The Eagle Island/Boise River flood thing has always irritated me. If you want to buy or build a 2 million dollar home 40 feet from a river that floods annually (sometimes extensively) that’s fine, but you shouldn’t expect the State, City or County to spend millions of dollars of other people’s money on flood control projects to protect your unwise real estate investment. Maybe I’m heartless, but I have no sympathy for people who live too close to the river and get flooded every spring.

It’s not a mental dis-order ,Guardian,it’s out and out uncontrolled GREED by developers and our local politiicians who they keep in office as long as the new, unregulated construction is unchallenged.

I came here 8 years ago and this was still a quiet little western city-town. Now downtown Boise resembles a large parking lot surrounded by streets full of road-rage and drivers vying with each other to see how many red lights they can go through.The graffitti, the damage to the beautiful Green belt and the Boise River along with the destruction of Idaho 55’s beautiful habitat nauseates me. The State legislature has done nothing to stop this uncontrolled growth along with county and city gov. We, the People, need to demand of these politicos that definite laws and regulations are passed to REGULATE new construction so that it does not 1- damage the local environment 2-Is in the best interests of the People already occupying the area 3-Since these developments usually wind up costing 4&5 times more than their original price tag ( which the taxpayer usually gets stuck paying for) a law saying that if said development can not stay within it’s original price quote it should be stopped immediately and turned into a cost effective community serving project.

The first thing cities and counties should do is stop with the constant zone changes, except in rare cases. You buy a piece of property, you can do what the zoning allows — period. You bought it with that zoning; you live with that zoning. None of this: Please change my zoning because I want it — Oh, Ok, what do you want?

OK, instead of grumping, maybe we should act like “we the people” and begin some citizen action – how about a State-Wide effort to make building within x feet of a river, creek, stream, lake, pond, whatever, which has flooded within the past 25 years.

I lived in Washington State when a citizen lead initiative forbade any further private ownership of any additional land which bordered / abutted a public water-way. The public water way was defined as any body of water which had shores / banks on land owned by X or more people (I think that the X was 10, but am not certain) Such land not already in private ownership became State owned. Prior to that any pond or lake had to have public access to at least one public boat-launch / fishing / picnic area.

Any legal types around who could draft such an initiative petition? I’d be willing to contribute to the expense(s) involved and to aid in the circulation of such a petition if drawn well.

You can bet that as more million dollar homes are built next to the Boise River, there will be a cry to channelize the river bed after a few bouts of flooding. It will eventually resemble a large canal. All the wildlife will move away from the people who want to live by it. Funny, it used to be that only the poor would live by the river alongside all the former municipal dumps. This town is run by greedy “deciders” who tell the people everything they do is about “freedom” as they get us to shell out more tax dollars so they can make more profits.

boisean, I thought that “8 years ago” comment was funny and ironic as well. I’ve lived in my house for 8 years and in Boise for 35 years. I remember being a kid in Boise when there was literally nothing outside of downtown but farmland and ranches.