Champlain’s Great Lake Status in Doubt
WASHINGTON — The Senate agreed unanimously Tuesday to revoke the recent designation of Lake Champlain as the nation’s sixth Great Lake.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who engineered the earlier change, agreed to return to the status quo since the new bill left his original aim intact: helping the University of Vermont get money under the National Sea Grant program.
Leahy had underestimated the wave of controversy that hit after President Clinton signed the bill upgrading Lake Champlain on March 6.
“It snowballed into concerns that we would have to rewrite our encyclopedias or throw out our atlases,” Leahy said jokingly.
The issue has been on the front pages of newspapers and in editorials across the Great Lakes states for weeks.
Champlain, a 490-square mile lake that straddles Vermont and New York, is puny compared to the Great Lakes. Ontario, the smallest of the five, is 7,430 square miles.
The House has yet to act on revoking Champlain’s status.
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