Algae blooms choking St. Albans Bay are only a part of the bad news for water quality in Franklin County and Vermont as a whole.
Both the City and the Town of St. Albans are actively pursuing ambitious new development projects. In so doing, they may be contributing significantly to the ill health of the Bay.
One of the principle developments in the Town, a vast new Walmart store and parking lot, involves disturbance of a large tract of agricultural soil from which quantities of residual fertilizer have no doubt been “liberated” to find their way downstream. Even when developers satisfy the letter of the law with regard to controlling run-off from construction sites, there is no such thing as “zero contributions.”
Local wisdom holds that we can build, build, build our way out of our economic troubles; and that parking places somehow equate to job creation (a principle which I am sure has never been embraced by serious economists.)
Little is ever said about the impact of all this development pressure on our most valuable natural resource, since money has a powerful megaphone and water just burbles unobtrusively along.
Now, the honest effort by those who would act to protect the Bay has been dealt another serious blow. A program of significant value in the fight against lake decline has come to a halt.
Over town objections, flow gages were installed a couple of years ago in order to monitor the rate at which water (and therefore, the pollutants carried in that water) is entering the lake and from what sources.
The Town initially objected because they were concerned that accepting the monitoring meant some sort of obligation on their part….like, for instance, to do something about the phosphorus levels?
Now the gages will cease to operate at the end of September, largely due to government cutbacks. Not only will those gages be defunded, but so will a gage installed twenty years ago to monitor flow at the mouth of the Missisquoi River in Swanton. The Missisquoi is singularly important to the health of the entire Lake Champlain basin.
Flow data gleaned from the gages is paired with other data analyzing contaminant levels, so that effective policies can be developed to improve the overall vitality of our Lake.
As with all such efforts there are real economic benefits associated with a cleaner environment, but that is little appreciated by many officials, who live from election cycle to election cycle, concentrating on short term economics alone.
Unfortunately, I cannot link to the outstanding story filed in the Messenger by Michelle Monroe, which carries an informative history of monitoring efforts and the rise and fall of the program under a cloud of politics.
Vermont’s Clean & Clear played a significant role in securing the placement of the gages, but that effort was not without its local challenges.
Suffice it to say that when the Tea Party rails against earmarks, it is this sort of program that often gets the axe. Without a Leahy sponsored earmark, which initially required the U.S. Geological Services to pay for the gages, they very likely never would have been installed and we would not have the benefit of data that they have already collected.
Once that earmark had been pulled in 2010, the U.S.G.S. continued to pay for half of the monitoring, and the Lake Champlain Basin Program, using funds from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission paid for the rest. They also helped to support monitoring of some locations in New York State.
It appears that GLFC is no longer able to make that contribution, so all the of the monitoring will have to end.
And that’s a shame, because the health of the Lake was never in greater jeopardy than it is now, with development pressures and climate change worsening an already critical situation.
I have read more comments regarding this situation that attribute the algae growth to the use of fertilizers and its subsequent runoff. I would imagine there is a lot more of this fertilzer that is a contributing to the weed growth that leads to the algae bloom than the residual fertilzer you sight at the Walmart development. Can you provide your resource regarding your residual fertilizer theory? Thanks.
for another informative story, as well as graciously crediting those tasked with the environmental concerns and work involved. I have been hearing of St Albans woes nver wondering where you stood.
My condolences to the wildlif & ecosystems involved as well as the lake for the loss of support from agencies & officials who just don’t seem to get it or willing to prioritize a clean environment, but move heaven & earth to accomodate the purveyor of more foreign-made & Chinese cheap junk to keep our landfills full and of course jobkillers extaordinaire.
but if you look into the federal and state coordinated programs to improve the Chesapeake Bay watershed, one of the significant factors listed is urban runoff, so it is not too much of a jump to lend SOME credibility to the statement that is made in the article.
Clearly the drainage patterns of the lot layout and the holding ponds, etc. would mitigate a lot of the runoff factor, and in theory anything that went into the parking lot drainage system would be a fresh face as far as any P or N laden runoff. It is rare that the surrounding green spaces drain into the parking lots here, due to the ice and all….
So, Sue points to something that may have a degree of credibility, but anyone who has devoted any time to the water up in the St A bay and town area knew already that the problem was out of hand long before Wally arrived.
Each drop still fills the bucket a little…
they can reduce peak runoff to below pre-development conditions, and effectively treat nutrients. Farms that actively contribute nitrogen and phosphorus onto the land, where it can wash directly into streams without first passing through a vegetative buffer are a much greater threat to water quality.
Urban development in the Chesapeake Bay watershed (and elsewhere for that matter) degrades water quality when there are no treatment and control measures. Which is say, in most places, simply because much of the development occurred prior to stormwater management regulations. Retrofitting is expensive, especially when trying to fit solutions into a limited landscape. That is one reason (and a very big one) that huge estimates are given to meet water quality standards for streams and lakes. For example, the restoration of Potash Brook is estimated to run as high as $40 million.
The loss of stream gauge funding will come back to haunt us. Making wise land-use decisions depends upon accurate data. I’m of the opinion that there’s a certain political party that hates science and facts that run contrary to their philosophy of using up the earth’s resources – future populations be damned – that intentionally targets programs such as stream flow monitoring. If you don’t know where the floodplain is, how can government prevent someone from exercising their divine right to use their property as they see fit? As long as they’ve sold off the building before the next flood hits, the damage (and payment for that damage) is some other bloke’s problem.
http://unhmagazine.unh.edu/sp0…
Exposure appears to be strongly associated with the development of ALS, also known a Lou Gherig’s disease – an incurable, deadly, neurological disease.