Months before fires tore through Medical
Lake and Elk in August 2023, neighbors in the River Run neighborhood near Spokane Falls Community College had already started figuring out how they could legally thin the trees that run along the edges of their backyards down to the shoreline.
About 30 of the roughly 200 homes in the neighborhood sit along the edge of a bluff above the Spokane River, the steep hillside below thick with vegetation — mostly ponderosa pines that cover the ground with dry needles.
Under a shoreline agreement that was signed before the subdivision was built, homeowners aren’t allowed to trim anything within the shoreline jurisdiction, which extends 200 feet from the high-water mark…