Excessive amounts of algae blooming, waste being dumped, murky gray waters. What happened to lake Champlain? This year in the What's the Story program I will be researching and developing my knowledge on the water conditions of lake Champlain, which is noticeably bad. My interest has peaked over the past few months of hearing about it over the news, but I don't really know a lot about it. Apparently the water is a mess and the natural ecosystem is being destroyed, which inclines me to believe that not enough work is put into keeping the lake clean.
I have grown up next to a farm, and I try my hardest to eat locally grown food, food grown by farmers who need to fertilize their fields. As I have heard, fertilizer is running off fields into the lake, causing algae to grow excessively and cut off all other plants and water-life by using up oxygen. So does that mean farmers are at fault for the lake's well-fare? I hesitate to say anything that I am not sure of, but field runoff can't be everything... It looks like there is another source of the pollution.
The polluted water is affecting the drinking water, as well as the ecosystem, because the drinking water is pulled from the lake then 'cleaned'. But it appears that it is not being cleaned enough before use, and there have been accounts of sickness from drinking the water.
There are a lot of things that the pollution in the water affects, but what is the most important? What should I focus on these next few weeks during my research? One of the most intriguing things to me is the way that pollution whirls around beneath the surface, killing off marine life. It can't be good for the fish, that much is obvious. But to be honest, I really don't know anything about the way polluted water harms life in the lake. This is likely what I will focus on as I explore and discover the life of Champlain.
Through What's the Story I hope to answer some of these questions for myself, and decide where I stand and why. If you have any suggestions, sources, or questions, contact me!
Jack, interesting post here. I'll have to check out something, but by the end of this past summer there was supposed to be some sort of international Bread Loaf contingent looking at access to safe drinking water. I'll delve into that to see where that group has evolved to now.
ReplyDeleteThis issue of protecting our waters will grow increasingly important on a global scale and I think it's really neat to focus right here in Vermont. The Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington has a huge interest in these questions as does Patrick Leahy, one of our two US Senators. After you've thought through this a bit more and done some researching, I think contacting Leahy's office would be a must.
http://www.echovermont.org/
https://www.leahy.senate.gov/about
Like most good topics, the learning curve about what we know about Lake Champlain and what is being done about it already is steep and the more you can research in the coming weeks, the better, because you want to position yourself to a place where you are making sense of the best information out there.
Once you read up, maybe asking to visit with someone at Echo for a day or two of shadowing would be really a cool idea to see what's on environmentalists' and scientists' radars.
I look forward to reading more, soon.
-Tim
Nice job! This is definitely an important issue in Vermont right now. I really like how there is great potential to make a change with this issue. I would encourage you to research into the issue of water quality in Lake Champlain as much as you can to try to figure out which subtopic you would like to study in depth. You mentioned how you might want to learn about what effects the pollution has on marine life. If you chose to study that, Echo would be a good resource for you, as Tim said. Along with your research, do you have a particular change you are trying to accomplish? You may want to consider preservation efforts for Lake Champlain's marine life, or how farmers can prevent fertilizer runoff. You are off to a good start!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work,
Henry