LIBERTY LAKE MONITORING
Annual water quality monitoring occurs on Liberty Lake by
personnel from the Washington State University Department of Natural Resource
Sciences under contract with the Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District. The
primary purpose of the Liberty Lake monitoring is to provide information to help
the community understand lake water quality status, assess trends in lake water
quality, and to guide the community and the district in decisions regarding lake
and watershed management. Sampling occurs biweekly throughout the growing season
(early spring to late fall) and assesses dissolved oxygen, temperature,
conductivity, alkalinity, pH, clarity, algae, zooplankton, and nutrients
(phosphorus and nitrogen). In addition to the lake monitoring, sampling of the
inlet streams (Clarke, Stokke, Kamiakin, and West fork of Liberty Creek) also
occurs biweekly by personnel from WSU and the LLSWD.
Click to
enlarge the photos
BiJay Adams, the Lake Protection Manager for the Liberty Lake
Sewer and Water District, has established real time telemetry monitoring
stations for Liberty Lake and Creek. Telemetry probe setup has been integrated
by a telemetry consultant, Tom Yeager, in consideration of the mutual covenants
set forth in the Telemetry Consulting Terms and Conditions.
Liberty Lake and Creek stilling wells are equipped with Instrumentation
Northwest PS9800 pressure
transmitters that captures both water temperature and pressure and provides
a 4-20 mA signal proportional to the magnitude of these parameters. The data are
transmitted via radio waves and linked to the world wide web via a radio
telemetry modem.
A 6 inch ductile iron stilling well has been installed on Liberty Lake at a
private homeowners association park. The purpose for the installation of
this site is to monitor the continuous level of Liberty Lake and maintain the
level of the lake at or below the 1951 adjudicated level (2049.51). This stilling well will offer real time data valuable
for calculating lake volume, evaporation, and residence time; plotting and calculating the rise and fall of the
lake level, and pin pointing
runoff and storm events. Ongoing
monitoring will ensure quality data useful in calculating hydrologic and
nutrient budgets while maintaining and establishing baselines and trends.
Unlike the remote area of Liberty Creek, this site has direct power through
cooperation of Avista Utilities and the homeowners association. Two existing staff gages are on Liberty Lake to
correlate to the real time data collected by the telemetry station and to ensure
the accuracy of the data being reported.
Below is the link to Liberty Lake's radio modem and stilling well data:
Liberty
Lake Telemetry Station
For more information visit
libertylakemonitoring or contact
BiJay Adams
