Sprawl & water pollution: what you may not know about how development patterns are threatening our lakes and rivers.

• Author: Stein, Melanie

IT WAS A SUMMER of record rainfall in Vermont, ensuring a robust fall harvest and steadily flowing rivers and streams. Snow and rainwater breathe life into the unique beauty that is New England.

But every shower brings a hidden danger. Stormwater runs off impervious surfaces, like roads and parking lots, carrying toxics, sediment, nutrients, salt, oils and garbage into nearby waterways. As sprawl development conquers the New England landscape, an enormous increase in the amount of impervious surfaces has made stormwater pollution one of the most pervasive--and least understood--environmental hazards.

Vermont's Lake Champlain is one of the water bodies that has been hit the hardest. Cloudy, foul-smelling water and toxic algae blooms are now common. Adults have become sick and dogs have died after plunging into the toxic waters of the northern part of the lake, which has been afflicted for more than a decade. Roughly half of the nutrient loading that feeds algae blooms is due to sprawl; the other half comes from farm runoff, both fertilizers and manure,

Beyond public health concerns, the economy of the Lake Champlain Basin will suffer if pollution continues. Existing property values and recreation dollars hinge upon a healthy lake. Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists spend tens of millions of dollars on Champlain's shores.

To protect the region's important waters, CLF is making the cleanup and prevention of stormwater pollution a major focus of its work. New England needs CLF to play the role of watchdog because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has broadly shirked its duties as enforcer of the federal Clean Water Act. Chris Kilian, director of CLF's Clean Water & Healthy Forests program, explains: "The reason we are so obsessed with stormwater is because it is the biggest and worst remaining source of water pollution not enforced by EPA. Lake Champlain and its tributaries are already in trouble. There's no room for any more pollution."

Kilian explains that many people still see waterways as an extension of our waste disposal system. This attitude cannot persist. "We must be protective, setting minimum standards of water quality and maximum levels of allowable pollution," he says.

CLF has taken this argument to the courts--with great success--challenging illegal permits that allow businesses to pollute at levels far greater than those allowed by the Clean Water Act. Since late August, CLF has won two major victories in Vermont that set powerful precedents for the protection of New England's waters.

IT BEGAN IN SOUTH BURLINGTON, where CLF has been embroiled in a four-year...