King County has a lakes monitoring program that tracks – among other things – fish die-offs, algal blooms, and the human health aspects of catching and eating fresh from various lakes. Since Lake Sammamish has been my traditional interest, I’ve decided to take a closer look at several aspects of the “quality of the waters” .. or water quality.
What makes this interesting are the rapid innovations in accurate multi-water parameter test kits – like the multi-parameter kits from LaMotte used locally by the SnoKing Watershed Council - and “digital instrumentation.” Simple water temperature data loggers are widely available, affordable and allow the study of water temperatures in Lewis Creek and the smolt rearing raceways at the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery. These are much improved from the (air) temperature and humidity studies I did in NPS museums and visitor centers.
Both SnoKing and King County monitor bacteria – E. coli and Fecal Coliform – counts as one of the water quality parameters they monitor. In conjunction with my study of Lewis Creek, I intend a “broad spectrum” monitoring of the near-by Tibbetts Beach at Lake Sammamish State Park. SnoKing utilizes the new Roth R-CARD® Rapid Test Method and their use is covered in SnoKing’s excellent Water Monitoring Classes.
To set the context for this next venture is a bit of history and high-school biology. It helps to know the context of the data I hope to be collecting in trying to understand it better and as a sanity check; does this information “make sense”? The bact-t counts in Table A below are taken from King County’s ‘Lake swimming beach bacteria and temperature’ and list the results from the 2023 and 2024 monitoring season to-date. The County’s bacteria testing begins in mid-May and ends in mid-September.
Beach Bacteria and Temperature Data, Lake Sammamish State Park (LSSP)
Tibbets Beach
I also want to collect samples to examine under the microscope of a previous post. Before a transition to the R-Cards, cultivating samples in a Petri dish would be interesting. Luckily, Amazon has Agar Agar, a common nutrient derived from seaweed … so I best get cookin’.
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