A 108-year-old boat that was set to be sunk to the bottom of Lake Champlain next summer will instead be scrapped.
The plan was to scuttle the ferry Adirondack at the bottom of the lake in 2022, both to preserve the vessel and to give divers a new site to explore about a mile offshore from the Burlington waterfront. However, a growing wave of criticism from lawmakers, environmentalists and the public in recent months caused officials to drop the project, Seven Days reported Tuesday.
Critics said the scuttling could endanger Lake Champlain’s fragile ecosystem, posing too great a risk for environmental damage.
On Tuesday, Lake Champlain Transportation and state officials withdrew their permit application. The permit had been approved by the Department of Environmental Conservation in March but was being appealed by several environmental groups in court.
Laura Trieschmann, the state’s historic preservation officer, said it was always the plan to call off the project if it didn’t have the public’s support — and it became clear in recent weeks that it did not.
“Public comment is very important to us, and there has been a notable increase in public responses, and the vast majority of those have been in opposition,” she said.
After lawmakers took up the issue this spring and learned there was nothing they could do to stop the sinking, two environmental groups — the Vermont Natural Resources Council and the Lake Champlain Committee — filed an appeal of the permit.
The rising costs of the project — a result of the appeal — and a pending review by the Burlington city government, in combination with the opposition, led to the decision to change course.
Trieschmann said she thinks this kind of late-in-the-game opposition is human nature.
“People always catch on to something that’s happened after it’s moving closer to the finish line. We are all completely overwhelmed. I don’t think people really understood what was being proposed,” Trieschmann said.
In particular, Trieschmann said she didn’t think people realized how closely they were following EPA standards for scuttling, making sure that things such as lead and PCBs would be cleaned before the boat was sunk, “but there is always that unknown, and you can’t really address that, so that became a little too powerful of a message,” she said.
Jon Groveman, water program director with the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said he was “very, very pleased” by the change of course.
He said that, to get the permit in the first place, it had to be proven that the ferry project was in the public good. Typically, he said, infrastructure such as bridges and marinas earn that designation.
“The idea that just dumping something in the water could be a permitted activity that’s in the public good, it just didn’t make sense,” he said.
The benefits would have flowed only to a few hundred people who have the economic means to partake in a sport such as scuba diving, Groveman said. When something potentially dangerous is dumped in public waters so a few privileged people can benefit, that doesn’t sound like the public good to him, he said.
Now, the Legislature is considering a three-year moratorium on this kind of sinking while it considers permanent changes in the law. Groveman said he thinks such a moratorium would be perfect because it’s clear to him that the laws need serious reconsideration.
“This got a permit. That’s still very disturbing,” he said. “The state felt that, under the current law, they were able to, or had to, permit this because it met requirements. It should not meet requirements. We need to take a hard look about what statutes and regulations allow going forward.”
