Lake Chelan water quality being monitored from water run off

Avalanche chutes above Lake Chelan. Photo courtesy: Wandering at Large.

A successful clean-up of trash and debris from the waters of Lake Chelan and the shoreline this past weekend and now the continued effort to monitor the lake’s water quality.

The Lake Chelan Research Institute is monitoring water run-off, in the Sawtooth Wilderness through the blackened remains of last summer’s Pioneer Fire, into the lake.

"We know this is going to shed off and has been shedding off sediment already, but we're looking at upcoming run-off from snow melt," said the Research Institute's Phil Long. "That's going to dump a big slug during May or June, depending on when that (snow melt) peaks into the lake. We want to be able to trace that and determine how quickly it's going to show up down here in Manson and Chelan."

"We'll use our equipment to monitor where that sediment is going; where those very fine particles are drifting down into the lake, how's it going to effect our water quality in the future," added Long. "We did notice, when we sampled for the first time this year, that there was a slight different color above the Narrows. We're trying to investigate that and see if we're already seeing some of that real fine glacial silt making its way down. It doesn't seem to have impacted our water clarity yet."

Long, on a visit to KOZI, said the history of the geography of the valley is quite interesting.

"15,000 years ago right here in the studio there was several hundred feet of ice right above us," said Long. "We have a hard time as human beings visualizing this, so what we did was commissioned oil painter Rowan Carey, he's out of Snohomish but he has Chelan connections, to depict this. And we're almost ready to unveil this oil painting and we're going to display it around the community. We're working with the (Lake Chelan) Arts Council."