Public advocacy groups took aim at a sacred Vermont institution Wednesday, accusing cheese-maker Cabot Creamery of polluting local farms with wastewater full of industrial chemicals. Members of the groups Toxics Action Center and Whey To Go, said Cabot Creamery's practice of spraying local fields with water used to clean their equipment is not in tune with Vermont's image as a green state. Cabot Creamery immediately denied any wrongdoing.

The Conservation Law Foundation renewed its request Wednesday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency take over the job of regulating water pollution in Vermont on grounds the state Agency of Natural Resources is failing to get the job done."The state is not protecting clean water in the way that Congress and the EPA require, so the state shouldn't be able to take millions of dollars of taxpayer money for those programs," said Chris Kilian, head of CLF's Vermont office. Vermont is one of a number of states to which the EPA has delegated enforcement of the Clean Water Act. The state receives an estimated $6 million a year to do the job.

An environmental group says the state has failed to crack down on water pollution from large farms and a sewage treatment plant. The Conservation Law Foundation says that since the state isn't doing the job, the federal government should take over the clean water permit program.

Policymakers know where much of the phosphorus in Lake Champlain comes from. Sewage treatment plants release some. Most phosphorus — either dissolved in water or attached to soil particles — is carried to the lake in runoff from farm fields, lawns, roadside ditches and city streets. There’s one likely significant source of phosphorus that no one has quantified or included in pollution budgets: Phosphorus attached to the soil in eroding river banks.

Following a recent clash with three area residents over the right to kayak and fish on Berlin Pond, the city of Montpelier is considering adopting a new ordinance and revising an old one in order to protect the pond, which supplies the city with water. The ordinances would clarify and strengthen Montpelier's ability to take action to protect the pond, and would raise the city's existing "Source Protection Plan" to something that can be enforced with fines and penalties, according to Paul Giuliani, the city's attorney. It would also allow the city to act more quickly to a threat of pollution or contamination, Giuliani said.

Two government scientists will report startling good news today about efforts to reduce phosphorus pollution of Lake Champlain. Using new statistical methods, the researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey found that phosphorus loads decreased in 14 lake tributaries between 2000 and 2008. That conclusion runs counter previous reports using less sophisticated analytical techniques. Until now, researchers had been unable to detect any downward trend in phosphorus carried to the lake by rivers in Vermont, New York and Quebec – despite more than a decade and $100 million of public investment in stemming pollution.

The Lake St. Catherine Fund made itself official Saturday. The group, organized by people dissatisfied with the Lake Saint Catherine Association's approach to the southern end of the lake, adopted bylaws and elected officers and a Board of Directors Saturday. William Steinmetz, one of the group's original organizers and its newly elected president, said 80 families are members. "We're going to create some pressure, raise some funds and clean up the lake," Steinmetz said after the meeting.

Attorney General Andrew M Cuomo today announced that his office is dedicating $500,000 to create a new grant program to help local farmers fight water pollution in Lake Champlain. The funds, from a settlement that Cuomo secured in a court-ordered settlement with American Electric Power, will assist farmers in the southern Champlain Valley to further improve operations and reduce stormwater discharges of nutrients from their land. Cuomo enlisted the help of Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell in finding a way for farmers in Vermont and New York to reduce pollutants along the southern stretches of the lake.

For almost a year, two Mount Anthony Union High School sophomores have been studying the bugs in two Bennington waterways to determine the level of pollution in each. The research that the students began last summer was funded by the University of Vermont and Vermont Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research though a National Science Foundation grant. The students said they plan to continue their research over the next year, likely continuing to study the Walloomsac as well as a different waterway, and submitting next year's research in the state science fair.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reconsidering its approval of a state clean up plan for Lake Champlain. The plan was approved by the federal government in 2002, but pollution levels have continued to rise in the big lake. The Douglas Administration reacted strongly to the EPA decision. Environmental Conservation Commissioner Justin Johnson said at one point the EPA had declared the Vermont plan a model for other states.

Update on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 01:48PM by VCF Staff

It's complicated, has been going on for years and is, at times, extremely arcane. But the dispute between the state and the Conservation Law Foundation over the regulation of phosphorous pollution in Lake Champlain is also one of the most important environmental battles in Vermont. Its outcome will matter to anyone who swims or boats on the lake or just lives in its watershed – and that's the majority of Vermonters.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has worked for decades with New York and Connecticut to clean up Long Island Sound. Too much nitrogen in the water has led to "dead zones" where fish and shellfish can't survive. Now the federal agency is asking sewage treatment plants nearly 200 miles away in Vermont to help reduce pollutants that are hurting the sound.

In their annual town meeting Tuesday, folks in this town weighed in on a debate that has consumed lawmakers in Montpelier and dominated radio talk shows and newspaper opinion pages: the continued operation of an aging nuclear power plant whose "leaks and lies" are fueling a push to close it. People in Waitsfield and 13 other towns approved resolutions urging the Legislature to pull the plug on the Vermont Yankee plant. Normally, the decision would be solely in the hands of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Not in Vermont: It's the only state with a law giving the Legislature a say in the relicensing of a nuclear plant. And Tuesday, regular people had their say, too.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has taken the rare step of reaching across state lines into Vermont in order to protect Long Island Sound - hundreds of miles downstream. The EPA has formally objected to permits proposed for two Vermont sewage treatment plants. The agency says the Vermont plants would let too much pollution flow down the Connecticut River to the Sound.

Saying that the state's groundwater was being polluted by the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, the Vermont Natural Resources Council filed a request with the Public Service Board to intervene in Entergy Nuclear's still-pending request to continue operating for another 20 years. Jon Groveman, water program director and staff attorney for the environmental group, said Tuesday that the recent tritium groundwater contamination convinced group to get involved. So far, it hasn't participated in the formal hearings on the relicensing issue. "Vermont Yankee has misled the Public Service Board and everybody about the threat to groundwater from existing piping," Groveman said.

A new University of Vermont study offers fresh hope for protecting Lake Champlain. The study demonstrates how a set of actions on a limited land area could dramatically reduce one major pollution source: farm runoff. Although the study identifies strategies for reducing pollution from high-priority fields, implementing those changes will not necessarily be easy. That will depend on the willingness of farmers to change, and the ability of government to subsidize practices such as riverbank buffers and the planting of winter cover crops.