Lake Whatcom
Lake Whatcom is a natural, deep water lake between Mount Baker and Bellingham, Washington. It is drinking water source for more than 90,000 residents. A proposed reconvenance of land would put current state lands into Whatcom County park hands.
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. The lake's watershed covers some 56 square miles. Half of the watershed is privately owned and the other half is made up of public lands managed by DNR for various trusts, with a focus on logging in the watershed to generate revenue.
Roughly half of the DNR-managed land around Lake Whatcom was granted at statehood to support school, while the other half actually belongs to the county. These were private lands which the county claimed after tax defaults early last century. State law allows counties to transfer (or "reconvey") such land back from DNR if they have a legitimate recreation plan for the lands.
Read about the proposed transfer and creation of a new forest preserve park.
Lake Whatcom, drinking water source
The forests around Lake Whatcom filter the water. The soils of the Lake Whatcom watershed are largely unconsolidated and unstable. Logging operations have channeled sediment pollution into the lake and have caused landslides into communities and the water. That sediment contains phosphorous, which fosters algae growth and degrades water quality.
As the number of people living here grows, the need to protect clean water in Lake Whatcom also grows. While stormwater runoff from residential development is the biggest threat, runoff and landslides from logging and associated roads is a real threat, especially on steep slopes.
A proposed new Lake Whatcom forest preserve, once approved, will protect fragile soils from logging and associated road building, protecting drinking water, keeping neighborhoods safe from landslides, and providing low-impact trails.
See a bird's eye view of the proposed land exchange.
Past and future for Lake Whatcom
In 2000, Conservation Northwest and others persuaded the Legislature to unanimously pass the Lake Whatcom bill requiring DNR to develop a landscape plan to protect water and local neighborhoods. In 2004, DNR adopted a Lake Whatcom Landscape Management Plan, developed in consultation with a local advisory committee. The landscape plan is in effect, it rests on a strong legal foundation and is rooted in community support, and regulates logging on DNR land here to a higher standard than anywhere else in the state.
But DNR will still be logging substantial areas, including clear-cuts of up to 100 acres, within the Lake Whatcom watershed by constructing dozens of miles of new road, in some cases across steep, unstable slopes. Reconveyence will prevent this by consolidating (through intertrust land swap) county land onto the steepest slopes of Lookout and Stewart Mountains, and placing them into forest preserve.
