This commentary is by Bob Stannard of Manchester, an author, musician and former state legislator and lobbyist.
If you’re born in Vermont, you like to think of yourself as a native Vermonter. We’ve often judged our lineage by how many generations we have buried in our local cemeteries.
For instance, if someone asked me if I was a native Vermonter, I might reply by saying, “I have seven in the ground.” That would make me an eighth-generation Vermonter.
Ironically, the first people who moved here carrying my last name came from Haddam, Connecticut. I like to say that I’m one of the original “flatlanders,” the name Vermonters use to describe those “from away.” Thankfully, the locals of 1760 allowed us to stay.
After a while, those who moved to Vermont settled in, bought or built a place, found something to do, raised a family and gradually became part of our great state. Now, there’s always that little bit of tension when we hear a newcomer say, “I’ve been here 40 years so I consider myself a Vermonter.” The native Vermonter will roll their eyes, but probably not say anything.
It’s a tough state in which to gain acceptance. Tolerance might be all you get, but that’s good enough.
Sixty years ago, in 1962, Vermont witnessed the arrival of another unwanted guest; Eurasian milfoil. It showed up in Lake Champlain and has now infested pretty much every lake in Vermont.
It was immediately declared an “invasive species” and viewed as something unacceptable, unwanted and had to be destroyed at all costs, because it would destroy our lakes. The fight was on to eradicate this unwanted invasive transplant from our state.
We tried everything. We tried raking it out, sucking it out, starving the plant of water by drawing down lakes and last, but not least, we tried poisoning it. Poisoning this weed became the option of choice, probably because it was perceived to be cheaper. That we might be degrading our environment and our economy was beside the point.
From “Living History Farm”: “For all of the attention that the insecticide DDT got, herbicides like 2,4-D became a bigger seller in a few short years. The herbicide 2,4-D came on the market in 1945 for public testing. In 1946, manufacturers sold 631,000 pounds of it. The next year, manufacturers sold 5,315,000 pounds, a 500 percent increase! Today, the U.S. farmer spends over $11 billion on all pesticides, and 58 percent of that money goes to herbicides, 28 percent to insecticides, 8 percent to fungicides and the rest to other chemicals.”
The man who created DDT, Paul Miller, received the Nobel Prize. DDT was banned in 1972 because it was showing up in mother’s breast milk. 2,4-D (Agent Orange) was banned in parts of Canada in 1985. Approximately 200,000 to 300,000 people die each year from exposure to toxic chemicals.
On some level, it’s understandable why these toxic chemicals came into being. Farmers need to grow more and more food for more and more people. Weeds and bugs inhibited their ability to grow more food, so any help that they could get to rid the world of pests was welcome. They didn’t know about or think about the future consequences of their actions.
We have a chance to learn from history.
Our enhanced knowledge has done little to discourage our use of toxic chemicals to kill stuff. If you read my previous column, you know there is a major battle underway to stop the use of a toxic chemical, ProcellaCOR, from being sprayed in Lake Bomoseen. Lake Bomoseen is Vermont’s premier fishery and is perhaps the cleanest lake in Vermont.
In 1996, the former Water Resources Board determined that, of the lake’s 2,360 acres, roughly 600 acres was occupied by milfoil. A study done last year determined that we now have 620 acres of milfoil in Lake Bomoseen. That’s about a 1.03% increase over 26 years.
Does that sound like a crisis to you? Milfoil maxed out decades ago, but we still feel the need to kill it by introducing more and more toxic chemicals into our waters.
Clearly, this perceived remedy has failed miserably. The state of Vermont has been spraying lakes for years and yet we still have milfoil. Talk with folks who run tournaments or just fish a lot and they will tell you that the lakes that have been sprayed with toxic chemicals no longer have good fishing. After Lake St. Catherine was sprayed with Sonar, fishermen caught fish with large heads and small bodies as the fish appeared to be starving. Sonar is now no longer used.
One might think that after 60 years we would accept milfoil as simply a nonnative plant. It’s been in Lake Bomoseen for 40 years and it’s helped to filter the dirt out of the water and create the best fishing habitat in the state.
It would seem as though, if we can come to accept the large number of invasive people who have moved into Vermont and changed our way of life, we should be able to come to grips with a plant that moved here. Both may be considered harmful, but also have done some good, too.
