The door is always open at LPO Waterkeeper

Hello Sandpoint! My name is Travis Dickson and I am proud to be the new associate director with Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper.

Right now you maybe asking yourself, what is a Waterkeeper? Waterkeepers throughout the world are tasked with the duties of collecting water samples, testing them for signs of pollution and making the results available to the public. Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper also organizes educational events and holds an annual Water Summit to celebrate our lake. Our organization aims to keep Lake Pend Oreille drinkable, fishable and swimmable through education, community engagement and advocacy.

Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper is more than 10 years old and, for the past eight years, we have been conduction our Water Quality Monitoring Program. A colossal amount of work has been done through those years and an extensive dataset has been produced. With gratitude and respect, I wish to thank all past LPOW workers and volunteers for their achievements in developing this program. The amount of time and effort that has been put into this organization is nothing short of admirable. The information collected from this program assists regulatory authorities that hold polluters accountable.

I have inherited a very robust dataset produced from LPOW’s eight years of monitoring. The data consists of measurements for 11 variables from 15 locations around the lake. These measurements give us an idea of how “clean” our lake is. I’d like to invite you to visit our website to explore the new data visualization charts that make it easy and fun to explore the “cleanliness” of your favorite swimming holes in Lake Pend Oreille.

I was raised in Bonner County, went to Sagle Elementary School and graduated from Sandpoint High School. Sandpoint is my home. I am a passionate environmentalist who values human health. Guided by the age-old-adage “you are what you eat, drink and breathe,” I believe that to be fit and healthy you need a healthy source of food, water and air. I believe that the best way to protect our own health is to protect our environment. I am committed to protecting the health of this community, by first understanding the threats to the ecosystem and then advocating for the preservation of our greatest local resource.

You may be asking yourself, how can I help LPOW’s initiative? We are non-profit organization and, of course, open to you donations. After all, the more funds we have, the more testing we can do for the community. But even more valuable are contributions of your time and expertise. Our door is always open and we are located in suite 212 of the Cedar Street Bridge.

Again: Thank you to all our volunteers. This is a citizen’s science program for the people and by-the-people. Please visit our website (lakependoreillewaterkeeper.org), which includes news and events happening around the community. We hope you’ll find this information helpful.

TRAVIS DICKSON

Sandpoint