When Erin Robbason of West Rutland first heard that Lake Champlain had briefly been designated “Great” status, she was perplexed. So she asked:
“Why is Lake Champlain no longer a Great Lake?”
To answer Erin’s question, we pass the mic to our friends at Interlochen Public Radio and the podcast Points North. You can learn more about the show and find the original web post for this episode here.
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Josh Crane: From Vermont Public and the NPR Network, this is Brave Little State. I’m Josh Crane.
You could say that this episode started where a lot of Vermont journeys start: at an admissions event for the University of Vermont.
Erin Robbason was at one last spring with her son, who’s a prospective student. And something the admissions officer said piqued her interest.
Erin Robbason: And I had never heard this before, and so it just made me question if it was even real, what he was saying.
Josh Crane: Erin has lived in Vermont for more than 20 years. She’s one of those people who likes to collect all the quirky bits of local history and other trivia she can find. But this fun fact was new to her.
Erin Robbason: The comment was, “And did you know that Vermont was the home of a Great Lake at one point?” Or something, something along that line.
Josh Crane: Great Lakes. There are five straddling the border between the Midwestern United States and Canada. And they are really big, covering more than the area of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
Erin Robbason: When I think of the Great Lakes, I think that they're much larger and bigger, and really that they are geographically centered where the Great Lakes are. And so to have a Great Lake in Vermont sort of stretched my, my mind to say, how is it even possible to have a Great Lake here?
Josh Crane: Now, Vermont really only has one lake that you could, in good faith, even consider as a Great Lake contender: Lake Champlain. And, turns out, it was once the sixth Great Lake … for very brief period of time.
The fact that Lake Champlain once had "Great" status, and then lost it — that raised even more questions for Erin.
Erin Robbason: How did it just lose its Great Lake status, and why is it no longer a Great Lake? What happened?
Josh Crane: A lot of you are also stumped by this strange Vermont fact, since you chose Erin’s question for us to answer in one of our recent voting rounds.
Well, in a case of true synchronicity in the public radio podcast universe, just after all of you voted for Erin’s question, I heard from this guy.
Dan Wanschura: Check one two, testing, testing. One two. Check, check, check ...
Josh Crane: This is Dan Wanschura, the host and executive producer of Points North, a podcast from Interlochen Public Radio all about the Great Lakes.
Dan Wanschura: Check, one, two, okay, I think we're good. Cool.
Josh Crane: Dan and his team host trivia nights in Michigan.
Dan Wanschura: We call ‘em “Pints North” by the way, which we’re pretty proud of. (Laughter)
Josh Crane: And while they were prepping for these events, they stumbled upon the same fun fact that Erin did: that Lake Champlain was once considered the sixth Great Lake.
Dan Wanschura: The crowd at the trivia nights would often be stumped, 'cause they didn't remember this or know anything about it. And through that, I was just like, man, we got to do this story. We got to get into what happened here.
Josh Crane: So, they did. Dan and reporter Ruth Abramovitz unearthed the history of Lake Champlain’s fleeting brush with greatness, and the controversy that followed. They even spoke to the one Vermont senator who was at the center of it all.
Dan and Ruth pick the story up when we come back.
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Dan Wanschura: I’m Dan Wanschura.
More than 25 years ago, back in 1998, Tom Berry had a job in politics in Vermont. It was late February, when out of the blue, Tom got a call from back home in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Tom Berry: My mother called and asked me, “What's up with Lake Champlain thinking it could be a Great Lake? There's only five Great Lakes and Lake Champlain's not one of 'em.”
Dan Wanschura: Tom was completely caught off guard. He hadn’t heard anything about this from his colleagues in government. So he was even more surprised to be getting the news from his mom.
Tom Berry: And she said, “Well, one of the Vermont senators just made it a Great Lake, and it's not a Great Lake.”
Dan Wanschura: What Tom didn’t know then was Congress had just passed a bill designating Lake Champlain as one of the Great Lakes. It was quickly becoming this huge national story, like on NBC Nightly News.
Lisa Murrow: Congress wants to create a new Great Lake. A sixth one. Read between the lines of this bill — the president is about to sign it — and you will find language to designate a new Great Lake.
Dan Wanschura: Tom’s mother wasn’t alone in her outrage. All over the Midwest, fifth graders, editorial boards and members of Congress pushed back against this new Great Lake. It seemed sort of ridiculous. Lake Champlain is way smaller than all the other Great Lakes. It’s this long, skinny lake tucked between New York, Vermont and Quebec. Even Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake, makes Champlain look like a swimming pool. It’s over 16 times bigger than Lake Champlain.
Davis Helberg: We have islands in the Great Lakes larger than Lake Champlain.
Dan Wanschura: That’s Davis Helberg talking to NPR. He was the port director in Duluth, Minnesota.
Davis Helberg: We have these thousand-foot lakers that carry iron ore and coal within the Great Lakes. A thousand feet long, carry about 65,000 tons. I suppose when one of these retires, we could donate it to Lake Champlain and they could make a bridge out of it.
Dan Wanschura: Congress members from the Great Lakes states were quick to chime in too.
Fred Upton: To add a little lake that’s one sixteenth the size of the smallest Great Lake is just crazy.
Dan Wanschura: That’s Fred Upton, a congressman from Michigan at the time. He also described Lake Champlain as a “pencil line on a map.” Ohio Representative Steve LaTourette piled on too, telling reporters, “If Lake Champlain ends up as a Great Lake, I propose we rename it ‘Lake Plain Sham.’”
So, if Lake Champlain was not on par with the fab five, how did this all happen? Ruth Abramovitz picks up the story.
Ruth Abramovitz: This all started with one of Lake Champlain’s biggest advocates, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. By 1998, Leahy already loomed large in the Senate. He had been in office for more than two decades, and he chaired and held seats on some of the most powerful committees. He also literally loomed large. Leahy is 6’2. His imposing frame, furrowed eyebrows, and white hair were super recognizable. Leahy knew that Lake Champlain was in trouble.
Patrick Leahy: I wanted to make sure we were protecting the lake, which is a beautiful spot, but faces all of these environmental pressures.
Ruth Abramovitz: Senator Leahy tells me this from his kitchen in Burlington. I can see Lake Champlain through the window behind him. Great or not, it’s a brilliant shade of blue. He’s 85 now. He retired from the Senate a few years ago, after 48 years in office.
Patrick Leahy: I wanted to make sure I had a lake that wasn't falling into the pollution that we saw in a couple of the Great Lakes.
Ruth Abramovitz: In both the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, agricultural runoff was causing a buildup of phosphorus in the water. This led to harmful algal blooms and threatened aquatic life. And zebra mussels, sea lamprey, and other invasive species had arrived in Lake Champlain.
Susanne Fleek-Green: Senator Leahy was really focused on ways to increase both scientific research that went into cleaning up Lake Champlain, as well as the actual cleaning up of Lake Champlain.
Ruth Abramovitz: That’s Susanne Fleek-Green, a legislative assistant to Leahy who worked on environmental issues.
Susanne Fleek-Green: He really, you know, looked at every agency and tried to find ways to help Lake Champlain.
Ruth Abramovitz: The lake brought billions of dollars to Vermont and New York through tourism and fishing each year. It also provided hundreds of thousands of residents with clean drinking water. If Lake Champlain fell into ecological disaster, it wouldn’t just harm the species in the lake. It would harm Vermonters. But there was a solution. A federal program to fight these problems already existed.
[Waterfall of individuals saying “sea grant”]
Ruth Abramovitz: The National Sea Grant Program had been around since 1966. It funded ecological research in coastal areas and the Great Lakes. They were tackling those issues with invasive species and runoff, among other things.
Susanne Fleek-Green: The University of Vermont, said, “Hey, it would be great if we too, could be part of the Sea Grant program,” especially because they worked on a lot of the same invasive species issues that occurred in the Great Lakes.
Ruth Abramovitz: In late 1997, Susanne went to work.
Susanne Fleek-Green: We knew that the Sea Grant reauthorization bill was bubbling at the Commerce Committee. … And so we started talking to … staff on the committee about how to add UVM as a Sea Grant program.
Ruth Abramovitz: Reauthorization of the program only happened every couple of years. This was their best shot at including Lake Champlain.
Susanne Fleek-Green: You know, like in any legislative process, we went back and forth a little bit to see if that was the best approach.
Ruth Abramovitz: They wanted to get this done while the bill was still being polished in committee. Before it went to the full Senate for a vote.
Patrick Leahy: The only way we could do it initially, because the bill was about to go to the floor, was just add it on to the Great Lakes designation.
Ruth Abramovitz: So, Senator Patrick Leahy added in a brief line. It read, “The term Great Lakes includes Lake Champlain.” Tom Berry, the guy whose mom called him, later worked as a staffer for Leahy. According to Tom, this was a classic move from Leahy’s playbook.
Tom Berry: It's just something that the senator was able to do, I think sort of at the 11th hour during a committee markup, which is often how he liked to get significant, uh, work done. … Just an extra line of language here or there, not completely remaking the bill, could have a dramatic impact on Vermont.
Ruth Abramovitz: The Sea Grant bill made it to the full Senate, amendment and all. Compared with a lot of bills in Congress, this one was pretty unremarkable. It was a bill reauthorizing an uncontroversial program. In fact, it didn’t even come to a full, recorded vote in either chamber. Instead, it went through legislative shortcuts used to pass boring bills. So in both the Senate and the House, the bill passed super easily, without any disruption or complaints from the Midwest legislators.
As the media storm brewed, President Bill Clinton signed the Sea Grant bill into law. On March 6, 1998, there were six Great Lakes. Leahy’s office put out a press release celebrating this win for Vermont. It noted that Lake Champlain was now one of the Greats.
Patrick Leahy: I had people come up to me in the Capitol, “Oh, we saw a picture out of Lake Champlain. My, that's beautiful.” I had a number of people bring newspapers wanting me to sign the newspaper. I’d never had an experience like that.
Ruth Abramovitz: This was all welcome news to Ellen Marsden. At the time, she was an assistant professor of wildlife and fisheries biology at the University of Vermont.
Ellen Marsden: The Sea Grant program has always been a very good place to go to for research funding. … So it spelled opportunity for us. Wow. We're already doing work on Lake Champlain. Here's even more opportunity to get that work funded or find funding for it.
Ruth Abramovitz: Ellen and her colleagues saw the attacks on Lake Champlain — like “Lake Plain Sham,” the thousand foot freighter bridge. But, they had a sense of humor about it.
Ellen Marsden: I remember it and we were, of course, we were glued to the radio and the press and you know, ultimately being slightly miffed, a bit more just chuckling at the different responses.
Ruth Abramovitz: They knew their lake didn’t measure up, but they still felt the need to defend it. Maybe, it should be a Great Lake.
Ellen Marsden: We wanted to find some statistic that would allow us to sort of hold our own, so to speak. Well we’re certainly not bigger in area, and we’re certainly not bigger in volume. We are actually deeper at the deepest point than Lake Erie, but that's not saying a lot. Lake Erie is very shallow.
Ruth Abramovitz: Okay, it passes the depth test.
Ellen Marsden: And the one big statistic, of course, is we have a remarkably huge drainage basin… So in the Great Lakes, that ratio of watershed to lake area is about one to one. … In Lake Champlain, that ratio is 18 to one.
Ruth Abramovitz: The Vermonters stuck to these arguments, and said Champlain really was on par with the Great Lakes. Leahy pushed this idea as well. Back in 1998, he told NBC that Vermonters had always considered Lake Champlain the sixth Great Lake.
Patrick Leahy: Lake Champlain has always been one of the Great Lakes in its ecology, its geography, and its origin.
Ruth Abramovitz: So why did the Great Lakes politicians let this happen in the first place? Likely, they weren’t paying much attention to the Sea Grant bill at all.
Patrick Leahy: These were people who basically were embarrassed that they had to tell their constituents, “I voted for a bill I never read or didn't understand,” and I was, I was not gonna push back on them.
Fred Upton: It missed the attention of everyone.
Ruth Abramovitz: That’s Representative Fred Upton again.
Fred Upton: You know, we have a lot of bills, pieces of legislation. You rely on staff, you rely on others, you often might have 25 bills up in an hour’s time for a vote on the House floor.
Ruth Abramovitz: He was worried that this bill could hurt funding for the Great Lakes.
Fred Upton: When you go from five Great Lakes to six, guess what? The funding gets cut.
Ruth Abramovitz: At first, a Lake Champlain Sea Grant program would take less than 200,000 from a $56 million pot. But, what if Lake Champlain cut into other programs, beyond Sea Grant? And this set a dangerous precedent.
Fred Upton: It would've been a foot in the door to eventually block us out by adding a sixth. And who knows if someone in someplace else had an idea for a seventh Great Lake or you know, whether it be in Florida or California.
Ruth Abramovitz: The heated backlash coming from the Great Lakes was about funding, but it was also about identity.
Chris Gillcrist: The idea that the Midwest is culturally different from, say the East Coast or the West Coast is really, it's, it's been a long standing tradition.
Ruth Abramovitz: That’s Chris Gillcrist, the director emeritus of the Great Lakes Historical Society. Chris says this attempt to add a sixth Great Lake felt like an affront on the five original lakes and their home states. It was annoying. The Great Lakes region were often victims of bicoastal bias, Chris argues. When it came to federal projects, they always had to fight for attention over the two coasts. Making Lake Champlain a Great Lake on a whim, it felt like just another example of East Coast favoritism.
Chris Gillcrist: I think it illustrated a lot of things about how people viewed the Great Lakes, and kind of a lack of respect for the history of the Great Lakes and what it had done for this country over 200 years.
Ruth Abramovitz: Even though the bill was signed into law, the fight wasn’t over. The Great Lakes delegation did not want to admit Lake Champlain, and Senator Leahy did not want to lose the funding he had just finessed. The stage was set for negotiations to begin. In the ring, it was Representative Upton and Michigan’s two senators. They were up against the heavy hitter from Vermont.
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Fred Upton: I felt a little bit like David and Goliath. … Leahy was very distinguished, real white hair, a lot of respect. No skeletons for sure, and well loved and … he was able to get a lot of things done for the state of Vermont.
Ruth Abramovitz: Compared to Leahy, Upton just didn’t have the same stature. And he looked it. He said he would still get carded buying alcohol when he was in Congress.
Fred Upton: I got tackled once on the house floor by the security folks who, they didn't think I was a member of Congress rushing to vote early in my career. … And, here's this young guy, not even a subcommittee chair, working to take him on.
Ruth Abramovitz: But it wasn’t just the Michigan Congressional delegation negotiating with this titan of the Senate.
Fred Upton: You know I relied on folks from Wisconsin and Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York. We're all reliant on the Great Lakes. We know the importance of it, whether you live on the Great Lakes, or not.
Ruth Abramovitz: Outside of negotiations, the Midwest had some other tactics.
Fred Upton: We utilized the press, so NPR covered it as they should.
Scott Simon: Lake Champlain is now a Great Lake. It’s the law. No matter what logic or geography says.
Fred Upton: And we got some wonderful editorials and headlines in major city papers.
Ruth Abramovitz: The more attention this got, and the more the Midwest outrage made headlines, the better. It would ramp up pressure on Leahy to undo the designation.
Patrick Leahy: I told them quietly, “Don't worry, we're gonna fix all this and we're gonna have a bill that you will want to vote for.”
Ruth Abramovitz: 18 days after the bill was signed, Senator Leahy came to the floor with an announcement.
Patrick Leahy: Mr. President, I want to say that I'm pleased to join my colleagues from the Great Lake States today to offer an amendment that clarifies an issue that relates to ecological research involving Lake Champlain and its relatives, the Great Lakes of the Midwest. …The purpose of my earlier amendment was not to change any maps, but to promote ecological research on the common problems facing our lake. I understand the symbolic issue this has become with our friends in the Midwest, and because they are my friends, I do not want to create problems for them. … We've agreed to call Lake Champlain a cousin instead of a little brother to those larger lakes in the Midwest.
Ruth Abramovitz: Under this amendment brought by Leahy and his colleagues from the Midwest, Lake Champlain would no longer be one of the Great Lakes. The amendment didn’t guarantee money for Lake Champlain, but it allowed nearby universities to apply for it. Just like any other college in the Sea Grant program. Looking back, Upton remembers this as a true compromise.
Fred Upton: The bottom line, of course, was that the Great Lakes still prevailed at five and getting the funding. And Lake Champlain was eligible for Sea Grant money, and he was pretty happy about that too. So it was a win-win for both regions.
Ruth Abramovitz: This new amendment was tacked on to another appropriations bill in the Senate, which passed both chambers of Congress. The national news died down, the dust settled over Vermont, and President Clinton signed the bill into law about six weeks later. Lake Champlain was still a good lake, but not a Great Lake. 27 years later, this footnote in Congressional history has paid off.
Patrick Leahy: I'm looking at future generations of my children and grandchildren, that they'll have a lake, there'll be a clean lake, they can swim in, they can fish in and sail and everything else, and not have to worry about dangerous chemicals and pollution. So it ended up being a win-win for everybody.
Ruth Abramovitz: Despite what he told the press back then, Senator Leahy now says he was never trying to add a sixth Great Lake.
Patrick Leahy: Nobody in Vermont, myself included wanted to rename Lake Champlain as a Great Lake. … I didn't care. They could designate Lake Champlain as Lake X if they wanted, provided we got the research money.
Ruth Abramovitz: But Leahy admits that once the press made it front page news, he had some fun with all the attention.
Patrick Leahy: I realized there were a number of interviews where I was trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face, like right now.
Ruth Abramovitz: Even years later, Leahy and his colleagues would still rib each other about Lake Champlain. Fred Upton remembers Leahy putting his hand on his shoulder…
Fred Upton: And he'd give me a little twinkle in his eye. … Said, do you remember when? I said yes, I do. … He said, well, we ended up getting the money. I said, well, that wasn't a problem. As long as it … didn't take away from the Great Lakes. So we laughed about it for years afterward, and Lake Champlain is a good place.
Ruth Abramovitz: For as much as they teased each other, Senator Leahy and the Great Lakes Congress members found a genuine and shared interest in protecting their lakes. They formed a lasting relationship that benefitted both the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
Patrick Leahy: I wanted to make sure the ecological research and all for the five Great Lakes continued because I think they are a national treasure. … So I wanted 'em to continue to have the research so they can keep clean for, again, thinking of future generations.
Ruth Abramovitz: Each time Sea Grant needed to be renewed, Leahy fought hard to grow the pie, and ensure that no state felt like they were getting cut out. In doing so, Leahy brought home more funding for both the Midwest and the East. For the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain alike.
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Credits
This episode was reported and produced by Ruth Abramovitz and Dan Wanschura. It was edited by Morgan Springer. Additional editing from Dan Wanschura, Ellie Katz and Claire Keenan-Kurgan.
The Brave Little State team is Josh Crane, Sabine Poux and Burgess Brown. Our intern is Camila Van Order González. Our Executive Producer is Angela Evancie. Theme music by Ty Gibbons; Other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
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