SANDPOINT, Idaho — The Center for Biological Diversity and Idaho Conservation League today filed suit against two federal agencies for approving a commercial marina and luxury housing near the mouth of Trestle Creek on Lake Pend Oreille. Work on the project is underway in apparent violation of the federal permits.

As today’s lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Army Corps of Engineers notes, Trestle Creek is one of the Pacific Northwest’s most important spawning streams for federally protected bull trout.

“With construction crews already plowing ahead, federal agencies need to protect threatened bull trout from this misguided zombie project once and for all,” said Sarah Brown, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Northern Rockies program. “Carving up the North Branch of the creek could worsen polluted runoff into Lake Pend Oreille and put crosshairs on bull trout right in their critical spawning area. It’s time for the agencies to seriously consider the many threats this project poses.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, says that the agencies failed to consider the various ways that the marina and houses may harm bull trout and their critical habitat, resulting in violations of the Administrative Procedure Act and National Environmental Policy Act.

The Center also filed a notice of its intent to sue the agencies for violating the Endangered Species Act, citing their inadequate and unsupported analysis of the project’s effects on bull trout and its critical habitat.

Today’s suit says the agencies’ approvals were contingent on the developer meeting certain conditions that now appear to have been violated, triggering an immediate need to reassess the project.

The Corps’ permit authorized marina construction only after completion of the planned reroute of Trestle Creek’s North Branch and only during specific seasons to protect bull trout. The permit also required the North Branch to be dry during construction. Despite those conditions, work is underway while the creek is flowing.

“Despite the requirement that this work be completed in dry conditions, extensive areas of the lakebed are being dredged, the shoreline cleared and other areas of the lake filled in, all during a historic flooding event that led to a state of emergency declaration throughout Bonner County,” said Jennifer Ekstrom, the Idaho Conservation League’s North Idaho director. “We asked the Corps to do their job and put a stop to the excavation that is in violation of their permit requirements, but they failed to do so. As a last resort to protect imperiled bull trout, we have no other recourse than to take legal action.”

The Idaho Club’s current project proposal calls for building large fixed-pier docks, a commercial marina with the capacity for 98 boats, a breakwater, boat pump-out station, boat storage, private homes, roads and a large parking lot.

The developer has moved forward prematurely with their plans to carve out a new channel to reroute Trestle Creek’s North Branch away from the commercial marina, excavate portions of an island and a peninsula, and dump fill into Lake Pend Oreille. All of this would occur near the mouth of Trestle Creek.

Trestle Creek is considered the most important bull trout spawning stream in the Pend Oreille Basin. Annual redd counts (the in-stream nests where fish lay their eggs) show that as many as half of the bull trout redds in the entire basin occur in Trestle Creek.

Bull trout migrate between the lake and Trestle Creek multiple times during their lifetime to spawn, and juvenile bull trout are raised in the stream before migrating into the lake. The Service has determined that protecting this area is critical to the survival and recovery of bull trout.

“If we want to see bull trout survive and possibly even thrive, we need to do everything we can to save them now,” said Ekstrom. “Protecting the critical habitat near the mouth of Trestle Creek is imperative.”

In 2022 the Center and ICL sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Fish and Wildlife Service for approving the Idaho Club’s then-proposed plan for the marina and high-end homes without considering how it would harm critical bull trout habitat. In response to the lawsuit, the Army Corps pulled the project’s permit.

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s original biological opinion determined that the development would harm and possibly kill bull trout. The agency recently reversed course, however, and now claims that the housing, marina, and creek reroute are unlikely to harm bull trout.

Bull trout have been protected since 1999, when they were listed as threatened with extinction under the Endangered Species Act. In 2010 the Fish and Wildlife Service designated critical habitat for the trout, including Trestle Creek. Trestle Creek also provides important habitat for other animals including bald eagles, migratory birds, beavers and kokanee salmon.