PANTON — As manure runoff from a Panton dairy farm mixed with snowmelt and found its way into Lake Champlain this past March, a wrinkled brown crust formed on top of the water. For a moment during Panton resident Eben Markowski’s video footage of it, the crust looked like a moonscape or a desert. The illusion was broken when Markowski dipped a plastic cup into the water and held it in front of his camera. A brown-gray sludge clung to side of the cup. When he poured it back, it hit the water with a chunky bl … (read more)
