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Tree house comes down
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August 25, 2012 |
 After
months of controversy, a contracting crew hired
by the City of Bonners Ferry showed up at the
riverfront home of Tremain Albright and Adara
Dancer Thursday and took down a tree house that
garnered global attention earlier this summer,
along with the tree it once sat in.
In early June, the Army Corps of Engineers
determined that the tree holding the $14,000
tree house, one of several big cottonwoods on
the dike along the Kootenai River in Bonners
Ferry, posed a threat to the dike system and
threatened to withhold federal flood prevention
monies from the city if the tree and the house,
being used as a guest house, didn't come down.
Albright had been working on the unique tree
house for years, a little bit at a time, and he
said he realized that he might need a permit in
2007, when it started shaping up into more than
your typical tree house. He said he received a
permit from the city that year after a public
hearing, something the city denies.
Rather than lose the more than $160,000 in
federal funding the city stood to gain this year
for dike maintenance and repair, the mayor and
city council decided the tree house had to go,
and allowed Albright and Dancer until July 15 to
clear out their belongings.
The controversy that ensued over private
property rights versus public safety was picked
up by media outlets around the world, most with
Albright and Dancer characterized as the
underdogs facing off against an implacable big
government, but the plot thickened when a survey
paid for by the city showed that at least a
portion of the property in question belonged not
to the two homeowners, but to the City of
Bonners Ferry.
With that, the city set a date of August 1 for
demolition, but unusually high river levels
forced postponement of the project until August
23, when the river level and bank condition
stabilized enough to allow the work.
In a statement, Bonners Ferry Mayor Dave
Anderson acknowledged Albright and Dancer's
"affection for their creation," but that
demolition was "the right action to protect the
safety of our citizens."
Neither Albright nor Dancer were available for
comment. |
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