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Explore our latest coverage of environmental issues, climate change and more.

Floods Worsen Lake Champlain As State, EPA Develop Clean-up Plan

Photo courtesy Lake Champlain Basin Program

The last two months of heavy rains have pushed Lake Champlain to near flood stage, and aggravated the lake’s pollution problems.

The high water and increased pollution comes as federal and state officials are preparing a clean up plan for the lake.

The plan will likely include everything from new limits on sewage treatment plants to increased controls on storm water.

The record rains and swollen rivers in the Champlain watershed have been especially discouraging for Eric Smeltzer, the state’s staff scientist for the big lake. For years, he’s worried about the phosphorus pollution that runs off the land and into the water, where it can fuel toxic algae blooms that plague the lake in the summer.

The high and muddy rivers carry stormwater run-off, sewer plant overflows and soil scoured from stream banks. Smeltzer said that means more and more phosphorus dumped in the lake.

“I look at that brown water, and it’s like a punch in the gut every time it happens, because it’s just hurting the lake,” he said. “And the phosphorus levels in the lake are going in the wrong direction as it is.”

On Thursday, Smeltzer will be part of an all day technical workshop that will focus on ways to control phosphorus pollution.

The session, organized by the Environmental Protection Agency, is part of the EPA’s work to develop a pollution budget and clean up plan for the lake. This is the state’s and EPA’s second attempt. The first plan, finalized in 2002, was later rejected by the EPA because it didn’t provide enough assurance that it would actually work. Smeltzer says that the EPA wants more guarantees this time.

“I expect that they’ll be seeking stronger commitment to implement programs and policies and funding mechanisms and potentially new regulations that will provide those reasonable assurances that the reductions that have to happen will, in fact, occur,” he said.

Environmental Commissioner David Mears said the tougher clean-up plan will mean everyone in the watershed, from municipalities with sewage treatment plants to businesses planning new development, will have to up their game for the benefit of the lake.

“So for instance, we already have a large number of communities in the Chittenden County area and also St. Albans and Rutland who are engaged in planning for putting in place a whole set of new stormwater requirements that will reduce the amount of stormwater run off,” he said. “We may need to make those more stringent and broaden the communities that are subject to those requirements.”

Environmentalists say the work is long overdue. Anthony Iarrapino is a senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation. He points out that CLF went to the Legislature back in 2006 to urge lawmakers to strengthen measures to improve the lake to account for the impact of climate change since models predict more and more rainfall in the region as the atmosphere gets warmer. When the Legislature failed to act, CLF then went to court to force EPA to rewrite the plan.

“I think every day that goes by that we are not adapting our pollution control programs to the reality of climate change, the increased precipitation, the taxing of our sewage treatment infrastructure by the increased precipitation, increased flooding risks, every day that goes by is a wasted day,” Iarrapino said

Iarrapino says the state doesn’t have to wait until the plan is finalized to do more to help the lake.

“The Shumlin Administration and the Legislature have a responsibility to react to the reality that we’re seeing right outside our windows,” he said. “It’s not just about pollution control, it’s also about better control of flooding. One of the nice things about this problem – if there is a nice thing – is that some of the same things that you do to protect people and keep them safe from flooding also has the benefit of reducing pollution.”

State officials say major components of the Champlain clean-up plan should be out by late fall for public comment.

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