Editor’s note: Kim Greenwood is water program director at the Vermont Natural Resources Council.
A bill that is pending in the Vermont Legislature would finally allow citizens a voice in environmental enforcement actions for violations that damage the state’s natural resources.
Under current law, when a polluter is found to have violated Vermont’s environmental laws, the polluter and the Agency of Natural Resources negotiate – for all practical purposes behind closed doors – just what the penalties should be.
Vermont government has a long tradition of open doors, not closed doors. A bill pending in the legislature, H.258, would allow citizens with a stake in the outcome to have a chance to weigh in on these environmental enforcement agreements before they are finalized. The bill would not give citizens the right to force higher, or even lower penalties, but it would allow them be able to say their piece before the deal is done.
Today, if ANR finds that a manufacturing facility, for example, has illegally discharged a harmful chemical into a river, that business and ANR negotiate a penalty finalized by a court without any input from the public. Vermont citizens –maybe the residents who routinely swim or go fishing just downstream from the discharge, for instance – have no way to comment on the deal before it’s finalized. Unless they check the ANR website daily, they would never know a settlement has been reached. Or that the complaint that they lodged was even investigated.
Under the pending bill, impacted citizens would have an opportunity to weigh in on the proposed sanctions.
Vermonters have a long history of open government. People trust an open government, and trust is critical for a strong democracy. This legislation continues Vermont’s good government tradition in the environmental enforcement arena. It builds trust between our citizens and our regulators by increasing communication among all parties. It sends a message to Vermonters that enforcing our environmental laws in an open, fair and appropriate manner is important.
We at the Vermont Natural Resources Council have a long-standing commitment to robust enforcement of our environmental regulations. In fact, in 2007, VNRC undertook the first ever evaluation of enforcement of the Agency of Natural Resources stormwater construction permit program. We visited almost 70 construction sites all over Vermont to assess how this water quality protection program was working. We documented numerous cases of non-compliance with permit requirements (almost all of the sites were in violation of this one particular permit) in this program – which is designed to keep pollution from washing into Vermont’s lakes and streams – and issued a report outlining our findings. To its credit, ANR is purported to have stepped up oversight, in part because of VNRC’s report and advocacy by VNRC and other conservation groups.
The environmental enforcement legislation under consideration in the State House is narrow in scope and straightforward. And because so few enforcement actions are brought each year, it would have an impact only in a few cases. For example, in 2010 – a typical year – ANR received approximately 1,000 complaints about possible violations of environmental laws. For that same year, ANR took formal action on only approximately 30 of them – the worst of the worst violations.
This modest bill is congruent with Vermont’s conservation ethic. It is congruent with our tradition of open government, and congruent with our eminently marketable Vermont “brand” because a clean and healthy Vermont is a place where people with creative ideas, lots of energy, and financial capital want to be. That’s good for the long-term vibrancy of Vermont. The legislature should pass this bill and the Governor should sign it into law.
