New coordinator aims to unite Lake Champlain conservation efforts

Sue Hagar takes helm of coalition working to protect watershed from pollution, climate threats

By Tim Rowland

Stretching for 120 miles, Lake Champlain directly and indirectly touches numerous communities, municipalities, conservation groups and citizens, many of them with thoughts about how best to protect the lake and its tributaries from pollutants.

These thoughts and ideas are often good, but they don’t always filter from one part of the lake communities to another.

“We have five very distinctive counties that all have very special, specific needs, and we all need to work together,” said Sue Hagar, the new coordinator for the Champlain Watershed Improvement Coalition of New York (CWICNY). “CWICNY’s mission is to foster collaborative planning and implement projects throughout the New York region of our watershed that protect water quality, increase resilience and enhance natural resources to meet local needs and support a healthier Lake Champlain.”

Organization recharges after funding gap

CWICNY was founded in 2003 as an umbrella organization sharing information among multiple municipalities, soil and water conservation districts, nonprofits and government agencies with an interest in protecting the lake. It also became known for its annual Stormwater Tradeshow and Conference where these professionals would learn about the latest in conservation technology, such as porous pavement that absorbs stormwater instead of shedding it, receive professional development credits and network with other professionals in their field.

The coalition continued to soldier on, even as funding for a dedicated coordinator dried up, said Alice Halloran, current coalition president and manager of the Essex County Soil and Water Conservation District. Now, with a new, five-year grant, that position has been restored, meaning the organization can recharge its unifying mission to protect the lake from phosphorus and other threats.

New coordinator focuses on collaboration, complex jurisdictional challenges

Hagar is early in the process of introducing herself to interested parties and expanding upon the coalition’s services. “Collectively, the members of CWICNY are a high-quality source of information about natural resources,” Hagar said. “So that could be resources for municipalities, it could be resources for the general public, it could be resources for educators, it could be resources for technical assistance, making sure that our partners and our stakeholders understand and support what our mission is and what our success is supposed to look like.”

In some ways it’s a  tricky business. New York’s jurisdiction extends to less than half the width of the lake, with more shoreline than Quebec, but less than Vermont. Nor are conditions of health of the lake uniform throughout its waters. 

Some sections have done relatively well with controlling phosphorus, while others, notably Vermont’s Missisquoi Bay, have struggled. All the usual contributors of nutrients that feed harmful algal blooms—farms, sewer plants and stormwater—remain an issue, but there always seem to be new problems to contend with as well.

Five-year plan emphasizes climate resilience, education, priority projects

Most notable, said Halloran, is the need for climate resilience.  Climate change can manifest in hotter temperatures and intense storms that overwhelm local infrastructure. Cyanobacteria blooms, also known as blue-green algae, are showing up earlier in the year and lasting later into the fall, Hagar said.

Kristin Ballou, Franklin County Soil and Water District Manager, who served as president of CWICNY at a time it was without a coordinator, said the group has remained strong in the roughly 10 years since she has been involved, but water-quality issues can now be more consistently addressed with full-time staff. “We’re going to focus on education and outreach, along with our annual stormwater trade show and conference,” she said. “We’ll work over the next five years to identify a list of priority projects that need to be implemented throughout the watershed and focus on the implementation of some smaller projects with funding that we already have secured, and then Sue will work over the next few years to secure additional funding to both support (the coordinator) position and also to support the project implementation.” Hagar has previously worked with the Lake Champlain Basin Program, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and in the environmental remediation field such as the Boquet River Black Ash Pond project in Willsboro and the Saranac River Coal Tar project in Plattsburgh.

In her new role she’ll be spending the coming months meeting with county representatives, listening to local needs and speaking with the public. By learning what communities need, and how they would like to implement projects supporting clean water, CWICNY is in a unique position to help, Hagar said.

She said pursuit of funding for individual projects can at times be challenging, and could be made more effective — for example, if several communities are working on similar projects, CWICNY hopes by working together with their partners in the region, these projects could be bundled together to more effectively go after grant funding.

Beyond that, Hagar said she will continue with CWICNY’s mission of coordinating its multiple members’ initiatives for pollution control, climate resiliency and habitat restoration, as well as working on the organization’s website and increasing familiarity with its brand.

“All members of CWICNY are like-minded,” she said. “We all are working really hard to do the right thing, not only for the environment, but for our communities.”