Federal Agencies Work Group Opportunities for Federal Action: Preventing Pollution from Toxic Substances

Reduce toxic contamination to protect public health and the Lake Champlain ecosystem.

KEY FEDERAL ACTIONS Environmental Protection Agency EPA provides funding for the Superfund program at the Pine Street Barge Canal and the Plattsburgh Air Force Base (AFB), Brownfield grants, and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) grants and enforcement. The Agency is also involved in the lease process involving the interim and long-term use of the entire Plattsburgh AFB acreage. Additionally, EPA has listed the Commerce Street Plume site in Williston, Vermont, as a Superfund site. This addition to the National Priority List under Superfund will allow for eventual cleanup of the site.

TOM MANLEY NOAA has supported research on the Lake hydrodynamics by Middlebury College Professor, Tom Manley (far right).

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Environmental contaminants specialists in the Service’s Division of Environmental Quality review environmental documents, legislation, regulations, and permits and licenses with pollution potential to ensure that harmful effects on fish, wildlife, and plants are avoided or minimized. These specialists work in the field on Superfund activities, natural resource damage assessments, dredging and disposal of contaminated sediments, special contaminant studies both on and off Service lands, and oil and chemical spill response.

U.S. Geological Survey

The USGS is completing a five-year (2001–2006) study to understanding of mercury (Hg) and methyl-mercury (MeHg) movement in the Lake Champlain Basin. This study has quantified the amount of Hg in river water that enters the lake and has identified urban land uses as a large source of elemental Hg and agricultural land as a surprisingly large source of MeHg—the toxic form of Hg. This knowledge of factors controlling Hg movement in ecosystems has been incorporated to Hg mass-balance models of Lake Champlain and will help identify better management practices to mitigate Hg contamination in surface waters and fish. Total funding for the project is at $750,000. (Funding in 2006 is $38,000.)

The USGS initiated a two year study in 2006 to determine the presence of a new class of contaminants in the water environment—
pharmaceuticals, animal and plant hormones, and other by-products of societal activities and life-styles. This new class of contaminants—referred to as organic wastewater contaminants (OWC) —is of emerging concern because little is known about their occurrence in the environment,
their effects on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and how to accurately measure their presence. Recently, studies throughout the United States have started to document their presence in streams and ground waters and USGS has been at the forefront of this work. Lake Champlain is an important source of drinking water, receives inputs from permitted wastewater discharges, and has high recreational value, suggesting routes by which humans and aquatic organisms could be exposed to these compounds. There is no known information on the presence,
distribution, or concentrations of contaminants of emerging concern in the Lake Champlain Basin; the Basin itself represents an excellent area in which to study OWC because of the range of land uses within its boundaries—from rural forests to intensively
agricultural and urban lands. Total funding for the project is $161,000. (Funding in 2006 is $105,000.)

Mercury in the Environment (USGS Fact Sheet, October 2000)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

UVM Captain Dick Furbush, of the University of Vermont research boat, Melosira, holds a drifter used for hydrodynamic research on the Lake.

Through the Lake Champlain Research Consortium, NOAA provides approximately $200,000 annually for atmospheric and hydrodynamic research in the Lake Champlain Basin. Approximately $100,000 supported the work of Tom Manley of Middlebury College, who continued the ongoing underwater drifters program with a number of collaborators from New York, Massachusetts, and France. Remaining resources support atmospheric and hydrodynamic research initiatives, upkeep of the Colchester Reef meteorological station, and an ongoing study of mercury transport. The Lake Champlain Sea Grant (LCSG) research initiative provides urban watershed pollution prevention, reduction and education activities to assist residents, local officials, businesses and volunteer organizations to reduce toxic non-point-source pollutants from residential, institutional and business properties. Education and technical support reduces pesticide, oil/grease and household chemical inputs in urban watersheds, including Englesby Brook, Burlington; Stevens and Ruggs Brook, St. Albans; and Mallets Bay, Colchester. The NOAA Air Resources Laboratory and LCSG supported the development of a unified atmospheric deposition research and monitoring plan for the Lake Champlain watershed, including budgets, research priorities, an extension plan and a framework for interagency collaboration. These recommendations guide NOAA and other Federal deposition research and monitoring investments in the basin, especially in relation to Hg and airborne toxins.