Why isn’t Lake Champlain a Great Lake?
Lake Champlain is one of the largest lakes in the continental United States with a watershed area-to-lake ratio multiple times that of the Great Lakes. Like the other Great Lakes, Lake Champlain is a bi-state, bi-national lake, and today Lake Champlain Sea Grantplays an important role in protecting this shared resource. So why isn’t it considered a Great Lake?
Lake Champlain has a much higher land-to-lake ratio than any of the Great Lakes. Illustration: Emma Dannenberg for LCBP
In the late 1990’s, the United States government briefly recognized Lake Champlain as the nation’s sixth Great Lake. On March 6, 1998, President Clinton signed a bill drafted by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that would increase support for research and outreach efforts on Lake Champlain. The bill included a single line declaring Lake Champlain a Great Lake, a designation that would allow for the states of Vermont and New York to access federal funding for research and education.
As history would have it, Lake Champlain’s new status was not to be. The seemingly innocuous designation caused a small uproar, primarily among midwestern elected officials who were concerned not with the allocation of funding to Lake Champlain, but with its small size relative to the Great Lakes. Lake Champlain is half the length of the shortest of the Great Lakes, and the surface area of the smallest Great Lake is almost fifteen times that of Lake Champlain.
Only 18 days after the bill passed, Lake Champlain’s Great Lake status was rescinded. However, the bill still accomplished what it ultimately set out to do: establish a Sea Grant office for Lake Champlain. The National Sea Grant college program had been created by Congress several decades earlier, in 1966, to support the conservation of coastal, marine, and Great Lakes resources, and would provide important resources to the Lake Champlain watershed.
After the 1998 bill passed, the Lake Champlain Sea Grant Outreach Project was established as a project of New York Sea Grant and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). From 1999 to 2002, many partners on both shores of Lake Champlain, including the LCBP, worked together to build a strong outreach program.
In 2002, further support from Senator Leahy added an independent Lake Champlain Sea Grant to the National Sea Grant program. Today, this program is based at UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and works in cooperation with SUNY Plattsburgh. An almost 20 person staff leads outreach, education, and research to support Lake Champlain ecosystems, economy, and people. Each year, the program provides more than $15 million in economic benefits to the basin. With closely aligned missions, the LCBP and Lake Champlain Sea Grant collaborate on many initiatives across the watershed.
Let’s return to the question of Lake Champlain’s greatness. Although much smaller in size, Lake Champlain bears many similarities to the Great Lakes of the Midwest. All situated at similar latitudes, the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain feature similar aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Their seasonal climates support many of the same year-round and migrating species. All of the lakes were formed by the movement of glaciers over the landscape and ultimately drain to a common body of water: the St. Lawrence River.
These ecological and geographical similarities make Lake Champlain, with its smaller scale, an excellent place to conduct research that also benefits the Great Lakes, and vice versa. The establishment of Lake Champlain Sea Grant—along with the many watershed organizations in our region—has elevated the research and outreach efforts taking place both here on Lake Champlain and in the Great Lakes, allowing for shared learning and cooperation on a host of efforts from invasive species prevention to water quality and beyond.