Several years ago, an informed source told me that the glacier on Mount Baker was shrinking. In recent years, a number of independent scientific studies have been conducted, and forecasting models implemented and tested against existing data. The studies show a trend of declining flows during the summer and increasing flows during the winter. Due to higher temperatures, water runs off instead of staying as ice or snow. During the summer, there is insufficient snow melt to keep flows up. Summer flows in the Nooksack may be down 40 percent by 2075- 63 years from now.

Since nature abhors a vacuum, the space left by lack of freshwater will be taken up by salt water from Puget Sound. Aquifers will be effected also. Saline waters are not suitable for agriculture, and drinking water treatment is expensive and wasteful.

The only probable solutions will be to lose population and agriculture or build large impoundments to capture excessive winter flows and store for summer use.

It also means that we need to be very dubious about proposed water-guzzling industrial projects like the coal terminal at Cherry Point, which will use hundreds of thousands to millions of gallons per day of Nooksack water trying to control dust in a windy location during summer days of 16 hours of sunshine when the river is at its lowest. Because it is evaporated, none of this water is recycled.

Humphrey Blackburn

Custer