Quebec legislators want Vermont to permanently ban the discharge of leachate into Lake Memphremagog — which provides drinking water to more than 175,000 Canadians.
Environmental groups suspect the PFAS chemicals, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, detected in the lake in the fall came from the Casella Waste Systems landfill, the only operating landfill in Vermont. It’s located in Coventry. Casella disputes the connection and said there was no evidence of a concrete link.
Last Thursday, the National Assembly of Quebec voted 118-0 to ask the province’s government to take a stand on “permanently banning discharging treated leachate into the Lake Memphremagog watershed and to solicit the Vermont government to ensure this is done,” records show. The motion was first reported by the Sherbrooke newspaper La Tribune.
Leachate — the liquid that forms when waste breaks down in a landfill and water filters through that waste — can be highly toxic and can pollute the land, groundwater and waterways.
Officials and activists on both sides of the northern border have talked for years about water quality in the lake, which flows north from Newport into Canada.
Casella Waste Systems once sent its leachate to Newport’s sewage-treatment plant, located on a tributary of the lake. But in 2019, as part of an agreement in an Act 250 dispute, the company agreed to stop doing so until January 2024.
Calls to extend the moratorium were prompted by the discovery last fall of the emergent pollutant PFAS in a Canadian drinking water intake area connected to the lake. Activists believe the trace findings may have come from the landfill’s leachate. Experts say it takes two years for water to flow the entire length of the lake, so activists believe it’s possible the PFAS found last fall could have been in leachate discharged in 2018 or 2019.
Julie Moore, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, said Monday she has been talking with Benoit Charette, the Quebec minister of the environment, about meeting to discuss Lake Memphremagog and other cross-border waters, including Missisquoi Bay in Lake Champlain.
She plans to tell Charette about her agency’s plan to collect data on PFAS concentrations throughout the Memphremagog watershed.
Those tests — three rounds of monthly sampling starting around July — would include studying fish tissues, sampling surface water and testing treated wastewater discharge, Moore said.
“There isn’t a lot of data that’s available in order to have that kind of informed conversation,” she said of the debate around leachate in the lake.
Asked for her reaction to the Quebec legislature’s vote, Moore said she believes that “we need to have a more complete understanding of the issues.” Data like that from the planned study is the best way to move toward a solution, she said.
Moore said her staff has been talking to colleagues in Quebec about running a parallel study on the Canadian end of the lake. The southernmost 5 miles of the finger lake is in Vermont. The remaining 27 miles are in Quebec.
La Tribune also reported that Charette wrote to Moore, saying that Canadians in the region around Lake Memphremagog want the leachate ban to become permanent, and he attaches “importance to any decision that could be taken in this direction.”
The Quebec minister asked Moore to inform him of her plans about the landfill and the lake.
Moore said plans for the PFAS study in Lake Memphremagog began before Charette contacted her.
“We very much look forward to the opportunity to share … what the sampling design is intended to accomplish,” she said.
Concerns about Lake Memphremagog’s water quality haven’t been limited to PFAS. Moore said she understands and shares those worries about the impacts of leachate in the lake.
“That’s part of the reason we require it to be treated prior to discharge,” she said.
Moore said the study will provide a better understanding of where the PFAS are coming from. While the contaminant exists in landfill waste, it can also come from other sources, she said.
The state has studied PFAS before. Last February, the Department of Environmental Conservation issued a report showing that the sewage-treatment plants in Montpelier and Newport had “significantly higher” concentrations of PFAS in the discharges leaving their plants than other Vermont treatment plants.
Those two plants were the only ones regularly accepting landfill leachate during the study.
In Newport, city leaders have said they would like to resume treating leachate at its sewer plant.
City Manager Laura Dolgin said in February treating leachate brings in revenue that would benefit taxpayers in Newport to benefit.
Asked for comment Monday, Dolgin said the city “supports science and technology.”
She pointed to a clause in the leachate-treatment moratorium that says the leachate restriction can be amended if the move is supported by “new science, new technology and/or new data” that shows the risk to the lake’s water quality will not be “unduly adverse.”
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Quebec legislators want permanent ban on leachate into lake on Vermont’s northern border - vtdigger.org
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