o What: Benefit swim across Vancouver Lake.
o When: 8 a.m. Friday, May 28.
o Where: Matt Graves will start his two-mile swim at Vancouver Lake Park on the west side of the lake and finish at the Vancouver Lake Sailing Club on the eastern shore.
o To donate: To sponsor the swim or make a donation, go to http://www.houghfoundation.org.
When Matt Graves tells people he’s planning to swim across Vancouver Lake on May 28 to promote awareness of water quality, he said, they usually have a uniform assessment.
They say he’s crazy.
The 2,600-acre lake, tucked between Vancouver’s city limits and the point where the Columbia River bends to the north, has paid the price for man-made changes to the natural environment. The Columbia, harnessed by dams and constricted by dikes, no longer pushes out accumulating sediment with rampaging bursts of springtime snowmelt.
o What: Benefit swim across Vancouver Lake.
o When: 8 a.m. Friday, May 28.
o Where: Matt Graves will start his two-mile swim at Vancouver Lake Park on the west side of the lake and finish at the Vancouver Lake Sailing Club on the eastern shore.
o To donate: To sponsor the swim or make a donation, go to http://www.houghfoundation.org.
Vancouver Lake is now badly clogged with silt.
During a practice swim Saturday morning, Graves stood up in chest-high water at a buoy marking the midpoint of a two-mile swim.
“I don’t think most people realize how shallow that lake is,” he said.
At the same time, stormwater — collecting everything from fertilizers to motor oils — continues to pour in by way of Burnt Bridge Creek and Lake River. Public health authorities have commonly issued no-swimming recommendations in recent summers due to blue-green algae blooms in the shallow water.
Graves, 34, an environmental specialist who works for the Port of Vancouver, hopes that his swim will help people realize the cumulative effect of lawn chemicals and other pollutants dripping into storm drains that ultimately flow into the lake.
“People have a big impact on water quality,” he said. “The more aware people can be … the longer we can keep places like Vancouver Lake open for future generations to keep using.”
Graves is not only raising awareness with his swim, but he’s also partnered with the nonprofit Hough Foundation to raise money for the foundation’s Pool Pal Scholarship program, which gives children access to open swim times at Marshall Pool. He said he spoke last week to excited students at Hough Elementary School, who donated $20 they had collected.
On Saturday, Graves tested the waters.
Clad in a light wet suit donated by Seven Seas Scuba of Vancouver and wearing a swimming cap adorned with an X-mark through “E. coli” and “Blue-green algae,” Graves set out from the dock of the Vancouver Lake Sailing Club on the lake’s eastern shore. Tim Brown, the club’s commodore, and member Roy Potts shadowed Graves in a small motorboat.
Members of the sailing club have been active in working with local authorities to clean up the lake.
“Vancouver’s lucky to have this,” Potts said.
Indeed, on a sunny morning with the surface glassy-smooth, the lake glimmered as a natural jewel in an urbanized environment.
Graves, who swam competitively while growing up in Coos Bay, Ore., slipped into the water shortly after 8:30 a.m. He had been swimming regularly at the Hough Pool, until funding shortfalls forced the foundation to close it permanently in February, but he wanted the chance to try the real deal on Saturday.
“It definitely took the breath out of you when you jumped in,” he said.
After a few initial zig-zags, Graves straightened his course with help from Brown and Potts aboard the motorboat. It took him 26 minutes to get a mile out to the midpoint buoy and another 29 minutes on the return back to the eastern shore.
On the morning of May 28, he’s planning a straight west-to-east course from Vancouver Lake Park all the way across to the sailing club.
He’s hoping the water will be fine.
“If people understood this lake should be open to swimming, then people would be more aware of how to keep it clean,” he said.
Erik Robinson: 360-735-4551, or erik.robinson@columbian.com.
