Healing waters guardians
Kaci Boyd/Columbia Basin Herald<br> People let the mud from Soap Lake soak into their skin Saturday. Many believe the lake's water has health benefits.
SOAP LAKE -— The water in Soap Lake is special.
It contains minerals many believe have health benefits.
These minerals are what set the lake apart from most other lakes – the lake is not comprised of fresh water.
But Soap Lake Conservancy Chair John Glassco says the lake will soon turn into a fresh water lake if something isn’t done to protect the mineral water.
“If we don’t start aggressively protecting the lake, there won’t be anything left to protect,” he said.
It’s what the Soap Lake Conservancy is trying to do – preserve and restore the minerals in Soap Lake.
A little bit of history
Many believe the water of Soap Lake has healing powers and health benefits.
In the 1920s and 1930s, when U.S. soldiers were returning to America from the first World War, more people came to the Soap Lake area. Many suffered from Buerger’s disease, which is inflammation and clotting of arteries and veins.
People found Soap Lake water arrested the symptoms of the disease, Glassco said. The water didn’t heal – the disease isn’t curable, he noted – but people’s symptoms were relieved by the minerals in the water.
The water was believed to be so beneficial that many houses in Soap Lake built their restrooms with two water taps – one for city water and the other for water from the lake.
“This lake is a very special lake,” Glassco said. “It’s really a treasure.”
Author Dr. W.T. Edmondson’s book, “The Uses of Ecology: Lake Washington and Beyond,” examines, in part, the mineral content of Soap Lake. Edmondson wrote that, by the 1940s, the lake’s mineral content was 37.1 grams per liter. That figure is approximately 20 percent greater than sea water.
Pumping the lake
In the late 1990s, Glassco said two Soap Lake residents complained about the water level of Soap Lake, claiming it was too high. They complained to the city and, following petitions to the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Ecology, the mayor signed a resolution to start pumping water out of the lake on July 15, 1998.
Glassco said this resolution was signed with little or no public input.
A temporary permit was granted by the Department of Ecology on Aug. 27, 1998, to pump 3.33 cubic feet per second out of the lake to prevent possibly flooding. The water was to be used for irrigation water. On April 7, 1999, an extension was granted.
So many minerals were removed, Glassco said, that the solids could have filled trucks lined up, bumper-to-bumper, from Soap Lake to Moses Lake – approximately 20 miles.
“The pumping in 1998 and 1999 was totally unnecessary,” Glassco said.
He said the lake’s mineral content is now about half of Edmondson’s figures from the 1940s.
“Those minerals took thousands of years to develop in the lake,” he explained. “(The pumping was) a permanent reduction in mineral content in Soap Lake.”
Glassco said he is concerned for the lake.
“There may be others, but Soap Lake is the only unique ecosystem we are aware of that is currently being threatened by the surrounding irrigation systems,” the Soap Lake Conservancy wrote in a letter to the Department of Ecology.
The threat, Glassco explained, includes the draining of groundwater into Soap Lake. Increasing fresh water content in the lake decreases the mineral ?content.
The Conservancy
In response to the resolution signed by the mayor in 1998, the Soap Lake Conservancy formed in 1999.
“Preserving the mineral content (of the lake) is the purpose of the Soap Lake Conservancy,” Glassco said.
The Conservancy hopes to restore the mineral content of the lake. But if the removal of the minerals was a permanent reduction in content, as Glassco said, how would minerals be restored?
“We need to determine how minerals get into the lake and allow that process to continue,” Glassco explained.
He compared the preservation of Soap Lake to the preservation of salmon, except the lake isn’t a species that needs protection. It is an ecosystem.
“It’s being slowly strangled,” Glassco said, by becoming a freshwater lake.
The Conservancy has an ongoing dialogue via letters with the Bureau of Reclamation. The group hopes to get the Bureau of Reclamation to acknowledge the problem with Soap Lake, Glassco said.
“Talking to them is like talking to police on the street corner after you’ve been arrested,” he said. They don’t want to talk.
Glassco said officials have either given up on the lake or think the lake is stable, that it’s not in danger.
But Glassco said the decision shouldn’t be in the hands of officials. The water belongs to the residents of Washington state, and he said they should be the ones to decide the fate of Soap Lake.
“It’s not up to (the Conservancy),” he said.
The solution isn’t clear, he added. Glassco said he doesn’t know where he would lead the issue if he were able to do so.
“I think it’s a delicate problem,” he explained. “The value of this treasure has not been reviewed … And that needs to happen.”
The Soap Lake Conservancy meets the second Saturday of each month at the Soap Lake Senior Center, 121 Second Ave., at 9 a.m.
For more information, including membership information, call Glassco at 509-246-0566 or visit www.thelake.org.