 And as many great historians and certain people today have said, we cannot understand where we're going until we've seen where we have been. And so understanding what we've been doing to Lake Champlain over the past, well millennia, but unfortunately most severely in the last 400 years since European settlers came here, understanding the sort of damage we've done to the lake has given us a huge amount of understanding of the types of things we need to repair. And so I see the future as a period of repair, undoing the damage, learning from the mistakes, and also we have more knowledge and technology now. We can detect phosphorus in the sediments. We understand the concept of ecosystem. We understand that randomly stocking species just because we like them is perhaps not a good idea. We have a history of stocking exotic species that just hasn't worked out very well for us. So there's a lot we need to do and the three speakers this afternoon I think will help guide us into that future. We're going to begin with Laurie Fisher. She's with the Lake Champlain Committee and she's going to be talking about the various challenges and threats in terms of both chemistry, biology, contaminants, plastics, that we have to deal with as we move forward. And one of course the deeply troublesome threats are the new ones that we're only just beginning to invent, plastics, pharmaceuticals and the like. She will be followed by from the International Joint Commission, a double team of Pierre-Yves Co and Michael Alada, who will be talking to us about the water side of Lake Champlain. The watershed, the flood controls and how we share literally the water of this lake and control it without causing problems in the way that we control it. And then we'll be finishing Jim McKenna who comes from the New York Office of Sustainable Tourism. We'll be speaking to us about what I understand is a new project on the Adirondack side and understanding how we can enjoy this fantastic resource we have even better. So with that, I'll very briefly introduce Lori, Lake Champlain Basin Program and take it away. Thank you. Bonjour mes amis, and I'm Lori Fisher with the Lake Champlain Committee. My assignment this afternoon is to provide a very quick sketch of Lake Champlain's ecological health as a jumping off point for talking about the future. And I want to touch very quickly on seven factors that influence Lake's current conditions and its future. Climate change, demographics, nutrient loading, toxics, invasive species, access and cultural values. Any one of these could commandeer a full conference and a day or a week. So this is going to be a whirlwind tour so fasten your seatbelts. Climate change, the first one is increasingly obvious. There are things that we can do regionally and locally, nationally, internationally and individually but even if we do everything perfectly here, it's going to take billions of people cooperating in order to make a change here. Our climate is warming. If you're 33 years old or younger, the global average temperatures have been above average during every month of your life, at least through November 2018. In the Northeast, we see those ramifications with spring arriving earlier, summers are growing hotter and longer and winters are getting warmer, less snowy and shorter. The average annual temperatures have increased about 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade in our region. Lake Champlain does not ice over as often as it did even 20 years ago. The freeze over that happened last month is now a rare event. This chart shows a timeline of when ice on Lake Champlain has closed for the past 200 plus years. The lake used to freeze fairly reliably in January, then that freeze over started later in February and then in March. We couldn't reliably hold that international hockey game in Lake Champlain today. One of the things, less ice is going to lead to further warming and because it allows sunlight to increase warm temperatures earlier in the spring and then in turn the lake stratifies earlier so it sets up that warmer layer of water over a colder deeper one, that makes a significant change on Lake Champlain. Since monitoring began in 1964, average August surface water temperatures have increased in Lake Champlain by about 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That's a big ecological change. And those higher water temperatures really threaten the lake's capacity to support our native cold and cold water fish species like salmon, trout, walleye and northern pike, but they favor the warm water species such as bass and the invasives who are much more adaptable so like white perch they're more likely to thrive. In order to really address this, we need to reduce emissions. Of course, we all know that. There are lots of discussions about that. But we also have to adapt locally and adapt our communities for a changing climate. And experts are looking at ways that you do that and one of the things that they note that make a place more attractive in this age of challenging climate is one access to fresh water. Well, we certainly have that. A commitment to emission reductions. We really need to do that in our own region, in our own communities. But also what's very important is updated and well maintained infrastructure. And as we talk about some of the other problems, I want you to think about all of these factors. And then integrated emergency management and planning, flood proofing our public buildings and our shoreline areas, access to healthy local foods and parks and trails. Why? Because that helps build resiliency and the presence of strong community institutions. Those are all important factors as we move forward. We're going backwards in time. So demographics, people have lived in this basin for over 10,000 years. And so when Europeans came and renamed the Lake Champlain, there were about 9,000 people living here. Today we have around 600,000. How many people are going to be relying on the ecosystem services of the future? We haven't seen a significant influx in population yet, but we could begin to start seeing climate refugees. And one of the things that we just want to think about with that, and this is just one of many, is that while we're the ninth largest freshwater lake in the U.S., there's one measure by which we exceed all other large lakes in North America. And that's our drainage basin to lake surface area. There are over 8,000 square miles of land which are feeding this lake. And there are about 17.6 acres of land that's informing every acre of water. That is on a different scale than it is for any of the major waterways in Lake Champlain. So that population base spread over large areas really has an influence. It's not just how many people will live here, but how those who do choose to live and commute and behave. So nutrients, the most visible sign, and I apologize, this is an old program. I'm just saying this isn't the new slides, but we'll roll with it. Nutrients are naturally cycling through the environment over geologic time, but human activity has greatly accelerated processes for that. And the most visible form on this on Lake Champlain is cyanobacteria blooms. Eric mentioned them earlier. One of the reasons that we are concerned about them is under certain conditions they can turn toxic. They're public health threats. They also have economic and recreational implications. 2015, 35 properties along Lake Champlain's Georgia shore were devalued, hitting the grand list by a $1.8 million reduction. You see that was earlier noted about just the ramifications. When you get a news alert about that, it has a lot of ramifications. Not only for that bay that's been affected, but for all water quality in the region and for our tourism economy that really relies on it. This graphic shows the phosphorus loading in the land cover and the implications by that, the various types. I'm just going to blitz through it. Wastewater treatment facilities only contribute about 6%. We think we're safe there except that they're aging and we have not invested in infrastructure in our region, in our country. And more than 10% are beyond their expected lifespan and another 10% are within a few years of it. Those CSOs that we're seeing flowing into our waters are a direct sign of this. We're also seeing new contaminants being flushed down our waterways, into our wastewater treatment facilities that they were never designed to handle. So remember that it's only 6%, but we have to look beyond phosphorus here. Agriculture is a significant contributor with 38% of the load coming from farmland. In addition, there's another key challenge here and that's the legacy phosphorus that's already bound up in the soils that we keep seeing being flushed down. Develop land, 16%, but it's the biggest contributor of metric tons per square mile. We're not going to solve this with one policy initiative and some of the initiatives that we have to advance are going to be challenging. Like moving away from single commodity agriculture, so dependent on dairy and getting farms out of flood plains unless we can't keep contributing that amount of nutrient loading into our lake. Toxics, we thought we had a handle on some of those traditional ones like PCBs and mercury. This slide shows that in 2011 through 2017, mercury levels actually went up. Why? They think that was induced by significant events like tropical storm Irene. And concerns have been growing about these new generation contaminants, the pesticides, the plastics, the microplastics, pharmaceuticals that are everywhere. They flush into our wastewater treatment facilities. The microplastics that wash off from personal care products or come out of synthetic fabrics are too tiny to get screened out in our wastewater treatment facilities. So they go into our waterways and they cause issues there. We didn't know this when we first started using all these products. It's akin to what happened with the barge canal. Somebody mentioned that that superfund site in our backyard here. Those practices that generated the superfund site were accepted practices of the day. What are we doing now that are the superfund sites of tomorrow and we have to plan to make those changes? A lot of the things we're talking about here are everywhere in our society. So those changes to make are going to be really challenging. Invasive species, I just want to touch on this briefly. Eric's already mentioned some of it. This is an indication of some of them that are coming our way or already here. But the main vector that we have for these species is the Champlain Canal. The canal that Art Cohen so eloquently noted had such a historical value over time. It is something that we have to address. Main vector, we have got to figure a way around. Otherwise, these species, twice as many in the Hudson River, four times as many in the Great Lakes, they're all coming home here. And nearly finally, I just want to touch on access. Why do we want to talk about access as we move forward into the future? Because people care about things they experience. Eric mentioned earlier about the formative things that made him make choices in his life or how he's going to direct his talents and skills and time to the future. I expect everybody here has had some formative experience with water. That's why you're here today. We have to allow those opportunities for other people. And we have to make sure that people have public access to this public resource. We collectively own it, but not everybody can get to it. And not everybody gets taught how to use it. Not everybody who lives on the shores of Lake Champlain even knows how to swim or basically use a boat. These are just some examples of some of the initiatives, the ecotourism initiatives that are trying to promote why is sustainable use of Lake Champlain and help us move through the water in a more sustainable way. But as Jim I'm sure is going to talk about, we also have to make sure that we do that in a way that protects local populations and also doesn't negatively affect the lake health. And I just want to touch on one more component, cultural values. What do we care about? What choices do we make as individuals about water? As much as we say as a society, we really value water, we often balk at investing in it. For example, in 2012, the Vermont legislature charged the state environmental agency with coming up with a report on what it would cost to protect Lake Champlain and restore the state's waterways. And seven years later, we are still trying to pass legislation to pay for it. To try and build a culture of clean water. Now I want you to raise your hand if in the last five years, you've written a letter to the editor. Raise your hands high, okay? Now keep your hand up or raise your other hand if in the last five years you've contacted your town, your city official, state, or legislative provincial representatives. Anybody do that? Okay. All right. And then how about the governor of the premier? Keep your hands up. Our congressional delegate, parliamentary representative, the prime minister, or the president. Okay. So raise those hands, okay? All right. Great. Now I want you to keep your hands up if you've ever contacted any of these people about protecting water quality. Okay. Okay. So that shows our untapped power as a people. And we've got to, we've got to mobilize that power. And the future of the lake will be what we cause it to be. Remember that not only does it reflect these beautiful mountains and the shorelines, it also reflects our values. So here odes the odes those words. If we protect the lake, it will also protect us and care for us. Thank you so much. And I'll take your hat off and all of the water. So our two speakers are from the international joint commission and we'll begin with Pierre Yves Ko, and then we'll continue with Michael Ladder. They're double-teaming this. Cheers. After that talk from Lori, I am going to have to take off my jacket. Roll up your sleeves. Remove my tie and roll up my sleeves. Right? The future is probably the most daunting thing that we have in front of us and the talk that I have today with Michael will be on the references that we obtained at the IJC. So we have two references one on water quality and one on flooding. So how did we get here and what does it mean? We've heard that the system's been altered for century. I keep telling I'm a toxicologist myself and training. I keep telling people that it's those incremental changes that are so pernicious, so insidious. We're not keeping track of the cumulative impacts of those changes. And how do you communicate these impacts to the public? Well, we can communicate them by scaring them off or we can communicate them by talking about the ecosystem services that we've lost. For example, the flooding. We heard that you have 25 or 20 times the land mass and the water. It's important what we do on the land. It's important the wetlands are important for storage, et cetera, et cetera. There used to be a day where the ecosystem dampened the flooding. Same thing with water quality. There used to be a day where the ecosystem made sure that the waters were clean. Laurie talked to us about climate change and the only message I'd like to leave here is more often, more extreme. Also in Canada, I'm seeing I can grow things that I couldn't grow before. Is it good? Is it bad? I know it's bad. Some people think it's good. We all know about the impacts on our different water uses. Drinking water. There's a little town Bedford in Quebec where they have to spend an outrageous amount of money to clean their drinking water every summer just to drink it. Isn't that something that we should be free? Other impacts. Recreation. We talked about tourism today. My parents were wed in Venise on Quebec. I'm not sure too many people go to Venise on Quebec anymore to as a resort. So there are impacts. Some additional challenges that we have. We talked to people. We talked to a lot of people across the watershed and there's a different level of understanding of where the impacts are coming from. This binational context of ours, and it was mentioned this morning, we have five jurisdictions, three levels of government, different languages. So imagine in Quebec, for example, the flooding issue, we have nine departments taking care of the flooding issue. We talked to them all. Multiply that by the states and different jurisdictions. Are we actually organized to do concrete actions in this watershed? Perhaps we get to take a look at that. The other problem I was just discussing with some very nice folks at lunch. The problematic is ingrained in our socioeconomic fabric. We use the land for shelter. We use the land for food. The agriculture is not going away. So what are some of the actions, concrete actions that will help to improve the system for the future generations? Michael? This is Lake Basin right now. So the two most recent charges that the government of Canada, the government of the United States has given the IAC are two references. Oh, not two. Oh, right. Our latest two references. One dealing with flooding, water climate, and the other dealing with water quality. Now, these are just two recent references that the IAC has partake in this basin before it goes any further. A lot of people ask us what is the International Joint Commission? There's a lot of misconception with regards to what we are and what we're not. So what we are, we're a fine national independent organization that was set up by the U.S. and Canada in 1909. Our mandate is to involve any water-related disputes between the U.S. and Canada. And we operate under two principles, two mechanisms. This is very important. This is widely misunderstood on the landscape, I think, is that we have a regulatory control under what we call water levels and flows. So if any body of water, a long order of that, we can have it here, turn on or turn off. The IAC has a hand in developing those rulers. The other mechanism is two references. And this is what we're looking at here in Lake Champlain, is when the governments ask us to look into something, whether it's water quality, water quantity, and make recommendations, make non-binding recommendations to the governments. The IAC also acts as an alerting function. So we're kind of a watchdog of something, you know, of this long boundary with regards to invasive species and other water-related issues. Moving forward. Now, I'm going to first have a cheat sheet for this one. IAC has been present in this basin since the 30s. And it's funny that most of those references that I've been referring to often follow periods of high water. But this long history with regards to water quality and flooding, I have to watch my words here, has been intermittent at best. In other words, the IAC has made the recommendations of every world from the 30s to the 70s with regards to how to manage water levels and fuel water quality issues, but the governments didn't take our recommendations. This cursive involvement may not have been the best use of the IAC for dealing with significant water quality and flooding issues in the basin. In other areas along the boundary to become a planting disease here, for some of my folks here who are involved with the flooding reference, along the boundary we established long-standing warrants that deal with water quality issues. We have yet to see that happen here in this basin. To talk about the flooding reference, I'm not going to link on this slide. In 2011, we had some dramatic flooding event which actually spurred the government to give us this reference to look at how to come up with different measures to talk to flooding in the basin. I don't know if I'm in time, but here's a graph. The point of the graph is our events are getting more frequent and more powerful over time. I don't think I need to spend too much time lingering on this graph, but we're seeing a lot more events in a shorter period of time, three minutes. To answer this, the Universal Joint Commission in cooperation with the government has put together a governing structure which is unique in the fact that we're looking at socio-political economic impacts of flooding. Now, let me slow down here by running out of time and running out of time. The goal for our flooding reference is to either look at reducing high water levels or reducing water mobility. We can see these days up in the themes. Our potential structural solution is that we're looking at a theme one is to just deal with the increase in flow out of the rich loo. The second theme is to actually reduce the inflow to Lake Champlain. We have measures that we are looking into, the feasibility of these measures. Beyond structural solutions, we're looking at how we improve our response to a changing environment or increased flooding. Better flow responses and better flow planning management. This is really, really difficult when we look at all the multi-jurisdictions we have to deal with, plus the fact that we're looking at two nations. We're using GIS. One minute. We'll pass this on to you. You'll even see if we get the water quality in the minute. Two minutes. The water quality, we have two basins, the Champlain Basin and the Memphermagaud Basin. Permagaud is part of the Saint-François River watershed. The binational approach that we're using, we've gone out to the experts. Those are the basin organizations, both LCBP and OBVPM. They are the experts. They live, breathe the issue. They do all the research. They know the experts in the basin. They'll be reviewing and evaluating the science and the policy and regulations. They'll be also collecting expert opinions through their networks to see their views. And with that, they'll be developing recommendations that they all forward to us. We'll look at those recommendations, reassess them, perhaps delete some, add some, and we'll provide recommendations to federal governments. This work will be peer reviewed. There'll be public consultations, and we've set up already advisory groups to help us direct this work. So it's ongoing right now. So what are we facing? The problem we saw today took us decades to get here. There were signs. It'll probably take us decades to get out. So the question with, let's put some chemicals in there to trap the chemicals, it's not really feasible. Technology just isn't quite there yet for us to remove the phosphorus in such a big lake. So there is a current opportunity, and that takes stock and reinforce what governments, jurisdictions, different organizations have been doing well. Let's reinforce that. But then there's also an opportunity to recommend an approach towards remediation. And it will probably be a longer term approach. An approach that probably spans several decades, goes through successive political administrations, and gets resourced by these because it's the right thing to do. I'll do a closing comment. I'll speak this slide really quickly. Actually the key to our financial successes is incorporating what we're dealing with our stakeholders. And the future of this link from my perspective is we're going to be seeing more of this interoperability, both horizontally and verbally, and horizontal coordination between all these jurisdictions. As we slowly sew together a single narrative that is multi-scallared for this basis. I think that's what we're moving towards. Harry, do you have any words? Yes, just one comment. The government of Quebec, and this is the slide on that. The government of Quebec will be working with jurisdictions and looking at social acceptable solutions which will be the ones that we will recommend to governments. The government of Quebec has a new action plan for public safety. Minister Nathenquatu, they're open to listen to other solutions, and they're open to evolve practices to increase not only the chance of finding a solution, but also increasing the resiliency of the population. I think this is something that we need to learn from, and we need to work together to enable. Thank you very much Pierre-Yves, I think, as a response. Appreciate your comments. And Jim McKellen from New York Office of Sustainable Tourism is our final speaker. It's good to see you all. Well, I'm supposed to talk about the future, but I'm going back again in history, and I can't get that hockey game out of my mind than an actual hockey game, because when you think about it, that had much more value for our basin than the first look. And what did that lead to? Well, yes, 94 years later, 40 miles from here as the crawl flies in our basin was that hockey game, the international hockey game between the U.S. team and the Russians team. And you know, it all started here on Lake Champlain, so we should feel good about that. Before I start, how many people here from New York are on the western side of the lake? One, two, three, four. Wow. Okay, so here's my first prediction. And this is going to be up to the basin program at the Lake Champlain Committee. Five or ten years from now, we're going to meet again, or this may be sooner, we're going to meet on the western side of the lake, and there's going to be as many New York people engaged as Vermont people, because we're one when it comes to the lake. So, it's on you guys to do that. Not me. For myself, you know, I've had a lot of, I grew up across the lake, but I've had a lot of involvement in Vermont, and you know, I understand a little bit and feel about it. You know, a couple of quick examples. ETV's been my airport forever. I bought three cars at Al-Mart and Lolo. Son, that was a hockey player in Middlebury, lives there now with his wife and son, and another son on the way in Cornwall. And I just, a couple of weeks ago, if anybody knows Stonecutter Spirits, I went to their adventure dinner a couple of weeks ago. So, wow. So, I know, I follow what's going on here. What I do, the excellent name of the organization I work for is the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism, based in the Adirondacks. We have five offices throughout the Adirondacks with our central office in Lake Classic, and we have an office actually at the Crown Point Bridge Building on Lake Champlain. And you know, we certainly, we do eight destination websites under an Adirondacks USA brand. And you know, we do have a Lake Champlain region site and social media that we do quite a bit. We have 12 government contracts in the Adirondacks, counties, towns, and villages. We're funded primarily by occupancy taxes, so you know, we have to do show some success so we can get the funding going. And you know, that's, let us to understand the challenges in the Adirondacks are somewhat similar, but somewhat different. Yeah, you know, I know everybody knows the view of the Adirondacks, but I'm not sure everybody really knows what the Adirondacks are really about. How this publicly protected land area in the continental U.S. If you take Yellowstone, Yosemite's, Grand Canyon, and Smoky Mountain National Parks combine them, that's not as large as the Adirondacks part. It's a mixture of public and private land, about 2.6 million acres are owned by New York State, plus they manage another 785,000 acres in conservation easements, which leaves about 2.6 million acres of land in total public or private holdings. But that land, both public and private land, is regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency. If you can ride through the Adirondacks, you'll notice that there's hamlets, and that's where the development can happen. And it's not between the hamlets, very limited development, so it's a little unique. It's 2,300 lakes and ponds, 31,000 miles of rivers and streams, over 46 high peaks. And you know, there's one of Vermonters go over there, because I ride by that one to 73, and you know, there's a Connecticut license plate, from my license plate, they actually are usually at the highest level, so I don't know about that. But if we're on the Adirondacks, I have a lot in common. How many acres in the state of Vermont? 6 million. 6.154, to be exact. Around the top. How many acres in the Adirondacks? 6 million. 6.1 million. Around the bottom there. So the Adirondacks in the state of Vermont are about the same size. We share Lake Champlain, which we all know, we've talked about today as a real jewel. Mountainous forest, lakes, rivers, tourism and forestry, outdoor recreation on a year-round basis, resort destinations, a day drive to over 60 million people, quality of life. As Debbie mentioned earlier, I'm not sure here, the state of Vermont does about 2.8 million, a billion in tourism, and around it's still about 2 billion on an annual basis. Same products, same theater markets. Well, we have some differences too. How many tappable sugar maples in the state of Vermont? Who knows? Right now. 6 million. Well, there was a study done about 10 years ago by Cornell University, Mike Farrell, who got his PhD, and he's actually operating a pretty heavy-duty maple facility in our studio right now. Part of his PhD was to be terminating that state of Vermont versus the Adirondacks. Well, state of Vermont, well-known in the maple sugar industry, has 110 million tappable maples. How many in the Adirondacks? Thanks. No. They're 30 million. Ooh. However, about 50% of those around the state's forest-preserved land can't be touched. So you're in luck. You can still carry that. But that's just something to note. Most of the state owns the lands in the Adirondacks. They've been continuing to buy it. That park started in 1892, one of the oldest in the country. The land has to be kept forever wild in forest lands. It can at least sell or exchange it. Nor can a timber be sold, removed, or destroyed, and it's part of the New York State Constitution. So it's pretty significant in land management. Number of alpine ski resorts in Vermont? 20. Number in the Adirondacks? Two large ones and two small ones. So, you know, the two large ones for state-owned and combined have less skier visits than Lake Champlain. That's where we have a lot of similarities. In Vermont, five rivers and three creeks feed the lake. In New York, eight rivers and one creek. We're feeding it the same way. You know, it provides drinking water for us, 81 species of fish. I don't know if that's still current, but the climate change is going on. That number is certainly something called change. Over 300 bird species have such a vital role in U.S. history. That lake is pretty phenomenal. I don't know if you all go down to Fort Ticonderoga. Repreation was mentioned. Swimming, boating. We're connected pretty easily. We've got two bridges. We've got two year-round ferries. We've got two seasonal ferries, and we can certainly drive around. So we're well connected. And I think that's really my point. Is that, you know, we have to work not as Vermont and New York. For the basin, we have to work for the basin. And we have to get rid of those boundary lines of the state, I think, to be effective for the U.S. We may just look at the attendance here today as a great example of how we have to do that. And we do have some opportunities, I think, even though that we're at a time in evolution here where we know the human influence has had effect. I don't know how many people are familiar with it, but who's not familiar with the Champlain Adirondack biosphere reserve? Anybody not know about that? Okay. Well, that was created back in 18, not 18, 1989. And, you know, what that is, there's a number of biosphere reserves around the world. I think there's 40, there's 400. You know what? Pardon me for a minute. Well, anyway, we're going to talk about that in the end. Its goals are to encourage social economic vitality while preserving and improving the biomedical health of the reserve. We're fortunate that we have the basin program and the Lake Champlain Committee doing a lot of the work of that. But some of the challenges we have is clearly climate change, that's the mention. I don't have to get into that. Recreation is even going to be affected. It's going to be warmer, wetter, and wilder out there. The fisheries will certainly be affected. Pollution and ag runoff, we've mentioned that, drinking water, recreation, swimming, all that was mentioned today. With the Champlain Adirana Biosphere Reserve, that's an international designation. That gives us the ability to work with sustainable and ecotourism on a worldwide basis and use that as a tool to enhance what we want to accomplish here. There's also the Champlain Hudson Power Express, I don't know if anybody feels about that, but that's going to have it's going to have a fund of $117 million that's going to be used over 30 plus years. And that is to help the aquatic quality of Lake Champlain, Hudson River, and some other ones. That's a power line that will originate in Canada, going to water down Lake Champlain into New York City, clean energy, so there's a lot of crust there. The feature is very important. A couple of great examples. Mirror Lake, which is the little lake on Lake Classet, it's got a salt problem. So what does the government do? It's got more salt. So it's affecting the water's ability to cure and over, affecting the lake trout, that's got to be managed. This morning over on Vermont Public Radio, anybody hear of APR this morning and heard about the Aston County and the farm and the ore and everything? Two minutes, I got two minutes. Why is that happening now? It's things we have to get engaged with. So, sustainable tourism. You do tourism for the benefit of residents, not the benefit of trappers. One quick example of what's going on in Essex County is the development of two occupancy tax of what's going to be called the Community Tourism Enhancement Fund. That's going to be two main dollars on an annual basis to go into programs to help the community and help tourism. Things like that salt issue on this basis. There's ways to go to use tourism for the benefit of it. Finally, I have a lot more things. But Wendy, are you still here? Let's co-op. Let's get some money together. You, me, and Canada, we're going to do something around the lake. Not only cycling, we can do roof pups, we can do farms, we can do dining around the lake and storm sites, and ranch your house for the solar eclipse. Thank you very much. I have two questions to any of the speakers. The microphone's going around. I was first posed two hours ago and I still am. Just one quick thing. I don't know if Mark's still here. I gave him a cartoon, that political cartoon that came from the Suburban List, which was a weekly in Essex Junction in the 60s and the 70s. The cartoon was done by a cartoonist, an artist named Jane Clark Brown. It showed a birch bark canoe ghost-like. In it was Sandra Duchamp Lane and maybe two or three Native peoples. There were tires floating by, smelling fumes coming off the water, dead fish, and Champlain's canoe was sacre bleu. What are they doing to my lake? That's a half century ago. And we're still saying sacre bleu. What are they doing to the lake? And that's rather discerning this commentary. Regarding the Adirondacks, we celebrate George Perkins Marsh who wrote Man of Nature in 1864 so we have a little park dedicated to him in Woodstock and yet he was a prophet without honor in his land. But across the lake Phil Terry, who wrote the book on contested terrain about the creation of the Adirondack Park said that those New York leaders of that time learned from George Perkins Marsh. So the problem I think we have here in Vermont, we haven't learned we really haven't learned that lesson despite our claims to environmental purity we're dealing with issues and we're not solving them. So I think we need to get beyond the marketing and as you were doing rolling up your sleeve and loosening your tie and really naming the problem and then dealing with it. And yes, you've got problems too in the Adirondacks, but thank God for the forest preserve or else your TMDL level would be a lot higher than this today. So thanks. Any responses from the crew? That works for you. The Adirondack works for you. Maybe to spark discussion maybe to spark discussion Eric, we were talking just a little bit earlier about the HAPS and with everything that we've seen today is it something that like climate change people were mentioning we in essence lost the battle and that we need to adapt to it? I think the people that will be doing something to reduce climate change this is it's fortuitous, it's something very good, however I think it's now we need to talk about adaptation because our kids your kids will see the blues over the long haul so maybe we need to talk about how to adapt to these HAPS and these beach closures, etc Any comments? That's what I didn't know about this Hi, I'm Susan I'm the director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum So we at the museum look at the relationship between the land and the people and the water and one of the people things that has come up today is agricultural runoff and phosphorus so I guess I have a question and a request for discussions like this and the first question for the panel is what will the future look like in working with the agricultural community and what are some examples of programs or ideas that are starting to get going now that you think are heading in the right direction and the request would be for us to include the voices of farmers and agricultural sector workers in conversations around this there's a lot of people who are thinking about this in the agriculture world and often our worlds are segregated in that way so I think these conversations can be a great opportunity to bring them all together To that comment, we talked about we're going to be interviewing at least like the base of organizations will be interviewing the experts they'll be getting their opinions and the career of people that have spent their careers thinking about the problems what would you do to solve the issue and these people are telling us I think about a family show who's telling me, oh I've got the solution for you and he starts laying it out for you on the pipe watershed this is what I would do and he's got in his hand so we need to capture those thoughts but then you think well are they ideal or can we together five jurisdictions and three levels of governments can we make it happen these people are giving you the solutions so it's incumbent on all of us to make them happen make it happen so yes, there's some possibilities out there but there's got to be a will I'll build on what Pierre Hugo said is the mere fact that the has done, I believe, is due diligence with regards to dealing with agricultural practices through the new TMDL process and that's something I don't know what the public said came back not so much to New York because we don't have the loading issues in Europe but that's something that's being looked at in the right direction how do we make these, let's say the TMDL enterprise something that's international that we can look at the system as a whole so I think the new norm now is actually again, as I was speaking before an integration of communication and collaboration up and down a multi-jurisdictional scale including municipalities and townships to address that it all does come down to how do we affect human behavior so that's for all events and pass it over thank you thanks Susan for that question and comment and I think the issue with agriculture in this watershed is a complicated one and for many factors and one is that for the years farmers were told to import phosphorus and to apply it on their lands by a higher than ergonomic rate you also have a group that particularly when you're talking about dairy in particular they produce a product where they don't set the price and so for most of us we can budget for that for what are they going to be the cost that we have to take on farmers are in a situation where those price supports are set nationally they don't really make sense of the plasma system that we have gotten and I've worked on policy issues for many years when they talk about farm bill reform there is nothing that I've ever seen close to farm bill reform until you start talking about those kind of price supports but we are in a smaller region where we can think more creatively and we're going to have to do that and very importantly certainly bring farmers into the conversation those conversations are going on but we also have a bias particularly in this state and that is I have heard this stated and this is a gross over generalization but that in Vermont agriculture is dairy that cannot be our mantra and we have to think about ways to transition in some cases to a system that and I'm not saying we lose all our dairy farms but we have to confront this issue and we also have to look at ways that we can be more diversified with agriculture not so dependent on outside markets but we also have to understand our own agency in that we all buy food I know a lot of people who buy you know won't buy organic milk they have that high value for it they have the economic opportunity and the ability to do that but they're going to go for a cheaper product so when we talk about this future and we really think what our values are we don't want our farms going out of business because those slides that we all showed earlier show a much greater nutrient loading per acre from developed land it's not that answer to lose that but we do have to have a much more benign model out there and we have to think about those importation phosphorus how much we're applying on the land how much gets absorbed and there are places where we can no longer farm and I know that is an unpopular thing to say but in certain places we you know unless we can be good stewards of both the land and the water we cannot do that but we are going to have to help a community that has been so instrumental in defining this place our quality of life and also our working landscape in transitioning there too I have a question to the bi-national commission it was set up in the early 19th member it took both federal governments and there is any number of well-managed reports carefully considered public comment lots of scientific input that then gets shallow what is the roadmap as you see it on how we all can get the results of for example the scientific reports and best evidence implemented worked on it does not seem like the state of Vermont alone can do it not the province of Quebec I think it's going to take some higher level between the two governments to push this through because when you're telling when you sign an economic plan to gee you just can't fund anymore that's not going to work unless there are subsidies or something and that will come from governments and it's not just state government it's going to be a federal thing so without monopolizing time members of bi-national commission do you have any thoughts as to what is the next step when you finally compile your report that's an excellent question and you spoke exactly to the point I was trying to make during our talk there that the IJC we can only make recommendations to the governments it is up to the governments to do what they will with the recommendations and a lot of the times you are correct these recommendations do sit on the desk or get shelved now the real that leaves the question why do we have international joint commission right so it all comes down to how can the international joint commission recommendations affect the mandates of those organizations and bureaus that are charged for controlling our natural resources so how can our findings with regards to nutrient loading in Lake Champlain how do we get NRCS folks on the kind of level speaking with their equivalents in Canada you know because there's definitely there's not only a border a political border but there's also jurisdictional or I call it mandate borders that happen and in order to get some of our recommendations to work we have to focus on those organizations upon whom we depend on for information we have to make sure that that ECCC is working working with USGS in USGS's many silos we have to make sure that the provincial agencies are working in sync with the different state agencies because there's not really a what's changing slowly but there's really not that a neutral platform upon which these agencies can collaborate and actually make some of these recommendations work you know we're making sense here so I think the ultimate goal of the IJC is to affect different mandates so some of these recommendations can be taken seriously and I'm a blast out full kind of guy I really think that the outcome of our quality study from MEPROMAKEAUG and Mr. Coivé is going to shine a light on a nice light on Vermont to be honest with you but it's going to shine a light on if we're going to clean up this lake we're going to have to have some very well scripted and well defined collaborations to make that work in other places we have one of the things that was shown is the IJC was in the space several times since 1936 when they built they basically reviewed the system and the friars dam was built the system was going to be controlled at that time never happened the war came along then we studied the system time and time again those engineers back then in the 70s were excellent the measures that they proposed were top notch measures however they didn't take the pulse the social acceptability and the appetite from these different stakeholders to those measures and that's what's different today so they're going out there finding out what that appetite is so that when they do come up with recommendations there's some perhaps it's going to be implemented minister one of our previous ministers said to us you need to go through the process right now you've got an opportunity you've got an independent organization who's going to take stock it's not biased it's going to show government this is an independent review of the situation and here are proposed recommendations for both solving the flooding issue and looking at addressing over the long haul the water quality issue pay attention we won't be here for another 20-30 years so it's important to take minister's head go through the process if you want to get funding for that you've got a document to support a treasury board submission to go get the resources to implement those those measures take your time go through the process so I'll build on I was talking about the stress on the point that one of the goals or one of the challenges in this region is to make sure that the recommendations that we make with regards to water quality or even our flooding outlive different political cycles you bring that up often and I think you're spot on and I think in the future I mean that is definitely a challenge is how do we make great recommendations that we take into account different people's opinions and views yet how do we get the government how do we get people actually to do these things and how do we make our recommendations viable vis-a-vis through different political cycles so Laura you mentioned earlier part of this issue is water retention on the basin and I was just wondering you you mentioned do I say that right remediation and how that plays a role into more innovative practices is how are we going to make our soil more spongy and retain that water and some innovative practices with remediation I just wanted to hear more on that it's not only one thing to remediate I think somebody was talking about land use stop growing corn in those areas that that are vulnerable to leaching to the lake and have a normal season place to replace corn to something and greenhouses so subsidies we need to change that socio-economic factor because the low hanging fruits are on it so we need to take almost drastic measures if we really want to solve the issue because with climate change temperatures are rising it's only going to get worse I just have a comment and a question the comment is who's lake is it and you know when I had a boat it was my lake and as soon as I went home and sold my boat and went home 8 miles inland Lake Champlain was no longer mine because I didn't have any access to it so how many people in Vermont New York and Quebec really think of it as their lake if they live away from the lake so I think that it's important for all of us to think about the lake Champlain watershed as part of our lake and that makes a lot more people responsible for it than just those who live along the along the water side and someone said to me over the lunch hour is that the access to the lake is really very poor there are fishing accesses but someone who has a canoe paddle can't use that access so if there are a lot of fishmen out there a paddler can't put his canoe in the lake from there so you have to think about access New York State geologically has very poor access to the lake but anyway so I think it's important to tell somebody in Berlin, Vermont is it Berlin or Berlin I forgot which state has which but anyway it's their lake as well as mine then I had a question for the IJC who controls the lake how is it controlled is there a person standing at a wheel controlling the level remember when I was talking about how the IJC is actionable on landscape and through an order of approval orders of approval are when we have actually something to turn on and turn off let's say Lake Ontario the upper Great Lakes Rady River, Lake of the Woods we actually have a structure we don't have anybody here in this basin training office switch for directing water levels and flows so one of the unique aspects of this study that we're trying to that we're going to do is we're exploring what would be the impact of basin storage what difference land use practices can be changed to decrease the amount of runoff coming into the lake so the direct answer to your question is there is nobody turning on or turning off anything to regulate flows in this lake they tried with the building of the Friars Dam which remained unfinished because of World War II and there is marginal control we must say marginal or little control with regards to the widening of the Chameleake now up in St. John but that's not anybody having a direct on off switch with regards to flows levels and flows I have one more question which is the lake end that's another good question get that man's number so I mean through this as a hydrologist geographer here I've noticed four different versions of what the Lake Chameleake basin is now from the international or by national the basin itself starts in the southern most part of Henry and goes all the way up to Sorrel almost like a siphon we're entering, we're emptying this huge stream pool through the straw of the Richland River and so the folks up in Quebec who live in Sorrel they actually live in the basin but it's a product of our different I would say expectations but our different imaginations of what this basin is that we see different maps hydrologist standpoint from Henry to Sorrel can I quickly follow up on your point about Coulomb's lake it's not here thank you your point about Coulomb's lake just to reinforce a point this lake is held in public ownership okay so we all have a role in this future and thank you for sharing that when you moved away you know just a mile it was less important that's unfortunately a value it's a reality that our organization deals with routinely we're part of what we try and do is expand people's definition of their backyard so that includes not just that Bay of Hughes their access point but that they care about this is what they South Lake and other parts of the watershed that they influence I mean how many of you use the lake today today today raise your hands high if you used it today okay did you go to the bathroom did you drink water here you all use the lake and that's one of the things that we have to remember here you know and as much as we value water and could not survive there's no business there's none of us could survive without water we talk about it so rarely and you know there are people here and institutions here like you know Brian Costello is here you wave your hand who runs the causeway getting people access very lamb key who just held a great conference last Friday and echoed about the culture of the lake and its future the Maritime Museum that's piloting those underwater preserves Champlain area trails in the Outer Rhondda it's trying to connect people to place through a connection of water trails our own organization oversees over 40 sites on Lake Champlain for the Lake Champlain paddlers trail we are all working together to raise our voices and to link arms with people like you to talk about water more often but we need all of you if we really want to see a change in this lake these are the easy places to talk about water but unfortunately the conversation doesn't continue outside of here and it's incumbent on all of us if we want to bend the curve that's what we've got to do and we desperately need you this connection sometimes from the further away from the lake the less connected that's the reason to really look at the Champlain Outer Rhondda Biosphere Reserve because that not only includes the lake it includes the Green Mountains and the Outer Rhondda and it's greater and it's a global significance so I think that that gives reason to investigate and move forward that further and very importantly the Biosphere Reserve had a very strong connection to this being a populated place and in fact that was one thing that was unique about that reserve when it was established at that time it's this covenant that we've sort of overlooked but I think it has a lot of opportunity the biggest challenge with that is that it's overlooked and it's the largest Biosphere Reserve in the states and it's the fourth largest in the world I'll just very briefly mention I'd like to shout out this question about access to the lake and moving away from it I think we have a shout out to Sea Grant and the Watershed Alliance because they bring in students for schools throughout the Vermont watershed but particularly underserved schools under funded schools that might not have other access to the lake thanks to donors this is at the University of Vermont thanks to donors who are putting together an endowment for our research vessel which is also used for teaching we are going to be more and more able to take those school groups at a very, very discounted rate to perhaps almost free rate and take those students, the kids from K through 12 out on Lake Champlain so they can see this resource and that's where it begins the kids come home to their parents and go wow, dad, mom did you see that this is amazing and that's literally your grassroots bringing it up from below so, yeah, Sea Grant and Watershed Alliance and thanks to our donors who are bringing that endowment to bear and local motion, thank you I've worked with Brian on that ferry it's amazing how many people go I've never been in a boat before wow, okay that's an awesome experience that's another exposure to the lake I think we have time for one last question probably the Governor Scott I think is here or here soon so, we have somebody with a mic here so, please I'll be very brief thank you, I'm Mary O'Neill I'm a planner here with the city of Burlington but I happen to live along the Georgia shore and there's a great big caveat that goes Lori with the with the particular piece of information you gave I let it go this morning I thought nobody's going to know except who lives on the Georgia shore but there was in fact a 1.8 million dollar diminution in our tax rolls in the town of Georgia in 2015 the large caveat here is this was a property owner requested there was an opportunity that the previous summer the month of August was terrible in the St. Albans Bay and investment property owners that had rental properties and summer camp owners were very distressed that a third of their summer swimming was cut short they are the ones that caused the conversation to move forward and the town of Georgia offered a blanket $50,000 reduction in your tax assessment there was no analysis per property there's been no follow up of sales which would be very important to understand because those people that happily had their tax bills reduced did not expect they were going to sell their properties for those low prices they thought they were going to sell their properties for what they are so unless there's a lister here from the Mrs. Boy Bay or St. Albans Bay I'm happy to tell you that property values have diminished but the tax rates the tax bills for those 37 homeowners who volunteered to have their property diminished that's the reason for the 1.8 also the town of Georgia reassessed the rest of us which made our tax bills level out the income that they had that year so there's context to that statement and the process that led to the diminution of the property values thank you I'm Cree Linnolack from Shelburne and my question really is for you Lori I want to thank the panel for a great discussion it is about resilience the issues in the face of flooding and water quality and it's about the wetland rules that are being discussed in the Vermont legislature in the House and Senate agriculture committees and I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about wetland rules and agriculture and agricultural exemptions from those wetland rules and what that might mean for wetland protection and restoration sure I'll try to do that simply with thank you Cree for raising that there's a proposal in the legislature now which is really an incredible step backwards to really weaken our wetland rules in order to to avoid I think any repercussions for agriculture I can't go into all the details now I have to check my phone with our water protection advocate for latest updates on that but I think one of the larger issues here and one of the big concerns is that for many years I think because we so we identify with agriculture very strongly and it's understandable and I want to be adamant that I am not anti-agriculture but I do see that we are at a very critical stage where we have to find a better way forward and I think as a region we really have to envision a different approach and to bring and farmers very much have to be as part of that conversation and in those discussions but we absolutely cannot go backwards in terms of weakening what are really fundamental protections Lake Champlain in terms of any environmental issue you look at our wetlands have been absolutely critical to environmental mitigation some of us through the IJC process in terms of looking at that flooding issue that are really trying to advance natural systems as important tools in better protecting not only our ecosystem but also our even populations and there are many stories we can tell about that and even through the storm I read the strong wetland systems help places avoid extensive flooding so we don't want to go backwards but I think and this is again a gross ever generalization but for many years agriculture particularly the Vermont legislature there were ongoing agricultural exemptions it was just part of the course when you were advancing legislation we cannot do that any longer recently the legislation that passed several years ago in terms of what's called the Clean Water Act really required much more stringent controls on agriculture we need to really be enforcing those and there's no way that we should be weakening things that are really fundamental to environmental protection so you know stay involved you can contact me for more detailed information on what's going on there but you know just want to make that larger point that we need to really not only protect our farming community but we also need to protect the land and the water that we're so dependent on I'd like to thank Ellen and this absolutely stellar mental for a terrific Mr. few minutes we have two honored guests two honored guests who wish to make a few remarks and the first the first is Eugene Rich he is the chief of the Mrs. Goy Habanaki Nation and he he's going to come on and chat with us for a few minutes Eugene Rich thanks so much for joining us I promise to keep this brief because I have absolutely no memory of everything down but it's an honor to be here I wish I could have been here earlier this morning to greet everybody but it's a great way welcome please accept my belated welcome to the Winnicki River, the Old Onion River in our ancestral language in an important part of Mrs. Goy's homeland today the lake between is very important to our people we hunt the marshes, the shorelines we fish it shallows and the depths we enjoy canoeing, power boating we're just feeding out in the old waters a lot of things have changed but my people's love and respect and need for this lake have not the Mrs. Goy St. Francis's Sikoki tribe has always been by this lake it is still by this lake and it will always be by this lake our people have always settled the first falls on the rivers coming off the lake for its fishing and for its agriculture the Mrs. Goy River now swung Winnicki, on the Winnicki River now Burlington Nathan Bay, Patungak the Otter Creek now for gens, the waters flowing into Lake Champlain are in our blood and in our souls over the years we have to deal with reburying our ancestors that were collected by a dominant society at the flood plains of these ancient lifelines along this lake the Arduous Tash could reaffirm our ancient ties to the lake into the watersheds to assure the respect that our people have for the lake and its environment we take our young to the fields every year to teach them to fish and learn how to camp and collect and teach them the difference between medicinal plants and edible plants things that have become important important part of our culture from time and more we share this lake in streams and rivers with many cultures but at the heart of this lake it all has been part of the Atnaki and it's our ongoing mission to try to work with as many agencies private people and like the university for a moment had an incredible folk tour last year where I was allowed to go out first hand with some of the students and more concerned people and just be able to take a look at what they do and how they do it and it's one thing to see numbers on paper it's quite another to actually go out be part of something and to observe it and see the dedication some of the young people that were involved gave me great hope because this next generation is our future they are our protectors I can stand up here and talk all day long but my time is going to end it's the next group they have to have the love of the lake they have to have the concern and the voice and so with that I just hope everybody takes a moment to be empowered and to empower others to help speak for this lake the lake can't do it on its own it'll show you when it's hurt it'll show you when it's ailing but we need to be good stewards of the lake thank you so much Eugene Governor Phil Scott is the 82nd Governor of Vermont and far more important he's a graduate of the University of Vermont class of 1980 Phil Scott it's been a long day for each and every one of you but important work today and it's something that we have to continue to talk about I think the good news is throughout the state and throughout the legislature and administration we all have the same goal we all know that we have to clean up our lake it's the crown jewel of Vermont and it's something that we have to protect so the good news is we are all on board in my administration we've come forward with the funding we believe necessary this year and ongoing throughout the next decade or two to continue this process so that's the good news we may have different road maps on how to get there but again I try to focus on common goals what we can do to get it when I took office a couple of years ago I had talked about my three guiding principles to grow the economy make Vermont more affordable and protect the most vulnerable Lake Champlain and our waterways are an integral at least two out of the three maybe all three when you think about growing the economy it's incredibly important to us it's an asset to us here Lake Champlain is to our region to our state but also it's amongst the most vulnerable and again we have to we have an obligation to protect that so as we look to do both protect the most vulnerable to grow this economy again it goes hand in hand it's not either or it's both and I think that we have again a lot to look forward to I know each and every one of you and the panelists here today have a piece of that so from my perspective we I'm going to look at the glass that is half full and it's getting clearer but again that's what we have to look forward again to because when you look at some of the studies that have been done we know as the quality and the clarity of the water decreases our economic opportunity decreases as well so the clearer the water gets the more economic advantage it is for us as a state so regardless of what side of the issue you're on we're in this hand in hand and I believe that we can get this accomplished because again we share the same goal I thank you so much for taking part in this your ongoing effort this isn't this is going to take some time but again working together pulling the same direction is how we'll accomplish this so thanks again for having me and thanks for taking the time today to do this partner in time next steps the only logistical thing I have to add here at the end is if anybody needs a ride down to the flag raising ceremony let me know we decided to save the missions and not rent a giant bus but if anybody does need a ride let me know and I'll be happy to arrange that with a couple of cars here ready to do that the only other logistic thing is you may have noticed we have been taping and doing all sorts of media related stuff and we will work with all the folks here and make that available at some point soon and this is a really great interview so I think we've been able to do and it's been a pleasure trying to work on this and organize this we've been so lucky to have such great panelists in all sorts of places and of course David probably has some last thing to say here absolutely nothing to say thanks for coming