At its 58th annual general meeting, held on Saturday at the Magog Community Center, NEWPORT Memphremagog Conservation Inc. made a sincere appeal for the public to participate in protecting Lake Memphremagog and its watershed.
The organization’s volunteer president, Johanne Lavoie, stressed that every effort matters in preserving the natural asset that is in danger due to habitat loss and the effects of climate change.
According to Lavoie, you also have a significant responsibility to protect this vital source of drinking water and its distinct ecosystems. By working together, we can secure Lake Memphremagog’s and its environs’ survival for many years to come.
The fifth anniversary of the ban on the release of Coventry NEWSVT landfill leachate into Lake Memphremagog, which supplies drinking water to about 185,000 Canadians, was celebrated with a unique presentation. Prior to the embargo, the Newport wastewater treatment plant on the lake received millions of gallons of leachate between 2010 and 2019 that contained thousands of contaminants, including PFAS compounds.
Don’t Undermine Memphremagog’s Purity, or DUMP, was responsible for the moratorium, which stopped millions of gallons of leachate from being dumped into the lake or watershed.
Henry Coe, the founder of DUMP, received MCI’s esteemed 2025 Gordon-Kohl Award in recognition of his dedication to preserving Lake Memphremagog. Concerned about the possible environmental effects of the Coventry landfill, he organized against its development in 2018 and contacted Robert Benoit, the then-MCI President, which resulted in the establishment of DUMP.
Our shared objective is to permanently prohibit the disposal of landfill leachate anywhere inside the Memphremagog watershed, Coe stated. Our top objective is safeguarding the ecology on which we all rely as well as our neighbors’ drinking water reservoir in Quebec.
Given that Vermont’s only landfill is situated close to the Black River and the South Bay of Lake Memphremagog, the groups are still concentrating on water quality issues, including the experimental leachate pretreatment pilot project in Coventry.
The meeting was attended by Sherbrooke council members Annie Godbout and Christelle Lef re, as well as members Louis Villeneuve and Marianne Dandurand of the Federal Parliament.