From family business to industrial operation: Neighbors fight against PDI expansion in Naples

BONNERS FERRY — After people expressed concerns about environmental contamination, air quality and other factors, Boundary County commissioners will consider revoking a conditional use permit issued to a Naples furniture manufacturer.

About 100 people gathered Wednesday in the Bonners Ferry High School auditorium, where commissioners heard two appeals for a conditional use permit from Panhandle Door Inc., a maker of cabinet doors and drawers.

Appellants Kelli Martin, Jeffery Steinborn, and Jim Dewberry alleged that PDI contaminated the local environment and created health risks for nearby residents.

In the early 2000s, Martin’s parents moved to Boundary County and settled on three wooded acres adjacent to the property where PDI now operates. Martin’s children grew up visiting their grandparents’ house in Naples.

“We never saw the neighbors,” she said. “I couldn’t see them through the trees.”

Martin said she moved out of state in 2018 but returned in 2022 after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She said she was shocked to see how the neighboring property, where a small family carpentry business previously operated, had been transformed. Many of the trees that once isolated neighbors have disappeared. But what stood out most was the smell.

“It smelled like someone spray-painted the inside of my parents’ house,” she said. “The smell was so strong it hurt his nose and throat.”

Martin’s parents are now deceased. She said she believes environmental factors contributed to the health problems they have experienced in recent years.

“They are gassing lacquers and paints on the sides of the building,” she said. “Huge fans blowing less than 60 feet from my parents’ house. Six years of blowing smoke directly at us.”

Public records show that several neighbors have filed complaints about the business, citing concerns about air quality and hazardous materials.

“Panhandle Door/Maveric in Naples appears to be a chronic dispute between neighbors, although there may be merit to the claims,” a DEQ official wrote in a June email. “I think I remember more bad actions by Panhandle Door/Maveric than I could find on the complaint tracker.”

After inspecting the site last fall, the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality sent Nelson Mast, who purchased PDI in 2018, a warning letter to notify him of seven “apparent violations” of Idaho Waste Rules and Standards. Dangerous.

These violations were failure to count monthly hazardous waste generation to determine generator category, as well as failure to comply with satellite accumulation area labeling requirements, surplus satellite accumulation area containing labeling requirements, publication requirements of emergency procedures, preparedness and prevention agreements with local authorities, preparedness and prevention equipment requirements, and failure to manage solvent-contaminated wipes as hazardous waste or to comply with disposal exclusion requirements.

“We have all kinds of evidence,” Dewberry said Wednesday of the alleged contamination of the area. “We are swimming in evidence. What we don’t have is a legal team, but we will if this continues as it is.”

Steinborn told commissioners he believed PDI’s location was not appropriate for the business because it is in a forestry/agricultural zone.

“This is no longer a mom-and-pop cabinet store,” he said. “This is an industrialized business,” Steinborn said.

Don Jordan and Kathy Konek are appealing PDI’s permit due to concerns about road access and noise. Jordan and Konek own Pot Hole Road, the only access road connecting PDI to U.S. Route 2, along with property adjacent to the manufacturing facility.

Jordan told commissioners that PDI’s expansion from a permitted capacity of six to eight employees in 2005 to 70 today has created traffic and noise conditions that have harmed its property value.

“If this operation continued, of course, we would be fine with it,” Jordan said Wednesday, referring to PDI’s previous size. “That’s not what happened.”

Jordan expressed a desire to see PDI build a dedicated road connecting the business to U.S. Route 2 and told commissioners he feared PDI would continue to grow, to the detriment of its neighbors.

“Look at the expansion he’s made,” Jordan said of Mast. “There’s no reason to think he won’t continue.”

Mast testified at the hearing after appellants.

“I probably didn’t realize what I was getting myself into when I bought the business, but whenever concerns came up…we always did our best to be compliant and to run a clean operation,” he said.

Mast told commissioners he agrees Pot Hole Road is overused and said he is pursuing an initiative with the Idaho Department of Transportation to create a new access road from the highway. He added that he has done his best to limit noise from his premises and that he believes the contamination allegations made by the second appellant are unfounded.

“We are in the right zone. Ag/Forestry enables what we are doing,” Mast said. “I don’t see that there is any evidence or reason why we shouldn’t be where we are.”

After two and a half hours of testimony from the appellants, the commissioners postponed their decision and agreed to meet again on November 6. In the meantime, the council aims to obtain more information about alleged inhalation risks at the site and possible road changes. access to the property.

The hearing will resume in the Bonners Ferry High School auditorium at 6:30 pm on November 6.