Friends of Cottage Lake is currently focused on improving water quality and restoring lake habitat.
2007-2009 Projects:
- Cottage Lake Park shoreline restoration
- An updated planting plan can be found here
- See the January 2007 newsletter for a description of the project
- Scheduled for Spring/Summer/Fall 2007
- Spring/Summer: Remove invasive weeds from the planting site
- Fall: Plant native plants as described in the planting plan
- 2008: Maintain the site, add fencing and additional plants
- 2009: Signs installed, additional fencing and maintenance
Signs for the park kiosk are ready for review - you can download them here:
Ongoing Projects:
- Water-quality monitoring with goals of:
- Improving our knowledge of current problems facing the lake.
- Measuring levels of additional pollutants such as fecal coliform bacteria.
- Determining impacts of all our projects.
- Data from the first year of monitoring can be found in our January 2007 newsletter
- Native shoreline planting:
- Add native shoreline plants to reduce lake-bound phosphorus from lawn run-off.
- Shoreline plants help keep Canada geese off of lawns (another source of fecal coliform pollution).
- Community outreach and education:
- Increase community awareness of lake issues and possible solutions.
- Help change behaviors in the community to reduce our impact on Cottage Lake.
- Noxious weed removal:
- Control or eradicate invasive weeds such as Purple Loosestrife, Fragrant Water Lilies and Eurasian Milfoil - see the Water Lilies page or Milfoil page for more information on our current plans.
- Community Newsletter - "The Cottage Lake Connection"
- The January 2007 issue is here! Check out our newsletter page
We are currently working with King County to apply for funding for these projects. In the summer of 2005, our lake was chosen as a recipient of a Centennial Clean Water Fund grant—this grant targets the phosphorus problem and will fund water quality monitoring and community outreach programs for 5 years.
Eagle on Cottage Lake