COEUR d'ALENE - How contentious can it be to require a strip of natural bushes and trees along a shoreline be retained? How about requiring that strip be 25 feet wide or more?

In the next few months, Kootenai County is bound to discover exactly that.

This week, the county announced that a draft of its revised and condensed land-use and development code document had been completed and is now available for public review.

But in the squished-down version, there is one land-use and development restriction that is notably absent - a shoreline protection buffer.

Here is the language that is currently on the books and in force, but was stripped from the version being proposed by the county for the future:

"For lots with frontage on a recognized lake or the Coeur d'Alene or Spokane rivers, a shoreline protection buffer shall be maintained at the waterfront," the ordinance states. "The buffer shall be a minimum of 25 feet in slope distance from the ordinary high water mark of the water body."

Restrictions for development next to streams remain in the new draft.

"The requirements for stream protection buffers shall not apply to frontage along the Coeur d'Alene River and Spokane River, nor shall they be construed to apply to waterfront on a lake," according to a copy of the draft provided to The Press.

The county's community development department staff members spent a year working on the draft, which doesn't alter "policy aspects" of the existing regulations.

"However, there are proposed changes in favor of property rights," the county announced in a news release Monday. "For example, the 25-foot 'undisturbed natural vegetation buffer' currently required along waterfront lots has been eliminated."

"There's a 25-foot buffer alongside of a lake, which there's no scientific evidence - as Kendig Keast (Collaborative) found in their studies - that suggests it does anything to improve water quality," County Commissioner Marc Eberlein told The Press on Monday.

Kendig Keast, with corporate offices in Sugar Land, Texas, was the firm contracted by the county that produced the proposed - and eventually rejected - Unified Land Use Code.

Buffer requirements like the county has now prevent people from placing riprap or anything alongside the lake to prevent erosion, Eberlein complained.

"By not being able to take care of erosion, we're actually putting nutrients into the water and are releasing pollutants back into the water," Eberlein said.

Commission Chairman David Stewart said the 25-foot vegetation buffer made the county more restrictive than agencies in the federal government like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"The cities don't have to abide by that (25-foot buffer), just the county," Stewart told The Press.

Not everyone agrees with the commissioners, however.

Tom Freeman, a landscape architect at CDF Landscape Professionals in Coeur d'Alene, told The Press earlier this week that he knows Eberlein is wrong to say there is no scientific evidence.

Freeman said the "numerous benefits riparian buffers provide" should be maintained to protect the "county's greatest resource" - its lakes.

"To say there is no science supporting a shoreline and riparian buffer along the lakeshore is simply untrue," said Heather Keen, a spokeswoman for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. "There have been numerous scientific studies done over the years to support the importance of a riparian buffer."

The Tribe believes the removal of the shoreline and riparian buffers around Lake Coeur d'Alene would hurt water quality.

"Furthermore, it will negate years of work by our Lake Management Program and others in the region to improve water quality in the lake," Keen said.

She pointed to multiple scientific articles regarding the science behind maintaining shoreline and riparian buffers.

In one article, in the academic journal Landscape Ecology, the abstract said, "Conversion of forested lands to agriculture or urban/residential has been associated with declines in stream and lake water quality."

Thomas Herron, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality regional water quality program manager for the Panhandle, said the necessary width of a vegetation buffer will depend on the slope and "surface roughness" of the ground.

"Sometimes 5 feet works, sometimes you need 75 feet," Herron said.

The difficulty in a county writing an ordinance is picking a number, which can seem too "one-size-fits-all" for property owners.

Herron said the buffer needs to be the best fit for the site.

"We don't have a single recommendation" for a number that could be set for Kootenai County, Herron said.

A vegetation buffer is a necessary transitional zone between land and water that prevents erosion, protects habitat and absorbs excess nutrients in runoff, Herron said.

"It doesn't have to look unkempt," Herron said.

As to the question if science supports the need for buffers, Herron said it absolutely does.

"It's basic physics," he said.

Still, he knows some still won't agree.

"The science that you believe in is the science that serves you," he said.

Bonner County has had a 40-foot waterfront setback standard in place for 35 years, said Clare Marely, county planning director.

"It is not, however, a 'no-disturb' area," Marely said.

After considerable citizen input, the county's board of commissioners adopted a shoreline buffer strip standard that allowed property owners to either leave existing vegetation intact or remove vegetation as long as it was restored with non-invasive native or beneficial vegetation.

The first option is preferred, she said.

"We were fortunate to have input from Dr. Frank Wilhelm from the University of Idaho while our ad-hoc citizens group considered the shoreline buffer," Marely said.

Kootenai County has distributed a brochure that cites the benefits of riparian buffers.

The brochure states waterfront lots must retain an "undisturbed natural vegetation buffer" of 25 feet or more.

"Why is this rule in place?" the brochure asks.

"Established vegetation reduces the potential for nutrients entering the waterways," it answers. "The buffer protects fish and wildlife habitat while protecting water quality."

"Why is the setback 25 (feet)?" it asks.

"Some say that the setback should be smaller; however, research indicates that a 25-foot setback is one of the smallest setbacks of all of the major lakes in the U.S.," was the answer.

If the draft revision is approved by the county commissioners, the document would become the interim code and serve the county until an update to the 2010 Comprehensive Plan is completed and a subsequent land-use and development code can be produced. A public-hearing process is expected for later this year.