The desires of the “HOA” change with every board vote. The HOA Board at times pushed and at other times pulled. What people are missing is that the CWA is a strict liability, black/white issue. “Are you polluting the water or not?” Finger pointing and excuses are not relevant to the federal judge. And while the City may be responsible now, they could easily decide that the Biofilter indeed fits many exemptions that would allow even extensive maintenance, and let the HOA handle it all by their lonesome. Then the HOA would just have to do it! Or they could fight it and waste a lot of time and money on lawyers and fines..

How much would redirecting parts of another river cost? That sounds crazy expense. I think stopping all major polluters, starting with this one, makes more sense. Oddly enough, it was not until the last few months (maybe February) that “everyone” was in favor of fixing the Biofilter. Many currently on the Board have been saying that nothing can be done for the past 5-10 years.

Brian –

The emphasis is on “proven” source of pollution being added to the water.

The citizens that collected the water from multiple locations around the biofilter didn’t have the time nor the resources to check and test the entire lake. Their goal was to either prove or disprove that the biofilter was working properly in filtering stormwater.

There are certainly other “sources” of poor water potentially being dumped into the lake. But at the moment, there is only one “known” source that exceeds state and federal water quality standards.

Everyone is in favor of getting the BioFilter fixed… I don’t know anyone in the LSHOA who is against it. The red tape here is idiotic. Making the lake clean and safe should be a priority for everyone as it is such a vital part of the community.

The $300k is also not for the purpose of chasing down the LSHOA, its for engineering changes needed to improve the water quality. I am also pretty skeptical that the houses around the lake are the primary cause of the algae bloom, but its much harder to chase down farms/dairies in Vancouver up stream.

One proposal I’ve heard which seemed sensible was to make it so that lacamas creek which is flows through farmland in Vancouver is not the only source of water. Instead they could pump/redirect water from the Columbia or Washougal river in to offset.

There is no doubt this is not a trivial problem, but it needs to be solved. LSHOA is an easy target to blame, but lets be real here… they arent defying the city and want to comply. They likely arent the primary cause, but could contribute to cleaning it up regardless. More needs to be done that to clear foliage on 2 acres of land and “fix the biofilter”.

Meghan —

You are “close”, but not quite.

The maintenance of the failed biofilter is the responsibility of the Lacamas Shores Homeowners Association. All the “costs” for that maintenance would be theirs, not the cities responsibility.

They asked the city for permission to do some work to repair the failed biofilter roughly 4 years ago. Instead of encouraging the LSHOA to do the repairs, the city demanded they get a state permit before proceeding. The state said they wouldn’t likely give the HOA a permit.

The “fix” should cost the city of Camas nothing. But instead, Camas has allocated $300,000 of the people’s tax dollars to “study” the problem.

There is only ONE “known” source of pollution (excessive phosphorus) being dumped into Lacamas Lake — the LSHOA biofilter. The city should DEMAND it be fixed immediately.

There are many other possible “sources” of stormwater coming into the lake that “may” or “may not” be exceeding federal water standards. But fixing the one known source should be the easy, first step in addressing lake water quality.