Lake Champlain Watershed Program
The Lake Champlain Watershed drains the area between the Adirondack Mountains in northeastern New York State and the Green Mountains in northwestern Vermont. The long, narrow and deep lake, which spans 120 miles with a maximum depth of 400 feet, has its outlet at its northern end where it flows through the Richelieu River into Quebec and empties into the Saint Lawrence River.
Watershed Facts:
- Area: 8,234 square miles
- New York Area: 3,050 square miles
- Population: 571,000
- New York Population: 154,000
- Lake Area: 278,480 acres
New York's Connection to Lake Champlain
New York's portion of the Lake Champlain watershed is made up 4,883 miles of freshwater rivers and streams. Major tributary watersheds to Lake Champlain in New York State include the Ausable River (767 river miles), Saranac River (662 miles), Boquet River (532 miles), Mettawee River (390 miles) and Ticonderoga Creek/Lake George (380 miles)
There are 235 significant freshwater lakes, ponds, and reservoirs (covering 159,302 acres total) within the watershed, including Lake George (28,523 acres), Upper Saranac Lake (4,844 acres), Lower Saranac Lake (2,145 acres), and Lake Placid (1,954 acres).
In total, some of five New York counties are in the Lake Champlain watershed: Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Warren and Washington.
Water Quality Problems and Solutions
Excess nutrients (phosphorus) and sediment from all over the Lake Champlain watershed degrade the Bay's water quality. Nutrient sources include sewage, manure, inorganic fertilizer, urban stormwater and sediment-bound phosphorus from eroded streambanks, fields, and rural roads.
Lake Champlain Phosphorus Total Maximum Daily Load
In 2002, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) approved the Lake Champlain Phosphorus Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) developed jointly by Vermont and New York. The Lake Champlain TMDL outlines the maximum amount of phosphorous pollution that the lake can receive and still meet water quality standards.
The TMDL established the necessary reductions in phosphorous for each wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) in Vermont and New York as well as reductions needed from agricultural, developed, and forested land in each sub-watershed of the Lake. There has been significant effort to address phosphorous sources in the New York portion of the Lake Champlain watershed, phosphorous levels in most areas of the lake continue to exceed TMDL target concentrations.
Lake Champlain Watershed Implementation Plan
While the 2002 TMDL helped meet the water quality goals of several of New York’s Lake segments, it did not include an implementation plan. DEC developed the Lake Champlain Watershed Implementation Plan (PDF) which provides an analysis of the geographic sources of phosphorus pollution by source sector (Agriculture, Developed, Forested, Septic and Wastewater). The plan then discusses implementation strategies and potential funding sources for implementation. While $112 million of state funding (and $70 million in state-sponsored loans) has been spent on nearly three hundred water quality improvement projects, conditions associated with excessive phosphorus pollution persist in some sections of the lake. The plans targeting strategy will allow DEC and its partners to achieve the largest amount of phosphorus reduction in lake segments that continue to exceed phosphorus targets with the lowest cost over time.
Lake Champlain Harmful Algal Bloom Action Plan
Harmful algal blooms (HABs) have been of concern over the past few years due to increased frequency and duration in blooms that have resulted in frequent bathing beach closures near Port Henry and Isle LaMotte. NYSDEC, along with the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) and New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYSDAM), developed a Harmful Algal Bloom Action Plan for Lake Champlain in 2018 to identify conditions that contribute to the formation of HABs and determine immediate and long-term actions to reduce their frequency.