The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation is taking public comment at regional planning commission meetings regarding its updated water quality plans for the Lake Champlain Basin. The latest was held at the Addison County Regional Planning Commission in Middlebury.
The state DEC has developed draft water quality plans for the Otter Creek and Northern Lake Champlain watershed drainage basins. Working in conjunction with regional planners, towns, local nonprofits and scientists, the draft plans outline ways to restore or protect rivers, lakes and wetlands.
The department held a public information session during a meeting of the Addison County Regional Planning Commission. DEC Watershed Planner Angie Allen explained the concept of the tactical basin plans.
“They’re intended to protect, maintain, enhance and restore all of the surface waters across the state of Vermont. So you can think of them as large scale water management plans,” explained Allen. “And we have 15 planning basins across the state and we update the basin plans every five years.”
Allen noted that the process to update the plan is the same in each regional basin.
“We start by going out and monitoring the surface waters, lakes and ponds, rivers and streams and wetlands. We don’t do anything with groundwater. After we monitor, we do assessments and we identify where we have water quality issues or where we have waters that are high quality waters and where we want to then go forth and identify strategies to protect or restore those waters based on their condition,” Allen said. “We gather and incorporate public input and feedback into the basin plan. We publish that plan and then set about implementing the actions that we identified that are the most important pieces of work that we want to do to support surface water health in the basin over the upcoming five years.”
Basin 3 includes the Addison County region. The plan identifies areas that exceed water quality standards and also indicates water bodies that need remediation.
“There are a lot of really high-quality waters in the basins. We also identify priority waters for restoration in this plan and DEC goes out and monitors and assesses chemical, biological and physical attributes and status of surface waters and the pollutants of concern. And we do that every two years,” reported Allen. “The pollutants of concern as of 2022 were nutrients, E-Coli, mercury in fish tissue. The most prominent TMDL, Total Maximum Daily Load, in Basin 3 is arguably the Lake Champlain phosphorus TMDL. We are in Phase 3 of the implementation plan to meet the goals of that TMDL and it’s included as a part of this draft.”
There were a number of questions about the draft water quality plan. Addison County Planning Commission Delegate Ross Conrad was curious about contaminant monitoring.
“In your presentation you mentioned phosphorus, chloride, aquatic invasives. I’m wondering what other issues or potential contaminants that cause water quality impairment does this plan address?” asked Conrad.
“We identified bridges, culverts, dams that impede the movement of aquatic organisms. Nitrogen is a pollutant of concern that are in the Connecticut River basins,” replied Allen.
“I’m just wondering why for example why pesticides or petroleum products not something that is looked at in terms of water quality?” Conrad questioned.
“We do include a section on PFAS. If we don’t have monitoring or assessment data we don’t include it in the plan,” noted Allen.
The public comment period for the Lake Champlain Basin water quality plans ends October 24th.
