This cache is placed and maintained by GeoCrackers with permission of Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District.
Liberty Lake Sewer and Water District’s mission is to restore the lake, in 1973 area residents voted to form this special purpose district government as duly authorized by Washington State law. Their mission is public sewer and water service through leadership to preserve and protect the aquifer, river, and lake; serving people and the environment. To assure pure drinking water and effectively treated wastewater we maintain the highest security, safety, construction practices, operating standards, low rates and fiscal responsibility. It serves as an advocate and clearinghouse for lake, river and aquifer protection, conscientious wastewater treatment, and water conservation. They continually monitor water quality and manage the watershed to understand and prevent negative influences while operating a safe, secure, and reliable sewer and water utility.
Liberty Lake is a 708-acre (1.1 square mile) Mesotrophic lake located approximately 2.5 miles east of the City of Spokane Valley, Washington and 3 miles west of the Idaho border.
Liberty Lake has no natural outlet, but simply a fabricated outlet structure and channel with infiltration basins. The only outlet or disposal for flows from the lake and runoff is through infiltration of permeable rock and soil into the Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer, an aquifer discovered in 1895 that currently supplies drinking water to over 400,000 people in the Spokane area. Not only is lake water quality important to Liberty Lake, but drinking water is also an important commodity to protect. In fact, studies indicate that Liberty Lake donates 11.6 thousand acre-feet of water per year to the aquifer (Washington State University Report, 2001). This fact illustrates that by protecting surface waters, you protect groundwater our primary source of drinking water.
The primary purpose of the Liberty Lake monitoring is to provide information to help the community understand lake water quality status, assess trends in lake water quality, and to guide the community and the district in decisions regarding lake and watershed management.
A 6 inch ductile iron stilling well has been installed on Liberty Lake at a private homeowners association park. The purpose for the installation of this site is to monitor the continuous level of Liberty Lake and maintain the level of the lake at or below the 1951 adjudicated level (2049.51 feet above sea level). This stilling well offers real time data valuable for calculating lake volume, evaporation, and residence time, plotting and calculating the rise and fall of the lake level, and pin pointing runoff and storm events. Ongoing monitoring will ensure quality data useful in calculating hydrologic and nutrient budgets while maintaining and establishing baselines and trends.
This cache will take you to the Frank L. Boyle Inlet Station near the lake. Make sure NOT to enter the building, it’s not necessary.
The 2017 Spokane Geocache Tour brings you Sustainability of Spokane. This Geocache Tour will send geocachers on a trip through the Spokane region, finding caches in areas where Spokane residents utilize natural resources and give back to the environment. You will visit locations featuring water conservation, farming, waste treatment, forestry, and of course dam, solar and wind energy.
- All caches begin with the series name SOS: followed by a location specific name so they are easy to search. We also made a SOS Bookmark of the caches.
- Be sure to visit SpokaneGeoTour.com for more infomation on current tours and a map view of all caches in this series.
The Sustainability of Spokane Geocache Tour is sponsored by Cache Advance, and by donation from local cachers. We hope you enjoy the tour!
