Priest Lake needs your voice, and it needs it now.
The proposed Yoman Bluffs Subdivision (county file S0003-25) is back before the Bonner County Board of Commissioners. This is our last chance to stop it. The decision made on October 20 will shape the lake’s water quality for decades, long after today’s commissioners have left office. Do it for your grandkids.
What’s at stake
Yoman Bluffs would put 12 residential lots on about 38 acres off Sherwood Beach Road near Coolin, on land zoned Recreation. The project was first proposed at 23 lots. It has been through repeated hearings, continuances, and a remand. Because the Coolin Sewer District has a moratorium on new hookups, every home would rely on its own well and septic system.
That is the heart of the problem. The Coolin Sewer District exists to keep septic systems away from Priest Lake, because septic systems are known to degrade water quality. Approving individual septic systems as a workaround weakens the protection the district was created to provide. It also leaves existing residents carrying the cost of fixing and expanding a sewer system that development keeps outpacing.
Once septic effluent reaches the groundwater and the lake, there is no undoing it.
What you can do today
- Email your opposition letter to the Bonner County Commissioners. Find their contact information here. Keep it short and personal. Say who you are, why Priest Lake matters to you, and that you oppose file S0003-25.
- Join the hearing on Zoom on October 20. Find the meeting and Zoom link on the county calendar. Showing up, even virtually, tells the commissioners the community is watching.
- Read the record. You can review SCA’s full comment letters, letters from other community members, and the county’s Yoman Bluffs documents.
Priest Lake has been protected because people like you kept showing up. Please show up one more time.