stuff - USGS has 50 years of data on this, but nobody has yet put it into a useful format or analyzed it. DOE gets the final vote on the official numbers. This number is important for building permits, and for if we are ever gonna put a dam on the outlet. There was a lake height measuring tube until just recently, but it got pulled out.

D&O insurance - lawyer looked at it. $1700 for the insurance, or we could just ask for DLPOA members to pledge a lean on their property in case we get sued.. Maybe ask members for $5 dues increase to pay for this (instead of the lean). Or, we could just pass the hat among the members if this should happen.

Finally quit in time to see the 2^nd half of the game.

DLPOA board meeting Feb 8 2007

Board members attending: Larry Nokes, Mike Phillips, Ivy Shaw, Bill Beyindal, John Gregerson, KenRozelle, Mauri Paul and Jim Santora.

Guests were Larry Block (Filling in for Gerry), Jim Davies, Ken Merrill, Larry Twitchell, Mike Egan and of course your humble scribe.

Presentation on water quality.

Jim Davis from the Loon Lake POA, and Ken Merrill Department of ecology attended. Most of the meeting involved a presentation by Jim about doing water quality testing and monitoring. We all know that Loon Lake has a milfoil problem that, as yet, we do not have. But they apparently also have a serious water quality problem that we do not think we have yet either. Part of their problem is they have a smaller watershed area dumping into their lake than we do. I am not quite sure why this would crud up the lake, but Jim seemed to think it was significant.

LLPOA has voted funds to buy some equipment and train some volunteers and purchase some lab time to track their lake quality. They, like us, have a boatload of existing water quality data, going all the way back to the 1920's. BUT, it isn't consistent, data wasn't taken the same way every time, using the same techniques, at the same place and time. So, you do not have something that you can reliably track over time to see how things have changed, or anything something that you can take to a court, or a board of commissioners, or some state agency and present and have them believe. They want to have input into the comprehensive plans that are being developed in Stevens county for this area, and you need good science to be at the table. They want to be party to the changing regulations that will be happening over the next few years.

LLPOA has committed to do several tests a year, every year, forever. Using the same test methods, at the same spot(s) in the lake, at the same time of day, and same weeks of the year.

Mr Merrill pointed out that our govmnt has a publication named "A citizens guide - to understanding and monitoring lakes and streams" which you can find at www.ecy.wa.gov/biblio/94149.html. It is a pdf that can be downloaded, it is humongeous, and it was written for the wet side of the state, of course, but it gives you a general idea of the kinds of things that can happen to lakes if you are not monitoring them.

Mr Davis proposes what he believes is an absolute minimum of monitoring for his lake. That would include

• Secchi depth. - the funny black and white disk, showing how far down you can see.
• Surface temp.
• Measurements of pollutants of nitrogen and phosphorous at various depths.
• Dissolved oxygen. T
• Temperature, Conductivity, Ph. At various depths.
• Chlorophyll A.

Consistent for when, where, conditions, and methods.

Mr Merrell would volunteer to interpret the data to be simple, accessible and determine needs, so a group like DLPOA can all understand what is being said.

Measurements would occur One week a month during the summer., center of the lake. These need to be done After the stratification of the lake occurs, which is in late spring

The big problem is that there is a hardware cost about $8000, mostly for the profiler, the electronic gadget that you send down the column of water to collect some of these measurements.

You also need a capable and certified Laboratory to analyze some of the water samples that the profiler can't do - things like Chlorophyl, nitrogen and phosphorus. The Spokane tribal lab meets these criteria and would be the contractor. This would cost about $900/year to do all the stuff that Loon lake wants done.

Four sampling trips. Top, bottom and middle of the lake column. June, July, August, September. 12 Secci disk and temperatures per year, May to October. Plant mapping twice a year (August, September).

They would really love to have DLPOA join them with this effort, especially to help buy the equipment. If we buy in, then we get to use the equipment on our lake. Lab costs would be extra.

The really big deal is oxygen content, at the bottom of the lake . No oxygen releases phosphorus and that then eutrophies the lake, causing algae blooms and is just generally bad news all around.

Logging and road construction dump lots of phosphorus into the watershed. The comprehensive plan at the moment makes no statements about how to protect ground water and surface water. Eg, no logging rules or building rules. Nothing really regulates runoff from logged land, or roads.

It has been determined that both Loon and Deer lakes have a nine years retention time for internal loading of junk in the lake. That means that whatever runs into the lake will take, on average, 9 years for it to go away.

Minutes from last meeting accepted. Obviously nobody read them or there would have been a large hue and cry.

D&O insurance - $2 million liability, some property - would cost between 700-1500/year. Lawyers differentiate between a benevolent organization (like a church) and us, a service organization. Benevolents apparently don't need as much protection. We are looking for lawyer advice on how much risk we are at. We are incorporated, which helps some.

DLPOA Property - $80K materials cost. Need an architect to do some drawings. We would have to build a commercial building and to commercial building codes. Which somewhat increases the building cost. We think we can get some grants. We need to start the process of getting a wider membership involvement.

Discussion on the lake monitoring :Do we need to do it as much as loon? Need more information. Are we in as bad a shape as they are? Do we have enough volunteers to do the job? Is it cost effective?

The real problem that we see in our lake is mucky bays. Whole south end of the lake is getting that way. Also, some algae growth, in the same areas. This muck apparently came from early road building, and some sawmills that at one time were on the lake and dumped their waste into the lake.

Logging: The owner's plan is to sell 20-20 acre plots on the West side, and 5-20 acres plots on the East side after the logging is done. These would be on the hillside, with no lake access. Rumors have it that the asking price for bare land will be in six figures.

Fishing: There will be a March opening in 2008. The changes to bass limits will be May 1 2007. The problem is to get all this published in time for the changes, hence the 2008 date for fishing. We presume this means ice fishing, since the lake is currently well frozen over.

Meeting ended 915.

DLPOA Board Meeting January 11, 2007

Board Members attending: Larry Nokes, Mike Phillips, Ivy Shaw, Jim Santora, Maurice Paul, Ken Rozelle, Gerry Block.

Guests: Larry Twitchell, Ron Watson, and Dennis and Bonnie DeMattia

Financial report passed around. Previous board minutes passed around. The treasurer is on sabbatical for a couple of months, so we are taking the financial report on faith, since nobody here can understand the numbers. Board Minutes approved.

4^th of July - Fireworks will be on the 3^rd (which is a Tuesday). Parades (kids and boats) will still be on the afternoon of the 4^th. We believe that this gives working people a chance to come up the afternoon of the 3^rd, enjoy the fireworks, and then have all day of the holiday for time off. Plus, we save a few bux on the fireworks.

Need some no wake buoys during the setup time. Need a dock for a firework platform. Want to close the road around the dock for during the fireworks shooting time. All this to protect the fireworks platform during loading, and shooting off.

The Newsletter should suggest that people get on the water to see this stuff.

Boat parade is clockwise this year.

Fish - Deer Lake will be open for fishing March 1, but NOT TILL 2008!!!! This is because the rule change came too late to properly publicize it. There will be no limits on small mouth, raised limits for what size of other fish you can catch, mainly predators. All that will happen this year.

The problem with the new fishing date is, there is ice on the lake generally till April 1. We will probably have to put signs out warning people about the ice so that somebody does not go ice fishing and fall in.

Newsletter stuff needs to be here by next meeting. Newsletter to go out before following meeting.

We will continue to use Walts for now.

Following are the dates for the summer events:</P>

Cleanup days -- May 12 (day before mother day) and Sept 22 .

Annual Meeting June 9^th (2^nd Sat).

Dock demo days June 2. Need a backhoe, dump truck. These dock logs are great burning wood, and you are all encouraged to bring your chainsaw and take home some firewood.

Pancake feed is the weekend before the fireworks.

D&O Insurance - still needs to be looked into.

Mike Phillips - how to salute people who have served on the board. Cards, placques, gift certificates, ??? Case by case basis.

Regional lakes conference Feb 10.

March meeting, Ken Merrel, DOEcology, lake specialist, to talk about phosphorus in the lake. Nutrient loading kills lakes. Plant filtering of runoff.

Money - Loon Lake association wants to build a Lake Quality Database. To do this , they need an electronic data gathering dohickey, a "profiler" that will grab lots of lake data at different depths. If we do this a lot of different times over several years, we should be able to get some quality data that can be believed in, and then hire some lake experts to analyze the data and tell us how it is doing. This profiler thingy costs about $3000. Loon Lake would like to share the cost (and the device) between the two lakes, and maybe a couple others. We will tell them that we want more information and are interested.

Lorinda Travis is collecting all the historical data we have available to have it in one place. U of I is getting into the biology of the lake.

Zoning - Jim Santora went to the county public meetings. Commissioners are now pondering in closed sessions.

Firewood - extensive tree thinning is going on in some state land in the Agar Road area. This wood will be available for use as firewood, maybe perhaps.

Lake water levels - Kevin, who gave a presentation last meeting, has been doing some surveying of the lake on this question. Where relative to the outflow would be a good place to try to keep the lake level, so that we would protect ourselves from a further bump?

We have been hiring a kid to do sign maintenance. He wants a huge raise, since he is now a teen ager with Ipod aspirations. He has a good negotiating position, in that his family controls the water hose that we water our grass in front of the sign with.

We had another discussion of property tax values. Somebody said that the good news is, Reverse Mortgages now become a lot more feasible for our late years. If you can afford the property taxes, of course.

Meeting done about 9pm.