Sincerely,
James Ehlers
Lake Champlain International, Inc.
http://www.mychamplain.net
@Lake_Champlain

To your question, CLF is considering using the Clean Water Act citizen suit provisions to enforce laws that are being broken by many farms in the watershed and has been working with affected residents who live near polluted waterways across the state to gather the type of evidence that these lawsuits require. Thankfully the Clean Water Act created this option for citizens to take action when state and federal regulators fail to adequately enforce our laws. So while that option is very much on the table, we have also pursued a strategy under the clean water act that seeks to hold the State Agency of Natural Resources and the EPA accountable for not doing a better job of enforcing clean water laws against farms.

As a practical matter, the state and EPA are in a much better position to enforce our laws and have far more resources to get the job done if only they had the political will to do it. State and federal regulators can actually go on to farms without worrying about trespass laws that ordinary citizens must respect. Once on a farm, government regulators can inspect specific aspects of the operation and look at records kept by the farm that are generally not available to the public. They can inspect regularly and have the types of sampling equipment needed to create evidence that will stand up in court.

Trying to marshall those same resources when you are working, as CLF does, with citizen volunteers across the state is difficult but not impossible. CLF has been glad to invest our staff time to support that effort in building cases that we may file while we are also busy lobbying at the statehouse for better legislative oversight of the clean water law enforcement agencies and trying the aforementioned legal strategy to get Vermont ANR and EPA to do a better job.

CLF is also actively involved in numerous conversations with more progressive elements of the farming community who are frustrated that the state government has promoted megadairy at the expense of alternative farming methods (smaller grass-fed operations, fruit and vegetable farming, etc) that may be lighter on the land and water. Those types of efforts don’t grab headlines in the same way that lawsuits do, but we are committed to them just the same.

So to sum up, all our options are still on the table. We welcome any ideas yuo and other readers of CLF Scoop may have to make progress toward a cleaner lake.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
James Ehlers
Lake Champlain International, Inc.
http://www.mychamplain.net
@Lake_Champlain