Dear friends of CLF.

• Author: Warburg, Philip
• Position: Conservation Law Foundation - Brief article - Travel narrative

THIS PAST JULY, I TRAVELED WITH MY WIFE and two teenaged daughters to Lake Champlain. Renting bikes in downtown Burlington, we headed north along a short section of the 363-mile Champlain Bikeway. The wooded trail, with its occasional vistas out onto the lake and surrounding mountains, was spectacular.

It would be wonderful if those beautiful vistas were matched by the lake's ecology, but that's far from the case. Given recent rains, my family sadly yielded to warnings against swimming at any of the beaches along the bike trail. Pollution has crippled sections of the lake, with blue-green algae blooms posing a health hazard to people and their pets.

CLF's Lakekeeper team is working hard to rein in Lake Champlain's phosphorous loadings, the primary cause of algae blooms and excessive weed growth. Cracking down on municipal...