View to west across Liberty Lake. Note the dense shoreline development along the far shore. What impacts might it have to the main aquifer?
Liberty Lake (as well as many of the other tributary lakes to the aquifer)
was formed during the Pleistocene (Ice Age), its mouth blocked by glacial
debris and catastrophic outburst flood deposits on its north side.
Today, water flowing into the lake has no physical outlet, and the lake
is maintained by annual rainfall, snow melt, and several small streams
flowing from the surrounding watershed.
Liberty Lake is just one of a number of small lakes that occupy basins
adjacent to the Rathdrum Prairie or the Spokane valley - all contribute
water to the aquifer through diffuse leakage through their bottoms.
The other lakes include Spirit, Hayden, Hauser, and Newman Lakes, as well
as Lake Coeur d'Alene and Pend Oreille Lake.
Collectively, these lakes are significant contributors to recharging
the main aquifer system. In this case, Liberty Lake is estimated
to contribute approximately 11.6 thousand acre feet (amount of water required
to cover one acre of land to a depth of one foot) of ground water to the
aquifer each year (Bolke and Vaccaro, 1981). For comparison,
Hauser Lake contributes approximately 26.8 thousand acre feet per year,
and Newman Lake contributes about 47.1 thousand acre feet per year.
View to west across Liberty Lake. Note the dense shoreline development
along the far shore. What impacts might it have to the main aquifer?
View of Liberty Lake toward the south, into the contributing watershed.
