August 30, 2012

Capitol Campus Update

On Aug. 30, the Department of Ecology will be sampling Capitol Lake as part of a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-funded National Lakes Assessment effort to determine the general health of Washington state lakes.

Candidate lakes were randomly selected across the state.

Capitol Lake is one of 31 lakes chosen to be sampled. The assessment will involve large and small lakes and reservoirs. This is the second time that Ecology has performed an assessment under this program, the first occurring in 2007.

It is purely coincidental that Capitol Lake will be sampled when a cleanup plan, or Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), for the Deschutes River, Capitol Lake, and Budd Inlet is being developed. The TMDL also is being performed by Ecology. The work is significantly more comprehensive in scope than the lake survey and respective efforts are not comparable. The first piece of this TMDL is a technical report, which is completed and available on the Ecology website.

The Aug. 30 National Lakes Assessment sampling will be a one-day effort collecting physical, chemical and biological data from a single deep-water location. An assessment of shoreline conditions also will be performed at 10 locations around the lake. The biological and chemical samples collected will be sent to the federal government for analysis. The data will be used to determine national lake quality trends.