Dear Rob:
In advance of my lecture and film on the 29th, you might give this statement to your students and ask them to read the 9 pages devoted to agriculture in the Draft Phase One Plan referred to:
On page four of the 236 page Draft Phase One Plan: Lake Champlain Total Maximum Daily Load, Commissioner Mears makes this straightforward statement:
“Agriculture is the largest source of phosphorus load into Lake Champlain, estimated to be approximately forty percent of the total load. Reducing polluted runoff from farms is by far the most cost effective investment we can make in reducing phosphorus.”
To combat this problem, the Draft Phase One Plan recommends that all farms, large and small, comply with the Accepted Agricultural Practices (1995). According to Mears, the AAPs were designed “to reduce non-point pollutant discharges through implementation of improved farming techniques rather than investments in structures and equipment, however...those remediations may be of a high cost. State law requires that these practices must be practical [emphasis added] as well as cost effective for farmers to implement.”
During the near twenty years the AAPs have been in effect, lake pollution attributable to agriculture has increased dramatically. Yet, the Draft Phase One Plan devotes just 9 pages to agriculture, recommending as its most important remedy that farms comply with the Accepted Agricultural Practices (1995).
These statements, taken together, tell us the state acknowledges that agriculture is the proximate cause of lake pollution but that state law prohibits implementation of any strategy to remedy it that imposes a cost on conventional dairy.
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