After issuing its State of the Lake report on the health of Lake Champlain in June, Patrick Leahy-Lake Champlain Basin Program officials and scientists have been conducting public outreach sessions to explain the implications of the report. One of the latest brought residents and stakeholders together to hear directly from the report’s chief scientist.
The Basin Program’s Love the Lake lecture series began about 20 years ago to discuss the cultural and natural resources of the Lake Champlain watershed. Education and Outreach Steward Madeline Reilly introduced the most recent talk, which focused on the State of the Lake Report.
“It comes out every three years and it’s the most up-to-date current scientific data and accounting of the state of the lake, the health of its ecosystems and also the work that we’re doing and is being funded throughout the basin to improve water quality as well as education initiatives and wildlife. Pretty much everything that’s encompassed in the watershed,” explained Reilly.
Chief Scientist Matthew Vaughan says the report is part a response to pressures on the environment and ecosystem.
“This is the state of the lake or state of our watershed where we use our latest monitoring data to determine what the state of our water quality and our habitat quality is. And then we form a response which is called Opportunities for Action. It’s a management plan. In that management plan we have four goals for the Lake Champlain Basin Program: clean water, healthy ecosystems and an informed and involved public and thriving communities,” Vaughan said. “So these are shared goals. We all want these things, right. This is how we kind of organize our work and how the State of the Lake report is also organized.”
One of the most visible water quality issues are blue green algae blooms that cause beach closures. Vaughan explained how the cyanobacteria blooms cause problems for beachgoers.
“The kind of recipe for a cyanobacteria bloom is excessive nutrients, things like phosphorus and nitrogen, calm water and warm water. And when these conditions are out there cyanobacteria wins the race and they are able to grow more than other things that are growing and that’s when you get a cyanobacteria bloom and these water quality problems,” Vaughan said.
Vaughan touched on public and community engagement. As he discussed healthy ecosystems and clean water he was interrupted by a South Hero resident.
“We have very high-quality drinking water although, as is true throughout much of the world, we do need to treat our water for it to be safe to drink,” noted Vaughan.
“I have a question on that,” interrupts a South Hero resident. “We can’t get water. We have to get our own well.”
“There’s a mix of water suppliers,” replies Vaughan. “Some residents need to drill a well and get their water from the ground water and for this graphic we’re focusing on major public water, community public water supply for Lake Champlain specifically.”
Stakeholders and residents did not identify themselves, but had numerous questions on water quality monitoring. One man was curious about an emerging pollutant in the lake.
“Have you been monitoring styrofoam and the microplastics that get disbursed?”
“Yeah. There has been some work on microplastics in Lake Champlain,” Vaughan confirms. “There’s a team at SUNY Plattsburgh that’s been leading the research and they’ve found microplastics but also fibers from fleece that might be going in the waste stream from laundry, things like that. They’ve actually found nurdles which is a type of plastic that’s used in plastic production. So they’ve done some initial work and we’re actually just beginning a new study to look at microplastics on beaches and on Lake Champlain and its tributaries. So we’re going to learn a lot more about microplastics throughout our environment in the next few years.”
An upcoming Love the Lake session will focus on microplastic pollution in the Lake Champlain watershed.
