The Environmental Protection Agency wants to see a stronger commitment from the state to clean up Lake Champlain.
In a letter to state environmental and agriculture officials last week, the EPA pressed for more details on a plan to reduce phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain. The feds asked the state to provide specific policy commitments, timelines and details, including outcome measures and the delegation of authority.
“In general, you know, it was a sobering letter in that EPA is asking for a lot of additional detail,” said David Mears, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, who is part of the team orchestrating the cleanup.
Last fall, the department and the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets released a draft plan for restoring the Lake Champlain Basin. The EPA ordered the state to revise its total maximum daily load (TMDL), which sets targets for phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain, or face federal funding cuts and tightened regulations for facilities around the lake, among other regulatory pressures.
Phosphorus from sewage, farm runoff and stormwater is blamed for fueling algae blooms that persistently crop up in areas of the lake.
With a plan in place, the EPA wants details and commitments by the end of March. After the proposal is finalized, the EPA will decide whether to approve the plan as soon as this summer.
“They want to know timelines by when we would implement these programs, what it would take to implement them in terms of authority – whether we have the authority or not, how do we get it if we don’t. And also resources: what do we need to implement, in terms of staffing or helping to put money out on the ground for our partners,” Mears said.
The letter calls on the agencies to “provide final policy commitments in a basin-wide scale implementation plan,” including a commitment letter from Gov. Peter Shumlin by the end of April.
“They recognize this is going to be a multiyear process, but there has to be a down payment this year; there has to be a demonstration of good faith,” said Anthony Iarrapino, a lawyer with the Conservation Law Foundation, which has long advocated for lake cleanup.
This year’s major water quality bill, H.586, is being reviewed in the Committee on Fish, Wildlife & Water Resources. The bill would alter agriculture and livestock practices and require new road and bridge standards, among other provision, to limit phosphorus runoff into Vermont’s water bodies.
Mears said many of the state’s agencies are on board with the proposal, which would apply new water runoff standards across the state. Many lawmakers support the concept of cleaning up the lake, but need to see more details before they enact legislation, Mears said.
The letter asks that the cleanup proposal include a plan that acknowledges the realities of climate change, such as higher intensity rainfall. Specifically, the proposal should include phosphorus projections outlined by previous EPA reports that detail several climate scenarios.
“These measures will be a critical component of the implementation of a revised Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for the lake,” David Deegan, a public affairs officer for the New England Region of EPA, wrote in an email to VTDigger. “EPA’s letter applauds the scope and ambition of the Proposal while noting that aggressive application of all the measures will be needed to achieve water quality standards in the lake. The letter also lays out EPA’s expectations for the remaining planning for the TMDL as well as implementation after issuance by EPA later this year.”
The letter says that current water quality models suggest that all the state’s proposals would have to be fully implemented to achieve required water quality standards set by the EPA.
“What I took the letter to basically say is that this is a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough,” Mears said. “But, I think in terms of not going far enough, it was more that they wanted some more detail about the proposal, rather than they wanted some new initiatives added on to it.”
