North County water trail: Lake landowners look to stop water corridor

Hole in the Ground Creek runs north toward Bonnie Lake. Both the creek and the lake are part of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s plan to create a water trail connecting Chapman, Bonnie and Rock lakes via streams like Hole in the Ground Creek.

More than 40 owners of land along Rock Lake and Bonnie Lake are vehemently protesting a state proposal to turn that area into a state-owned public water corridor.

Irritated landowners of the United Bonnie Lake Landowners now have made calls and penned letters to state Department of Fish and Wildlife and to Whitman County officials with one clear message: We won’t sell our land.

Multiple Gazette interviews with some of those same officials had an equally clear consensus: If you don’t sell, the park just won’t happen.

John Siegel stands in front of a portion of his property at Hole in the Ground.

The game department has proposed turning the corridor into a park to provide more public access and to protect the diverse range of species living there. The department currently has an application for a $3.6 million grant in to the state’s Recreation and Conservation Office, or RCO, to purchase land for the corridor. Award for the grant will be decided in September.

The land in question is defined as Chapman, Bonnie and Rock lakes, the water channels between them, and mile-wide strips of land flanking each side of the waterways.

Those strips of land in question hold homes, barns, cattle, wheat and lentil fields, and untouched forest throughout.

In a meeting with the Gazette out at Hole in the Ground Monday morning, March 15, about a dozen landowners said the land in question has been in most of their families for more than 100 years and under no condition would they sell.

“If they pay me a million dollars an acre, I don’t want to sell,” said John Stelzer, long-time landowner along the corridor.

Farmers were highly suspicious of the game department’s promise that it would only purchase land if the landowners were willing.

“You go back in history and you ask Chief Sitting Bull if he had a distrust for the government. We’re not wearing any feathers but by golly we’re in the same tribe, you might say,” Stelzer added.

Louise Belsby’s family has owned land in the area since the late 1800s.

John Siegel said his family too has farmed land in the area for decades, some of it visible from the bridge at Hole in the Ground south of Bonnie Lake.

“Most of the farms have been up there for 100 years,” Siegel said.

The farmers had a list of other reasons why they don’t want to sell; more people in the area would increase the fire risk in an area of dry, plentiful timber; more people would leave trash, and more people would be out hunting close to homes or even poaching.

They were also alarmed that an entire proposal, including a map with their names and their plots of farm land, had been drawn up by the game department without any locals being contacted.

One farmer on the corridor just happened to read a Feb. 18 Gazette article detailing the Whitman County park board’s endorsement of the proposal. For many of the farmers, that was their first clue of any state plan.

“It was devastating. It’s a backdoor approach,” said landowner Julie Pittman.

Members of the United Bonnie Lake Landowners came to a Whitman County park board meeting March 11 to protest the proposal to the park board. Some will attend the next Whitman County Commissioners meeting March 29 at the courthouse.

In an interview with the Gazette Tuesday, game department regional wildlife program manager Kevin Robinette said if landowners do not want to sell, the department can’t force them.

“Obviously if everyone down there doesn’t want the project, we’re not going to force it,” Robinette said.

He went on to say the proposal is still in its early stages, pointing out he won’t know if the $3.6 million grant from the state RCO has been awarded until September.

An official with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife in Olympia, Jennifer Quan, affirmed Robinette’s statement.

Quan said there is a list of criteria each department proposal must meet to qualify for a grant from the RCO office. One of those is community support and if community support is low, she said, the RCO could turn down their proposal.

If the RCO office did decide to award the grant, Quan said, the department could go ahead and make offers to buy up land with the grant money. If farmers won’t sell at that point in the process, Quan said, the grant funds would not be used and the RCO would pass the money on to another proposal.

“If we can’t secure any sales with that money we ask for an extension or the money goes to next project on the RCO list,” Quan said.

When asked what they would do if push comes to shove and the department does receive the $3.6 million grant, all the landowners said they would simply refuse to sell.

“This has been our life for years,” said Gary Van Dyke, another landowner along the corridor.

For more information from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, call this public official Kevin Robinette at (509) 892 7859, ext. 324.