Perspectives on the Lake Champlain Restoration Plan
The Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL) at Vermont Law School announces the publication of information and perspectives on the Lake Champlain restoration plan recently approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the federal Clean Water Act (https://tinyurl.com/guc7kwu).

In June 2016, the EPA issued a document referred to as a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL), which assigns responsibility to landowners, farmers, and businesses for reducing the levels of phosphorus into Lake Champlain. The Lake Champlain edition of the VJEL (Volume 17, Issue 4) focuses on 12 Vermont segments of Lake Champlain, and provides understanding on how science, policy and law are intertwined in the efforts by the state, the EPA and the many Vermont businesses, citizens and farmers working to restore Lake Champlain. The issue's articles are written by scientists, engineers and policymakers who had direct influence on the development of the 2016 Lake Champlain TMDL.

Polluted stormwater runoff is the major challenge facing Lake Champlain, not surprising, given this "watershed has one of the highest ratios of land to water of any major water body in the U.S."

While the sources of pollution into the watershed are diffuse and spread across a wide area, the authors suggest that it "should be possible to change the way in which we touch the landscape, such that pollutant loads are reduced to levels that the watershed can assimilate and remain healthy."