Interview #1

Douglas Facey, PhD; Professor of Biology at St. Michael’s College

10/7/14 in 302B Cheray Hall, St. Michael’s College

CC: Could you explain your personal take and the work you’ve done involving the water quality of Lake Champlain?

DF: Well, in terms of work, I study mainly fishes in Lake Champlain. So I actually don’t do research specifically on the water quality. However, I’m aware of a lot of the issues on the Lake. I don’t have a research perspective. The concerns that I have are shared really by a lot of people, not particular to me, and that is that the issues that we have in Lake Champlain are issues that we have had for a very long time. There’ve been a lot of people who have been talking about this for a very long time, and although there have been some efforts made to try to improve the situation, we haven’t been very successful. I think you could make the case that a lot of what has been done…and a lot of money has been spent already…probably we’re better off than we would have been had we not done anything. But we haven’t seen improvement. We’ve seen maybe a slow-down in the rate at which it’s getting worse, which is better than nothing, but not very satisfactory. And there’s lots of reasons. A lot of people do point the finger towards agriculture for part of the issue. Because a lot of the ag[riculture] components and regulations are voluntary, and there’s not very strong enforcement. There is stronger enforcement on dealing with wastewater treatment and sewage treatment plants. They contribute proportionately. The whole issue for this here is nutrients. Mainly phosphorus that comes into the lake and helps feed the plant growth. And that’s what feeds the algae blooms. Nitrogen is a concern too, but mostly the focus right now is on phosphorus. Most of the phosphorus in the lake is coming from agricultural sources. A lot of it also comes from urban and suburban runoff, though. We have to be honest about that. Sometimes people are too anxious to point the finger at the farmers, but the reality is, every time you put in a new road or a new housing development or a shopping center, you increase the rate at which the water is going to rush off of that land. And it surges into the local rivers and streams and creeks, there’s a lot of turbulence, and there’s a lot of phosphorus that’s just literally tied up with particles of soil and sand. So erosion becomes part of the problem, so does agriculture because of fertilizers, whether it’s cow manure or other chemical fertilizers. So those are big components. The wastewater treatment facilities, they don’t contribute as much total phosphorus, but the type of phosphorus that they do contribute is what’s called dissolved phosphorus, which is very quickly absorbed by the plants. So even though it’s not a lot, what goes in is very quickly absorbed. A lot of the stuff that comes in from runoff is phosphorus bound up in soil particles, which physically gets into the system, but it doesn’t become available to the plants chemically immediately. It has to go through some biochemical process. So there’s a lot of back and forth about, you know, how do we best spend the money to get the best effects? Should we try to put more regulation on sewage treatment plants, which we’re already controlling most of their phosphorus, or should we try to target certain farms? And if you target farms, then should we treat all farms the same? Should we focus mainly on large farms? There are a lot of exemptions for small farms because they’re small operations and people don’t want to put them out of business. So, where is the farm? Is it literally right along the river? Or is it not so close? So it’s not that easy. There’s not enough money to completely fix everything. So you have to figure out what’the most effective way to spend the money.

CC: How are you affected personally by the water quality of Lake Champlain? Would you ever swim or fish in the water, knowing what you know?

DF: Oh I do swim and fish in Lake Champlain. I would never go in if there was an active algae bloom in play. You can look at the water, and if it’s green and yucky looking, then don’t go swimming. I’m very sensitive to the fact that we have these problems in Lake Champlain and nobody likes to see them there. I do get a little bit concerned, however. I think the view that some people have is that the entire lake is in terrible condition. And although things are not going well in certain parts of the lake, it’s not bad all over the lake all of the time. In fact, much of the lake is in pretty good shape. However, having said that, there are definitely signs in the last decade or more, that things are going in a bad direction. And even places in the lake that didn’t use to have algae blooms are starting to see them. And part of the reason for that, people believe, is associated with climate change. Because what’s happening with our climate here is we’re getting a larger number of very intense rainstorms. And when you get those rainstorms that come by where you get like three, four, maybe six inches of rain overnight, in a few hours, you get huge runoff. And that just tears up the ground and just a whole bunch of nutrients end up in there, instead of coming in more slowly. One of the interesting things that you see if you look at the way that phosphorus comes into the lake, is that certainly it comes through rivers and streams, but a lot of it comes in during a relatively small number of very intense storm events. A huge proportion of your phosphorus could come in over just maybe three or four or five storm events over the entire year. That could be half or more of your phosphorus load. Just because so much comes down so fast that it just floods everything. And that’s really really bad. We also get a lot in the spring, but that depends on how quickly the snow melts up in the mountains, and if agricultural fields get flooded as the storms come down. They can wash away a lot of soil and a lot of fertilizer that goes into the lake, and it just depends on a lot of things. But climate change is definitely a factor; because of the way it has changed our rain events. That’s making it more difficult to manage, so that the concepts and the models that people have been working with for the last twenty or thirty years, which are largely based on what things used to be like twenty or twenty-five years ago, it’s just not holding up anymore because our rainfall patterns have changed.

CC: Wow. So this is definitely a long-term project.

DF: Oh, absolutely. The other issue to add to it is that even if we were able to completely shut off the inflow of new phosphorus, which we can’t, but even if you could, there’s a lot built up in the sediment from the last thirty, forty, fifty years. So it’s already there. So, it’s going to continue to be released. So it’s a very, very long-term kind of project. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Because you have to try. And people are aware of it, it’s just a matter of how far they are willing to go, and how much are they willing to spend to try to get it under control sooner rather than later.

CC: So does that mean it’s unrealistic to think about now, immediately?

DF: No, I don’t think it’s unrealistic to try. I think we have to try. But I think we need to try harder. And that’s where some people say, well, if you crack down too hard, you put some people out of business, and that’s not a good thing. Well, that’s perhaps true, although you may be able to provide a lot of assistance. And there are a lot of programs to assist farms and other communities to try and control these things. There are federal programs, funding available, there’s assistance available, but it still costs money. And there’s not enough money to help enough people. A lot of people want to do the right thing, they know what the right thing to do is, and they could get some assistance in doing it. But the lake is for all of us. And if the lake goes down too badly, that affects other people’s businesses. Just as an example, the northern portion of Lake Champlain in Vermont is actually shared with Quebec. It’s called Missisquoi Bay; it’s a very shallow, relatively warm bay. That’s one of the places that has been most heavily hit, along with St. Alban’s Bay, in the last decade or so, with these blue green algae blooms. Most of Missisquoi Bay is actually in Canada, about roughly two-thirds of it. But the other third is in Vermont. On the Canadian side of Lake Champlain, there are a lot of summer resorts, and there’s one significant resort on the Vermont side. And there are a lot of cottages that are based on summer rentals and stuff, so there’s an entire industry, you know, a local economic factor, in that region of lower Quebec and northern Vermont, that depends on tourism on Missisquoi Bay. When the blue green algae kicks in, which is usually mid to late July, when it gets kind of warm, this year I think it hit in early August or a little bit earlier than that, you know tourism just drops off dramatically. I mean, who wants to go to a lakeside resort if the lake smells bad, and it looks bad, and you can’t go swimming? So there are economic factors if you don’t do things. There are economic factors on other people if you do things. So if you go to all the farmers and say, you have to stop doing this, you have to do things differently, it hurts them economically. If you don’t do that, then it hurts other people economically. So not doing anything is actually doing something.It’s just not good.