Vermonters should be ‘All In’ on water quality

Tom Torti is executive director of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce. Photo by John Herrick/VTDigger

As lawmakers scurry to raise public money needed to improve the state’s water quality, a half-dozen posters displaying photographs of shorelines smeared in blue-green algae were arranged around the House chamber Wednesday.

“These images do not explain or even begin to describe the stench that emanates from the lake for months on end as our lake slowly dies,” said Denise Smith, executive director for the advocacy group Friends of Northern Lake Champlain, during an unusual morning summit on water quality.

Democratic leadership, water scientists, farmers and businesses urged lawmakers to pass legislation needed to improve the state’s water quality. Many speakers, including business owners and farmers, are willing to pitch in to restore the state’s 13 lakes and ponds and 68 streams and rivers that are considered “impaired,” which means they do not meet pollution limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

This list includes Lake Champlain, and lawmakers this biennium are drafting legislation needed for the state to fulfill its commitment to federal regulators that it will restore the lake’s water quality, including raising the necessary funding.

“It’s time for the business community and the taxpayers of Vermont to stand up and say ‘we also have an affirmative obligation to fund this going forward. Theses are all of our waters,’” said Tom Torti, president of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Distributed atop each lawmakers’ desk were blue and green dice-sized cubes, a report on phosphorus pollution and sticker that read “All In.” Several speakers at the summit said polluters and residents at large share a responsibility to restore Vermont’s water quality. A majority of Vermont residents agree, one survey found.

The sources of phosphorus pollution vary across different sections of the lake. In St. Albans Bay, for example, manure runoff from farms accounts for 61 percent of the total phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency.

But in Burlington Bay, 81 percent of the total phosphorus loading comes from wastewater treatment plants and urban development.

Julie Moore, former state water quality czar and now a scientist at Stone Environmental, an environmental consulting firm based in Montpelier, said humans have quadrupled the amount of phosphorus entering lake Champlain; of the 900 metric tons of phosphorus entering the lake, she said 650 tons to 700 tons comes from human impacts on the basin.

“It includes farms, stormwater runoff from our downtowns and village centers, wastewater not only from our treatment plants but out failing septic systems, (and) erosion along our roads sides,” she said.

She said historical development has made a lasting impact on the basin’s water quality.

“We clearcut most of the state. Much of the sediment that was on the tops of the hills is now down in our river valleys and as those are eroded away and rivers work to reestablish their floodplains, the ultimate settling basin for many of them is Lake Champlain,” Moore said.

Regardless of the pollution source, many residents and visitors share the benefits of water quality, speakers said. Clean water is also part of Vermont’s economic brand and without it the state could lose a competitive edge, according to Torti of the LCRCC.

“The waters of Vermont are as important to our economic future as IBM Global,” Torti said, before naming a list of other economic drivers in Vermont. “We lose our water, we lose our ability to market Vermont.”

According to 2004 data, Torti said visitors spent more than $1 billion in Vermont, generating tens of thousands of jobs and tax revenue for the state. He said the top reason visitors don’t come back to Vermont is the state’s regressing water quality.

Gov. Peter Shumlin proposed raising up to $7 million in new revenue for a proposed Clean Water Fund, as well as another $13 million for pollution control measures on farms, roads and developed land.

During the first few weeks of the session, lawmakers dropped two proposals by the administration to tax commercial development and increase a fee on fertilizers. Towns and farmers opposed both measures. The pushback comes at a time when the state is seeking to close a growing budget gap of at least $112 million for 2016.

“Change, rhetoric, happy talk is easy until we have to pay,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said during his remarks to the House chamber. “Go find me $15, $20 million in addition to the $112 (million).”