National Park Service assists trail project

SANDPOINT - An effort to connect Sandpoint, Ponderay and Kootenai with a shoreline trail is getting some expert help from the National Park Service, which has awarded a technical assistance grant to the Friends of Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail.

A community planner with the agency's Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program has been assigned to the Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail project to help with planning and public involvement for one year. The Friends will have an opportunity to apply for a second year of assistance.

"This National Park Service award shows the enormous promise this project holds for our area," said Carol Kunzeman, Mayor of Ponderay, a founding partner of the Friends organization. "We are really excited to work with these national experts to make this community driven project a reality."

The Friends of Pend d'Oreille Bay Trail seeks to secure a public waterfront trail, creating safe shoreline access and a backyard getaway so locals and visitors can continue to enjoy Idaho's largest lake. The proposed trail would extend from Sandpoint's water treatment plant, to the cities of Ponderay and Kootenai. All the local landowners along the corridor supported the grant request.

The Friends formed this year as a community partnership of the cities, county, private organizations, businesses and state agencies. Among the partners are North Idaho Bikeways, Idaho Conservation League, Avista Corporation, the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, Ponderay Economic Development Corporation, Bonner General Hospital, the Kinnickinnick Chapter of the Idaho Native Plant Society and several other partners.

The trail partnership is dedicated to working cooperatively with the landowners along the shore.

One of the agency partners is the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, which, with the cities of Sandpoint, Ponderay and Kootenai, and Bonner County, is seeking an environmental assessment of the project area under the federal Brownfields Program. Cleanup activities to address heavy metal pollution from historic smelting operations and any other possible contaminants could coincide and advance development of the proposed trail.

The National Park Service's Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance program is involved with many public trail and parks projects across the United States, and on average helps create more than 1,400 miles of trails and conserve more than 63,000 acres of natural areas and 700 miles of rivers each year.

For more information about the program on-line, go to "www.nps.gov/rtca."