Why cow manure might not be Lake Champlain's worst enemy

Joel Banner Baird
Burlington Free Press

Originally published Dec. 1, 2017

ESSEX JUNCTION - Mounds of phosphorus-rich manure have long been targeted by water-quality advocates around Lake Champlain, but a recent state analysis shows that fertilized hay and cornfields are far more potent culprits.

Lori Fisher, executive director of nonprofit Lake Champlain Committee, displays a water sample she took at Burlington's Oakledge Park on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017.
Fisher took the precaution of wearing gloves, even though windy conditions precluded formation of cyanobacteria blooms.

That finer-toothed finding, and others that track the passage of pollutants into waterways, might yield more bang-for-the-buck, officials say.

 “There is so much to do, everywhere — but we don’t have to do everything, everywhere,” Karen Bates, a watershed planner with Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, said Thursday at a public meeting in Essex Junction.

Karen Bates, a watershed coordinator and planner with Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, discusses pollution-reduction strategies during a meeting Thursday night in Essex Junction.
Photographed Nov. 30, 2017.

Vermont’s latest update to plans for meeting federally mandated limits to phosphorus pollution offers unprecedented specificity and a keener sense of direction, Bates told the five people in attendance.

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The challenge remains monumental, she added: Scientists have cautioned that reversing the lake’s degradation will take decades, and the infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars.

And every summer, fueled by phosphorus and an ever-warming climate, the life cycles of aggressive plants and cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, go into overdrive.

Other aquatic species suffer as oxygen levels in the water plummet — as does Lake Champlain’s appeal to water-loving humans.

The state’s proposed updates for a cleanup include sophisticated computer modeling that predicts how terrain, slope, rainfall patterns and land use affect phosphorus runoff.

So far, much of that modeling corresponds to boots-on-the-ground inventories, Bates said.

A consensus at Thursday's meeting: Farms, which annually contribute the lion’s share of phosphorus into the lake, are likely to remain front-and-center for regulation and enforcement.

Practically speaking, fixes to the agricultural landscape, from wider buffer zones around streams to more restrained fertilizer applications, are also quicker and cheaper to implement than tweaks to more urban landscapes, Bates said.

Less obvious is the role played by agricultural drainage pipes, or tiles, that help dry out fields.

Those common, subterranean features of the rural landscape speed the flow of water-borne phosphorus into streams and should be included in the state's calculations, said Rebekah Weber, Lake Champlain Lakekeeper with Montpelier-based Conservation Law Foundation. 

Statistical models — coupled with Vermont's political inertia and budget shortfalls —  suggest that improvements to lake water will be modest in the short run.

Potential reductions in phosphorus "exports" to Lake Champlain are shown (warm colors are highest) in this map created in Nov. 2017 by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
The largest red "hot-spots" in the map correspond to intensive farming around St. Albans, Hinesburg and Charlotte.

Patience is in short supply among some advocates, who say decades of half-measures have proved fruitless.

Leicester resident James Maroney, a retired organic dairy farmer, opposes public funding to upgrade dairy operations as long owners are “hell-bent on increasing production” through phosphorus fertilizer imported into the Lake Champlain watershed.

“There’s no muscle in this plan, and I don’t want to pay that tax,” Maroney said.

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Public comments about proposed updates to Lake Champlain cleanup plans are welcome until 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 18, and can be emailed to Karen Bates at karen.bates@vermont.gov.

Find the plan online at http://dec.vermont.gov/watershed/map/basin-planning/basin5.

Contact Joel Banner Baird at 802-660-1843 or joelbaird@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @VTgoingUp.