Colleen Hickey’s 32 Years of Service to Lake Champlain Recognized with Resource Room Dedication

Grand Isle, VT — In recognition of Colleen Hickey’s 32 years of service to the Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) and NEIWPCC, the Lake Champlain Resource Room—located within the ECHO Leahy Center for Lake Champlain—has been renamed the Colleen Hickey Lake Champlain Resource Room. 

The dedication was announced by Julie Moore, Secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR), on behalf of the Lake Champlain Steering Committee during a retirement celebration for Colleen at the ECHO Center on July 31. 

Friends, family, staff, partners, and environmental leaders from the region joined Colleen to celebrate her influential career as Education and Outreach Coordinator for the LCBP.  

During her tenure as Education and Outreach Coordinator, Colleen focused on coordinating media outreach, school programs, educator trainings, and public outreach programs that improved understanding of the Lake Champlain watershed. 

Colleen played an integral role in establishing the Champlain Basin Education Initiative and its signature teacher training program, Watershed for Every Classroom. She helped get lake issues into homes around the region with the award-winning Champlain 2000 (later renamed Champlain Connection) news segment. Colleen was a major collaborator in the effort to launch the Lake Champlain Resource Room, and has supervised the LCBP staff who provide lake interpretation to Resource Room visitors for more than two decades. 

Colleen has helped facilitate the Lawn to Lake collaborative since its inception in 2006, first focusing on Don’t “P” on Your Lawn—a campaign to reduce the application of phosphorus-based fertilizers to lawns in the watershed—and later integrating the Raise the Blade campaign, which encourages people to let their grass grow longer to protect water quality. 

Supervisor to seasonal Education and Outreach Stewards since 2019, Colleen has advanced environmental careers for numerous individuals—including several who went on to join the Program in a full-time capacity. She has been a mentor and cheerleader to every member of the LCBP Team, and an advocate for and collaborator to countless watershed organizations throughout the region. 

In retirement, Colleen will spend winters close to family in Goffstown, New Hampshire. Colleen’s summers will be spent on the shore of Lake Champlain in Georgia, Vermont , enjoying the water she has spent 32 years protecting. 

Learn more about Colleen’s early career and accomplishments during her tenure at the Basin Program here. 

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The Patrick Leahy Lake Champlain Basin Program coordinates and funds efforts that benefit the Lake Champlain Basin’s water quality, fisheries, wetlands, wildlife, recreation, and cultural resources. The program works in partnership with federal agencies, state and provincial agencies from New York, Vermont, and Québec, local communities, businesses, and citizen groups. NEIWPCC—a regional commission that helps the states of the Northeast preserve and advance water quality—serves as the primary program administrator of LCBP at the request of the Lake Champlain Steering Committee and administers the program’s personnel, finances, quality management and contracts. NEIWPCC is a program partner of LCBP. For further information, contact the Lake Champlain Basin Program, 54 West Shore Road, Grand Isle, VT at (802) 372-3213 / (800) 468-5227 or visit https://www.lcbp.org/.