Meetings and News

20th Annual Conference Wrap-up
On October 18th and 19th WALPA members gathered at Campbell’s Resort in Lake Chelan to celebrate twenty years as an organization and to hear speakers on a variety of topics. Citizens, tribal staff, consultants, lake association members and government officials—more than 90 people altogether—attended the annual conference, this year called "Lakes – Bringing Science and Communities Together".

Jonathan Frodge from King County kicked off the plenary session suggesting directions WALPA could take as we head into our next 20 years. Ideas included leading an effort to reinstate a statewide lakes program and working on lawn fertilizer legislation to keep lakes clean. Senator Ken Jacobsen followed up on Jonathan’s suggestions with a presentation about developing meaningful and successful legislation.

At Thursday’s lunch, Bill Jarocki from the Boise State Environmental Finance Center spoke on "Saving Time and Finding Money to Achieve Results: A Watershed Approach." The talk focused on work his team has been doing to help people fund environmental enhancement and protection projects. Tools available include a searchable database of financial resources for watershed restoration in Washington and other states, a planning tool to help estimate project costs and a program that allows users to implement a long term financial strategy to meet strategic goals. All of these are available on-line and free to everyone at http://efc.boisestate.edu/efc/.

Other sessions at the Chelan conference covered topics from community and volunteer work to new legislation updating the state Shoreline Master Program to the ever-popular blue-green algae.

Members also gathered for cocktails and networking Thursday night and for a business meeting at Friday’s lunch. At the business meeting members selected new board members, met the new presidents, and asked general questions of the board and other members.

Ten vendors sponsored this year’s conference including Hach Environmental, Clean Lake LLC, AquaTechnex, TG-Eco-Logic, Aquatic Environments Inc., Northwest Aquatic Management, LLC, Electronic Data Solutions, Solar Bee and Cygnet Enterprises NW Inc. These generous sponsors helped make this year’s 20th anniversary conference a great success – thank you!