The Messy Vocabulary Of Watershed Protection
Lake Champlain Quadricentennial — Anniversary or Funeral?
Lake Champlain Lakekeeper
By Tim Burke, Lake Champlain Lakekeeper
Liquid manure flows from a farm field into Lake Champlain.
Tom Ardito
In 1609, Samuel de Champlain came up the Richelieu River and found a big lake that he promptly named after himself. Today, the lake is suffering from nutrient pollution. In 2002, Vermont and New York adopted and EPA approved a pollution reduction plan for phosphorus. In the almost five years since the adoption of the plan, however, no significant reductions in phosphorus have occurred in the lake. This year the state legislature passed a law requiring Vermont, which contributes most of the phosphorus, to reopen and rewrite the plan. Lake Champlain Lakekeeper and Conservation Law Foundation played a critical role getting this law passed and forcing the state to adopt an industrial stormwater permit to stop polluted runoff. Plans to commemorate Champlain’s arrival are now underway for 2009. But without real progress on nutrient pollution, the celebration of the 400 year mark may be more of a funeral than an anniversary.
Sewer overflow pipes dump raw sewage directly into streams when inadequate sewer systems are overwhelmed by rain.
treatment facilities at three of the bay’s four largest wastewater treatment plants are already underway. While our waters remain murky for now, Narragansett Bay is on course for a cleaner, healthier future. w www.waterkeeper.org
»Every year, Florida’s St. Johns River receives 32
million pounds of nitrogen, the vast majority from human sources. The thick green carpet of algae that coats the river proves that the St. Johns is suffering from acute nitrogen poisoning. Years of advocacy by environmental groups like St. Johns Riverkeeper have forced reluctant state agencies to admit the river is in jeopardy. For the past six years, St. Johns Riverkeeper has faced nutrient pollution head on. This has meant untangling a knotted mess of science, law and bureaucratic vocabulary called Total Maximum Daily Loads or TMDLs. A TMDL is a scientific calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a waterbody can receive and still meet federal water quality standards for fishing and swimming. The mention of something like a TMDL makes most folks’ eyes roll back. But once you get beyond the jargon, a TMDL can be a useful tool in controlling the amount of pollutants that enter our waterways. For us, it was the best tool we had to decrease nitrogen pollution. So we jumped in with both feet. Our journey began in 1998. A lawsuit brought by Earth Justice had just succeeded in forcing Florida to establish a nutrient TMDL for the lower St. Johns River by September 2003. According to water quality models, nitrogen would have to be reduced by 60 percent to achieve healthy nutrient levels in the river. But as soon as the state attempted to implement this reduction, polluters threatened to sue. The state caved in to the pressure and weakened the TMDL. St. Johns Riverkeeper knew that if we were ever going to reduce nitrogen pollution in the river, we needed to act. EPA approved the inadequate nutrient reduction plan and, in 2004, St. Johns Riverkeeper and Clean Water Network of Florida filed a lawsuit. Major polluters, including the American Pulp and Paper Association and our local utility, accused us of standing in the way of river restoration. But we pushed through with our legal challenge and community outreach. As our fight against the state’s plan intensified, the river health took a turn for the worst. In summer 2005, a toxic blue green algal bloom — dubbed the Green Monster — covered over 100 miles of the river. Toxic algae levels were 300 to 1000 times
By Neil Armingeon, St. Johns Riverkeeper
Riverkeeper and the Clean Water Network successfully linked the tangled jargon of our lawsuit and the state’s TMDL to the green water and toxic algae they were seeing in their community.
Fall 2007 Waterkeeper Magazine
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