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A county landowner built a dock along the Lower Shoshone River without first getting a county permit. (Park County photo)
Kim Dillivin (left) and county planner Joy Hill discuss the dock permit with commissioners.
A county landowner built a dock along the Lower Shoshone River without first getting a county permit. (Park County photo)
Kim Dillivin (left) and county planner Joy Hill discuss the dock permit with commissioners.
A dock, which was built without permission on the lower Shoshone River and led to concerns from the county engineer and locals, including members of Trout Unlimited and raft owners, was ordered to be removed Tuesday by the Park County commissioners.
The vote was 3-1, with Lee Livingston opposed, saying he didn’t want to tell a private property owner what to do on his land. The motion granted approval for the owner’s work to revamp a road down to the river on his property and his removal of roughly half an acre worth of shrubs, especially Russian thistle, to create a clearing. It denied permission for the pier, which is already built but will now have to be removed. The owner could return with another permit for a pier that may meet with commissioner approval.
The hearing was attended by many people objecting to the dock and a few in support. More people had submitted comments objecting to the construction, especially the pier, and how it may impact a popular rafting area and blue-ribbon fishery.
Park County Planning and Zoning Director Joy Hill and her staff, in their official report, raised the same issues as members of Trout Unlimited. They expressed concerns about the precedent this could set in regard to more property owners building docks along the river.
They, along with Park County Engineer Brian Edwards, also raised concerns about the pier itself being washed down river in a flood. In addition, Edwards and Hill raised worries about the road itself being in the floodplain and the erosion that could result.
Hill noted that the pier is located along a stretch of the river known as a blue-ribbon fishery, a name given to trout fisheries that are extremely high quality for anglers and wildlife enthusiasts.
The owner of the property, John Leroux, wrote in documents that it was built for recreation and said it was built to withstand floodwaters, made of galvanized steel grate and pipe. The decks are supported by steel pilings driven into the riverbed.
Wyoming River Trips raft company co-owner Landon Blanchard was one of many to raise concerns about the pier jutting into the water and leading people floating down the river in rafts to be pinned or trapped by the structure, which was nearly completely submerged recently with the river flowing at 5,000 cubic feet per second.
“We do our best to manage risk as a professional company and as a commercial outfitter,” he said. “That’s why people come and pay us money to do it. I’m talking about the stuff that we can’t control. I’m talking about the public that doesn’t have that expertise. And I’m talking about an increased user-base of river runners that go beyond the commercial stuff.
“It’s not talking about what we can control, it’s talking about what we cannot control. It’s not about where you’re supposed to be, it’s about where you can end up.”
Blanchard pointed out, as did commissioners Scott Mangold and Lloyd Thiel, that rafts will naturally flow to the outside of a river bend, which is where the pier is located.
“I do believe that it poses a specific danger,” Thiel said. “I don’t have one bit of problem with the road, the vegetation, clearing the Russian thistle and things like that. But I do believe that we are setting a precedent allowing something this significant into the river.”
No other structures exist on this stretch of the river, Hill said. Tom Brown, a member of Trout Unlimited, said as far as he knew, the pier was the only structure along the waterway between the East Entrance to Yellowstone and Willwood Dam.
Attorney Mary Reed, representing Leroux, said the work had been done on the pier to minimize the possibility of its loosening and being taken downstream during high flows. She said it had been watched during the recent high water and remains intact.
Harold Musser, who owns land along a stretch of the Shoshone upriver and sold Leroux the land in question, said he supported Leroux’s project as well within his property rights.
“What this really is about is private property rights,” he said. “I’ve known John Leroux a long time. I haven’t known him to do anything that wasn’t first class from his houses that he’s built to the ranch he operated. I know he wouldn’t do anything to harm anyone.”
The worry that the pier could nonetheless lead to someone on the river being harmed led most of the commissioners to side with the majority of the people in the crowd.
Hill’s staff report alluded to some of those same concerns.
“While the impacts of this individual project may seem negligible, the board shall consider impacts that may result from additional projects of this type being proposed and completed along this reach of the Shoshone River,” the report stated. “Recent historic flooding in the region should serve as a reminder of how otherwise ‘flood safe’ construction can quickly be swept away to the danger of others.
“Repeated exposure of the structure to water in this manner is expected to weaken the structure over time. Certainly, the management of flows in this stretch assists with flood management but is not a guarantee that flooding will not occur in the future within or beyond the mapped floodplain.”
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the landowner (LeRoux), owns the riverbed, also. I can't see how anyone has an argument UNLESS, the Shoshone is a, by federal designation, a "navigable" river (which it is and SHOULD be). Public has access up to the high water mark on navigable rivers and would have the right to object to this dock. What this case is all about IS, is the Shoshone a NAVIGABLE river?
I am all for the public having access if it is a "navigable river". However we as a society have been for way to long telling others what they can and cannot do on their property. We are having our rights taken at an alarming rate. I have not lived in Wyoming that long, but I am finding Wyoming touts a lot of freedom and being conservative. But I am finding it really is not at all, all that conservative. And people here wanting to tell everyone what they should and should not do, is just as bad as anywhere else in the country. In some ways it is much worse than other places. I have never seen such tax and spend Rinos as we have in this Park County Commision.
Wow, Mathew, welcome to the NIMBY capital of Wyoming. A whole bunch'a freedom lovin' people.........and most of them love tellin' someone else what to do with their property. A bunch of CINO's (conservatives in name only)
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