Interactive County-Wide Water Quality Maps

Committee Positions Open - Are you interested in efforts to improve and protect water quality and reopen shellfish beds in Whatcom County? There are advisory committee positions open on the Drayton Harbor and Portage Bay Shellfish Protection District Advisory Committees. These committees meet 2 to 4 times per year and provide feedback on water quality and shellfish recovery efforts in Whatcom County. For more information, visit the County Council webpage for boards and commissions at: http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/210/Boards-Commissions. 


The WCPW staff coordinates with County Health, Planning and Development Services (PDS), Whatcom Conservation District (WCD), and State Departments of Agriculture (WSDA) and Ecology (ECY) to monitor water quality and respond to drainages where elevated bacteria levels are consistently observed. See interactive maps below for a compilation of preliminary results across watersheds. 

Click on the map below for routine/ambient and source tracking preliminary fecal coliform results collected by WCPW, WCD, WSDA, and ECY.New Online Map

Click on the map below for fecal coliform standards compliance results from Lummi Natural Resources. 

LummiNR_map

 

Click on the map below for the Whatcom Conservation District's Watershed Health    Assessment.

                  
 WCD Watershed Assessment  
         
   

Click on the map below for the Washington State Department of Health's commercial shellfish growing area status map. 

    DOHmap
  
This map is intended for COMMERCIAL shellfish harvesting purposes only. Click here for RECREATIONAL harvesting on public and private beaches.
 
View preliminary lab results from Department of Health's marine sampling.

View the City of Bellingham's Urban Stream Monitoring Program results here.

Glossary of Terms


Watershed: An area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel.
Routine/ambient monitoring: A fixed network of sites are visited on a pre-determined schedule to monitor water quality at that location during all types of environmental conditions. 
Source tracking/storm monitoring: Monitoring locations are specifically selected in order to target locations where high bacterial counts were recently observed. Also used to refer to monitoring that is conducted during specific events, such as storms. 
Preliminary data: Water quality sample results from the lab that are not yet finalized. Access to preliminary data is provided to accelerate the identification and correction of potential pollution sources.