Now, 20 years later, the objective sought by designating Vermont’s largest lake as one of the six great lakes has been fulfilled.
On Wednesday, a research program based at the University of Vermont and SUNY Plattsburgh has been classified as a Sea Grant Institute. That designation will bring more federal resources to the region.
The classification comes down to the penning of the five letters “great” in a key piece of long-forgotten legislation.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., slipped a seven-word sentence into a bill reauthorizing the National Sea Grant College program that redefined the term “Great Lakes” to include Lake Champlain.
“That got everybody all upset,” Leahy said in a phone interview Wednesday. “I just wanted the money.”
The reclassification irked many in the Midwest, who derided Lake Champlain, with its 490-square-mile surface area, as unworthy of the term “great.”
“I’ve heard you can practically pitch a baseball across it,” Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton said of Lake Champlain’s width, according to one report.
Upton scoffed that on an elementary school map, puny Lake Champlain was hardly the size of his pinky.
“It doesn’t stack up with the other lakes,” he said.
The change also set off handwringing over how America’s geography students would cope with the addition of a sixth Great Lake. Would HOMES (the acronym for remembering Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior) become CHOMES?
Or, one Washington Post writer mused, perhaps PHOMES — with the “P” standing for pork?
Within weeks, the Senate had unanimously passed language revoking Lake Champlain’s “Great”-ness.
Leahy says the purpose of the moniker was always to make more federal funding available for research and outreach around the lake, and after the 1998 flap, an avenue to that was negotiated.
Since then, research and outreach around the lake through UVM and SUNY Plattsburgh has been supported through the Lake Champlain Sea Grant. In 2012, the program achieved a milestone guaranteeing a higher level of funding. The program began the process of applying to become an institution in 2015.
With the announcement this week, the senator’s two-decade-old objective has been fulfilled.
“Now it’s been designated as a sea grant institute, which is what I wanted right from the beginning,” Leahy said.
Along with added prestige, the new designation as an “institute” comes with a significant boost in federal funding from $400,000 to $1 million annually.
Kris Stepenuck, who leads the UVM extension portion of the program, said the new funding will expand research capacity, including supporting the establishment of a fellowship program. It will also help build out community programs, like extending a watershed education program for Vermont middle and high school programs across the lake in New York.
It also will help support a program that focuses on minimizing stormwater runoff, a factor in lake pollution.
While Lake Champlain technically does not count among the Great Lakes, Stepenuck said the bodies of water do have many similarities.
Like the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain drains eventually to the St. Lawrence River.
“We are technically in the same watershed as them,” Stepenuck said.
Lake Champlain and its greater western cousins also share many issues, like nutrient levels, algae blooms, and common invasive species.
But, Stepenuck said, the origin of the institute helps it stand out.
“We have the best story of all 33 sea grant programs, for sure,” she said.
