Lake Bomoseen Environmental Alliance Spring Educational Meeting
Lake Bomoseen Environmental Alliance’s first annual Spring Educational Meeting will be held on May 4th from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm, and you are invited! Join us in Herrick Auditorium (Room 146) in the Stafford Academic Center of VT State University at Castleton for all or part of the day. The event is free, accessible, and open to the public.
From 9:00-10:15, meet the board members and hear a brief overview of the organization, updates on lake monitoring and water quality, news from our allied organizations, and a bit of lake history and ecology. Light refreshments will be available during a restroom break.
Our keynote speaker, Dr. Andy Vermilyea, PhD Geochemistry, will give a presentation from 10:30-11:30. Together we will explore what we really mean by 'water quality', how we might assess it, and what some of the emerging concerns are in our local water bodies. We will spend time focusing specifically on phosphorus and the sequence of events that can lead to potentially harmful algal blooms.
Professor Vermilyea teaches and conducts environmental chemistry research with students at VSU Castleton. His PhD came from the Colorado School of Mines, where he studied reactions driven by sunlight in freshwater bodies, and during research cruises in the Gulf of Alaska and around Bermuda. These reactions influence the availability of nutrients and can help to degrade contaminants. Afterwards, he worked for two years in Juneau, Alaska to understand how landscapes influenced the total export of nutrients from watersheds to a very productive coastal ecosystem like the Gulf of Alaska. Locally, Dr. Vermilyea has collaborated with UVM, the PMNRCD, and Lake St. Catherine Lake Association to study nutrient export from our Vermont landscapes and the resulting impact on our lakes.
There will be time for Q & A before a lunch break from noon to 1:00. Please plan either to bring a brown bag lunch or to visit a local eatery. We will provide a list of nearby options and sample menus.
Plan to reconvene at 1:00 for a presentation by Hilary Solomon, MEM, Manager of the Poultney Mettowee Natural Resources Conservation District. Hilary graduated from Duke University with a Master’s Degree in Water Resources and worked for the Ohio EPA and Ross County SWCD for three years, before moving to Vermont. She worked as the watershed coordinator for the Poultney Mettowee Watershed Partnership from 2004-2008 and returned to the district in 2012 as the Water Quality Specialist. In 2014, Hilary became the District Manager for PMNRCD. The PMNRCD and Rutland Regional Planning Commission have been named as the “South Lake and Southern Lake Champlain Direct Clean Water Service Provider” in accordance with Act 76, the Clean Water Service Delivery Act. As such, they are collaborating with many partners around the state on watershed management and conservation. Hilary will talk about PMNRCD’s focus and how the organization can help with management best practices (e.g., stormwater runoff mitigation and native plant buffers). Lake Bomoseen drains into the Castleton River, which joins the Poultney to enter Lake Champlain in West Haven, and thus is within this Conservation District.
Louis Daversa, VT State Game Warden stationed in Rutland, will join us with several colleagues at about 1:45 to discuss boating safety, including general regulations and problems he has encountered on the lake (e.g., life jacket usage). He also will touch on the new wakeboat regulations. There will be an additional opportunity for Q & A before the meeting closes at 3:00 pm. The Lake Bomoseen Environmental Alliance is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to protecting and preserving the lakes natural ecosystems and water quality through scientific research, lake monitoring, advocacy, public networking and education. For more information and/or updates, email lakebomoseenenvironmental@gmail.com, check our website www.lakebomoseen.org, and follow us on Facebook & Instagram. Currently, we are unsure whether we will have the capability of offering online access to the meeting.
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Welcome…
…to our new organization! The Lake Bomoseen Environmental Alliance, Inc. was incorporated with the State of Vermont in September 2023. We are the formal public benefit non-profit organization that grew from the unofficial Keep Lake Bomoseen Herbicide Free group. We now have an official board of directors, and we can enroll members and take donations to support our work.
Our mission is to protect and preserve Lake Bomoseen’s natural ecosystems and water quality through scientific research, lake monitoring, advocacy, public networking, and education. We still oppose the use of herbicides in the management of Eurasian watermilfoil. Click here to read our Mission and Vision Statements and our Core Values and Purpose.
If you support the work that we do, we urge you to join us as a member. We vow to keep our membership fee as low as possible so that it will not be a barrier to anyone. The cost for 2024 will be $10 per person. Additional donations are welcome (and encouraged!), and we are a 501c3 organization, so donations are tax deductible. Business memberships are available for $100.
Click the green button for more information and joining instructions. (If you’ve already become a member and wish to donate more, look for the donation button at the bottom of the page.)
Everyone’s lake
At approximately 2,400 acres, Lake Bomoseen is the largest lake within Vermont’s borders - a nearly 9-mile stretch of interconnected, natural ecosystems in Castleton & Hubbardton. Its average depth is estimated to be 27 feet and deepest zone 65 feet, providing a rich mix of habitats from marshy edge to open water, unlike many smaller bodies of water. For people, it is a year-round homescape, a vacation get-away, or a retreat from the stresses of "ordinary" life. For its myriad animal and plant communities, it is everything.
Humans can so easily unravel those relationships, that interdependent web of living and non-living things. Over and over we've made decisions based on our own immediate desires without fully understanding the repercussions to the natural communities. We've impaired water quality, destroyed habitat, jeopardized food and drinking water sources. We've been seduced by chemical companies promising quick and easy fixes, only to discover much later that their brews caused worse problems down the road, which impacted the health of people or wildlife.
Lake Bomoseen is currently relatively pristine, having not been legally treated with herbicides in over 40 years - a perfect natural lab for studying non-chemical management strategies. Like all public bodies of water in Vermont, it is owned by the people of Vermont. According to the Public Trust Doctrine, “As trustee of these waters and lands, the state, through the Department of Environmental Conservation, has an obligation to manage Vermont's lakes and ponds in a manner which preserves and protects a healthy environment, guarantees the right of Vermonters to hunt, fish, boat, swim, and enjoy other recreational opportunities, and provides the greatest benefit to the people of the state.” We are all stakeholders with equal voices.
Many of us who love Lake Bomoseen believe that herbicides do not belong in our public waters. We created this website as a repository of information gathered in our quest to Keep Lake Bomoseen Herbicide Free.
In February 2022, the Lake Bomoseen Association (joined later by the Lake Bomoseen Preservation Trust) filed an Aquatic Nuisance Control Permit Application with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. The application called for use of ProcellaCOR EC to treat Eurasian Watermilfoil. The treatment was to begin in July 2022 with the application of ProcellaCOR EC to 223 acres in the north end of Lake Bomoseen. The following two years, the remaining 398 acres of estimated milfoil habitat would be treated. This represents treatment of 93% of the littoral zone over the course of three years.
On June 30, 2023, the VT DEC issued a draft denial of the application.
On April 2, 2024, the VT DEC finalized the denial of the application.
Background
Photo by Jeremy Hynes on Unsplash
Why we are concerned?
ProcellaCOR EC was first registered with the EPA in 2018. There are no long-term studies on the safety and efficacy of this chemical. Our concerns include:
The possible long-term effects of this chemical on human health
The possible long-term effects of this chemical on the Lake Bomoseen ecosystem
The effect that killing off large swaths of milfoil will have on water quality
For further details, read our page “Why worry?”
Click here for a printable factsheet, developed in June 2022 by this group.
Who are we?
We are now an incorporated non-profit organization. Our directors and members, mostly from the local area, are united by our love of Lake Bomoseen. We include scientists, naturalists, educators, business owners, fishermen, nature enthusiasts, swimmers and other recreators, lakefront property owners (some of whom draw their drinking water from the lake), Lake Bomoseen Association members, parents, and grandparents.
We’re angry that an herbicide permit application was submitted with little transparency or public input. Our goal is to preserve this rich, pristine ecosystem without untested, unnecessary chemicals that could jeopardize health & habitat.
We also represent the concerns of the 1220+ members in the Keep Lake Bomoseen Herbicide Free Facebook group and the 3303+ signers of the change.org online petition.