The City of Bellingham and Western Washington University have collaborated on
investigations of the water quality in Lake Whatcom since the early 1960s.
Beginning in 1988, a monitoring program was initiated by the City and
the Institute for Watershed Studies
that was designed to provide long-term water quality data for the lake.
Although the primary objective of the Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project is to provide
long-term data for the lake and its tributaries, addition research is conducted annually
to evaluate the effectiveness
of storm water treatment systems in the lake's watershed,
and to model the hydrology of the lake.
The monitoring project also serves as a foundation for a wide
variety of undergraduate and graduate research projects.
Online Reports
Annual reports have been written each year since 1992. In addition, there are a number of
special project reports that supplement the annual reports. Printed copies of all reports are archived in the IWS library,
and recent reports are available from the City of Bellingham Public Works Department.
Online copies of the annual reports and special projects are available in pdf format from 1998
to the present (Online PDF Reports) and
in html format from 1997 to the present
(Online HTML Reports).
The pdf reports are very large documents that duplicate the
printed reports, excluding only large image files and
data reports not generated by IWS (e.g., AmTest reports).
The html reports have been recreated from original report files to provide a more
flexible and accesible online report structure. The html report conversions
represent an ongoing effort, and all converted html reports are posted as draft documents.
Any feedback or comments on the html reports should be directed to the IWS director.
Electronic data are available for most of the parameters sampled by
IWS. Data provided by
the City of Bellingham (e.g., coliforms, THMs) and other commercial laboratories
(e.g., metals, TOC) are not posted in electronic format, but are included
in the printed copies of the annual reports.
A simplistic online service of the data is available here in
Static Tables
and in
Dynamic Online Charts. The static format is recommended for slower
computers.
Older annual reports are available online, directly scanned from the physical paper copies.