Vermont Spends Nearly One Billion Dollars on Lake Champlain Cleanup

Vermont has spent nearly one billion dollars over the past decade to clean up Lake Champlain. The Environmental Protection Agency warns the state is not on track to meet its cleanup goals. Halfway through a twenty-year cleanup effort mandated by the EPA, Vermont has achieved only thirty-five percent of its target. Seven of the lake's fifteen sampling stations have exceeded annual phosphorus limits every year since twenty fifteen. Agriculture remains the largest source of phosphorus runoff into the lake. State lawmakers mandated an independent audit by an outside environmental consultant to evaluate the cleanup projects. That audit was never done because no outside firms bid on the project. Douglas Farnham of the Clean Water Board said firms felt the audit's scope was too broad. State auditor Doug Hoffer noted that the lack of an independent study raises serious questions about accountability. Meanwhile, toxic blue-green algae blooms continue to shut down public beaches and threaten drinking water for about two hundred thousand people.