It’s difficult to imagine a day like today in Boston without the aid of salt to make our roads safe to use. For those of us in the snowier parts of the country, road salt is a necessary and accepted part of our winter. It’s cheap, effective and it allows commuters, motorists and emergency vehicles to safely reach their destinations in harsh conditions. According to the Salt Institute, Americans used 22 million tons of road salt in 2008. In a different study by the National Research Council, Massachusetts tops the list of of states with the highest road salt-use at, 19.94 tons per lane-mile each year, surpassing even New York, with 16.6 tons per lane-mile. Under MassDOT salt policy, salt or sodium chloride is applied at 240 pounds per lane-mile. In other words, trucks in Massachusetts are dumping more than a ton of salt every 10 lane-miles in a single application! Salt does not evaporate or otherwise get removed, so one has to ask: what is the fate of all this salt that is dumped on our roads?

Unfortunately, most of it is washed off of roadways by rain runoff and snow melt and enters our rivers and streams or percolates through the soil into our drinking water supplies. That’s the situation that Cambridge, MA has been combating for years. This densely-populated city gets its water from two reservoirs, both located next to Route 128, making it particularly susceptible to salt contamination. Another town suffering from the same issue is Boxford, MA. The town launched a suit against the state highway department, MassHighway, to close its salt storage shed, contending that it was responsible for contaminating at least 30 local wells. Aside from the ecological damage of excess salt, there are also health and financial burdens associated with high salt levels in public and private water supplies. High salt levels can result in skin and eye irritation and pose a danger for individuals with sodium-restricted diets, according to the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission.

MassHighway is already under court order to manage stormwater runoff after CLF’s successful suit in 2008. Hopefully this effort will divert some of the salt from our waters and, in turn, lead to better health for both the environment and the MA residents who live in it.

Today, the U.S. EPA announced that it will join CLF’s lawsuit against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) for violations of the Clean Water Act. The suit, filled by CLF in U.S. District Court in February 2010, states that BWSC has failed to control polluted discharges from its storm water system, allowing it to carry raw sewage and excessive levels of bacterial, copper and zinc into Boston’s waterways, threatening the health and well-being of the surrounding communities.

BOSTON, MA  December 22, 2010 – The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) has issued the following statement in response to the motion filed today by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stating that it will join CLF’s lawsuit against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission (BWSC) for violations of the Clean Water Act:

“The complaint against the Boston Water and Sewer Commission documents serious failures in the system that are allowing ongoing unlawful pollution of Boston’s waterways, including the Charles, Mystic and Neponset Rivers, in some the city’s most economically-challenged communities,” said Christopher Kilian, director of CLF’s Clean Water and Healthy Forests program. “The federal government’s entry into this case is a clear indication of the urgency of the matter and the priority EPA places on it. BWSC’s inability to maintain a system that ensures clean water is a violation of the law and an affront to the people of Boston. The United States agrees with CLF that BWSC must make a major commitment now to improve water quality, as other cities have done, and restore these resources to health for everyone’s benefit.” More>>

(Photo credit: Cynthia Liebman)

The view from the corner office at CLF Boston is not always glamorous.  For the past few days, the sights and sounds outside our building on Summer Street have been dominated by environmental remediation trucks.  With their humming, rattling pumps, hoses and generators, it’s admittedly been a little distracting to those of us on the other side of the windows.

However, it’s a welcome intrusion to those of us who know what’s going on under the surface of the street.  The trucks are performing vital maintenance on the underground storm sewers that pipe rainwater from our streets into rivers and out to sea.  When the catch basins under the street grates become clogged with debris and leaves, they no longer trap trash and pollutants as designed.  So regular clean-outs (often done with a large vacuum truck) are vital.  And the network of sewer pipes under the City of Boston (like many municipalities) is aging and needs repair as well.  Rumor has it that cameras are being installed to monitor for leaks or cracks in the pipes underground.

As an organization that’s spent decades fighting for clean water throughout New England, the maintenance of the water infrastructure right under our feet is one of those scenes that, quite literally, drives the original goals–and results–of our advocacy home.

October 8 is the deadline to adopt a mile of New England’s shoreline and we’re counting on you to make a difference.

Even if you never heard the term “nutrient pollution” before, you may have seen its devastating effects on the New England waters that you treasure. Slimy algae blooms and fish kills are two of the more visible consequences of too much nitrogen and phosphorus in the water. And the effects you can’t see are the most troubling: massive areas under the glistening waters of our fragile bays and lakes where no living thing can survive. This man-made problem is a solvable one and the key to our success is you!

By adopting a mile (or more!) of shoreline, you are giving CLF the ability to rescue our most precious waters. Please symbolically adopt a mile today:

Adopt 1 mile of Narragansett Bay for just $10

Adopt 1 mile of Cape Cod’s Coastline for just $10

Adopt 1 mile of Lake Champlain’s Shore for just $10

Adopt 1 mile of the Great Bay Estuary for just $10

Adopt 1 mile of Maine’s Coastline for just $10

Like you, I am frustrated by the dramatic and entirely avoidable scourge of nutrient pollution that is wreaking havoc on our most precious waters throughout the region, including Lake Champlain, the Great Bay Estuary, Cape Cod, Maine’s Coast and Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.

This week, CLF made big news by seeking stricter controls on nitrogen pollution (a form of pollution caused by inadequately treated wastewater) in the massive Millbury, MA wastewater treatment facility know as the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District. Each day, this facility discharges more than 50 million gallons of nitrogen-laden water into the Blackstone River, which flows south through Massachusetts and eventually into Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay.

The impacts of the nitrogen pollution in Narragansett Bay have been devastating. We’ve seen toxic algae blooms, widespread loss of eel grass meadows–critical habitat for fish and other marine life–and even massive fish kills. Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management estimates that one of the larger kills in recent memory left approximately one million dead fish on the state’s shores.

It doesn’t have to be this way–and fortunately, the problem of nutrient pollution is solvable. But the fight to tighten pollution controls at the Upper Blackstone and across the region won’t be easy, and that’s why we need you on board. Today, before midnight, you can make a difference by adopting a mile of shoreline for just $10.

Your donation will help push our clean water advocacy forward, not just in Rhode Island, but across the region. Just last month, CLF filed suit against the EPA for not fulfilling its duties under the Clean Water Act to permit and regulate the wastewater discharges on Cape Cod. In NH, as a direct result of CLF’s advocacy, the Great Bay Estuary has been officially designated as “impaired” under the Clean Water Act, affording it greater, much-needed protection from continued nitrogen pollution and the 20 wastewater plants in the area. Our advocates are on the ground taking the forceful legal action required to tackle this growing problem.

You may have never heard the term nutrient pollution before. But by adopting a mile of shoreline and making a difference in our clean water advocacy, let’s hope you never hear it again.

Sincerely,
John Kassel
President
Conservation Law Foundation

P.S. Today is the day. With only a few days left to act, please make a difference by adopting a mile of shoreline for $10 before midnight on October 8.

Dear CLF Supporter,

New England’s waters are in crisis. Nutrient pollution is a huge problem for our region; inadequately-treated wastewater, fertilizer-laden runoff from industrial farms, roadways, and sprawl development are fueling deadly algae blooms in some of our most cherished waters—like Lake Champlain, Long Island Sound, Cape Cod’s bay and estuaries, and the Great Bay, located between New Hampshire and Maine. These algae blooms suffocate and kill fish, shellfish and other aquatic life, creating vast “dead zones.”

Nutrient pollution is bad news. But there is a silver lining to this scummy, man-made problem: It’s solvable. For years, CLF has been working to reverse nutrient pollution in waters throughout New England. And there’s even more good news; today, you have the opportunity to make a REAL impact on nutrient pollution by symbolically adopting a mile of shoreline for $10:

Adopting a mile of shoreline may seem like a drop in the bucket, but it gives CLF and our advocates the resources we need to tackle and solve this problem; it is the very underpinning of our most crucial clean water work.

When you adopt a mile of shoreline for $10, you will fund:

• Lake Champlain LakeKeeper Program: CLF’s LakeKeeper, affiliated with the Waterkeeper Alliance, is the eyes and ears of Lake Champlain, dedicated to protecting this irreplaceable natural treasure. Part watchdog, part scientist and part public advocate, the LakeKeeper engages citizens, businesses and state and local authorities in doing their part to keep Lake Champlain clean.
• Clean Water Enforcement: All over New England, violation of water quality regulations is rampant, resulting in severely degraded waterways. Due to a combination of lax government oversight and insufficient resources, clean water can no longer be taken for granted. This is especially true in low-income communities, which bear a disproportionate burden of water pollution. CLF is putting feet on the ground to hold polluters accountable, wherever they are, for compliance with clean water laws in an effort to restore vital water quality to all New Englanders.
• Nutrient Pollution Advocacy: Nutrient pollution is a relatively recent, man-made scourge—an insidious by-product of industrial agriculture and wastewater treatment operations—that is threatening New England’s great salt and freshwater bodies. It is also entirely solvable. CLF is tirelessly pursuing up-to-date, science-based limits on how much nitrogen and phosphorus can be discharged without sacrificing water quality and stricter controls at the source to keep the pollutants out of our waterways.

Nutrient pollution is a solvable problem and CLF is securing important victories all across our region. In Vermont, as a result of CLF’s advocacy, the city of South Burlington voluntarily cut in half the nutrient pollution that could be discharged into Lake Champlain from its sewage treatment plant. In Massachusetts, the EPA introduced controls for nitrogen in the 2008 permit for the Upper Blackstone Water Pollution Abatement District, over the objections of the district. The permit was recently upheld despite continued pressure from the district. The bottom line: Nutrient pollution, with your support, is a problem that we can solve!

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking. Literally. We are quickly approaching the point of no return for some of our region’s more fragile waterways. We need you to act now, before our October 8 deadline, to reverse nutrient pollution in New England. It takes just $10.

Today, you can make a real difference in New England’s nutrient pollution crisis by adopting one mile (or more!) of shoreline. We’re counting on you.

Sincerely,

Chris Kilian

P.S. Please click the “like” button below to share this important message with your friends on Facebook!

“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.

There is nothing more gratifying for CLF advocates than to be able to work with our members in translating big-picture policy goals down to the local level.  Over the last couple of years, I had that opportunity as a result of the City of Burlington’s efforts to adopt a stormwater pollution control ordinance to ensure that Vermont’s biggest city was doing its part to prevent pollution to Lake Champlain.  The idea was the brainchild of CLF member Scott Mapes, a lawyer and engineer who specializes in low impact development techniques to manage stormwater runoff.

As a member of the City’s Conservation Commission, a long-time lover of Lake Champlain, and a regulation-savvy lawyer, Scott was the City’s clean-water conscience and a driving force that overcame bureaucratic inertia to get the ball rolling on  this major project.  Scott’s principled persistence gradually led to enthusiastic buy-in at the highest levels of city government.  His multi-year effort to get the City to take stormwater more seriously was really something to watch.  As the process matured, CLF had a chance to weigh in by reviewing drafts of the ordinance, providing guidance and legal research assistance, and echoing Scott’s message that adoption of the ordinance was necessary for full compliance with the Clean Water Act.

After this experience working with Scott, it came as no surprise to read the headline in today’s Burlington Free Press announcing “Burlington man honored for stormwater efforts.”  In recognition of his work on the stormwater ordinance, Scott was named “Citizen Planner of the Year” by the Northern New England Chapter of the American Planning Association and he received a similar award today from the Vermont Planning Association.

Congratulations to Scott and to all CLF members who advance CLF’s mission through their support of the organization AND their leadership on the local level.

Warning: Bigger, faster, and more abundant mosquitoes may be breeding in a river or stream near you.   A new scientific study presented at this month’s meeting of the Ecological Society of America reaches the scary conclusion that mosquitoes–carriers of the West Nile Virus and other diseases–thrive in waterways contaminated by sewage.  As if we needed even more public health reasons to clean up and prevent sewage pollution!

Scientists have concluded that sewage spills and overflows are a boon to these bloodthirsty pests.

Sadly, untreated sewage pollution still flows regularly into many of New England’s rivers and streams as a result of sewage spills from aging or improperly maintained sewage collection and pumping systems.  For example, when a rupture in a Burlington, VT city sewage collection pipe went unrepaired for 8 days in 2005, it released approximately 4 million gallons of raw sewage into the river until sewage treatment plant operators finally addressed the problem.  In the wake of this high-profile incident, CLF led the effort for passage of the “spill bill”–a Vermont law that requires sewage treatment plant operators to undertake enahnced sewage spill prevention and emergency response measures and to notify the public when sewage spills occur.  The public has a right to know when its waters are being contaminated with spilled sewage (this Agency of Natural Resources web site includes a report of all recent spills) and to demand that action be taken to prevent sewage overflows through regular maintenance and greater investment in clean water infrastructure.

As with so many other important environmental and public health issues, CLF’s efforts in one of the New England states are helping to lead the country toward a future with cleaner water.

Currently, Congress is debating passage of the S. 937 “Sewage Overflow Community Right to Know Act.”  Like the Vermont law championed by CLF, this bill would amend the Clean Water Act to require mandatory reporting of sewer spills and the cleanup, mitigation, and prevention measures adopted as a result.  According to our friends at American Rivers in D.C., the bill has passed through the House of Representatives and through the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee.  With your help, the Clean Water Act will soon ensure our collective right to know when our rivers, streams, lakes, and beaches have been contaminated by raw sewage.  Ask your Senator to cosponsor S. 937 and to work for its passage this year– in the meantime be sure to stock up on citronella and bug dope…