Revising the Implementation Plan for the Lake Champlain Phosphorus TMDL

The Lake Champlain Phosphorus TMDL was developed and submitted jointly by the States of Vermont and New York to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2002. The TMDL included a Vermont-specific implementation plan describing action items needed to accomplish the necessary phosphorus load reduction. The implementation plan served as a basis for the efforts of the state agencies of Natural Resources (ANR) and Agriculture, Food and Markets by guiding annual funding requests, staffing levels, and program priorities between 2002 and 2009. Changes to state law enacted during the 2008 legislative session required ANR to prepare a revised implementation plan. The revised plan was released in January 2010 and has successfully attracted additional state and federal resources to support implementation. This paper describes the approach used in revising the implementation plan, the range of issues considered, the implementation priorities that were identified, and progress over the past year.