Echo Lake now open

Echo Lake is now open
Photo by Steven H. Robinson

By Diane Hettrick

King County has advised the City of Shoreline that the bacteria count in Echo Lake has dropped and the swimming restriction has been removed.

The restriction would probably have been removed sooner but the formal testing takes a couple of days.

They are quite certain that the spike in the bacteria count was due to bird feces.

At the Echo Lake Picnic on Tuesday, one of the work party volunteers found an entire pile of bread pieces that someone had left for the geese.

First of all, bread is not good for geese or other birds, although they are happy to eat it. When geese are overfed like this, they will congregate in the place near the food source.

If they are fed enough, they will not migrate.

They will lay more eggs and hatch more young.

Then you have situations like we had at Echo Lake Elementary some years back, where there were so many geeses congregating on the school grounds that there were concerns for the health of the children.

The geese there were captured and killed.

Don't feed the large birds - ducks, geese, seagulls.