Last Friday, I got a bad taste of life in a changed climate.

After barely sleeping through a night filled with constantly rumbling thunder, hail, whipping winds, and the most incredibly intense rain I have ever seen, my cell phone rang at 4:50 a.m.  The panicked voice on the other end was a friend who owns a downtown business with his wife.  Apologetically, he asked for help.  The Winooski River, which flows through downtown Montpelier, had broken its banks and was creeping toward their shop’s doorstep and they needed help getting merchandise up and out.  We spent a frantic hour packing inventory into cars as the water continued to advance and noisily poured into their basement.  Once they were as prepared as possible, I rushed to join my fellow citizens  helping other businesses as the air filled with the smell of sewage and fuel oil mixing into the river as buildings became inundated.  By 8:00 a.m., I finally got to CLF’s offices where the alarm was sounding to signal that flood waters in the basement were threatening the electricity.  Fortunately, forecasted rain did not fall and the river levels subsided throughout the course of a day that saw most businesses closed.

Though flood waters have receded in the neighborhoods and towns surrounding CLF’s office, reminders of last week’s terrifying deluge abound.  As you walk in the door to our building, a powerful smell of mold and mildew assaults you–a side-effect of our flooded basement.  Downtown dumpsters still overflow with discarded merchandise ruined when floodwaters rushed into low-lying businesses, some of which have yet to reopen.  Some city roads are still washed out and the City’s sewage treatment plant is assessing damage after it was completely underwater much of last Friday.  With the immediate crisis passed and the long recovery beginning, many are starting to ask whether this kind of flooding may be the new normal resulting from climate change.

Flooding at Montpelier's sewage treatment plan resulted in sewage discharges to the Winooski River. City residents await a final estimate of the cost to repair damage to the plant. (Photo credit: Louis Porter)

At this point, I am supposed to offer the obligatory caveat that we cannot measure climate change by any one single weather event.  Sadly, we don’t have to. Extreme weather is becoming the norm–just as so many climate scientists have for so long been predicting that it will.

The flash flooding that wreaked havoc across New England’s north country last week comes on top of earlier spring flooding throughout the Lake Champlain region.  In fact, Burlington, VT has recorded its wettest spring ever in 2011–as have several other parts of the country.  Before flooding came to our neck of the woods, we watched in horror as tornado after tornado flattened parts of the south and midwest.  And before that, all eyes were fixed on deluged areas along the Mississippi.  Just last spring, we were reporting on this blog about horrendous flooding caused by historic rain storms in Rhode Island and elsewhere in southern New England.  After all this, I refuse to believe the climate skeptics who argue that extreme weather has nothing to do with the rising global temperatures that made 2010 the second warmest year on record with the highest carbon output in history, pushing greenhouse gas levels to dangerous new heights.

In this last month, our region and our nation has seen climate change first hand and it sucks.  There’s just no other way to put it.

Politicians talk often about Americans as world leaders.  Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change , we are leaders in polluting the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases.  It does not have to be this way.

Americans have a choice.  It is up to us to demand that our elected officials like Senators Scott Brown and Kelly Ayotte stop doing the bidding of the mega-billionaire oil barons, coal companies, and their legions of bought-and-paid for climate change deniers while America continues to suffer devastation from climate change that they claim is not happening or is not a problem.  Climate change is happening!  It is harming Americans all across the country–from Barre, VT to Joplin, MO–and undermining the stability upon which our prosperity is based.  The time for action in Washington is long passed.

We can make the changes needed to stave off catastrophic climate change and–like Chicago–adapt to the climate change already happening.  Here in soggy Vermont, there are lots of hurting businesspeople, homeowners, and municipal officials realizing we have no time to waste…

There is no greater honor than to be recognized by your peers for the important work that you do. CLF’s Clean Water and Healthy Forest program director, Christopher Kilian, received such an honor last week at the Charles River Watershed Association’s annual meeting, where CRWA presented him with the 2011 Anne M. Blackburn Award. The award is “presented annually to an individual who has made significant contributions over a career that have resulted in singular improvements for the Charles River, its watershed and our natural environment.”

CLF is extremely proud of the clean water work that Chris and his team have done and continue to do in collaboration with CRWA and numerous other watershed partners. You can read more about this award-winning work elsewhere on our web site (e.g., cleaning up polluted highway runoff and polluted runoff from parking lots and other commercial development, and securing an agreement to prevent super-heated water discharges into the Charles from a nearby power plant). Here, however, I want to share with you some inspiring excerpts from the speech Chris delivered to an appreciative audience at the award ceremony:

We must all stand up for the basic notion of equal access to justice, including the courts, to vindicate the public interest in a healthy environment. I applaud CRWA for its willingness to stand up for clean water, including in the courts when necessary.

But the words of the law ring hollow unless they are connected to people and a place. No organization is more effectively connected to a place on earth than CRWA. Here on the Charles, my own evolving sense that an urban river can be a thriving ecological system and community amenity has been further inspired by the decades of incredible work of CRWA. CRWA’s ideal of blue cities where clean, healthy waters are present even in the densest urban areas, is a vision that is changing the world. Instead of dangerous dumping grounds, our urban waters will cool us as we safely swim in the summer, feed us as we catch fish and shellfish with our children, leave us awestruck in the presence of habitat for nature’s great bird migrations and creatures great and small, and provide a needed release as we sail, boat, and enjoy these great natural amenities.

Some, even government leaders in Massachusetts, say our work to protect clean water is done. They say that clean water is not worth the cost. They say removing raw sewage from our waters (a job that still remains unfinished) is all that the Clean Water Act demanded.  This cannot be the case. It cannot be that the Charles will suffer a fate overrun with toxic metals, raw sewage, and toxic blue green algae blooms. I am confident that with all of you, with CRWA, and CLF working together our waters will not be left degraded. Thank you to CRWA’s supporters, please continue your support. Our work is more important now than ever.

"The Gipper" explains why William Ruckelshaus (just behind him) is his choice to run EPA.

These days, Ronald Reagan is something of a hero to conservatives in Congress who see him as the champion of a smaller government with less taxes and low deficits (as numerous media have reported–the praise he earns on taxes and deficits often ignores the historical facts of his policies. you can read more about that here.)  Many of these modern-day Reagan-worshipers are the same folks who are behind the unprecedented assault on the Environmental Protection Agency, working to slash EPA’s budgets and deprive the agency of its authority to keep our air and water clean, and our nation’s people protected from the pollution hazards that threaten our health.

Since Ronald Reagan is resting in peace, we can’t ask him what he thinks about the present-day assault on the EPA.  But we can pay heed to the views expressed by William Ruckelshaus, the man that President Reagan and President Nixon entrusted to run the  EPA.  Writing in today’s Washington Post along with Christine Todd Whitman, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and former EPA Administrator under George W. Bush, these former cabinet members injected some much-needed nonpartisan perspective on the importance of a strong, science-based EPA into the debate:

Today the agency President Richard Nixon created in response to the public outcry over visible air pollution and flammable rivers is under siege. The Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would, for the first time, “disapprove” of a scientifically based finding, in this case that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. This finding was extensively reviewed by officials in the administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. It was finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency in response to a 2007 Supreme Court decision that greenhouse gases fit within the Clean Air Act definition of air pollutants.

…

It has taken four decades to put in place the infrastructure to ensure that pollution is controlled through limitations on corporate, municipal and individual conduct. Dismantle that infrastructure today, and a new one would have to be created tomorrow at great expense and at great sacrifice to America’s public health and environment. The American public will not long stand for an end to regulations that have protected their health and quality of life.

You can read the entire op-ed by clicking here.

It’s time to remind EPA’s conservative congressional opponents of the role that Republican predecessors and the professionals they appointed played in building an EPA that has made our environment cleaner and our economy stronger, while improving and protecting public health. CLF is making that easy for constituents of Republican Senators Snowe and Collins in Maine and Scott Brown in Massachusetts–click here to find out more–and spread the word to your friends in other parts of the country.

The sun is shining in Vermont–literally and figuratively–during “Sunshine Week…a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.” CLF is celebrating Sunshine Week by supporting two major government transparency reforms making their way through the Vermont legislature.

PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL ENFORCEMENT H.258

For more than a decade, CLF has been trying to shine a light on the behind-closed-door process for environmental enforcement in Vermont and to give affected members of the public a voice in the process.   In a 2008 case brought by CLF, the Vermont Environmental Court ruled that Vermont’s enforcement procedures were unlawfully depriving affected members of the public from notice of and an opportunity to comment on the backroom deals regulators strike with polluters before those deals get approved by the courts.  EPA subsequently agreed with this assessment.  It has provided the state with guidance on how to amend state laws to protect the public’s right to know about and participate in proceedings against polluters who damage our shared natural resources through their illegal activity.

This week, CLF’s efforts took a major step forward when the Vermont House Natural Resources and Energy Committee gave unanimous support to a bill proposed by the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources-H.258. Though not perfect, the bill goes a long way toward giving citizens who have suffered the effects of illegal pollution a role in the enforcement process.  Kudos to reporters Shay Totten at 7 Days (his stories are here and here) and Candy Page at the Burlington Free Press (her coverage here) for bringing this story the attention it deserves.  In a positive editorial today, the Free Press editorial board wrote:

An agreement between the state and polluters sealed behind closed doors might be more efficient, but that efficiency comes at the expense of transparency and true accountability.

…

The bill to open all environmental violation settlements to public scrutiny and challenge before final approval once again shows there’s much about government that can be fixed by increasing openness.

A vote by the full House is scheduled on Tuesday of this week.  Show your support for greater openness and public participation by contacting your local Vermont representative and them to vote for H.258.

STRENGTHENING VERMONT’S FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW H.73

CLF is also pleased to be working in a coalition of groups seeking to strengthen Vermont’s Freedom of Information laws.  CLF, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, the Vermont State Employees Association, the Vermont Press Association, and others committed to open government testified in support of H.73.  The bill would strengthen citizen enforcement of public records laws in cases where government officials unlawfully prevent the public from seeing public documents.  The most important feature of the bill would ensure that those unlawfully denied access to records will recover their attorney’s fees when they successfully argue in court that the government was wrong to deny access.  This would be a major deterrent to government secrecy.  The bill also ensures that most private contractors performing governmental functions also have to comply with public access laws.  The ACLU has been a leader on this important effort and its full summary of the bill’s open-government reform can be found here.

We cannot solve Vermont’s environmental problems without effective enforcement of our environmental laws, and we will not have effective enforcement without greater government transparency.  Let the sun shine!

Since the Douglas Administration’s controversial 2009 rule allowing ATV use on state lands, CLF and a coalition of citizens and partner organizations have been fighting to restore protection of state lands from the environmental damage and public safety risks posed by expanded ATV use.  In an exciting development last week (you can read about it here and here), Governor Shumlin’s new leadership team at Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources took the first steps toward putting the brakes on the 2009 rule by starting a new process to repeal the ATV Rule.  CLF needs your help to ensure that Governor Shumlin and Secretary Markowitz follow through on this important campaign-trail promise and withstand the pressure from ATV clubs.

• Call the Governor and Secretary Markowitz and leave a message thanking them for starting the process to restore protections for sensitive state lands and ask them to follow through by reversing the Douglas Administration’s ATV Rule

Governor Peter Shumlin’s Office: 802-828-3333
Secretary Deb Markowitz’s Office: 802-241-3600

Please Join CLF and our many organizational partners, including VPIRG, VNRC, VT League of Conservation Voters, Democracy for America, and Toxics Action Center, at the Vermont Environmental Action 2010 Conference.

What: Environmental Action is the largest grassroots activism conference in the state of Vermont. The conference provides an excellent opportunity for environmentalists, community leaders, and local activists to come together, learn from experts, and network with one another. This year the conference will have 26 workshops on a wide range of environmental issues and organizing skills from Using Free Internet Tools for Online Organizing to How to Bring Solar to Your Community.

Where: Vermont Technical College, Randolph, VT

When: 8:30-5:30

You can register online here.

If you come, please drop by my workshop at 3:15

The following are excerpts from Wendell Berry’s essay “Thoughts in the Presence of Fear,” published in 2001 in reaction to the tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath.  Nine years later, his “thoughts” still ring true.

XXIV.  Starting with the economies of food and farming, we should promote at home and encourage abroad the ideal of local self-sufficiency.  We should recognize that this is the surest, the safest, and the cheapest way for the world to live.  We should not countenance the loss or destruction of any local capacity to produce necessary goods.

XXV.  We should reconsider and renew and extend our efforts to protect the natural foundations of the human economy: soil, water, and air.  We should protect every intact ecosystem and watershed that we have left, and begin restoration of those that have been damaged.

…

XXVII.  The first thing we must begin to teach our children (and learn ourselves) is that we cannot spend and consume endlessly.  We have got to learn to save and conserve.  We do need a “new economy,” but one that is founded on thrift and care, on saving and conserving, not on excess and waste.  An economy based on waste is inherently and hopelessly violent, and war is its inevitable byproduct.  We need a peaceable economy.

(2001)

You can read all of Wendell Berry’s “Thoughts” in his book “Citizenship Papers” published by  Shoemaker and Hoard.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

That opening line from Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities ran through my head last week as I had two very different experiences of Lake Champlain, the 6th largest freshwater lake in the lower 48.

On Saturday, CLF participated in Burlington, Vt’s Lake Champlain Maritime Festival.  Visitors from Canada, outlying towns in Vermont, and many of the 50 states descended on the waterfront for fun in the sun along New England’s “west coast.” Festival goers had a chance to take sailing lessons and inspect old-style guide boats and other watergoing vessels from the Lake’s past.  By day, the sun shone on the broad blue Lake with its breathtaking vistas of the Adirondack Mountains in New York.  And by night great music from the likes of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals echoed across the waterfront.  Although they may not have known it, many of the festival goers also had a chance to drink water from the lake as it serves as the main public drinking water source for 250,000 people in the greater Burlington area.

The festival was exactly the kind of event that highlights the Lake as a recreational, cultural, and economic resource for Vermonters and those who come to visit.  It was a “best of times” moment for our great Lake.

But less than two months ago, in the midst of the summer’s worst heat wave, the same waterfront exploded with foul blue-green algae blooms that turned the water a nasty shade of slimy green.  The Burlington Free Press has an depressing gallery of photos here.

And that brings me to the “worst of times” moments from last week.

On Tuesday, members of the St. Albans Bay Area Watershed Association invited me to come see the foul water quality that has been plaguing the Bay for most of the summer.  I drove up to St. Albans, roughly 30 miles north of Burlington, to meet with three local residents–a retiree, a high school principal, and a state police officer–who are both maddened and saddened by the plight of St. Albans Bay.

A blue-green algae scum fouls and discolors the mostly-deserted waters of St. Albans Bay near a spot that used to average 50,000 visitors a summer before algae blooms like this became a regular experience

They took me on a tour of the watershed, an area that has become dominated by industrial-scale dairy farming responsible for spreading millions of gallons of liquid manure each year onto farm fields that eventually drain into the bay.  The excess nutrients in the runoff from those fields fuel the blue-green algae that choke the life out of the Bay, depressing area businesses and property values.  Forget the image of cows grazing happily on green fields with a red barn in the background.  The cows on these farms were packed tightly into low, single-story barns that look more like warehouses.

The group took me to the waterfront St. Albans Bay Park.  The bright-green, scummy water I saw is pictured at left.  It was a blistering hot day, but no one was using the beach or even thinking about swimming.  The ice cream parlor on the park’s edge had no customers and the convenience store looked pretty slow too.

One of my tourguides, who used to take his kids swimming there all the time in the 80s, told me that the park was once a major destination for Canadians who would drive south to bask on the Bay’s calm beaches–bringing their tourist money with them.  But annual visits to the park–once as high as 50,000 people per summer–have dropped to less than 5,000 as water quality has declined.

Vermont cannot and will not prosper as a state if we continue to tell this tale of two lakes.  The Maritime festival highlights what a tremendous asset a clean lake is and can be.  Yet one wonders what would have happened if the festival was scheduled for earlier in the summer when the water near Burlington looked much as the water in St. Albans did last week.  The experience of depressed property values and economic decline in St. Albans Bay highlights what we stand to lose if we don’t stem the pollution flowing to all sections of the Lake.  We cannot tolerate a situation where you have to check a Department of Health web site to see the status of blue-green algae blooms in the part of the Lake you are planning on visiting.

Whether the problem is pollution from poorly-run megafarms, fouled runoff from big-box parking lots, or inadequately treated sewage, CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper is committed to restoring and maintaining the best of times all the time and everywhere in Lake Champlain.

There’s nothing like a major summer heat wave to help you appreciate the value of rivers, lakes, and ponds that are safe for swimming.  Like the massive herds of animals that you see on nature shows congregating by a communal watering hole, we all have a primal urge to be submerged in cold, clean water as a cure for oppressive summer heat.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act, many of our nation’s waters are once again safe for swimming most of the time.  But sadly there are still many lakeshores, oceanfronts, and riversides close to major population centers where high bacteria levels and noxious algae often make swimming unattractive and unsafe.

A blue-green algae bloom fouls the Charles River, making it off limits to swimming

All across New England, from Cape Cod to Lake Champlain, wastewater pollution, polluted runoff from parking lots and streets, and manure and other wastes from farming operations fouls water quality, depriving overheated New Englanders of the chance to safely cool off by taking a dip in their neighborhood waterway.  Ironically, the same hot weather that makes us hanker for a refreshing swim can exacerbate pollution problems by stimulating the growth of harmful algae that can make swimmers sick.

It isn’t supposed to be this way! When Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972, it set a national goal of restoring all of our nation’s waters to safe-swimming status by 1983 and provided funding, permitting, and enforcement programs designed to achieve those goals.  Though the Clean Water Act has helped us make long-overdue progress toward that goal, our national commitment to properly funding and enforcing this fundamental law has waned along with water quality in many places.

Last night the heat was so bad in my un-air-conditioned home I had to get out for a swim.  Even though there are several stretches of the Winooski River running through my small city of Montpelier, Vt. where water flow and depth conditions would make for nice swimming, I know too much about the untreated pollution that runs off  city streets right into the river to walk down to the Winooski for a swim.  Instead, I had to jump in the car and drive a round-trip of 30 minutes into the countryside to find the clean-water relief I was seeking.  I’m lucky in this regard, because many New Englanders in more densely populated areas would have to drive farther to find a clean swimming hole even though, like me, most have another waterway that could be made–and by law is supposed to be–safe for swimming much closer to home.

By allowing regulators and policymakers to underfund and underenforce Clean Water Act programs, we are forfeiting one of our most valuable natural assets–safely-swimmable waterways.

At CLF, we are committed to achieving the national vision of restoring and protecting all our waters so they are safe for swimming and fishing–including our urban waters that flow through sweltering cities where people are most in need of a more carbon-neutral alternative to air-conditioned cooling off.  Our country still has much work to do on this public health/public happiness issue.  The heat wave is a reminder of why that work is worth doing.  To learn more about CLF’s clean water efforts for New England, please visit our web site.