A standing room only crowd at the North Country Career Center heard from six experts on the health of Lake Memphremagog this week. The event, organized by the group Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity (DUMP), focused on the threat of landfill leachate and the persistence of PFAS chemicals in the watershed.
DUMP members Peggy Stevens and Polly Jones assembled a panel covering water, sediment, and fish sampling. The driving concern is the potential discharge of treated landfill leachate into the lake’s watershed. In 2019, an Act 250 permit allowed New England Waste Services of Vermont (NEWSVT) to send 15,000 gallons of leachate daily to the Newport City wastewater plant, which then discharged into the Clyde River, a tributary of Lake Memphremagog.
That leachate contained PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances). The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources banned leachate treatment at the Newport facility in 2021, and NEWSVT has since built a filtration system that removes some but not all PFAS compounds. The group is now pushing for a law that would prohibit any landfill leachate discharge in the watershed.
For a full account of the expert testimony, see the Newport Daily Express’s June 12 edition.
Originally reported by Newport Daily Express.
Photo: Sahil Raut via Pexels. Photo is illustrative and not from the scene.
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