Water matters to residents in Shelburne, Hinesburg and Charlotte

A group of concerned residents turned out to learn about why water matters. Courtesy photo

By Roberta Nubile

A group of about 70 citizens and town officials from Hinesburg, Charlotte, and Shelburne gathered at the latest Water Matters event last Thursday, March 30 at the Hinesburg Town Hall.

“The purpose of the Water Matters series is to raise awareness about LaPlatte River watershed pollution concerns among the three towns who share it,” said Jean Kiedaisch, a member of Responsible Growth Hinesburg, one of the event cosponsors along with Lewis Creek Association and the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission.

What is a watershed and why does it matter? According to Steve Nicholas of the Institute for Sustainable Communities, a watershed is “the geographic area drained by surface and subsurface water systems (e.g. streams, rivers and aquifers)” that goes beyond town borders.  He emphasized that post-Irene, “Collaboration across boundaries is the key to dealing with tough challenges, like cleaning up Lake Champlain or preparing for future extreme storms and flooding.”

According to a 2011 report from the LaPlatte Watershed Partnership, the watershed includes approximately 174 miles of river channel and tributaries that drain a 53-square-mile area mainly in Hinesburg, Charlotte, and Shelburne before discharging into Shelburne Bay.

Act 64, Vermont’s Clean Water Act, regulates practices and funds initiatives to help clean up Lake Champlain and the rivers and tributaries that flow toward it.  Of greatest concern is stormwater (from rain or snowmelt) that drains from the parking lots, roads, farm fields, and lawns, and the bacteria, phosphorous, and sediment it contains, which can render lake water undrinkable, unfishable, and unswimmable.

In June 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released phosphorous pollution limits for Lake Champlain called TMDLs (total maximum daily loads), for 12 Vermont segments of Lake Champlain, including Shelburne Bay.  The segments are broken into sectors, which include wastewater treatment facilities, runoff from developed lands and roadways, agricultural and forest lands, and erosion in unstable stream corridors. The TMDLs help define standards and where to best concentrate efforts of pollution reduction. When a waterway becomes impaired by these standards, it is federally required that a state take action.  It is commonly accepted that it is far less costly and less dangerous to human, pet, and aquatic health to act before a waterway becomes impaired.

The meeting showcased two tools that illustrate how to prioritize cleanup efforts of watersheds, and a grassroots initiative at CVU.

The first tool, the Clean Water Roadmap, was explained by Neil Kamman of the Vermont Department of Conservation.  The interactive web-based tool, said Kamman, has multiple functions and layers, which include identification of Vermont watershed areas and their baseline total phosphorous rates based on 25 years of testing; best conservation opportunities;  a soil-water assessment tool which looks at how landscape affects water quality; and “reasonable assurance scenarios,” where a user can plug in a project and see what the result might be.

Kamman emphasized that the roadmap is not a tactical basin plan per se (TBP are plans that state-specific projects or actions need to clean up bodies of water and identify funding sources to complete the work, based on monitoring and assessment data), but the data can help inform the plans.

Lewis Creek Association Program Coordinator and Charlotte resident Krista Hoffsis then presented the more local LaPlatte Watershed Water Quality Scorecard. This map showed the results of stream pollution monitoring by the South Chittenden River Watch volunteers in Shelburne, Hinesburg, and Charlotte, along McCabe’s, Thorp, Kimball, and Holmes Brooks, with levels of water quality delineated by red, green, and yellow. By showing “hot spots,” the map allows homeowners to see how their neighborhood directly affects the water that runs into the lake.

The last presentation was from Marty Illick of Lewis Creek Association who reviewed the Ahead of the Storm project, a grassroots initiative that showcases local demo sites in Charlotte, Hinesburg, and Shelburne to teach residents how to help water sink into the ground rather than have it rush toward the lake, carrying phosphorous and sediment. Two CVU students, Molly Duncan and Mia O’Farrell, who participated in the school’s AOTS demo site, presented details of the project at their school.

Karen Bates, watershed coordinator at the Agency of Natural Resources, attended the meeting. It is fitting that she grew up in Shelburne and is now part of the team that developed the tactical basin plan for the watershed.  She recalls as a child growing up in Shelburne, “watching water run-off in a much different way than I do now. I have learned that water doesn’t need to be so fast – and we all need to learn how let it sink in, spread, and slow it down.”

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