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.

In 2010, CLF and three other Massachusetts conservation groups walked away from water policy discussions, terminally frustrated that the talks would produce any meaningful change that would stem the increasing trend of streams being drawn dry by public and private water suppliers.  To his credit, Governor Patrick encouraged us to come back to the table with a promise that the fundamental protection for fish provided under the water supply law, the so-called “safe yield” limit, would be interpreted by the state to protect fish populations.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has now released the long-awaited fruits of those renewed discussions: the “Sustainable Water Management Initiative” Framework. The Commonwealth promotes this initiative, called SWMI, as a “substantial improvement” on the regulatory framework for providing for essential public water supply services while protecting the Commonwealth’s freshwater fish and other aquatic populations. But is it? What benefits does SWMI produce over current conditions? Does this effort still fall short of the Governor’s promise?

On the positive side, SWMI vaults Massachusetts into the forefront in the country in my opinion with respect to its knowledge base of its rivers and streams. The state’s partnership here with the U.S. Geological Survey has produced a set of stream and stream flow analytical tools and a streams data base that allow the state to understand the ecological impacts of various flow regimes  in a stream, very close to the gold standard.

Similarly, Massachusetts regulators and biologists are now much better informed on the risk to wildlife and river ecosystems associated with water withdrawals for water supplies. It turns out that these aquatic biological communities are much more sensitive to stream flow fluctuations than previously assumed. While this linkage might have been qualitatively suspected before, the last two years of analytical work have now unequivocally quantified that fragile connection.

Massachusetts also has demonstrated through this process that it has some remarkable and dedicated public employees who performed the work with the highest level of professional skill. The Commonwealth is in very good hands at a technical level.

Finally, this initiative will help ensure that some of the highest quality streams in the Commonwealth will be protected to a greater degree than they are today against degradation. While the additional levels of protection will depend on the regulations that are ultimately passed and the implementation of those regulations by the agency, SWMI will provide another level of protection to those near-pristine stream segments.

Where the technical side of SWMI is robust and innovative, however, the policy side of SWMI is compromised and unlikely to produce significant ecological protection in more heavily impacted stream segments or restore stream flows to rivers that are currently being drawn dry by water supply withdrawals.

The “safe yield” tool in SWMI, which the Governor Patrick assured us would include an environmental protection factor, doesn’t really protect the environment. “Safe yield” is a stream flow calculation that is meant to set a maximum amount of water that can be diverted from a water source without adversely affected native biota.

SWMI throws out this tool as a regulatory limit for all practical purposes in many rivers including, for example the Ipswich River, an important water body that water suppliers drain every year in the summer. This results from the fact that SWMI averages the safe yield calculation over the whole watershed and on an annual basis. Because this averaging includes the late winter and spring floods, it shows high levels of safe yield even when a river is going dry in August.  It just isn’t a protective approach in any sense.

SWMI and the Commonwealth rely on other tools and regulatory tactics to avoid this result by requiring water suppliers to minimize their adverse stream impacts “to the maximum extent practicable.” The policy also goes to great length to protect water allocations from the 1980’s when the water supply law was first passed. There is nothing in the law that requires this continued grandfathering of water withdrawals in situations where there is harm to streams and such an outcome is just not good enough.

Massachusetts is fortunate to have abundant natural water supplies, receiving some 44 inches on average a year–Los Angeles gets about 10-11 inches. There is no real conflict between essential water services and healthy stream flows in Massachusetts that cannot be technically solved at reasonable costs. Unfortunately, however, while the framework may drive water use down, SWMI seems to reduce rather than increase the incentives water suppliers and municipalities have to use water smarter. All CLF can do at this point is wait to see whether the Commonwealth demonstrates through its implementation of SWMI that CLF’s concerns are misplaced.

MassDEP and the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs worked hard to find a path forward that municipalities and conservationists could both embrace. And the answers, needless to say, are not easy. The politics of water supply in Massachusetts are complex and often confrontational as they are in most states. Nevertheless, we had hoped for more for the Commonwealth’s rivers and streams.

Like many other states across the nation, and similar experiences in other New England states, Vermont had its first trial by fire with the expanded influence of “Super PACs.” In fact, one super PAC, Vermonters First, poured more than $1 million into several Vermont political races and issues. The right-leaning PAC was almost entirely funded by one person described by VT Digger as “a wealthy and somewhat reclusive Burlington woman named Lenore Broughton, who in just a few months has made herself the most influential Republican in the state.”

Vermonters First promoted a limited government message in several statewide races including the hotly contested races for state treasurer and auditor. In the race for treasurer, Vermonters First poured over $100,000 into television and radio commercials attacking Democratic incumbent Beth Pearce. Similarly, the Super PAC promoted the candidacy of Republican Vince Illuzi in the auditor’s race. Lastly, Vermonters First weighed in heavily in opposition to Democratic Mayor Miro Weinberger’s effort to pass a “Fiscal Stability Bond” to stabilize the city’s finances including restoring the city’s ability to proceed with long-delayed, major water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades.

In the end, this unprecedented influx of seemingly limitless cash didn’t carry the day. (According to The Washington Post, this is true not just in VT, but across the US.) Beth Pearce was reelected to the Treasurer’s post, Vince Illuzi was defeated for Auditor, and the Burlington bond vote was handily passed.

‘‘You can spend a lot of loot. You can buy a lot of those out-of-state ads,’’ said Gov. Peter Shumlin in this AP story, who easily won re-election on Tuesday. ‘‘But in the end, Vermonters judge you by who you are, what you stand for and whether they meet you, whether you knock on their door, whether they look you in the eye and decide whether your character and your vision is the right thing for Vermont.’’

After looking the candidates in the eye, Vermonters confirmed their commitment to a government that plays an important role in making our communities and state livable and sustainable. Vermonters don’t want a flood of money in their politics, they want further preparations against future floods – they want a safe, stable and thriving state.

After breathing a sigh of relief, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) will be pressing our elected leaders to solve the state’s major environmental issues including cleaning up Lake Champlain, protecting our public lands, embracing a sustainable and efficient energy future, and prioritizing livable communities.

We look to our elected leaders to lead on the most pressing environmental issues of our day. Silence, like that adopted at the national level during the campaign, will not be acceptable. We cannot afford further delay on issues like climate change. Now, more than ever, is the time to lead.

Next week, Vermonters will mark an anniversary many of us would rather forget.  It is hard to believe that a year has passed since the deluge of Tropical Storm Irene caused destructive flooding in much of the state.  Federal, state, and charitable organizations are still working to help the storms victims recover (the Vermont Irene Fund is one of the many ways you can help).  Yet as the process of recovery continues, it is important to take stock of the lessons we should learn from this disaster, and our response to it, because the overwhelming scientific evidence suggests that climate change may bring more such extreme weather to our state and region.

At CLF, Lake Champlain Lakekeeper Louis Porter, has led the effort to learn the hard lessons taught by Irene’s hard rain.

The gist of his message this week has been that science and experience teaches us that we reduce damage to the built and natural environment when we work with nature rather than against it.

Here are a few of the things he’s had to say this week with links to the major media outlets who have turned to him for analysis on this fateful anniversary:

• From his Vermont Public Radio commentary: “Especially after Irene, we know that the key to flood protection lies in giving rivers room to move, keeping flood plains intact and building roads and bridges that are ready for our new climate.”
• From Paul Heintz’s story “Water Ways” in Seven Days: “We are in for a lot more wet and violent weather,” he says. “We need to realize we’re going to need all of that flood capacity, all of that natural resilience in the years to come.”
• From Suzie Steimel’s report “Did Recovery Efforts Hurt Vt’s Rivers” on WCAX TV: “It was a systemic breakdown from the people doing the work to the folks overseeing it to the state oversight which should have been in place”

As the recovery continues, Louis and others at CLF will work with Vermont officials to ensure that we have the policies and the resources in place to prevent natural disasters from being magnified by man-made disasters caused when recovery work goes wrong.

An algae bloom in the Winnicut River, NH. Photo by Peter Wellenberger.

A week ago I had the pleasure of attending an event to celebrate the restoration of a tidal river. The Winnicut River – primarily located in Greenland, NH – is now the only dam-free river in the Great Bay estuary. Thanks to the hard work of the Winnicut River Watershed Coalition and numerous state and federal agencies, the project includes a new fish passage and, in addition to the dam removal, a restored shoreline.

Despite being a beautiful July summer day, the event was marred by one distinct image. The free-flowing river now supports a large area of abnormal algae growth – the direct result of excessive nutrients. Standing on the water’s edge, it was impossible to miss the mat of green slime. This certainly put a damper on the celebration.

The Winnicut River is not the only site in the estuary where algae is now taking over. Large mats of macroaglae can be found in the Lubberland Creek area, and algae has been taking over places where eelgrass – the ecological cornerstone of the estuary – historically grew. However, the Winnicut River provides a valuable lesson that despite our best efforts, the Great Bay estuary faces the risk of further degradation that could lead to a collapse of its sensitive ecosystem. Our only option is to invest in the needed improvements to our infrastructure to dramatically reduce the amount of nitrogen pollution from wastewater treatment plants and stormwater.

This is why it’s so important to build a stronger voice for the estuary, and why I’ve been working so hard to build the Rescue Great Bay coalition. In a previous blog, I discussed the formation of this new collaboration – at that time consisting of eight founding members: the NH chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association, the NH Coastal Protection Partnership, the Great Bay chapter of Trout Unlimited, the Town of Newington, the Winnicut River Watershed Coalition, the NH Rivers Council, EcoMovement, and CLF’s Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper.  I’m pleased to say that in the last month alone, six more organizations have joined the effort – the Great Bay Stewards, New Hampshire Audubon, the Exeter-Squamscott Local Advisory Committee, the Lamprey River Watershed Association, the Oyster River Watershed Association, and Green Power Management Holdings, Inc. of Newmarket, NH.

As Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper, I’m pleased to serve as the lead for Rescue Great Bay. We are building a common voice for Great Bay to educate the public about the need for immediate action to clean up the estuary. Everyone has who has joined the group understands what is at stake – the longer we wait to take corrective actions, the more the estuary is at risk.

Part of our effort is to show that the public cares about the Great Bay estuary and wants to see meaningful action.  Toward that end, we now have a “Rescue Great Bay” petition that hundreds of people throughout the Seacoast have signed.  It reads:

“We, the undersigned, believe that clean water and a healthy Great Bay estuary are essential to the quality of life in New Hampshire’s Seacoast region and southern Maine.

“We also recognize that the health of the Great Bay estuary is in decline as a result of  water pollution from sewage treatment plants and stormwater runoff.

           “We understand that public investments will be necessary to clean up the Great Bay estuary and keep it healthy now and for future generations, and we support prompt action to reduce water pollution in accordance with the full protections of the Clean Water Act, including the most stringent limits on nitrogen – the pollutant of greatest concern – from NH and Maine sewage treatment plants affecting the estuary.”

Sign The Petition Here

From Market Square Day in Portsmouth, to other events, it’s been great to engage concerned citizens with this petition, and to see how strongly people feel about protecting the estuary.  If you have not already signed, I urge you to do so by clicking here, where you’ll find an online version of the petition. Please also consider forwarding  the link below to your friends and neighbors and anyone else who cares about the future of this remarkable resource.

Let’s put an end to the sort of water quality problems I saw in the Winnicut River, before it’s too late. Together we can help ensure a cleaner and healthier future for the Great Bay estuary.

Sign The Petition Here

The Three Penny Taproom. Courtesy of adamjackson1984 @ flickr. Creative Commons.

If you like beer, then you can (and should) help support Conservation Law Foundation fulfill our mission of protecting New England’s environment for the benefit of all people. You see, at CLF we use the law, science, and the market to create solutions that preserve our natural resources, build healthy communities, and sustain a vibrant economy. So what’s CLF’s work got to do with beer?

Here’s a few examples:

• You need clean water to make great beer; CLF is fighting to control water pollution and keep water clean throughout Vermont and New England
• Drinking and driving is illegal and dangerous; CLF is working to expand public transportation options and to encourage development in walkable downtowns
• Local beer should have local hops; CLF is working to help local farmers find financing in their communities

And we’ve got plenty more reasons why beer-lovers should become CLF members. That’s why you’re invited to come discuss them over a frosty pint.

What: The generous owners of Montpelier’s Three Penny Taproom are putting the fun back in fundraising by donating a portion of an evening’s bar sales to support CLF’s work in Vermont. Come raise a glass with CLF’s Vermont advocates who will be glad to answer questions about the challenges facing Vermont’s environment and the many solutions CLF’s advocacy is helping to bring about.

When: Tuesday May 15, 2012 from 5:00-7:30 p.m. (and it’s a safe bet that some of the CLF advocates might stick around even later)

Where: Three Penny Taproom, 108 Main St. Montpelier, VT (for directions: http://www.threepennytaproom.com/directions.html)

Why: Because supporting CLF’s mission to protect Vermont’s environment for the benefit of all people has never been this easy or this tasty (did we mention that Three Penny has a delicious daily menu of small plates made with high quality local ingredients?)

If you’ve never been to Three Penny Taproom — designated as one of “America’s 100 Best Beer Bars” by Draft Magazine and winner of the 2011 7 Days Daysie reader survey for “Best Bar” — CLF Night is a great reason to come see what all the buzz is about.

At a time when our governors and our President were preparing to address their constituents, CLF was (and is) making news – news that raises a series of enduring questions: In our country, where is the line between federal and state authority? How clear is it? Who gets to draw it? Why would you draw it in one place instead of another?

These questions are so challenging because they are so fundamental; Americans have wrestled with these same questions for over 200 years. You’ll recall that our first national government, under the Articles of Confederation, was too weak to do the job. The Constitution granted greater power to the national government, but had to be balanced by the Bill of Rights, securing the rights of individuals and of states. The rest of our efforts to get the federal/state balance right has been marked by long periods of contentious negotiation and flashbulb moments of fractious history –national banking, secession and the Civil War, the busting of industrial trusts, the New Deal, and civil rights for all.

Protecting our health and our environment has been a part of the national and regional negotiations for decades. Recent events have provoked further discussion.

By the 1960’s and ‘70’s, when Congress began to address environmental protection and energy in a serious way, its constitutional authority to do so was relatively clear. It exercised that authority boldly, for the great benefit of generations of people and other species. However, as in much of our federalist system, there’s still a sharing of power between national and state governments, both by design and by default. The zone between federal and state authority is sometimes gray. It’s in that messy, gray area that many of our most controversial environmental issues are being debated.

These debates continue to this day. Take two of CLF’s hot issues recently in the news: Vermont Yankee and Cape Cod nitrogen pollution.

Vermont Yankee

The first is the adverse federal court decision CLF (and the State of Vermont) received on Vermont Yankee, the aging nuclear power plant in Vernon, VT. The decision affirmed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s broad authority over safety issues relating to nukes. It  preempted a role for states and handed a major victory to Entergy Corporation.

However, as Anthony Iarrapino points out in this blog post, the fight is far from over. There is a clear role for states in shaping our energy future; in the absence of federal action, states are leading the effort in promoting a clean energy future. Furthermore, as Anthony pointed out in his post, the court said:

“This Court’s decision is based solely upon the relevant admissible facts and the governing law in this case, and it does not purport to resolve or pass judgment on the debate regarding the advantages or disadvantages of nuclear power generation, or its location in this state. Nor does it purport to define or restrict the State’s ability to decline to renew a certificate of public good on any ground not preempted or not violative of federal law, to dictate how a state should choose to allocate its power among the branches of its government, or pass judgment on its choices. The Court has avoided addressing questions of state law and the scope of a state’s regulatory authority that are unnecessary to the resolution of the federal claims presented here.”

Even in the highly “federalized” area of nuclear power there is an undeniable role for states.

Cape Cod

The second is a settlement in principle of our litigation to clean up pollution from sewage on Cape Cod. This is a great step forward – one that  has attracted the focused attention of anti-environmentalists in Congress, as this article attests.

They preposterously allege collusion between environmentalists and the EPA in cases like this to expand federal jurisdiction beyond what Congress authorized in the Clean Water Act, thereby trumping state authority.  However, the federal/state line under the Clean Water Act is about as blurry as they come, in part because the facts relating to pollution and its impacts are extremely complex. As in all cases, the facts matter. Careful, dispassionate assessment of the scientific facts about discharges and pollution, and how the law applies to those facts – not political grandstanding by Members of Congress – is what’s necessary to achieve the visionary goal Congress as a whole committed to decades ago: the elimination of polluting discharges to United States waters, by 1985! It’s time we lived up to that commitment.

There is opportunity in messy, gray areas like the shifting federal/state interface: we can go forward or backward. That is, we can develop sensible allocations of authority between federal and state governments to achieve the public goals behind all of these public initiatives – a healthy environment and a healthy economy, or we can descend into politically motivated mudslinging that obscures the real issues and thwarts real progress.

At CLF we are committed to rational, fact-based discussion of the issues, and prudent forward motion that yields a thriving New England, for generations to come and for all. We know this terrain well. You can count on us to keep working it.

Last Friday, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), together with the Buzzards Bay Coalition (BBC), announced they had reached an agreement in principle with EPA to settle two lawsuits regarding nitrogen pollution on Cape Cod. In making the announcement, we released a statement, which can be found here.

In that statement, CLF’s Chris Killian responded to attacks by a group of Congressional Republicans seeking to limit EPA’s authority and advance their anti-environment agenda. You can read the full statement here. In it, Chris said:

“It is our experience that EPA has been a formidable opponent in clean water cases, and to imply that the agency is colluding with environmental organizations to expand its own authority is preposterous,” said Christopher Kilian, director of Conservation Law Foundation’s Clean Water and Healthy Forests program. “These are complicated cases, made more so by developing science and changing environmental stressors, and it is never an easy road to reach a resolution. The real issue is whether the parties are acting in the best interest of those who rely on the resource for their health and well-being. These Congressional leaders seem to suggest that EPA should take a hard line against the interests of citizens and the environment and protect the rights of polluters.”

We at CLF have been involved in the litigation and related issues on an ongoing basis. To help you find CLF’s resources, we’ve included a few curated links below.

Blog posts:

CLF Cleaning up the Cape’s Algae Problem
Clean Water: It’s Your Call or Click

Statements:

Joint Statement Between CLF and Buzzards Bay
CLF and Buzzards Bay Coalition Press EPA for Action in Cape Clean Up

News coverage:

The Cost of Doing Nothing: Toxic Algae Bloom Hurts Tourism, Changes Senator Inhofe’s Tune

Court Filings:

CLF, Inc., et al., v. Lisa P. Jackson, et al. (Complaint, September 19, 2011)

August 25, 2010: CLF, Inc., et al., v. Lisa P. Jackson, et al. (Complaint, August 25, 2010)

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to be in touch!

In their rush to exploit recovery efforts from Tropical Storm Irene, ideologues who perpetually fight against regulation and science and who posture as the defenders of traditional “Yankee” values are forgetting two important rock-ribbed principles.

The first is frugality. There has been a lot of loose talk about how much money was supposedly saved by largely ignoring environmental review and permitting as bulldozers, excavators and dump trucks rushed into rivers across Vermont in dozens of places. Understandably, given the dire situation facing the state at the time, these claims are based on initial, back-of-the-envelope cost estimates made with little or no analysis. However, using those alleged savings to argue for a change in policy is irresponsible as a matter of policy, and discourteous to basic math.

The accounting trick the deregulation folks are trying to pull off ignores the near-term and future public and private costs that Vermonters will inevitably incur and in some cases are already incurring to fix the problems caused by hasty “restoration” that did more harm than good. The overall restoration effort was extraordinary, and the state’s road system has been rebuilt quickly. But as any old hill farmer can tell you, a quick repair is rarely the last fix you need, and haste, even when necessary, makes waste.

Camp Brook in Bethel is a prime example where "restoration" work done hastily in the throw-the-law-and-science-out-the-window free-for-all that followed Tropical Storm Irene is now being redone, at additional cost to taxpayers, to minimize new flooding risks caused by the hasty Post-Irene stream alteration

The second Yankee principle ignored by those who don’t want to let modern understandings of river physics, science-based laws and common sense stand in the way of their crusade against regulation is that we don’t solve our problems by pushing them on to our neighbors.

One of the purposes of the science-based river alteration regulations that have evolved in Vermont during the last few decades is to minimize and prevent flooding altogether rather than simply transfer problems onto neighboring properties. Mining gravel from the stream next to your house might prevent – for a time – your fields from flooding. But it increases the likelihood of your neighbor’s house getting washed away. Striking the balance calls for smart regulation such as Vermont has developed. To do river work right, is to do right by your neighbors.

And, although some would not have it so, those principles of true frugality, quality workmanship, and true community remain in Vermont, and must be restored along with our roads, homes, and towns.

Take for example the case of Camp Brook in hard-hit Bethel.  As reported in Sunday’s Times Argus and Rutland Herald (sorry I can’t link to the story it is behind a paywall), the bulldozers are back in the river.  But this time scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and volunteers from nonprofit White River Partnership are guiding their work closely.  You see, the bulldozers are there trying to fix the mess (likely made with the best of intentions) that the early recovery efforts made of the Brook; a mess that, according to the news report, actually increased the risk of flash flooding and threatens upstream and downstream bridges along Rt. 12 with erosion around their abutments and more intense flows from a river artificially straightened after Irene.  Here is an excerpt that sums up the status of the Brook as a result of the rush job:

“[N]o one in the excavators really knew what the brook had looked like before.  The valley was flattened.  Berms stood mid-slope.  Where the lawn had once been, the river now braided over dirt and rocks, with no banks to direct its flow.  There were no boulders or even large rocks to add burbles to its sound or prevent flash flooding.”

After weeks of careful remediation, the new science-guided effort is restoring Camp Brook to a healthy functioning stream with natural structures that will help prevent future flooding and restore habitat for fish.  Even though it’s buried in the back pages of the paper, it’s good news for people who care about protecting property and maintaining healthy streams.  It’s bad news for the deregulation crowd because it directly contradicts the claim that we can save money by gutting environmental regulations that require recovery work to be done carefully in a manner that is consistent with science-based state and federal laws. In the long run it is cheaper for us and for those downstream to do a job right the first time lest we keep having to relearn the lesson that haste makes waste.