MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Top officials with several Vermont state agencies said Thursday they are ready to collaborate to clean up phosphorus pollution in Lake Champlain, as the state submitted a new plan for doing so to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Environmental Conservation Commissioner David Mears briefed reporters on a plan that calls for changes in farm and forestry practices, efforts to stabilize river banks against erosion and to reduce runoff from roads, housing and commercial developments.
Gov. Peter Shumlin office’s released a statement in which he called Lake Champlain “the source of vital economic, recreational and cultural opportunities … We share the nation’s interest in returning this treasured water to full health.”
The 125-mile-long lake, the border between northwestern Vermont and New York state that extends into Quebec, has seen some of its shallower parts choked with algae blooms blamed on excess phosphorus that flows into the lake, largely due to human activities along its shores and tributaries.
The new plan was welcomed by business, environmental, municipal government groups and the EPA. David Deegan, a spokesman for the federal agency’s regional office in Boston, said Vermont had “made great strides over the past few months to refine the plan and add more details.”
One possible area of continuing disagreement between the state and the EPA is over the agency’s push for Vermont to make expensive improvements to municipal wastewater treatment plants along rivers flowing into the lake. Mears said millions of dollars had been invested in those facilities over the past four decades, and that they now contribute just 3 percent of the phosphorus reaching the lake.
In a cover letter with the plan sent to EPA officials, Shumlin pointed to the Lake Champlain basin’s much lower population density than other parts of the country where the EPA had focused water pollution reduction efforts, including Massachusetts and the Chesapeake Bay.
“Unlike states that can meet the needed reductions by focusing on wastewater discharges, Vermont needs a comprehensive solution,” he wrote.
The three biggest contributors, Mears said, are agricultural lands, producing 40 percent of the phosphorus flowing to the lake; 22 percent is blamed on river bank erosion and 15 percent on forestry.
Among the fixes: fencing keep cows out of rivers, temporary bridges so logging machinery doesn’t have to roll through streams, and storm water ponds on the edges of housing and commercial developments. On the first one, Mears said the problem is less cows “pooping in rivers” than trampling the vegetation along their banks.
Costs for the changes are undetermined, and Mears said they would have to be shared by the state, municipalities, farmers and developers.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.