Water quality study on Lake Coeur d'Alene underway

COEUR d'ALENE — The roughly two-year, $770,000 study on Lake Coeur d’Alene’s water quality has started, with the first two meetings of the National Academies of Sciences committee occurring this week.

Hosting their first meeting Wednesday, the committee will meet again Friday to discuss water quality data and analyses from the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

On Wednesday, NAS representatives and committee members, representatives from the IDEQ, FDA, Coeur d’Alene Tribe, and Kootenai County Commissioner Chris Fillios gave a general overview of the past and present situation in Lake Coeur d’Alene.

No recommendations for remedial action will come from the committee. However, if further attention is called for from the state, another study could be conducted in the future.

The NAS's designated tasks for the committee are to:

• Evaluate current water quality in the lake, lower rivers, and lateral lakes, focusing on observed trends in nutrient loading and metal concentrations while considering how changes in temperature or precipitation could affect those trends.

• Consider the impacts of current summertime anoxia on the fate of the metals and nutrients.

• Consider whether reduced levels of zinc entering the lake resulting from the upgrade to the Central Treatment Plant and other upstream activities remove essential control on algal growth.

• Discuss whether the metal found in the lake sediments will be released into the lake if the current trends continue. If sufficient data is not available, the National Academies will identify the additional data required to achieve an appropriate confidence level.

• Discuss the relevance of metals released in the lake to human and ecological health.

Registration for the webinar is available at: www.nationalacademies.org on the The Future of Water Quality in Coeur d’Alene Lake webpage.