A project three plus years in the making, the Lake St. Catherine Watershed Action Plan (LWAP) draft is complete - and we can’t wait to share it with you!

Please join us on Wednesday, June 4th at the Wells Town Hall at 6:30 PM for a presentation of the plan, a look at the designs for the projects that were selected at the previous LWAP meeting in February, and we’ll gather your feedback before we submit the final draft to the State and our funders, the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP).

An LWAP is designed to identify and communicate the problems and fixes within a lake watershed to best protect water quality, wildlife habitat, and the lake’s ecosystem health. These plans answer the questions 'what issues threaten the health of our lake the most?' and 'what can we do about them?'

The goal of an LWAP is to evaluate water quality conditions and related stressors in a lake and its watershed to identify the greatest threats to the lake ecosystem, including sources of increased stormwater runoff and associated sediment and nutrients as well as other important stressors such as invasive species, habitat loss, erosion, and other threats that may lead to loss or degradation of defined uses under the Vermont Water Quality Standards.

Specifically for Lake St. Catherine, the findings from the creation of the LWAP will guide our long-term efforts to increase water quality by the prevention and control of aquatic invasive species (AIS), reducing erosion, and by reducing the amount of phosphorus, nitrogen, sediments, and other pollutants from entering the Lake.

The Lake St. Catherine Watershed Action Plan was developed over the course of 2021 - 2024 through extensive fieldwork, interaction with multiple stakeholders from the Towns of Poultney and Wells, LSCA, PMNRCD, and Castleton University, to identify and prioritize projects, and follow-up analysis & design work.

The LSCA hired Fitzgerald Environmental Associates (FEA) in April 2022 to assist with the development of the watershed assessment and accompanying project prioritization and concept designs. LSCA later added limnologist Emily Porter-Goff and Professor Andrew Vermilyea of Castleton University to the project team. Fieldwork and data analysis was reviewed by VT DEC officials.

This was a massive undertaking, and we’d like to thank all who contributed to this project. We’d also like to note that the good work of PMNRCD has made our LWAP unique in VT by including assessments of our wetlands and forest blocks.

You can read more about the LSC Watershed Action Plan here: https://lakestcatherine.org/lsc-watershed-action-plan

Please join us at the meeting on June 4th!