{"id":923,"date":"2022-12-06T14:09:25","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T19:09:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.seagrant.w3.uvm.edu\/2022\/12\/06\/blue-certifies-burlington-area-residential-properties-as-stormwater-friendly-for-over-a-decade\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:49:09","slug":"blue-certifies-burlington-area-residential-properties-as-stormwater-friendly-for-over-a-decade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/2022\/12\/06\/blue-certifies-burlington-area-residential-properties-as-stormwater-friendly-for-over-a-decade\/","title":{"rendered":"BLUE Certifies Burlington-Area Residential Properties as Stormwater-Friendly for Over a Decade"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBLUE<\/a> is a residential stormwater management incentive and certification program currently running in Burlington, Vermont. Burlington residents interested in learning about actions to improve water quality and reduce their stormwater footprint are eligible for free property assessments.<\/p>\n

\n\tOperating in the Lake Champlain basin since prior to 2010, BLUE has been supported at one time or another by nine municipalities in the watershed. BLUE evaluators work with homeowners to identify opportunities for them to install practices that help reduce the amount of rainwater and snowmelt that flow to nearby waterways and to engage in watershed-friendly stewardship activities to help protect local waters from pollutants and cyanobacteria blooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLake Champlain Sea Grant<\/a>, based at the University of Vermont<\/a> (UVM), partners with a team from the\u00a0City of Burlington<\/a>,\u00a0Fitzgerald Environmental Associates LLC<\/a>,\u00a0Just Water Consulting<\/a>, and UVM to implement the\u00a0BLUE\u00a0Program in Burlington. The City funds the program with some support from Lake Champlain Sea Grant.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe provide educational resources to increase awareness and understanding of water quality issues and offer recommendations for residents to reduce sources of water pollution, including managing for erosion,\u201d said Jillian Sarazen, who leads BLUE for Lake Champlain Sea Grant.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe University of Vermont, through its Office of the Vice President for Research, officially gained ownership of BLUE in the summer of 2022 from creator and founder James Ehlers, former executive director of Lake Champlain International<\/a>. Ehlers began developing the BLUE program in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

\n\tHistory of BLUE<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was a vacuum in public policy and the regulatory world around stormwater management; nobody was doing it in the early 2000s,\u201d said Ehlers. \u201cI had to explain what stormwater was\u2014that it was multiple polluting sources all draining into our drinking water bodies. How do you address this in a whole housing development of private landowners?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHis answer? He created a program that motivated individual homeowners to be part of the solution and gave managers, such as the City of Burlington, a way to assess stormwater mitigation activities that are underway.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver several years, Ehlers networked with liaisons in the environmental, public policy, and nonprofit sectors\u2014from water resources and ecology experts to real estate, financial, and regulatory professionals\u2014to help shape BLUE into a quantifiable, measurable, and trackable stormwater mitigation and certification program. Ehlers\u2019 arduous work paid off.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued patents for BLUE in 2011 and 2012. Lake Champlain International acted as the BLUE licensee and starting in 2016, Juliana Dixon, then a program director at LCI, managed BLUE for Ehlers who had designed the program to be replicated anywhere and run by licensees.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere were already certification programs for green buildings, appliance energy efficiency, and more recently organic and fair-trade products.\u201d said Ehlers. \u201cWhy not stormwater management?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe set out to build a certification program that was even better for stormwater management and to add legitimacy, created an auditing process to check certified properties every three years. Ehlers also worked to cast the widest net possible for participants.<\/p>\n

\n\tHomeowner Actions Big and Small Add Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBLUE consultants work with individual homeowners to develop a plan that works within their particular financial means and property characteristics. Plans might include: redirecting gutters, putting in a rain garden to treat driveway runoff, installing a permeable driveway that helps rainwater drain into the ground, constructing an open top culvert across a driveway to collect runoff, and more. Homeowners can get certified no matter how small the changes or how much they can contribute financially.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot everyone can afford to tear up their driveway and install pervious pavers, but some people can,\u201d said Ehlers. \u201cI intended to help people feel part of the solution in any way they could and be proud to display a BLUE sign of certification on their lawn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen individual residents do their own stormwater management, this decreases what the community or municipality needs to do to reduce stormwater runoff to local waterways.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf everyone diverts their gutter downspout to a rain garden, there is that much less runoff the city has to manage in the street drainage system,\u201d said Ehlers. \u201cI hope to see BLUE continue to provide a solution that people can believe in and pass on to others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor its innovative BLUE program, LCI earned a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region I Merit Award for all of New England in 2012, and BLUE was approved by the EPA Office of Water. At that time, more than 3000 homeowners in five Vermont towns had learned about the program.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBLUE was the most inspiring, most immediately tangible program I have ever helped to manage,\u201d said Dixon. \u201cMost programs make change over the long term, but BLUE could be implemented within months.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDixon believed so strongly in the program that, in 2018, she established an independent consulting firm solely focused on running BLUE as a licensee. BLUE certification soon grew to 300 households in six communities in the greater Burlington area.<\/p>\n

\n\tRunoff-reducing projects instigated by BLUE-certified households captured an estimated 133,188 gallons of stormwater in 2020.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI took advantage of this opportunity and am very glad I did,\u201d wrote a BLUE participant on Front Porch Forum. \u201cHighly recommend\u2026 an excellent way for us to protect our lake [and] take personal responsibility and action specific to each property.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpreading Water Quality Awareness and More<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe positive response from residents was amazing,\u201d said Dixon, who expanded the educational side of BLUE by producing printed hand-outs about runoff, soil nutrients, green infrastructure, and the connection of individual properties to waterways. \u201cThe program impact went way beyond spreading water quality awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe met a Burlington father who included his two young daughters in a consultation with Dixon, so they could meet \u201ca woman in science.\u201d Dixon also attended a neighborhood tea at which residents made a group decision to turn community property from short, mown grass into plantings that would better reduce stormwater runoff.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s all about the kinds of decisions we make as individuals that become collective actions and solutions,\u201d said Dixon. \u201cI envision BLUE developing volunteer programs in which community members help neighbors install green stormwater infrastructure such as rain gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWith growing homeowner interest in BLUE, by 2021, Dixon could no longer support the program independently. As Lake Champlain Sea Grant had partnered with BLUE as early as 2016 and became a funding supporter of the program in 2019, Ehlers and Dixon passed management of the program on to Lake Champlain Sea Grant in 2022. At the same time, the City of Burlington was revamping its stormwater incentive program and provided support for a team that included Lake Champlain Sea Grant and the BLUE program.<\/p>\n

\n\tCurrently, Sarazen who is the Green Infrastructure Collaborative coordinator with Lake Champlain Sea Grant, along with an undergraduate intern from the University of Vermont and a consultant from each of Fitzgerald and Just Water, conduct property evaluations for interested Burlington homeowners. During the 2022 season, the BLUE team conducted more than 50 property evaluations across the City of Burlington.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis year, several residents have decided to take action by installing residential green stormwater infrastructure and will take advantage of rebates offered through the program,\u201d said Sarazen. We look forward to continuing the success of the program into 2023!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLearn more about BLUE BTV and how to become certified in 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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