Bridge permit extended to March 2015 but bridge length will come up short of island

The Flathead County Planning Office has extended the construction permit for a bridge being built on the north shore of Flathead Lake in Bigfork.

Roger Sortino was granted a permit to build a 481-foot bridge from his property on Holt Drive to Dockstader Island, and construction started this spring on the project. However, in April, the county planning office ordered Sortino’s project to stop because the bridge had exceeded its permitted length by 100 feet.

Rather than seeking to have his permit amended to build a longer bridge, Sortino and his attorney Richard Dejana notified the Flathead County Planning Office in July that he intended to comply with the original permit.

Construction on the bridge was halted just as Flathead Lake was rising this spring, so the bridge pilings remain embedded in the ground and uncovered. The portion of the bridge that is out of compliance will have to be removed before the construction permit expires in March 2015, the county planning office said.

At 481 feet long, the bridge will not be long enough to connect the land to the island, so the bridge will start farther away from the north shore and will stop before it gets to the island, the county planning office said.

The bridge will be 481 feet long, 16 feet wide, decked with concrete and used for vehicles to access the island. It is being built by the owners of the land on the northwest and northeast sides of Dockstader Island.

Owners of the six lots surrounding the island are listed by the county as Jolene Dugan of Woodinville, Wash., and Bigfork resident Margrit Matter.

“He has an inherent right to get from one part of his property to another part of the property he owns over land he owns,” County planning director B.J. Grieve said. According to Flathead County plat maps, the owners’ land extends several hundred past the island into Flathead Lake.

Grieve said that it was a challenge for planning staffers to figure out how the bridge related to regulations that pertain to docks.

The bridge did not meet the regulations’ definition of a dock, a structure used for mooring watercraft and swimming activities and it does involve similar materials and methods of building a dock.

The regulations include provisions related to the amount of impervious coverage — typically the amount of dock space that can be built based on the amount of lakeshore frontage that is owned.

Under the formula, if a person has 100 feet of frontage, he or she can build no more than 800 square feet of impervious coverage.

But the property turned out to be different. With 100 feet of north-shore frontage and roughly 7,700 feet of frontage around the island, the regulations entitled Sortino to 14,865 square feet of coverage — for a deck. However the regulations do not address bridges. The bridge amounted to 7,700 square feet and a proposed boat dock on the island amounted to 840 square feet — all well within what would be a fairly restrictive formula.

Minutes from a March meeting indicate that commissioners Jim Dupont and Pam Holmquist questioned whether the permit application should have been referred to the county Planning Board, which would have involved public notice. Grieve said lakeshore permit applications are not referred to the Planning Board unless they require a major variance, and the bridge “didn’t require a variance because it’s something that can be processed under the regulations.”

With consideration that the entire structure was on private property, the two commissioners determined that the bridge did not amount to a major impact.

As permitted, the bridge design allows small watercraft to cross underneath.

There is no road leading to where the bridge meets — or now comes close to — the shoreline.

Flood-plain regulations do not prohibit vehicles from driving across the flood plain, but if a road were to be built, requiring the use of fill, that would require a flood-plain development permit.

Grieve said there has been no application for such a permit. The Flathead County commissioners in May were scheduled to consider an  amendment to the original building permit.

However, that review never took place because it was discovered by the planning office that the permit application crossed two property lines, instead of one property line, as outlined in the original permit.

That resulted in technical violations of lakeshore protection regulations, such as setback requirements.

Sortino had sought to make a boundary line adjustment on the properties, which would have put the original permit in compliance (except for the bridge being too long). However, the boundary line adjustment effectively would have made the location of the bridge as well as the proposed amended location non-compliant with the regulations.