Yesterday, EPA sent Vermont’s clean water agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, a Clean Water Act “Corrective Action Plan,” outlining permitting and enforcement improvements and updates the state has made or needs to make to ensure that the state provides all the protections required by law to its citizens and the waters they have a right to use and enjoy. This marks a major milestone in CLF’s long-running efforts to secure clean water for all Vermonters.

The federal Clean Water Act is one of the most important and successful laws our nation ever enacted. Before its passage more than 40 years ago, massive volumes of raw sewage and industrial wastes flowed freely into our lakes and rivers. Polluters responsible for this mess faced little in the way of meaningful consequences. The patchwork of state permitting and enforcement programs Americans relied on to keep our waters safe and clean simply had too many holes in it.

The law’s passage reflected a national commitment to restoring and protecting all of our nation’s waters, ensuring that they are safe for drinking, fishing, swimming, and boating, with water quality that also supports healthy populations of fish and shellfish. It established a national goal of eliminating water pollution. As important as this law is, its effectiveness depends on its faithful execution by political appointees and career professional regulators at EPA and partner state clean water agencies like Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

In 2008, CLF acted on its longstanding concerns that Vermont’s waters were suffering from excessive pollution in part because state officials were falling far short of fulfilling all of their Clean Water Act responsibilities. CLF, with tremendous assistance from its able pro-bono counsel from the Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Legal Clinic,  petitioned EPA to order significant improvements in Vermont’s water pollution control permitting and enforcement efforts. If Vermont officials failed to make needed improvements, CLF asked EPA to take over the lead in issuing permits and enforcing against polluters in Vermont.

After several years of investigation by EPA and negotiations with state officials, the Corrective Action Plan EPA issued represents a validation of CLF’s core concerns. It also represents a positive re-commitment to the Clean Water Act by the administration of Governor Peter Shumlin. Among the positive corrective actions Vermont has taken or will take to better control pollution per the EPA plan are:

• The final issuance of the state’s first ever permit to control pollution discharges from “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations”—animal feedlot operations meeting certain regulatory criteria—in a manner that complies with the Clean Water Act.
• Commitments to increase annual inspections of actual and suspected “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations” to detect unlawful pollution discharges and ensure that CAFO dischargers apply for and comply with Clean Water Act permits.
• Changes to state law allowing citizens to have a voice in the resolution of Clean Water Act enforcement proceedings.
• A plan for limiting the amount of nutrients discharged by municipal wastewater treatment plants into the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound.
• Enforcement against the Village of Waterbury sewage treatment plant that will significantly reduce one of the largest single phosphorous discharges into Lake Champlain through installation of state-of-the-art technology
• Conforming the state’s policy relating to the use of polluter’s penalty payments to EPA’s requirement
• Implementing a requirement of the Clean Water Act to prevent the degradation of existing high quality waters

The declining health of Lake Champlain and numerous other Vermont waterways underscores how far we. By implementing all of the Corrective Actions outlined above, Vermont is taking an important step in the right direction toward clean water solutions. Vermonters’ quality of life, economic vitality, and maintenance of our state’s green “brand” requires nothing less.

Last week I attended the Ninth Annual Rhode Island Local Food Forum, organized by Farm Fresh Rhode Island. The forum’s theme was “Center of the Plate,” reflecting its focus on local protein production. Particularly enlightening was a panel discussion whose moderator, academic chef Bill Idell, posed questions that resonate across the region.  These questions ultimately boil down to two big ones: First, what does a sustainable food system look like? And second, how can we make one happen?

The panel’s meat experts – local guru Pat McNiff of Pat’s Pastured and Mel Coleman from national good-meat powerhouse Niman Ranch – agreed that sustainable meat means raising animals in their natural habitats (not concentrated feedlots) and in a way that feeds both animals and soil. The panelists also highlighted that sustainable food systems require local capacity because geographically concentrated animal operations are at risk from extreme weather: last summer’s drought, for example, “force[d] livestock producers to liquidate herds because feed [wa]s too expensive.” All this means that local meat is not just grown in a place, but it also grows that place by enriching both land (ecologically) and community (economically).

Building capacity for local meat is tough, however, when farmers have limited access to land. This is the case in Rhode Island. Not only is land itself expensive here (as throughout New England), but property and estate taxes can make it almost impossible to keep productive land in agricultural use when it is more valuable as land for development (and is assessed as such for tax purposes). We at CLF are looking closely at this issue.

Moving from the land to the sea, the discussion yielded different insights from the panel’s seafood experts.  “Eating with the Ecosystem” founder Sarah Schumann and seafood-aggregation specialist Jared Auerbach of Red’s Best noted that sustainability means something much different for seafood than for meat, because so many fish and shellfish stocks are wild. They agreed that a sustainable seafood system should be biodiverse – instead of a singleminded focus on cod, for example, a sustainable system would mean sending more fluke, skate, scup, and squid to market. Diversifying the types of seafood we typically eat would allow overfished stocks to recover, and would also contribute to the resiliency of ocean life in the face of climate change and ocean acidification. Furthermore, a sustainable seafood system would mean – to borrow from Sarah Schumann – eating with the (local) ecosystem. Seafood brought in to local ports is easy to trace and to verify species, boat size, and fishing method – factors that are federally regulated but relatively easy to lose track of as more steps are added to the supply chain. Encouraging demand for diverse seafood products, localizing seafood markets with robust tracing and verification systems, and streamlining state and federal fisheries regulations would all help foster local, sustainable seafood systems.

All four panelists, farmers and fishers alike, agreed on another point: we need local, sustainable food systems both to limit and to respond to harms wrought by carbon dioxide emissions. These emissions cause climate change, leading to droughts and other extreme weather that disrupts agriculture; these disruptions, in turn, require robust local systems to add resilience to the global food system. And carbon dioxide emissions also cause ocean acidification, which poses an immediate risk to shellfish and a long-term risk to all ocean life.

All this highlights the importance of CLF’s farm-and-food and climate-change programs. Our work shutting down coal-fired power plants and promoting renewable energy helps to limit emissions that threaten our current food system (not to mention our planet). And our farm-and-food program promotes local and regional food systems that provide a broad range of environmental benefits. As CLF’s newest staff attorney, I am excited to be joining these efforts here in Rhode Island. The Local Food Forum made it clear that there are many good ideas brewing here – we just need to do the work to get our food policy right.

CLF is proud to be among a growing coalition of 32 key Vermont businesses, anglers’s associations, and environmental organizations who have signed a resolution “Urging Public Officials And Elected Leaders To Acknowledge The Value Of Clean Water To Vermont’s Public And Economic Health And To Sustainably Invest In The Same.” Though the name of the resolution is long, the idea behind it is quite simple: our health, happiness, economic prosperity, and reputation as a state depend on our ability to keep our waters clean, full of aquatic wildlife, and accessible to all. Doing so will require renewed public sector investment. 

Renewed public investment to Keep our water safe and clean is worth it! Photo Credit: Shutterstock

The resolution, excerpted below, speaks for itself. You can download a copy and find a full list of coalition members by clicking here. With the Vermont Legislature coming back into session today and after another summer with beach closures and fish kills in Lake Champlain, as well as rivers across the state still recovering from the natural and manmade ravages that followed Tropical Storm Irene, our growing coalition felt that today was an important day to ensure that renewed investment in Clean Water is on the mind of lawmakers.

If you find yourself nodding your head in agreement as you read the resolution, be sure to contact your legislator and voice your support for clean water. Or, if you’re not yet signed up for our e-newsletter, do so now – we’ll keep you informed of updates across the region as they happen.

Here is an excerpt from the resolution:

WHEREAS, clean water is essential to Vermonters’ personal health and the health of our economy and Vermont’s environment; and

 WHEREAS, clean water is critical to ensure healthy habitats vital to the protection and restoration of indigenous species and the protection of all flora and fauna throughout the food web; and

WHEREAS, significant progress to restore and protect our water resources has been made since the passage of the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act; and

WHEREAS, compromised and impaired waters still exist, and unimpaired waters remain largely unprotected, threatening our quality of life and our economy while public sector investment in protecting water quality continues to shrink, leaving forty years of environmental gains since the passage of the Clean Water Act hanging in the balance; and

WHEREAS, protecting the Vermont brand built on a reputation for protecting its unsurpassed environmental health from degradation is essential for the continued success of all business sectors relying on this crucial market distinction; and

WHEREAS, outdoor recreation, in particular water-based recreation, is a vital aspect of our state identity and a major pursuit among Vermonters and visitors, alike; and

WHEREAS, polluted waters are not accessible waters, do not support aquatic life, and, worse, imperil public health; and

WHEREAS, outdated treatment technologies, aging pipes and pumps, and inadequate capacity undermine our ability to treat sewage, stormwater, and drinking water; and

WHEREAS, in the opinion of leading professionals within numerous disciplines, infrastructure is inadequately funded in Vermont to meet current and future requirements; and

WHEREAS, new and sustained public investment for clean water at the federal, state, and municipal levels is critical to protect this basic element of public health and a vibrant, sustainable economy; and

WHEREAS, it is our legal and moral obligation, as well as an ethical imperative, to ensure that the same quality of life enjoyed by the current generation is possible for the next.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the undersigned concerned citizens and organizations urge that our state and local elected officials and policymakers:

1. Expeditiously adopt new, equitable, targeted fees and dedicated, broad-based revenue mechanisms; and

2. Sustainably invest these revenues statewide into water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure, and all other manner of water resources protection and water pollution remediation.

As I travel around the Seacoast, it is such a pleasure to talk with people who share my love for Great Bay.  Recently, I made a presentation to the Durham Garden Club – a group that recognizes the importance of clean water – and ran into an old friend who cares deeply about the health of the estuary.

Dennis related his own experiences as a scuba diver and the changes he has witnessed beneath the surface in our coastal waters. I was so moved by his comments, that I asked him to write a letter to the local papers. His letter appears in both the Portsmouth Herald and Foster’s Daily Democrat, and I urge you to read it. As you’ll see, Dennis poses the question – based on his personal observations as a scuba diver – “Where have all the fish gone?” He notes significant and troubling changes, including “a huge decline in fish populations along our coast” in recent years, and “marked reductions” in critical habitat in the Great Bay estuary rendering it “largely inhospitable for fish to spawn.”

The changes Dennis describes are not easily evident viewing Great Bay from the shoreline, which is what makes his observations so important – observations that confirm the urgent need to reduce pollution in the Great Bay estuary before it’s too late.

As Dennis concludes:

“These changes negatively impact both the sport and commercial fishing industries and the recreational value of the Great Bay estuary and of our coast. We need to require that all of the municipalities upgrade their sewage treatment facilities to reduce nitrogen pollution before it is too late. We have an environmental catastrophe in the making.”

Again, I urge you to take a look at Dennis’s excellent letter as well as his underwater photography presented in the above slide show, as it provides a view of the Great Bay estuary that is largely invisible to so many of us.

For more information about the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper and my work to protect the Great Bay estuary, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/. You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

The other night, I broiled a gorgeous piece of striped bass for dinner. Though I savored each bite of this healthy, delicious, lean protein, I couldn’t help think of the grim images of other sizeable stripers that washed up dead in the latest fish kill to occur on the shores of Cape Cod in late July.

Healthy striped bass like these inhabit many of New England's coastal waters. Nutrient pollution from septic systems creates toxic algae blooms in Cape Cod waters that threaten these fish. Photo credit: Bemep @ Flickr Creative Commons

According to the Cape Cod Times, on July 25, Falmouth residents began calling local officials complaining about foul odors and dead fish washing up on the shores of Little Pond Estuary–one of the many areas along Cape Cod where fresh water from the land mixes with salt water from the ocean. Upon investigation, officials confirmed the presence of what one resident referred to as a “heap of large dead fish…on the shore.”  Among the dead fish were dozens of striped bass, some measuring as long as 40″. The story noted that this is not the first fish kill of its kind in Falmouth’s Little Pond, nor is it the first on Cape Cod. You can see pictures of the dead stripers and read the full article here, and also check out a previous post to this blog discussing another Cape fish kill that occurred a couple of years ago: “1,000 Dead Fish on Cape Cod: When Will the Killer Be Brought to Justice?”

The tragic slaughter of these beautiful fish–much beloved by sport fishermen who bring tourism revenue to the Cape and other places on New England coast that these hard-fighting fish frequent–could have been stopped.

Scientists who investigated the fish kill identified nitrogen pollution from nearby septic systems as the main culprit.  You see, nitrogen is a common component of human wastewater. When too much of that wastewater flows unchecked into an estuary, the nitrogen feeds explosive blooms of toxic algae that  make the water smell foul, unpleasant to look at, and unsafe to swim in. Blooms of harmful algae also throw the entire ecosystem out of balance, resulting in an underwater environment without enough oxygen for even fast-swimming fish like stripers to survive.

Normally, most of the nitrogen that leaches from underground septic systems is retained in the soils. But, as this fish kill demonstrates, Cape Cod’s sandy soils present a unique problem because they are so porous that the pollution flows right through them and bubbles up into surface estuaries. Because of this unique pollution problem and the dire need to address it before more slaughter occurs, CLF is pushing EPA to recognize that the Clean Water Act requires these septic-system polluters to clean up their act.

Last week, a federal judge in Boston accepted the joint schedule that CLF and our partner Buzzard’s Bay Coalition worked out with EPA lawyers so that the Cape Cod cleanup litigation can move forward.  You can read more about our lawsuit and the clean water solutions that will help save the stripers here.

A recent scientific article from four Maine ocean scientists reminded me of a not-very-good environmental joke. An archangel was reporting to God all the terrible things that humans had done to the earth’s environment. God listened patiently as the list expanded, interjecting regularly that the archangel was not to worry; these events had all been anticipated. But when the angel reported that there was now a hole in the ozone layer, God bolted upright in shock: “I told them not to mess with the ozone layer!”

The article I was reading was not about ozone holes. Obscurely titled Step-changes in the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of the Gulf of Maine, as documented by the GNATS times series, four researchers, led by Dr. William M. Balch from the prestigious Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, reported on work they had done looking at a number of data bases of various physical, chemical, and biological markers in the Gulf of Maine. They focused on a series of ship-based sampling data collected between 1998 and 2010.

The researchers reported a startling fact: “[t]he standing stock of phytoplankton … generally decreased since 2005” and there had been a “dramatic” decrease in carbon fixation by phytoplankton across the Gulf of Maine in recent years.

The paper explained this dramatic decrease by pointing to increased precipitation in the Gulf of Maine watersheds in recent years. Four of the eight highest annual precipitation years in the last century in Maine occurred between 1998 and 2010. The data led them to conclude that this increased and atypical precipitation—a commonly predicted phenomenon associated with climate change –interfered with phytoplankton production by discharging increased amounts of colored dissolved organic matter from the watersheds into the Gulf that outcompeted marine plankton for available light.

This is no small matter. Phytoplankton is the base of virtually all marine life in the ocean. Moreover, marine phytoplankton around the world has been estimated to draw more carbon dioxide—a primary climate change gas—from the atmosphere and the oceans than all land plants combined. The punch line to the joke might just as well have been: “I told them not to mess with the phytoplankton!”

While it will take some time before a decline in phytoplankton production in the Gulf of Maine would manifest itself higher up in the marine food web by fewer numbers of high level fishes, the Bigelow researchers were correct to point out that historic high fish productivity in the Gulf of Maine marine system is directly linked to its high productivity of plankton. The health of the marine food web depends on the strength of its planktonic base.

This report’s startling analysis aligns in a troubling way with anecdotal information from fishermen and from fisheries science data that has been surfacing recently. Fish don’t seem to be as large at the different ages as they used to be and a number of predicted strong larval year classes of fish like Atlantic cod have “disappeared” before they became big enough to enter the fishery. Are Gulf of Maine fish failing to thrive like they once did as a consequence of declines in plankton production?

Climate change is happening and its impacts are already being registered in New England. The consequences of our profligate carbon consumption patterns will continue to challenge our ecosystem, our economy, and our way of life through both dramatic and random events that devastate coastal areas as well as chronic ecosystem changes that can be seen at the level of a single-celled phytoplankton. Sadly, it’s no joke.

The Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, along with the Coastal Conservation Association of NH, Great Bay Trout Unlimited and the NH Coastal Protection Partnership, coauthored the following editorial to The Portsmouth Herald.

A copy of this OpEd was originally published in The Portsmouth Herald. You can find a copy of it online here.

April 13 — To the Editor

The Great Bay estuary is in decline. That’s the inescapable message of the Piscataqua Region Estuary Partnership’s (PREP) most recent (2009) State of the Estuaries report, which tracks the health of the Great Bay and Hampton/Seabrook estuaries.

Of 12 primary indicators of the estuary’s health tracked by PREP, 11 show negative or cautionary trends, including two very troubling negative trends: nitrogen concentrations in Great Bay are increasing, and eelgrass vegetation — the cornerstone of the Great Bay ecosystem, and an important nursery for fish and other marine species — is in sharp decline.

Consistent with findings in the 2009 State of the Estuaries report, the N.H. Department of Environmental Services and Environmental Protection Agency have acknowledged that waters throughout the Great Bay estuary are impaired, meaning that their health is in jeopardy. Based on the overwhelming evidence that immediate action is needed to clean up the estuary, the Environmental Protection Agency has begun issuing draft permits to limit nitrogen pollution from sewage treatment plants affecting the estuary (there are a total of 18 such facilities, 14 of them in New Hampshire; none currently has a nitrogen pollution limit).

In sharp contrast to the need for urgent and meaningful action, however, a small group of municipalities calling themselves the Great Bay Municipal Coalition — Dover, Portsmouth, Exeter, Rochester and Newmarket — persistently have tried to claim “the science is in doubt” and to delay needed improvements to their sewage treatment plants.

In the face of the pollution problems plaguing the estuary, rather than taking meaningful steps to solve the problem, the municipal coalition has engaged in a withering, all-out assault on the N.H. Department of Environmental Services and EPA. Last summer they sought assistance from a New Hampshire member of Congress, resulting in a bill calling for a five-year moratorium on any EPA permitting activity in the Great Bay estuary. Most recently, the municipal coalition filed a lawsuit against the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, challenging — on procedural grounds — the legality of its analysis regarding nitrogen pollution in the estuary.

Members of the municipal coalition have been sure to explain that they care about the Great Bay estuary, and that they want to be part of the solution. They say they’re committed to “immediately” upgrading their sewage treatment plants to reduce nitrogen pollution. But their words ring hollow. In fact they’ve made clear that while they’re willing to “immediately” upgrade their sewage treatment plants to reduce pollution to a certain level, if they’re required to do more they will litigate the validity of their permits, and they’ll do nothing to upgrade their sewage treatment plants while that litigation is pending. Actions speak louder than words, and so far the municipal coalition’s only actions have been to delay what must be done to save the Great Bay estuary.

The Great Bay estuary belongs to us all. The health of its waters is inextricably linked to tourism and the local economy, and to what makes the Seacoast such a special place. We cannot allow the health of Great Bay, Little Bay, the Piscataqua River, and all the waters comprising the estuary to be held hostage. The estuary is approaching a tipping point which, once crossed, will make its recovery all the more expensive, if not impossible. Just ask the folks struggling to reverse the collapse of the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland, alone, is expected to spend — conservatively — $11 billion to clean up the bay.

We simply can’t afford to keep kicking this can down the road. It’s time for the municipal coalition to start investing in real solutions rather than paying lawyers and outside consultants to thwart needed action. It’s refreshing to see the town of Newington, which will be subject to EPA permitting, embracing the protections required to save Great Bay; and it’s encouraging to see another community, the town of Durham, choose not to follow the municipal coalition down the path of litigation and delay. We all benefit from a clean, healthy Great Bay estuary. Now is the time for action.

Derek Durbin
Chairman, New Hampshire Coastal Protection Partnership

Mitch Kalter
President, Trout Unlimited, Great Bay Chapter

Don Swanson
President, Coastal Conservation Association, N.H. Chapter

Peter Wellenberger
Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, Conservation Law Foundation

Camp Brook

The very severe damage in Vermont caused by Tropical Storm Irene led to an impressive and encouraging recovery effort both by state government and residents, many of whom volunteered to help their neighbors salvage and rebuild.

Unfortunately, however, the storm – the second flood of historic proportions in the state this year – also seems to have washed away much of what we have learned about the dangers of digging gravel from streams and rivers.

In recent weeks there have been dozens of excavators and bulldozers in rivers across the state digging gravel, channelizing streams and armoring banks with stone, not only at great ecological cost, but – particularly in the many cases in which a true emergency did not exist – greatly increasing the risk of future flood damage.

Meanwhile, the state, by not setting and enforcing clear limits on that work in the rivers, has done little – at least so far – to prevent the damage.

Knowledge gained by the scientific study of these river systems, also known as fluvial geomorphology, leaves little doubt that increasing the speed of water by turning streams that meander over rocky beds into straight chutes with little structure not only destroys vital habitat for fish and other creatures, it also increases the potential destructive power of floods. It was advances in this physics-based science which led to significant limitations on gravel removal from Vermont rivers during the last two decades.

Rock River

However, the recent flooding (and statements by Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin) has given new life to an outdated and inaccurate idea that removing gravel from the rivers is what prevented flooding in the past. This notion ignores the fact that restricting rivers into a man-made channel, cutting off the access to flood plains and jarring mature streams back into instability the risk of flood damage is significantly increased, particularly for neighbors downstream.

More on this subject can be found in a Burlington Free Press column here and in a Vermont Public Radio news story here.

Catch up with the latest news from TalkingFish.org, a blog brought to you by CLF and other organizations and individuals who want to see a sustainable fishing industry in New England and abundant fish populations for generations to come. TalkingFish.org aims to increase people’s understanding of the scientific, financial and social aspects at work in New England’s fisheries. Here’s what went on this week:

• September 7: “What happens to river herring in 2012?” – Populations of river herring are in serious decline across the Atlantic coast; some states have seen their populations drop by 99 percent or more.  Next year, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission (ASMFC), the body that manages river herring fishing within state waters, is requiring states to declare a moratorium on fishing for river herring. Talking Fish discusses the importance of this action and what it means for fishing in state waters.
• September 8: “Fish Talk in the News – Thursday, September 8″ – A weekly update of recent news stories that might interest TalkingFish.org readers.