Lake Champlain Committee
Winter draws to an end in the Lake Champlain Basin. LCC board chair Gary Kjelleren captured this scene of the sun setting on ice volcanoes at South Hero Town Beach in late February, during what may have been the final cold snap of a disconcertingly warm winter. Ice volcanoes are a phenomena unique to freshwater lakes, where waves push water and slush through the ice shelf above in a small eruption, leaving a conical mound resembling a volcano. (Photo by Gary Kjelleren.)
LCC coordinated students, teachers, and landscapers at BFA St. Albans High School to build infiltration trenches and plant native vegetation around campus to reduce stormwater runoff. The project was part of LCC’s ongoing work with schools to improve water quality.
LCC Helps BFA St. Albans Stay Ahead of the Storm
Stormwater runoff poses a major challenge for water quality in Lake Champlain. When rain falls on impervious surfaces, it does not have the chance to infiltrate into the ground and instead flows over roofs, parking lots, and roads—collecting pollutants and nutrients along the way—until it eventually reaches the lake, untreated. Runoff from developed land contributes more phosphorus to Lake Champlain than any other land use type per area. As the intensity and frequency of heavy precipitation events increases with climate change, efforts to mitigate stormwater runoff are increasingly critical. LCC has done extensive work on stormwater reduction at schools over the years including producing a stormwater education manual, conducting storm drain stenciling projects with educational facilities and municipalities, undertaking “Ahead of the Storm” stormwater assessments, and collaborating with Lake Champlain Sea Grant (LCSG) to develop the Soaking Up Stormwater Curriculum Guide.
Schools provide ideal locations for both educational work and stormwater reduction efforts given their central role within communities and many of them also have extensive areas of impervious surface from large buildings and parking lots. Bellows Free Academy in St. Albans Vermont (BFA St. Albans) was a particularly apt setting for LCC to pilot our 2023 school stormwater reduction project (funded through a grant from the Lake Champlain Basin Program) because of its proximity to Stevens Brook, a stream designated as an impaired waterway by the State of Vermont, and St. Albans Bay, an area with high levels of phosphorus and frequency of cyanobacteria blooms. We teamed up with school staff and students along with LCSG to assess conditions and develop a project to address the most challenging on-site stormwater issues at the school’s campus in downtown St. Albans.
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Neonicotinoid pesticides have devastating impacts not just on pollinator populations, but on aquatic invertebrates such as mayflies. (Photo by Richard Bartz, Wikimedia Commons).
Say "No" to Neonicotinoids
For about as long as we have had agriculture, we have had agricultural pests—insects and other creatures who make their living off food we grow. We’ve been in an evolutionary showdown with these pests for centuries, adapting new technologies to better protect our food. The stakes of the back and forth increased dramatically with the advent of chemical pesticides. In the 1980’s, a specific class of pesticide was developed called neonicotinoids, or “neonics”. These are versatile chemicals that can be added to irrigation water, onto plant tissue, or treated on a plant’s seeds so they’re built into the plant as it grows. The chemical binds with receptors in insects’ central nervous systems, which leads to paralysis and ultimately death. They are the most widely used chemical insecticide in the world, accounting for roughly 25% of global pesticide use, and are in an estimated 99% of corn seeds in Vermont as well as most corn seeds in New York. In the scope of the tit-for-tat battle we’ve been engaged in with pests this may seem like a win for humans. But, as with all things in nature, pesticides do not exist in a vacuum—there are wide-ranging unintended consequences of neonics on ecological systems above and below the water.
The four seasons of birding as imagined by science cartoonist and birder Rosemary Mosco (an alum of the University of Vermont Field Naturalist Program).
Weird Duck Time in Lake Champlain
The changing of the seasons in the Lake Champlain Basin brings new wonders to the avian world. Cartoonist, writer, avid birder, and graduate of the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program Rosemary Mosco broke down the four seasons of bird watching in the Northeast US: Elegant Songbird Spring, Subtle Treasures of Summer, Magnificent Fall Migrations, and the season we are now in—Weird Duck Time.
Lake Look
Botanist Grace Glynn with the Vermont Dept. of Fish & Wildlife captured this image of a single duckweed plant curved around its turion in preparation for winter.
Native Aquatic Plants in Winter
While the winter of 2024 has been unseasonably warm, we still needed to turn on the heat and don extra layers to adjust to the seasonal change. But what about the lake’s vegetative life? How have the native aquatic plants of Lake Champlain evolved to survive winter?
Nature Note
American bullfrogs are quiet during the winter, not attracting our attention the way they do in the warmer seasons.
American Bullfrogs Take A Nap
American bullfrogs (Lithobates catesbeianus) are deeply associated with spring and summer–their deep “jug-o-rum” serenade evokes images of hot summer nights: fireflies, and leafed-out trees. But what are they up to during cooler times? As with all living things in the Lake Champlain region, bullfrogs need to adapt to the winter season, and as aquatic amphibians, many do this in the lake itself.
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Thank You
Members of our great 2023 cyanobacteria monitoring crew included from left to right, Bruno Tufelli monitor at Champlain Avenue, Philipsburg, QC; Sandy Murphy who checked conditions at Indian Brook Reservoir, Essex Jct. VT; Jerilyn Bergdahl who reported from South Pond, Eden, VT; and Christina Duell who assessed Rock Point-Eagle Bay, Burlington, VT.
Kudos to Cyanobacteria Monitors!
Sincere thanks to our wonderful team of cyanobacteria monitors and partner organizations for diligently checking Lake Champlain and inland lake locations during the 2023 season. Monitors collectively filed nearly 3,000 reports over a 19-week period.
Preparation for the 2024 season is underway and we welcome additions to our crew! If you have some free time every week during the summer and fall and want to give back to a waterbody you love, please sign up. You’ll receive training in the spring, a monitoring toolkit, and support from LCC staff throughout the monitoring season. We’ll also outfit you with gloves and a cool hat and T-shirt. By volunteering you’ll help gather important data to aid research, keep community members apprised of water conditions, and strengthen and expand the monitoring program.
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Clean Lake Tip
Keeping storm drains clear of debris helps reduce the pollutants that runoff can collect on its way to local waterways.
Adopt-a-Drain: Cleaning storm drains for water quality
We don’t often give surface water much thought on its journey after it enters a storm drain–out of sight, out of mind. But the health of the waters going through storm drains is intrinsically tied to the health of all of our waters. It’s a common misconception that storm drains usually lead to wastewater treatment plants. In reality, most of this water is directly discharged into nearby waterbodies, and in the Lake Champlain basin, that means it eventually winds up in the lake. Before runoff enters a storm drain, it can pick up a wide range of pollutants and nutrients from the streets, fields, and sidewalks it rolls over.
One way you can help improve the water quality of stormwater runoff is by cleaning storm drains on your street. These drains, particularly during periods of spring rains and snowmelt, can become clogged with trash, sediment, and leaves and other organic matter. When runoff is prevented from entering the storm drain, it is spending more time on the streets collecting pollutants before it is discharged. Organic materials that clog storm drains also leach phosphorus into the water, which feeds cyanobacteria blooms.
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Water News from Near & Far
Flood Resiliency in Waterbury, VT
Flood resiliency efforts took many creative forms in Waterbury, VT during the floods of 2023. While the town experienced extensive flood impacts, a combination of hazard mitigation after Tropical Storm Irene and fast action from town officials and volunteers helped stave off the worst and expedite recovery.
Read more in this piece from Lake Champlain Sea Grant.
Winter Flooding Projected to Worsen with a Changing Climate
Parts of the Lake Champlain Basin flooded in late December 2023 with heavy rain raising river levels past flood stage. Unfortunately, this type of flooding, exacerbated by wet snow and snowmelt, is expected to become more frequent in our region as our atmosphere warms
Read more in this piece by VTDigger
The Road to Salt Reduction
We need to cut back on our salt use in order to protect Lake Champlain and adjacent waterways. This article in Adirondack Explorer outlines ways to do this—through regulation, education, decreasing liability, individual action, and improved infrastructure.
Unexpected Impact of Alewife Invasion in Lake Champlain
Researchers at University of Vermont Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory are investigating the role of invasive alewife in altering the Lake Champlain food web. In the Great Lakes, this fish has reduced populations of lake trout and other fish; however, in Lake Champlain, a reverse trend seems to have emerged: since the introduction of alewife, populations of fish species in decline during the 20th century have been rebounding. Read more on this research from ecoNews VT.
New Report on Forest Protection as a Strategy for Clean Water Protection
The Open Space Institute (OSI) released a new report quantifying the benefits of forest protection on water quality, with strategies and practical tools to ensure clean water programs can more effectively engage in the conservation of forested land to achieve their goals. The report provides hard data to support what we already knew: that forest health supports water health. Read more about the OSI publication on their website here.
Great Lakes Ice Coverage Hits Record Low
Ice coverage on the Great Lakes is only a sliver of the average for the date. This is a result of El Nino exacerbating dramatic warming trends in the region–our Great Lake neighbors are some of the fastest warming lakes in the world . Read more in this piece from Yale Climate Connections.
Photo by Lori Fisher. © Lake Champlain Committee.
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Lake Champlain Committee Board of Directors
Gary Kjelleren, Chair | South Hero, VT
Sandy Montgomery, Treasurer | Montreal, QC
Alan Booth | Plattsburgh, NY
Cliff Landesman | Brooklyn, NY
Rick Sharp | Colchester, VT
Hank Slauson | Shelburne, VT
Michaela Stickney | Huntington, VT
Lake Champlain Committee Advisory Council
Lisa Borre | Belding, MI
Steven Kellogg | Essex, NY
Peter S. Paine Jr. | Willsboro, NY
Mary Watzin | Raleigh, NC
Staff & Support
Lori Fisher, Executive Director
Eileen Fitzgerald, Education & Outreach Associate
Alexa Hachigian, Office Manager/Field Associate
Jared Carpenter, Water Protection Advocate
Rei Jia, Field Assistant
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