Meetings and News

WALPA 2008 Conference – Where rubber meets the road

Peter Goldmark, candidate for Lands Commissioner, kicked off the 2008 WALPA conference on September 30th. During his plenary speech, he tackled some very difficult questions that are concerns to lake managers and residents, like who is responsible for land at the bottom of lakes and how logging has been handled in past contributed to major floods. It was a great speaker for a year that is full of elections and political activity, even here within WALPA.

On the science side of things the first morning, members earned pesticide license recertification credits attending sessions learning about aquatic plant management issues and emerging aquatic plants, such as phragmites and milfoils (and its hybrids) susceptibility to herbicide. Lake Modeling and Data was also a popular session that ranged from TMDL modeling to eutrophication models. It was an opportunity for WALPA members to learn what strides have been made in lake science and what challenges face them as they try to protect and restore this valuable resource.

There were well attended sessions that focused on new/student work and community activism. Conference attendees were treated to learning how 2007 WALPA scholarship winner, Kelly Turner spent her summer in the North Cascade alpine lakes studying benthic macroinvertebrates for her master’s thesis at Western Washington University. WALPA members truly enjoyed hearing about student projects and meeting with the scholarship winners. We also had the pleasure of having citizens who are directly involved with the management of their lakes come and speak to us about how a community can organize to face some to the more challenging management issues. Some of the lakes are facing issues of noxious aquatic weeds and how the community has come together to survey, manage, and educate about the issues. Another lake community, Crystal Lake in Snohomish County, is using money generated by community timber harvest revenues to monitor the water quality and survey their lake.

The second day was filled with lake monitoring updates, toxicity in lakes and lake management issues. Lunch on the second day introduced the new WALPA board members and officers and included a short but productive business issues. Arlen Harris, the WALPA lobbyist, came and talked to the group about WALPA’s work down in Olympia. WALPA is very involved in passing two bills in this legislative session – one that is banning the use of phosphorus in residential fertilizers and the other asking the state to do a study that assess the needs of a state run lakes program. Both of these bills were introduced last year in 2007 and will be reintroduced in 2008. He talked about the importance of contacting your legislators and staying on top of the issues so that WALPA can pass these two very important bills (for more information go to www.walpa.org/legislation).

The conference closed with a bang. The room was packed, yet again, for blue-green algae talks. Kathy Hamel, of DOE, gave a talk about the state blue-green algae monitoring program and its successes in 2008 while Joan Hardy, of DOH, gave a talk on the recreational standards set by the state for algal toxins. Both Neil Harrington, form Jefferson County, and Ray Hanowell, Pierce County, gave talks on how toxic blue-green algae’s have affected their area lakes and what they are doing to manage it. This was the final wrap-up session to an exciting and very informative conference.

Jacob McCann, of Spokane County, is WALPAs president-elect and conference planner. According to the leaked planning details, the 2009 conference will be on the east side this next year, most likely in the Spokane area. Stay tuned and we hope to see everyone in 2009!

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