Washington State Lake Protection Association - WALPA

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Lake Whatcom supplies drinking water to 85,000 people — but in 1998, it was listed as one of Washington's impaired waterways. The culprit wasn't a single disaster; it was decades of quiet phosphorus runoff from yards, roads, and rooftops that fed algae blooms, depleted oxygen, and set off a slow cycle of decline. This video breaks down how that happened, what Washington's Department of Ecology is doing about it, and why the City of Bellingham, Whatcom County, and the Lake Whatcom Water and Sewer District are on a fifty-year mission to bring the lake back into compliance. Progress is real — but the work is far from over.

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https://wix.to/9pQV1Ya Lake Whatcom, a 10-mile glacier-carved lake in northwest Washington, holds 250 billion gallons of water and supplies drinking water to 85,000 Bellingham residents. Named "noisy water" by Coast Salish peoples, it was home to the Saquantch, Lummi, and Nooksack tribes, with steamboats and logging trains shaping its early-1900s shoreline.

Where is your favorite place to swim in Washington?

Use these websites to keep yourself updated on bodies of water near you!

Washington State Department of Health: doh.wa.gov
King County Beach Swim Monitoring: kingcounty.gov
EPA How's My Waterway: mywaterway.epa.gov

Those parallel lines of foam on a windy lake aren't random — they're the surface fingerprint of a hidden phenomenon called Langmuir circulation. In 1927, Nobel Prize–winning chemist Irving Langmuir spotted seaweed lining up with the wind while crossing the Sargasso Sea, and he couldn't let it go. He spent the next decade on Lake George, New York — pouring olive oil, dropping dye, and rigging lamp bulbs as floats — to uncover the counter-rotating vortices spinning just beneath the surface. Those invisible rolls mix heat and oxygen, herd plankton into dense green windrows, and quietly shape where everything in the lake feeds. Next time you're out on a breezy lake, look for the lines — if they're green, you're seeing the base of the food web written right on the water.
Curious about lakes? Follow along, and if there's something lake-related you'd like explained, drop it in the comments and I'll track down an answer.
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How do you see an underwater wave? On September 7, 2020, a wind event tilted the thermocline in Priest Lake, Idaho — and when the wind stopped, the warm and cold layers rocked back and forth for hours. This is an internal seiche, captured by two thermistor chains in the lake's southern basin.
These hidden waves mix nutrients, redistribute oxygen, and move plankton between basins. None of it visible from the surface.
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Come join us (FOR FREE) for this year's WALPA Community Lake Workshop on May 28th via zoom!

Panelists include Brian Turner (WA Department of Fish and Wildlife), Eli Mackiewicz (City of Bellingham), Eliza Spears (Herrera Environmental Consultants), Frank Wilhelm (University of Idaho), and Wes Glisson (WA Department of Ecology) All bios can be read on our website.

Register today on our website at walpa.org

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WALPA Spring Auction to support student scholarships. YSI ProSolo is valued at over $2,100. Auction ends 6/30/2026. Help us fund future limnologists.
https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/walpas-spring-auction--2026