How healthy is Echo Lake? ELNA meeting Tuesday

Echo Lake
Photo by Dorrena Ortega

Attendees at the Tuesday, March 19 meeting, 7-9pm at Shoreline City Hall 17500 Midvale Ave N, of the Echo Lake Neighborhood Association (ELNA) will find out the answer to the question: how healthy is Echo Lake?

Jennifer Adams, Surface Water Quality Specialist for the City of Shoreline and Brian Landau, the City's Surface Water and Environmental Services Manager will address the group. 

Echo Lake is fed by surface runoff from a drainage basic encompassing approximately 215 acres between N 183rd Street and N 200th Street. The basin is currently 56 percent impervious hardscape and includes Aurora Avenue, as well as runoff from the surrounding residential neighborhoods.

Everything that is deposited in our yards, roads, drains, and open spaces is carried into the lake by rain water, including fertilizers, pesticides, animal waste, oil antifreeze, rubber and many other hazardous substances.

Barbara Guthrie and Ken Romdall
collecting water samples from Echo Lake

The ELNA organization has been monitoring the lake since the City and the Neighborhoods were created. For over a decade, ELNA members took water samples from the lake to be tested by King County. When King County said it would begin to charge for testing, ELNA successfully petitioned the City of Shoreline to take over the testing.

The Echo Lake Neighborhood includes those who live or work in the area bounded by I-5 and Aurora, and 205th and 185th, but meetings are open to the general public.