Two green groups to merge; Smart Growth Vermont will become part of VNRC

Two prominent Vermont environmental groups will merge by June 30. Smart Growth Vermont will effectively dissolve and become part of the Vermont Natural Resources Council.

In a press conference on Tuesday, leaders from both organizations said they have similar environmental goals, though the council will now put more of an emphasis on the mission of Smart Growth Vermont – to prevent suburban sprawl from destroying the state’s agricultural and forested landscape.

John Ewing, founder of Smart Growth Vermont, said: “We’re looking at this as a happy merger.”

Both organizations have been hit hard financially by the Great Recession, and recent changes in the leadership of each nonprofit led to recent soul searching strategic planning efforts. The Shumlin administration tapped the executive director of Smart Growth Vermont, Noelle MacKay, as the commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs and the general counsel for the council, Jon Groveman, as the point lawyer for the Agency of Natural Resources. There will be no transference of tangible assets, with the exception of the Smart Growth Vermont website. In addition, Elizabeth Courtney, executive director of the council is stepping down, and Brian Shupe, deputy director, has been named as her replacement.

Ewing said when MacKay left “that led us to take a hard look at where we were.” The merger with the council seemed like a natural progression for the organization, he said.

Smart Growth Vermont, which was launched 13 years ago, has been instrumental in passing legislation such as “complete streets” and downtown center designation that provide incentives for the state to make villages and towns more attractive for residents and lure them away from suburban developments that contribute to sprawl.

Ewing said Vermont’s scenic landscape is a key economic driver for tourism in the state; sprawl essentially destroys that aesthetic and economic resource.

“The fact is, sprawl or adverse growth patterns are not going away,” Ewing said. As a counterweight to inappropriate construction development, Smart Growth Vermont has encouraged the state to support polices that put a premium on the traditional settlement pattern in which dense communities are located within the farm landscape.

The Vermont Natural Resources Council has a broader mission, which includes protection of water resources, energy planning, forest and biodiversity protection and sustainable communities.

The council is nearly 50 years old, and a half a century later, the problems environmentalists face in Vermont are similar but different, Courtney and Shupe said. In addition to the need to find ways to protect Vermont ecosystems, the state now faces impacts from climate change.

Courtney, longtime executive director of the council, explained that it’s been about 40 years since Gov. Deane Davis authorized Art Gibb to study “rampant development” that was caused, in part, by the construction of the first interstate highway in Vermont. Gibb’s commission proposed what became known as Act 250, the state’s planning law. The council helped to pass, and later to defend, Act 250 against challenges by developers.

VNRC was involved in the Pyramid Mall fight in Williston in the 1980s. That legal victory, however, came at a political price for the council, Courtney said, and ultimately Taft Corners was developed anyway. While VNRC has a lawyer on staff, the organization is more likely to leave legal matters to the Conservation Law Foundation.

“We believe collaboration can get us further than confrontation,” Courtney said.

Ewing pointed out that the merger is a prime example of that collaborative spirit.