Lake Whatcom
Lake Whatcom, drinking water source for nearly 100,000 people in southwestern Whatcom County, Washington.
Between Mount Baker and Puget Sound
Lake Whatcom is the sole source of drinking water for more than 90,000 people in and around Bellingham, Washington. The Lake Whatcom watershed covers some 56 square miles between Mount Baker and the Chuckanut Mountains and Bellingham Bay.
In a recent exciting development, Whatcom County has proposed that Department of Natural Resources (DNR) transfer more than half of its lands in the watershed from timber producing lands to protection forest preserve. This forest preserve would protect about 25% of the watershed from logging.
Half of the watershed is privately owned and the other half is made up of public lands managed for the school trusts by DNR, who has long focused on logging in the watershed to generate timber revenues. But as the number of people living in southwestern Whatcom County grows, the need to protect clean water in the watershed also grows.
The forests around Lake Whatcom keep the drinking water clean. The soils of the watershed are largely unconsolidated and unstable, and past logging operations have led to landslides into communities and sediment pollution into the lake.
In 2000, the Washington State Legislature unanimously passed the Lake Whatcom bill requiring DNR to develop a landscape plan for the watershed that would protect clean water and local neighborhoods, thanks to work by Conservation Northwest and others, including Citizen Advocates for Lake Whatcom. Out of that legislation, in 2004 DNR adopted a Lake Whatcom Landscape Management Plan, developed in consultation with a local advisory committee. The landscape plan is in effect and rests on a strong legal foundation and is rooted in community support, but it watershed plan's status is still somewhat unknown as it currently faces a court challenge from neighboring Skagit County.
