Boundary County commissioners approved a new conditional use permit Dec. 11 for Panhandle Door, Inc., a large-scale manufacturer located near residential county homes. 

The amended permit, set for adoption in the coming weeks, will resolve a nine-month zoning dispute involving numerous allegations of dangerous and illegal conduct by Panhandle Door, or PDI, over the course of several years. Opposers to the permit have indicated they now intend to take legal action. 

The mom-and-pop, door-and-drawer shop opened in 1999 in an agricultural and forestry zone outside Naples. In 2005, PDI received a conditional use permit, or CUP, to allow a 5,200-square-foot facility to operate between 6 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. with eight employees and eight delivery trucks. After Nelson Mast purchased the business in 2018, he said he was never made aware of the CUP. As he expanded the facility to over 31,000 square feet, employing about 70 workers running double shifts, he did not know his business operations violated a permit, he said.  

“When we purchased Panhandle Door in 2018, we had no idea that we were going to grow to where we’re at today,” Mast said. “But we're in an ag forestry zone that allows for heavy industrial use. My neighbors knew that when they bought their properties.” 

Commissioners decided at the Dec. 11 public hearing that the facility may continue operating with an amended CUP provided that PDI constructs a new ITD-approved access road by the end of 2025, eligible for a one-year extension. In the meantime, delivery trucks can continue trafficking Pot Hole Road, the only existing access point for neighborhood residents to U.S. 95.  

Commissioners also ruled that PDI must continue to meet Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, safety standards.  

At the hearing, commissioners, appellants, PDI owners and the public were only allowed to discuss the facility’s ventilation system, the air quality, and the new driveway approach.

Allegations against Panhandle Door

The appellants and Pot Hole Road residents said after the hearing that they had wanted to discuss eight other topics.  

“We were not allowed to talk about the water line or the buried trade waste oozing with formaldehyde,” said appellant David Dewberry, a Pot Hole Road resident who formerly worked at Panhandle Door. “The commissioners just ghosted it.” 

Commissioners, however, said the three approved discussion topics were the only ones that needed further clarification after the previous public hearing on Oct. 9. The other eight topics had already been properly discussed, they said.  

Pot Hole Road residents’ wider allegations include property damage and illegal dealings with outside companies. They also claim PDI is responsible for the deaths of trees, animals and four neighbors who succumbed to apparent respiratory illnesses within the last two years.  

The forest between Kelli Martin's home and the Panhandle Door facility has thinned out over the past few years. Appellants say the trees died from PDI off-gassing. PDI owners say Martin's mother, Judy Weston, hired somebody to cut down the decadent forest. 

At the hearing, appellant Kelli Martin, who lost three family members living in the house closest to the facility, demanded an air quality test to prove that PDI’s off-gassing of volatile organic compounds match those in the bloodwork of the deceased. 

“Our caretakers would talk about how their eyes burned and their nose burned,” Martin said in her rebuttal at the public hearing. “It was not until the third death that I started putting things together. There's more to this than a smell.” 

DEQ air quality manager Shawn Sweetapple said at the hearing that air quality tests are cost prohibitive, and that DEQ will only test very large industrial facilities. In the case of Panhandle Door, Sweetapple recently created an emissions model, using certified weather data from the downtown Bonners Ferry area. It estimates the highest potential emissions of the most volatile permitted chemical. The model revealed current emissions are significantly lower than what would be considered dangerous. 

“Based on the evidence of the hearing, our air quality is great,” Mast said. “DEQ certified that we are at 25 percent of the levels that are accepted.” 

The Pot Hole Road coalition said the model would yield different results if not for the recent installation of multiple 25-foot smokestacks and other new facility upgrades and business practices that mitigate environmental hazards. It was while the business was out of compliance that trees and people died. 

Panhandle Door's record of violations

From as late as 2021 to July 2024, DEQ records indicate that Panhandle Door was not in compliance with statewide environmental standards. On Dec. 12, the day after the public hearing, DEQ held a compliance meeting with PDI executives to issue a $5,000 penalty for previous violations and to begin drafting a new consent order. PDI will also pay as much as $5,000 for a new DEQ permit.

In April 2022, Paradise Valley Fire Chief Mike Glazier filed a complaint to DEQ that PDI had been periodically burning 100-foot-long piles of “painted and stained wood scraps, sawdust, paint cans and other non-burnable objects,” according to DEQ records obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request. Idaho law prohibits the open burn of trade waste, or any material resulting from business operations. In response, Sweetapple issued a warning and ordered PDI to cease and desist from open burns. 

“Trade waste sounds scary, but it’s sawdust from hardwoods,” Mast said. “A lot of this trade waste we bundle, and people come get it and chop it for kindling to burn in the wood stove. DEQ gets tickled pink if it gets used in that way.” 

In January 2023, Glazier complained of another burn pile, but PDI was not penalized because the employee responsible was later convicted of arson, Sweetapple said. 

While responding to the complaint of burning trade waste, Sweetapple also took notice of PDI’s lack of permits for its coating operation, records show. 

In September 2023, DEQ issued a permit. In July 2024, Sweetapple did an on-site inspection and determined that PDI was out of compliance with its DEQ permit due to 14 condition violations, records show. 

The 2023 permit authorized use of eight coating materials, but PDI was using 60, and it was “not monitoring the usage of non-listed coatings,” according to Sweetapple’s inspection report. Some non-listed coatings are deemed hazardous by their manufacturers.  

PDI was also exceeding its authorized limit to use 23 gallons of coating materials per day for the four months prior to the inspection.  

At the hearing, Martin said that Sweetapple lied in his inspection report. She said she has recorded evidence that he did not visit the Panhandle Door facility on the day he reported, but rather he visited the neighbors. Sweetapple later told the Herald that Martin was right. He said he got his dates mixed up in the report, and he actually visited the PDI facility the following week. 

While deliberating a ruling for the CUP amendment, commissioners decided that PDI owners should not have to shoulder the cost of an official air quality test because the commission would essentially be denying the CUP request if owners decided they did not want to pay the expense. Furthermore, county code dictates the commission defers to DEQ for air quality standards.  

The Pot Hole Road coalition has said they are not giving up the fight even though the amended CUP is set to be finalized later this month. Martin said she is demanding justice for the deaths of her parents and brother-in-law.  

“I have over 600 pages of evidence, laws and code violations by Panhandle Door,” she said. 

Mast said he is not concerned because he has not seen the appellants present any evidence of wrongdoing by Panhandle Door. 

“I don’t want to kill anybody,” he testified at the hearing. “We want to be in compliance, but I really think we’re using scare tactics. It’s about, ‘Not in my backyard.’”