The bill, H.35, includes new rules for runoff that target pollution flowing from farms, roads and developed areas. But many of the policy changes have yet to be finalized and others will take effect next year. The bill raises $7.5 million next year for water quality initiatives, but water quality advocates say the bill does not raise nearly enough. (Previous water cleanup costs were estimated at $150 million per year for 10 years.)
Environmental advocates doubt the bill alone will restore the state’s waterways, dozens of which are impaired. But they say it is a good start to address a pollution problem that will likely take decades to reverse.
“It’s probably more progress on water in one bill than we’ve seen in long time. Whether that’s going to be enough for what we need on the ground is a different question,” said Kim Greenwood, water program director at Vermont Natural Resource Council. “There is a lot to be seen still.”
The bill does make some attempt to address agriculture runoff, environmental groups say. That includes certification for manure applicators, which are not regulated, and small farms, which are rarely inspected. New management practices, such as prohibitions on stacking manure near waterways, take effect next year. The bill also raises money for eight staff positions at the Agency of Agriculture, including one enforcement officer, to implement agricultural water quality laws.
Environmentalists are concerned the bill does not fully address farm runoff, which accounts for 40 percent of the phosphorus pollution in Lake Champlain, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Excess manure that is stored and applied to fields as fertilizer seeps into waterways when it rains. That pollution leads to summertime toxic algae blooms in the state’s largest lake.
Many new pollution control measures, including standards for livestock exclusion from waterways, will not take effect until after 2016, and it remains to be seen how the rules will be written. The Agency of Agriculture still has the discretion to enforce water pollution laws, which is a fundamental concern for environmental groups that say the agency has been understaffed or unwilling to take action.
Those advocates want to return agricultural water quality enforcement authority back to the Agency of Natural Resources, but the Shumlin administration says the Agency of Agriculture is best-suited because it understands farming. That issue gained little attention this session.
“Sometimes you have to put legislation forward that is politically palatable and reflects where society is at,” said Denise Smith of St. Albans, executive director of the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain.
Others say the tough conversations were merely put off for the years ahead.
“There is still no recognition that some areas are not suitable for intensive, industrial agriculture,” said James Ehlers, executive director of Lake Champlain International based in Colchester. “That will continue to be the fundamental problem that will prevent restoration (of waterways).”
The Environmental Protection Agency says will review the bill to determine whether the state has made a commitment to implement its plan to to improve water quality in Lake Champlain. A draft decision is expected by mid-July. The bill was well-received by EPA.
“EPA expects there will be a sturdy foundation for the restoration of Lake Champlain which is important to ensure Vermont’s implementation plan provides sufficient assurance that phosphorus reductions will be achieved,” said Dave Deegan, a spokesperson for EPA’s New England Regional Office, in an email Wednesday.
Much of the focus on the water quality bill was on funding. This came during a tough tax year in which lawmakers closed a $113 million budget gap and faced pressure from constituents to lower property taxes.
In the final week of the session, the Legislature passed a three-year funding plan for water quality initiatives that raises $7.4 million in fiscal year 2016 through a 0.2 percent surcharge on the property transfer tax. The funding sunsets in three years when lawmakers hope to create a more equitable tax policy tied to the sources of pollution.
Cities and towns are likely to shoulder much of the long-term cleanup costs, which will likely be passed onto residents in the form of fees and property taxes, according to Karen Horn, the director of public policy and advocacy for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns.
Stormwater permits will be required for municipal roads, existing developed areas and smaller construction projects.
But David Mears, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said some investments, such as repairing a culvert or building a drainage ditch along a road, are intended to be a long-term investment that reduce erosion during heavy rain and flooding events.
But there are other costs as well. No longer will the state be required by statute to offer financial assistance for wastewater treatment plant upgrades to meet phosphorus reductions, which the Shumlin administration estimates will cost $126.7 million under reductions proposed by the EPA.
Vermont will have the flexibility to make changes to each wastewater treatment plant’s individual pollution limits to be set by the EPA within a lake segment as long as the total pollution for each lake segment does not exceed EPA’s total allocation, according to Deegan, of EPA.
The bill sets up a clean water fund to keep track of the money for water quality initiatives. A board composed of administration appointees will make recommendations to lawmakers on how this money should be spent. It includes an audit in 2021 on how the money is spent, how effective water quality projects have been in improving water quality and an assessment on how effective the Agency of Agriculture has been to enforce water quality regulations.
Microbeads banned
A bill to ban the sale of microbeads passed the House, but stalled in the Senate.
Taylor Johnson of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group said there was an issue with the definition of biodegradable. He said Illinois, which will ban some products containing microbeads beginning in 2017, allows beads that biodegrade only at high temperatures.
“The Vermont bill took that extra step to require it be biodegradable in the environment that it likely ends in, which is the water,” Johnson said. He said that was one of the reasons the Senate wanted to take more time on the issue.
Other bills stalled
Lawmakers again delayed raising money to help with the implementation of the state’s universal recycling law, which will require infrastructure upgrades to meet recycling and composting mandates, despite requests from rural areas of the state for assistance and flexibility. Proposals to place a fee on plastic bags and to collect unclaimed container deposits from beverage distributors were abandoned, in part because the proposals raise little money that diminishes over time.
A debate on a proposal to make the environmental permitting process more predictable will likely begin next session. The Shumlin administration is pressing for a controversial change to the permitting process that will make it more difficult for opponents of certain projects to raise objections about state environmental permits during an appeal to the state’s Environmental Court. The change is known as an on-the-record review of permit appeals is opposed by several environmental groups. The House Natural Resource and Energy Committee heard testimony but never voted on the bill.
