Vermont, New York and the government of Quebec have renewed an agreement that continues a partnership designed to protect Lake Champlain.
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and New York officials renewed the Memo of Understanding on Environmental Cooperation on the Management of Lake Champlain on Monday.
The agreement calls for the three governments to continue to share research and information on water quality and conservation in the lake and its surrounding basin.
The Lake Champlain Basin Program works with the governments to implement management plans. Basin Program Director Bill Howland calls it a document that shows New York, Vermont and Quebec have made a formal commitment to work together to share information and improve water quality of the lake and the economy of the region. “There are three areas where it makes a difference. One of them is in educational programs to inform members of the community about what they can do to reduce their pollution impact on the lake. There’s a second area: monitoring the condition of the lake. It’s all done with the very same instruments, with the same methods, with the same controls. It’s worked very well in the Lake Champlain basin. Then finally with research we work together on determining what’s important and where it has to be done. All of the three jurisdictions sit at the same table to make those decisions. So it really is a nice framework for cooperation.”
Lake Champlain Committee Executive Director Lori Fisher says since the agreement was first signed in 1988, it has fostered good collaborative work across the basin. “The states implement policies and programs individually. But the cooperative agreement really does emphasize sharing information and trying to work together to tackle these problems. A few years after the first agreement was signed back in 1988 it helped secure important on-going funding for this region and federal funding and an annual appropriation. Which we didn’t have before.”
Lake Champlain International Executive Director James Ehlers says the agreement is a nice arrangement between the governments, but he’s not sure what’s really been accomplished over the years. “What concerns me is the action does not reflect the rhetoric. If we continue to hold Lake Champlain in such high esteem why do we allow it to continue to degrade? It would be unfair to say there hasn’t been some progress in small select areas. But overall the data reflects a continuing trend of decline lakewide. It’s great that’s everyone’s talking to one another, but we’re very short on details of how we’re going to do this. The agreement says that we’ve added additional support to commitments. Well those commitments haven’t produced clean water or reduced pollution entering the lake. And in fact there’s new threats of pollution and contamination.”
The five-year extension includes provisions that focus on climate change and flood resiliency.
The agreement also aims to protect the lake from aquatic invasive species.
