There are some things that you cannot capture adequately in words alone. The impact of nutrient pollution on fresh water bodies like Lake Champlain is one.

A nutrient overload fuels a toxic algae bloom on the surface of Mississquoi Bay making the water unsafe for swimming and unpleasant to be around.

Photo by Lake Champlain Lakekeeper Louis Porter

That is why the Emmy-award winning film “Bloom: The Plight of Lake Champlain” was such an important development in the effort to raise awareness of the Lake’s problems and the urgent need for action. Christopher Kilian, Director of CLF’s Vermont office and its regional Clean Waters and Healthy Forest program, was featured in that documentary, which was narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper. You can watch a clip with Chris Kilian from the first Bloom here.

Tonight marks the premiere of the Bloom sequels–a series of three related short programs also narrated by Chris Cooper under the title “The Emergence of Ecological Design.” Each film focuses on one of the major causes of pollution to the Lake—agricultural discharges, urban runoff (aka stormwater), and sewage treatment—and highlights emerging solutions for each.  Because CLF’s Clean Water and Healthy Forest program is driving solutions to all of those problems, CLF clean water advocate Anthony Iarrapino (that’s me) appears in all three.

Tonight’s premiere screening is free and open to the public starting at 7:00 p.m. at the Palace 9 Theaters in South Burlington.  If you can’t make the show on the big screen, look for Bloom: The Emergence of Ecological Design on Vermont Public Television over the coming months.  You can also buy DVDs from the producers at BrightBlue Media at their website www.bloomthemovie.org where you will find clips of the new films.

Starting tomorrow, those concerned about Lake Champlain and interested in helping outline how to deal with nutrient pollution threatening its future will have a chance to make their opinions heard.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with the help of Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation, is in the process of re-writing the Lake Champlain Phosphorous Total Maximum Daily Load. This effort must be successful if we are to reduce phosphorous pollution to our great lake and keep one of Vermont’s most important resources swimmable, fishable and drinkable.

As you may know, the TMDL is an important technical document which acts as a phosphorous pollution budget so Vermonters can plan for reducing how much phosphorous we ask Lake Champlain to handle. We currently add much more phosphorous – well over twice as much in some years – than is safe for the lake ecosystem. The result, excess weed growth, potentially toxic blue-green algae blooms and low dissolved oxygen, makes the lake less usable. And those problems are likely to become more widespread, particularly with two floods of historic proportion this year.

Thanks to the work of Conservation Law Foundation, the EPA ruled earlier this year that the TMDL approved in 2002 was not adequate to truly protect and restore Lake Champlain. Now federal and state authorities have organized a set of public meetings to help in reworking the TMDL which will take place over the next week and will be focused on the northern portion of the Lake Champlain basin. A second set of meetings focused on the southern portion of the lake is scheduled for November 14th through November 18thand I will send you more details when they are finalized.

As you can see from the schedule below, the first set of meetings are roughly organized by sector of interest. Given that a draft of the new TMDL is still in the works, I expect the topics covered during these conversations will be quite broad and include questions of funding, how to structure the TMDL and possible barriers to implementing it. I encourage you to attend one of them if you are at all interested in learning more, and especially if you have concerns or thoughts about the way this issue has been addressed and how it will be addressed in the future.

I plan on going to most of these meetings and will be taking notes, so if you are interested in the subject but cannot attend one of the meetings I am happy to provide you with my unofficial minutes of those I have attended (lporter@clf.org).

You can file written comments if you are unable to attend and the state has asked that, if possible, you let them know if you are planning on going to one of the meetings so they can make sure the rooms are large enough. Both can be sent to Michaela Stickney, VTDEC Lake Champlain Basin Coordinator, michaela.stickney@state.vt.us.

The EPA’s disapproval decision finding that the 2002 TMDL is inadequate can be found here:

http://www.epa.gov/region1/eco/tmdl/pdfs/vt/LakeChamplainTMDLDisapprovalDecision.pdf

Vermont’s revised implementation plan for the TMDL can be found here:

http://www.anr.state.vt.us/cleanandclear/news/TMDL%20impl%20plan%20final%20-%20011510.pdf

The Lake Champlain Basin Program’s State of the Lake Report, which includes information on Phosphorous loads, can be found here:

http://www.lcbp.org/lcstate.htm

1.       Tuesday October 4, 10am – 12pm
Agricultural Sector
Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District (NRCD)

617 Comstock Rd, Suite 1
Berlin, VT

Phone: (802) 828-4493 Ext. 113
► (meet in the UVM Extension conference room in the complex)

 2.       Tuesday October 4, 3-5pm
Northern Municipality Sector
Northwest Regional Planning Commission (NRPC)

155 Lake Street
St. Albans, VT

(802) 524-5958
► (meet at NRPC offices)

3.       Wednesday October 5, 11:30am-1:30pm 
Business Sector
Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce & Greater Burlington Industrial Corporation

60 Main Street, #100
Burlington, VT
(802) 863-3489

► (meet at LCRCOC offices)
4.       Wednesday October 5, 5:30-7:30pm
Nonprofit/Mid-lake Watershed Group Sector
ECHO/Leahy Center

1 College St.
Burlington, VT

(802) 864-1848
► (meet in Alcove upstairs)

5.       Thursday October 6, 10am-12pm
Northern Lake Committee Sector
Lake Champlain Basin Program
54 West Shore Rd.

Grand Isle, VT

(802) 372-3213
► (meet at LCBP offices)

6.       Thursday October 6, 2-4pm
Stormwater/Urban Sector
Shelburne Town Offices

5420 Shelburne Road

Shelburne, VT

(802) 985-5110
► (meet at Shelburne Town Offices)

Last night, I sought refuge from the oppressive heat by taking a long swim in the cool, clean water of our local lake.  Families and young children packed the shallows where they found relief from record-breaking temperatures.  Floating along in this happy summer scene, I could not help but think of how fortunate we are to live in a country where our laws recognize that our happiness, our safety, and our economy depend on our ability to keep our water clean.

Thanks to the Clean Water Act, many waters are safe for swimming. Call your Senators to let them know you support this important law and want to ensure that all of our waters are safe for swimming, drinking, and fishing before it's too late.

In many places across the nation, the freedom to swim safely on a hot summer day was only a dream a generation ago when raw sewage and industrial pollution choked our nation’s waters.  Without the pollution controls and infrastructure investments required by the Clean Water Act and the work of groups like CLF to ensure that the law was being followed over the last forty years, water that is “drinkable, fishable, and swimmable” would still be beyond the reach of most Americans. Yet there remain many rivers, lakes, and bays from New England to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond where the Clean Water Act’s promise of water safe for recreation, drinking, and wildlife conservation have yet to be fulfilled.

POLLUTION CAN MAKE YOU “DEATHLY SICK”

Earlier this month, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe–one of the most anti-environmental members of Congress–received a stark reminder of how the dream of a swim on a hot summer day can quickly become a nightmare when we don’t have enough clean water.  Inhofe reported getting “deathly sick” from an upper respiratory illness he contracted when he swam in Oklahoma’s Grand Lake during a recent blue-green algae bloom caused by the combination of excess pollution and extreme heat. Fortunately, his 13 year-old granddaughter had the good sense not to join him in the illness-inducing swim.

Despite searing heat, swimmers stayed out of the slime-coated waters of Lake Champlain's St. Albans Bay most of last summer. Earlier this month, the Vermont Health Department warned swimmers about blue-green algae blooms that have appeared in the Bay again this summer.

From Vermont’s Lake Champlain to Cape Cod to Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay and in many lakes, rivers, and streams along the way, pollution from poorly-treated human waste and dirty runoff from streets, parking lots, and agricultural operations is feeding the growth of harmful blue-green algae of the sort that made Senator Inhofe feel “deathly sick.”  Added runoff from extreme rainfall events and hotter temperatures caused by global warming, will require even stronger clean water restoration and protection measures as we adapt in a changed climate.

THE CLEAN WATER ACT IS UNDER ATTACK

Sadly, some in Congress are attacking the EPA and the Clean Water Act, cynically attempting to free polluters of accountability under the false claim that pollution control is bad for the economy.  Click here to read about some of the “dirty water” bills being pushed through Congress by the Tea Party and some powerful Democrats who are in the pocket of the coal companies.

Twenty-eight years ago, the heavily-polluted Boston Harbor beaches were the poster children for the unfulfilled goals of the Clean Water Act.  Using enforcement tools under the Clean Water Act, CLF and U.S. EPA forced the beginning of a cleanup effort that many an overheated Bostonian can be grateful for as they head to the water this summer. The tremendous economic development that has occurred on the Boston waterfront as the water became cleaner is powerful proof that the Clean Water Act is a responsible and balanced tool for achieving many of society’s goals.  CLF and EPA are continuing the work under the Clean Water Act to ensure that Boston Harbor beaches remain safe for swimming and that citizens in upstream communities along the Charles, Mystic, and Neponset Rivers enjoy the same freedom to boat and swim without fear of becoming sick from pollution.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

As the U.S. Senate starts to consider the “dirty water” bills coming from the House, Senators are faced with a clear choice.  You can make a difference by calling or emailing your Senator and urging them to reject attempts to gut the Clean Water Act and weaken the EPA. Click here to find the phone number or email address for your Senator.  Join CLF in speaking up for clean water before it’s too late. 

Over the last several months the documentary Bloom: The Plight of Lake Champlain has been shown to capacity audiences around Vermont, from the State House to the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center.

Now the movie, which powerfully brings home the effect of too much phosphorous pollution on Lake Champlain, will be part of the Green Mountain Film Festival in Vermont.

Bloom, which features CLF Vermont Director Chris Kilian, will be shown at Montpelier’s Pavilion Auditorium at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, March 24^th and will be followed by a panel discussion which will include CLF Lake Champlain Lakekeeper Louis Porter.

The documentary combines narration, interviews and footage to convey both the severity and significance of the problem of uncontrolled algae and weed growth in Lake Champlain, and the need to quickly find effective solutions.

Bloom: The Plight of Lake Champlain
Thursday, March 24, 6:15 p.m.
Pavilion Auditorium
Montpelier, Vt.

MONTPELIER, VT January 24, 2010 – The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) has issued the following statement in response to today’s decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its approval of Vermont’s 2002 water quality plan for Lake Champlain. The decision comes almost two years after CLF first challenged EPA’s approval of the Plan in federal court.

“Today’s decision by the EPA to re-examine Vermont’s water quality plan for Lake Champlain is the key to bringing the Lake back to health,” said Louis Porter, CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper. “The EPA has reviewed the existing pollution budget and concluded, correctly, that there has not been enough improvement in the health of Lake Champlain under the current plan. Now, with a new administration in Vermont and a new water quality plan on the way, Vermont can begin a new, science-based approach to cleaning up Lake Champlain and making sure it remains a safe and enjoyable resource for swimmers, boaters, anglers, and the more than 200,000 people for whom it provides drinking water.” More >

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.

Millions of music fans the world over cheered last year’s news that the band Phish was getting back together and heading on the road for another one of their epic tours.  CLF was cheering too.

For close to a decade, Phish’s charity–the Waterwheel Foundation (and check them out on Facebook)–has been a strong supporter of CLF’s work to clean up New England’s waters.  Phish has focused much of the giving on CLF’s Lake Champlain Lakekeeper initiative.  With strong Vermont roots, the band clearly understands how important protecting and restoring New England’s “Great Lake” is to the state’s overall environmental health.  And the band also understands how important a group like CLF is when it comes to championing that cause.

Waterwheel raises money to support groups like CLF in two ways.

• the band has donated royalties it gets from the sale of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food Ice Cream.  That’s right, “Phish Food” no longer needs to be a guilty pleasure for you.  Next time you house a whole pint in one sitting, just remember that you are doing your part to help the environment
• the band also invites groups like CLF to work its Waterwheel Merchandise tables at its different shows.  The proceeds from sales of exclusive Phish merchandise, including rare autographed posters, and organic tee shirts and hoodies, go to support the charities who work the tables.

CLF is honored to have been invited to work a table again on this year’s tour.  This Tuesday evening, we’ll be at the Comcast Center Show in Mansfield, MA. Happily for Phish, the show is sold out.  If you are one of the lucky ones with a ticket, please consider dropping by the Waterwheel table at the venue to say hi to me and the other CLF volunteers who are teaming up with Waterwheel to support CLF’s work on behalf of New England’s clean water, clean air, healthy forests, oceans, and communities.

According to an April 2008 National Science Foundation press release discussing the findings of a Russian/American scientific collaboration, even the world’s largest freshwater lake–Siberia’s Lake Baikal–is feeling the effects of a changing climate and not in a good way.  Drawing on sixty years worth of data collected under grueling weather conditions (negative 50!) throughout the tumult of 20th century Russia, researchers document long-term warming trends that are changing the lake’s pristine waters and unique habitat. We’re talking about global warming affecting the health of a 25-million year-old lake that contains 20% of the world’s fresh water and 2500 plant and animal species that make their home there but nowhere else.

Global climate change threatens the pristine waters of Siberia's Lake Baikal--the world's largest freshwater lake. That's bad news for much smaller and less-resilient lakes like Lake Champlain. (Image source National Science Foundation, Nicholas Rodenhouse)

Closer to home, CLF has been making the case that global climate change is aggravating pollution and food web problems in Lake Champlain–one of the ten largest fresh water lakes in the United States.

For decades, many agencies of the United States government including the Environmental Protection Agency have produced studies warning that global climate change will likely make water pollution problems worse because we can expect:

• “warming water temperatures to change contaminant concentrations in water and alter aquatic system uses”
• “new patterns of rainfall and snowfall to alter water supply for drinking and other uses leading to changes in pollution levels in aquatic systems, and” (editor’s note–this summer sure seems like we’re seeing a new rainfall pattern in New England)
• “more intense storms to threaten water infrastructure and increase polluted stormwater runoff”

–EPA National Water Program Strategy Response to Climate Change

The Lake Baikal study is further confirmation that global warming and water quality issues are deeply intertwined.  It should serve as a wake-up call to government officials charged with cleaning up and preventing pollution because “[t]his lake was expected to be among those most resistant to climate change, due to its tremendous volume and unique water circulation.” If climate change is affecting Baikal, it’s certainly affecting Lake Champlain and other freshwater bodies throughout New England (not to mention the major impacts on our Oceans).

While we must do all we can to slow down and reverse the worst of what global climate change will bring–an effort CLF is leading in New England–it’s long past time to start factoring the reality of ongoing climate change into predictions about water pollution and decisions about pollution prevention and cleanup.

EPA had that chance when it reviewed and approved Vermont’s proposed phosphorus pollution cleanup target–or Total Maximum Daily Load– for Lake Champlain in 2002.  It had plenty of its own research that could have and should have shaped important decisions regarding:

• the amount of pollution reduction needed
• the likely effectiveness of different proposed pollution cleanup activities
• the likely cost of cleanup and prevention activities

Despite all the global climate change studies EPA and the U.S. Government had created with your tax money–EPA failed entirely to factor climate change into the water quality equation for Lake Champlain. That’s why CLF has filed a lawsuit in federal court to hold EPA accountable for this failure before it’s too late for Lake Champlain.  What good is scientific research if you don’t use it to shape decisions in the real world?  Click here to read a copy of the complaint and stay tuned for updates as the case moves forward.