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Soap Lake is the name of the lake and the town. Soap Lake is located in the center of Washington State 20 miles north of Interstate-90 between Seattle and Spokane. |
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The chain of lakes down the center of the Lower Grand Coulee ends with Soap Lake. These lakes originally fed one another in mostly underground streams. The mineral content of the water in the lakes increased with each lake ending in Soap Lake. Banks Lake Reservoir seen in the upper right of this view is about 17 miles north of Soap Lake and 900 feet above Soap Lake in elevation. The reservoir was built in the 1950's by the Bureau of Reclamation as part of the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, one of the largest irrigation projects in the world. The Grand Coulee Dam , the source of irrigation water for the project, is 47 miles above Soap Lake to the north. |
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This view of Soap Lake shows the encroachment of development around the lake. The lake is 2 miles long by 1 mile across. The town-site of Soap Lake wraps around the lake to the south. The 82.2 mile long West Canal seen here as a thin dark line entering the view on the right and encircling the lake around the north, carries irrigation water to one eighth of a million acres of farmland. The irrigated farming, dark circles and squares, can be seen surrounding the lake to the south in the lower half of this air photo. Runoff from the farming, State Highway 17, and the town-site drains into the Soap Lake drainage area and into the lake itself. |
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The air photos fail to express the grandeur of the area. The Lower Grand Coulee is over a mile and a half wide in places. This view looks west across the canyon with the morning sunlight warming the sheer basalt rock walls rising 900 feet over the coulee floor. The southern tip of Lake Lenore can be seen in the right of this view. Lenore used to feed water into Soap Lake from the north before the irrigation system was built and Lake Lenore was freshened and diluted. Lenore, once as mineralized as the upper layer Soap Lake is today, now is relatively fresh and supports sport fishing. State Highway 17 can be seen running up the floor of the canyon from left to right, heading towards Grand Coulee Dam and Canada. |
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This view of Soap Lake is to the south from the overlooking cliffs. The thin line of foam is a remnant of the past when the wind would blow billows of foam up on the shore that would cover the picnic tables. The exact
mechanism that causes the foam is not known. However dilution of the mineral water since the canal system was built in the 1950's, has all but eliminated the foam except on very windy days. At a depth of about 70 feet, the mineral composition of the lake changes radically to a much stronger composition with concentrations of unusual substances and life forms. The lake's two layers have not mixed in thousands of years. The scientific community refers to lakes with this rare condition as meromictic. There are only 11 meromictic lakes in the United States. Soap Lake is likely the most extreme of all. The scientific community is currently exploring the lake to document some of the unusual qualities. |
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Soap Lake has a special setting of exceptional beauty. This grass beach on the north end of the lake has been experienced by natives of the area over at least the last ten thousand years. The lake was known as "Smokiam" (healing waters) and soothed the aches and pains, bodies and minds of generations of weary travelers who would walk here from miles around. |
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Due to the influence of Seattle, which sets the tone for this "Emerald State" most people are unaware that most of Washington State is a desert setting. This splash of lichen on the brown basalt rock is typical of the vast display of life to be found here in the desert for the observant. A few miles to the south, the Columbia Wildlife Refuge is home to dozens of migrating species of birds. These birds are now flocking to Soap Lake as well and landing on the lake after feeding at the surrounding irrigated farm fields. In the past, the mineral content of the water repelled the migrating flocks from landing on the lake. |
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This tiny wood cabin is typical of the transient accommodation for visitors who used to come to "take the waters". At one time the population of the town was over 5000 including many visitors, but has dwindled to just over seventeen hundred today. The hills and town-site contained many large wooden "sanitariums" which would house the sick and weary from across the country. All but one of these historic structures have disappeared due to fires. Modern medicine and the lessening number of patients with Burgers Disease, a vascular malady that peaked during WW1, have caused the flow of visitors to slow to a trickle. Although the lake is reputed to arrest the symptoms of many skin disorders such as psoriasis, most visitors come to enjoy the setting, the peace and quiet, and to rejuvenate the spirit. |
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This quiet Soap Lake street reflects a town in transition. Although many homes have a separate Soap Lake Water connection from an aged water system that brings mineral water from the lake for bathing, separate from the fresh water system of the town, few of the residents take advantage of this feature. The town is mostly a bedroom community for people working in the nearby Cities of Ephrata and Moses Lake, and a retirement community. There is little industry in the place, no McDonalds, no offices and many empty buildings. |
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This ancient sauna with its three-tiered bench is part of an abandoned lakeside resort, typical of the "Spa" development that built the town. It will probably not survive the decade. Soap Lake used to be a center for healthful escape. The two to three million tourists who stream past on Highway 17 every year in search of more active recreation bypass it now. |
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This view shows the West Canal over 100 feet above the elevation of the lake. The 82.2 mile long West Canal carries 5,100 cubic feet of irrigation water per second to the 5,800 miles of canals, laterals and wasteways of the vast Columbia Basin Irrigation Project. This section of the irrigation canal surrounding the lake around its north end presented special engineering problems to the Bureau of Reclamation. To allow the canal to cross the mouth of the Grand Coulee high above the irrigated farm land, the Soap lake Siphon was built. The siphon plunges over 100 feet to the floor of the coulee, and up the other side in a steel and concrete 25 feet diameter pipe, the largest inverted siphon in the world. At the time of construction in the 50's, this part of the project, and the other engineering works caused several "problems". The Soap Lake Problem was the rising water in the lake that caused the flooding of the town. |
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Lake Lenore Pump Plant #2 sits on the floor of the Grand Coulee by the Soap lake Siphon. This battery of pumps intercepts water that is pumped off Lake Lenore, and injects it into the siphon, and on into the irrigation
canal system of the Quincy Basin. Underground water that escapes from Lake Lenore heading toward Soap Lake is intercepted and pumped from here into the siphon. This pump plant is one of 7 located in the coulee around the lakes that the Bureau uses to continue to solve the "Soap lake Problem".
There are six shallow wells built around the lake that "intercept" the groundwater that is swollen by the irrigation system. This groundwater is pumped into the irrigation canals and prevents the town-site from being flooded. The view is to the north, looking up the Grand Coulee in the distance. Soap Lake is behind the photographer, and Lake Lenore is out of sight in the distance. |
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Lake Lenore Pump Plant #3 sits on the shorelands of Soap Lake at its north end. This view across Soap Lake is looking to the south. This pump plant is the location where one and a half feet of surface water was removed from the lake during the lake's second pumping episode in November of 1998, reducing forever the mineral content of the lake. Until this second episode, no surface water had been removed from the lake since the first pumping episode of 1953. A permanent valve and pipe into the lake was built in 1998 to facilitate future surface pumping of the lake. Officials of the Bureau of Reclamation as recently as May 16, 2006 at a public open house stated that the mineral content of the lake has been stable for the last 40 years. They are unable to explain why the surface pumping does not change their impression of the concentration of minerals in the water. In spite of these questions, the lake scientists disagree with the official government position based on their recent and detailed research. Also the Bureau's concerns do not appear to include the affects on the critical lower layer of the lake which appears to be adjusting the mineral concentration of the upper water at the expense of the lower. |
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This concrete storm water drainage pipe begins in the farm fields to the South of Soap lake as an open ditch, zigzags through the town-site and terminates in the lake on the East Beach. It is known that runoff from surrounding farms, streets and the state highway end up in the lake. What is not known is the effect of this accumulating runoff on the lake. For the first time, samples from this and the other waste pipes that terminate in the lake are being analyzed for the presence of various pollutants. Like the minerals, waste materials are concentrated by the lake. This runoff could be intercepted, retained and naturally treated through the construction of low cost ditches and grass swales before it reaches the lake. This kind of mitigation is mandatory in larger centers, and yet year after year no official concern is paid even to the maintenance of these crumbling primitive drains. The Washington State Department of Ecology ranks Soap Lake at the lowest of the four rankings for state water bodies. Lake Washington for instance which lies within the Seattle area 180 miles to the west, has the highest ranking. The WSDOE officially refuses to adjust this position. They claim that Soap Lake does not represent drinking water and therefore does not affect human health as do their more important assignments. Their focus is naturally protecting Puget Sound and the other concentrated population centers. |
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This view from the Moses Lake International Airport, twenty-two miles south of Soap Lake shows the world's largest aircraft, a Russian transport hired to deliver components to be installed in one of the local dams.
Moses Lake Airport twenty miles to the south has one of the longest runways
in the nation with clear skies most of the year. The
region is poised for continued high-tech industrial growth to supplement the traditional farming.
Microsoft and Yahoo have built massive data vaults in the nearby town of
Quincy to enjoy the cheap land and reliable cheap electricity from the very
hydroelectric and irrigation dams that are affecting the quality of Soap
Lake. A national spaceport and a high speed rail corridor are in the
planning stages, and time will tell. The issues surrounding the protection of Soap Lake, it's precious mineral water, the local historic assets and the fragile local economy may continue to be overlooked in the development of the region. Without a railroad spur or a grain elevator, and having allowed the encroachment of housing into the limited industrial zone through conditional use permits, the City of Soap Lake is searching for a collaborative role in the regional economy without much luck. |
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Standing above Soap Lake on a winter morning, one can barely imagine that anything of the scene is temporary, except perhaps the quality of light. In reality, the geologic history of the area is filled with accounts of volcanic explosions, flows of molten lava and catastrophic floods. Even in a human time scale, the lake is enduring change due to the effects of human settlement. If we can find the resources to protect the lake from these effects, future generations will be able to enjoy the lake without the thought that we today could and should have done more. |
The Soap lake Story and all images (except air photos which are USGS images)
Copyright © 2002-2006 Soap Lake Conservancy and Copyright © John Glassco. All rights reserved.
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Revised: 12/02/2006
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