Join fellow community members for the public meeting and comment on the Draft Basin 17 Tactical Basin Plan on May 18th and 23rd. The Tactical Basin Plan will serve as the guidebook for water quality protection and restoration efforts in this basin for the next five years. The plan provides updates on water quality challenges in the Lake Memphremagog watershed, progress that has been made over the last five years improving waters for fishing, swimming, and boating, and includes targeted strategies on how we can improve these efforts over the next five years. A summary of the plan is covered in a StoryMap that can be viewed online.
Public meetings will be held:
May 18th at 12:30 PM hosted by the Orleans Natural Resources Conservation District with follow up meeting of the local work group.
Join in person at Prouty Beach Pavilion, 386 Prouty Beach Rd, Newport City or join virtually via Microsoft Teams. Link on the DEC website here:
https://dec.vermont.gov/water-investment/watershed-planning/tactical-basin-planning/basin17
May 23rd 6:30 PM will be hosted by the Memphremagog Watershed Association.
Join in person at the Gateway Center, 84 Fife Drive, Newport City, Vermont
The Draft Plan has been posted for public comment through June 10th. Please submit your comments at one of the public meetings or by email at ben.copans@vermont.gov. Public comments can be submitted by mail to Ben Copans, Basin 17 Comments, 374 Emerson Falls Road, Suite 4, St. Johnsbury, VT 05819. State officials will respond to each comment in a summary written later this summer.
The process to update the Lake Memphremagog Tomifobia and Coaticook tactical basin plan was initiated in 2019 with a round of water quality monitoring and a year for assessing this date to determine conditions of waters across this watershed. In the summer and fall of 2021 partners across watershed provided updates to the 66 strategies that were identified in the 2017 plan showing that over 80% have been initiated or completed since this plan was published. The status and updates on these strategies is available at this link Basin 17 report card.
Basin 17 includes the Vermont portions of the St. Francis River Watershed encompassing a total of 589 square miles between the Lake Memphremagog drainage and the Tomifobia and Coaticook River watersheds. The Vermont portion of this basin includes the Black, Barton and Clyde Rivers and many lakes and ponds, including Great and Little Hosmer Lakes, Lake Parker, Shadow Lake, Crystal Lake, Lake Willoughby, lake Salem, Island Pond, Great and Little Averill Ponds, Norton Pond, Holland Pond and Seymour Lake.