Watershed Moments - Newsletter Article


   

 

RACC Team Contributes to Groundbreaking Environmental Law Publication

   
Contact Maryellen Apelquist
Director of Communications, VT Law School
mapelquist@vermontlaw.edu


RACC faculty and stakeholders authored twelve of nineteen articles featured in the Spring 2016 Vermont Journal of Environmental Law.  Articles covered topics from “A Natural and Human History of Lake Champlain” to “The Lake Champlain Basin as a Complex Adaptive System: Insights from the Research on Adaptation to Climate Change “RACC” Project” and “Controlling Polluted Stormwater Runoff from Roads”.

The Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (VJEL) at Vermont Law School announced the publication of a timely new set of information and perspectives on the Lake Champlain restoration plan recently approved by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the federal Clean Water Act. 

In June the EPA issued a document referred to as a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) that assigns responsibility to landowners, farmers, and businesses for reducing the levels of phosphorus they are responsible for introducing into Lake Champlain. The "Lake Champlain Edition" of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law (Volume 17, Issue 4) provides helpful and interesting insights into the scientific, policy and legal implications of this groundbreaking plan. 
 
Editors Trey Martin, deputy secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, and David Mears, VLS vice dean and professor of law, are joined by an impressive array of scientists, government officials, policy experts and attorneys in presenting a top-to-bottom analysis of the TMDL. 
 
"The 'Lake Champlain Edition' of the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how science, policy and law are intertwined in the efforts by the state, the EPA and the many Vermont businesses, citizens and farmers who are working to restore Lake Champlain," Mears said. 

A full version of the journal may be found at 
Vermont Journal of Environmental Law