| July 19, 2000
News Release
King County to Launch High-Tech Water Quality Monitoring Program
A new, high-tech phase of King County's extensive water quality studies was launched today in Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish with the anchoring of the first of five computerized underwater sampling stations. The solar-powered, robotic sampling stations are linked to county computers via wireless signals and will provide a stream of data to county scientists 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
"This advanced technology will give us a wealth of new information that will provide a more complete look at how the lakes function," said King County Executive Ron Sims. "Instead of viewing the lakes' characteristics one snapshot at a time, we'll be seeing a full-length, color feature film. This dramatic improvement in data will help us better understand impacts to the lakes and make better decisions to protect the water quality of the lakes."
The five monitoring stations are suspended beneath bright yellow buoys that house the solar panels, a computer, communications gear and satellite global positioning equipment. A cell phone will automatically call police if the buoys are disturbed, the satellite connection will tell police the buoys' position. The stations will be anchored in Lake Washington off Sand Point, south of the west end of the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge and north of the mid-span of I-90 bridge. In Lake Sammamish, buoys will be placed north of Greenwood Point, and south of Weber Point.
"Few things are as vital to our region's environmental health than the quality of the water in our lakes and streams," said County Councilman Larry Phillips, vice chair of the King County Council's Regional Water Quality Committee." Advanced technology like this will help us better understand our lakes and make the data available to everyone on the county's Web site."
The buoys are equipped with a computer that runs a lake profiling system, stores data and sends it to the base station. An underwater probe will give a continuous top-to-bottom profile of various aspects of the lakes' water quality. The probe will systematically move three meters every few minutes and stop to measure temperature, chlorophyll, conductivity, pH and dissolved oxygen. Once the probe reaches the bottom, it reverses direction and repeats the process on its way to surface. Data are received on shore by a 900 MHz transceiver, which is connected to King County computers downtown by phone lines and a 56k-modem.
After one cycle of data collection, the buoys will automatically use cell phones to call and download data to computers at King County's Department of Natural Resources in Pioneer Square. The cell phones will also allow scientists to program specific instructions for the buoys sampling equipment.
The data collected will be used to create a comprehensive scientific simulation model of the Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish watersheds. Scientists will create a three-dimensional, hydrodynamic, water-quality- linked model that will simulate existing conditions and be used for future projections of lake water quality. The model will also incorporate data collected throughout the watershed, land-use data, and similar models developed with the University of Washington.
The county's current water monitoring program consists of twice a month sampling in the summer and once a month sampling during the winter in which county scientists on boats lower equipment by hand. The new buoys will use similar equipment to automatically and continuously sample water. Staff also collect water samples that are taken back to a lab for analysis. The water is tested for a variety of things including bacteria, nutrients, organic pollutants, heavy metals and chlorophyll. Test results can help determine if there are potential public health threats due to water quality, as happened with the recent closing of Juanita Beach due to high levels of fecal coliform from waterfowl.
Data collection by boat will continue and that information will be combined with data from the new stations to build a model to evaluate regional water quality. For example the information will be used to better understand the dynamics of the lake, algae blooms, habitat quality for fish and wildlife and water quality and quantity.
"This new technology puts a comprehensive model within our reach at a reasonable cost," said King County Department of Natural Resources Director Pam Bissonnette. "This model would not be possible using our existing monitoring program."
The Water Quality Monitoring Program will measure:
Temperature: Lake users will find this useful but to scientists temperature is vital in predicting algae blooms and fish survival. It will also help in understanding and predicting thermal stratification — water layers of different temperature.
Dissolved Oxygen (DO): The amount of oxygen dissolved in water, DO is necessary for aquatic animals to survive. It is supplied by the atmosphere and photosynthesis and consumed by animal respiration and decomposition of organic material.
pH: pH is the measure of how acidic or basic the water is and helps determine the lifecycles of algae living in the water.
Conductivity: By measuring the ability of the water to conduct electrical current scientists can determine the amount, but not the source, of dissolved solids in the water. Dissolved solids, such as metals and salts, are often higher in heavily populated watersheds than in similar watersheds with little or no development.
Data collected by the new sampling stations will be available on the King County web site this fall at www.metrokc.gov/lakedata/. For more information about this program call the King County Department of Natural Resources' Water Quality Monitoring Program line at 206-205-5020.
Related Information
Lake Topics
Cedar River/Lake Washington Watershed
Sammamish Watershed
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