Image source: unknown. by Eric Hirst State water law is a complicated mess, a piece-by-piece accumulation of disparate laws since 1917. Worse, these laws confound solutions to the problems we face today — climate change and population growth — in managing an increasingly scarce and precious resource. This [Read More...]
Recent sampling at Wiser Lake detected microcystin, a toxin produced by algae, at levels that may be harmful to people and pets. Toxin levels are more than 20 times the maximum safe level established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Residents are advised to avoid water contact at Wiser Lake [Read More...]
A typical big gun irrigation system that many Whatcom County farmers use; they are pretty to look at but inefficient because so much water is lost to evaporation.photo: Pixabay by Eric Hirst Background How can we best resolve long-standing water-resource issues in the Nooksack River Basin? These [Read More...]
North Fork of the Nooksack rapids at Horseshoe Bend photo: Ron Kleinknecht by Eric Hirst My January 2020 paper published in Whatcom Watch, “Nooksack River: Too Little Water, and it’s Getting Worse,” examined summer flows in the Nooksack River, measured at Ferndale, from 1967 to 2019.(1) These data [Read More...]
by Eric Hirst At the February 2020 City Club meeting, Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu asked us to offer five solutions to the problems we think are most significant for the county. Here are my suggestions to deal with our water-supply problems. Background The problems that motivate these suggested solutions [Read More...]
The Community Research Project was conducted on behalf of the Whatcom County Climate Impact Advisory Committee. The purpose of this project was to reach out to community leaders and stakeholders on how the county should address the growing impacts of climate change. The entire report is posted at: www.whatcomcounty.us/DocumentCenter/View/43718/2019-Whatcom-County-Community-Research-Project. [Read More...]
North Fork of the Nooksack rapids at Horseshoe Bend photo: Ron Kleinknecht by Eric Hirst There is less water during the summer in the Nooksack River today than five decades [Read More...]
This local organization is responsible for addressing water supply and quality issues within the Nooksack River basin and for salmon recovery. Its members include Whatcom County, City of Bellingham, Public Utility District #1, Lummi Nation, Nooksack Indian Tribe, and the state Dept. of Fish and Wildlife. It has existed in [Read More...]
by April Markiewicz and Laura Weiss Interested in protecting, preserving, and restoring Lake Whatcom, our community’s primary source of drinking water? Please join us at the downtown Community Food Co-op Connections Building (405 E. Holly St.) classroom on Wednesday, September 4, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. People for Lake Whatcom [Read More...]
Lake Whatcom watershed and sub-basins (Matthews et al., 2019) Lake Whatcom is the primary drinking water source for about 100,000 residents of Whatcom County. The lake is comprised of three sub-basins from which samples are collected in October through December, in February and April through September each year. [Read More...]