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Treehouse travail gets global attention
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June 11, 2012 |
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After a long
battle to save it, Tremain Albright,
Bonners Ferry, conceded that he can no
longer fight "big government," so on
Friday, a government crew will be out to
tear down the treehouse he spent years
building so they can safely remove the
tree in which the house sits. |
If you Google "tremain albright treehouse,"
you'll have your choice of 20,900 websites from
around the world to find out that a Bonners
Ferry man will lose what is perhaps the coolest
treehouse in North Idaho, if not the entire
state, because the tree it sits in, while on
private property, is in the
wrong place.
Tremain Albright, who owns property along the
Kootenai River within the city limits of Bonners
Ferry city, has been working on that treehouse a
little at a time for years. The treehouse grew,
and what now overlooks the river isn't your
run-of-the-mill "boys only ... no girls allowed"
kid's treehouse ...it's a unique structure fit
for guests.
That's what he planned to use it for, a guest
house.
As it began taking shape a few years ago,
Tremain recognized that his project was more
substantial than most treehouses, and that it
might have grown to the point where a permit
might be required. With due diligence, he made
the rounds people normally do when building a
habitable structure. He visited county planning
and zoning, to be told that this project fell
under city jurisdiction.
Had it been outside city limits, he was told,
the county wouldn't require any kind of permit
at all.
He then went to Bonners Ferry building
officials, who work with more stringent land use
regulations, and was informed that he'd need a
city-issued variance, a grant of relief from
measurable land use rules such as setback,
structure size or lot size requirements.
In 2007, after public hearing, the City of
Bonners Ferry granted that permit, and Tremain
began building in earnest, eventually spending
over $14,000 to make it something a guest would
look forward to staying in.
"It's very special," Tremain told a reporter,
"there's probably not another one like it in the
state of Idaho."
What he didn't know when going through the
permit process, however, is that sometimes one
permit just isn't enough, especially in Boundary
County, where more than 75-percent of the land
base is under federal or state control. While
local development almost always takes place on
private land, there are many regulatory agencies
that have rules and require permits.
The Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency are the ones that
apply to land use most often, but in Tremain's
case it was the Army Corps of Engineers that had
the regulations and in this case no permit that
can be issued as it's the tree causing the
problem ... were it or several others to fall,
they could damage the dike that protects the
city from flooding.
Therefore, the Corps ruled, the trees must come
down, and the treehouse, too.
If they don't, the Corps said, they would
withhold more than $120,000 in federal funding
that would go to the city for levy maintenance.
Tremain tried fighting it, but there was nothing
he could do, and on Friday, the Corps plans to
send out a crew to begin remove the offending
trees, along with a treehouse that grew to be
much more than a simple fort.
"I still feel like this is just an action of big
government," Tremain told a reporter. "We were
totally helpless. The city's helpless, and they
are pretty much held under the gun." |
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