Vermont lawmakers passed a committee bill Wednesday that sets a plan to restore Lake Champlain’s water quality and raises some money to back it up. Federal regulators have ordered the state to clean up the lake.
The House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee voted 7-1 in favor of an omnibus water quality bill, H.586, just before Friday’s crossover deadline, the date by which a bill must pass from one chamber to the other.
The bill sets new standards for inland sources runoff, including farms, forests, roads and other sources of phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain. The bill also includes revenue sources to help funnel money to the cleanup.
The Environmental Protection Agency is requiring the state to reduce the amount of phosphorus entering Lake Champlain and is threatening to use the Clean Water Act to tighten water discharge limits on the state’s wastewater treatment centers if the state fails to provide by the end of April “reasonable assurances” to clean up the lake.
The EPA is waiting on a letter from Gov. Peter Shumlin detailing this commitment.
The Department of Environmental Conservation has drafted a comprehensive plan to reduce phosphorus in the lake, but it does not include a dollar amount or a financial commitment for the cleanup.
The administration has said it plans to look to existing state and federal dollars for the money. But lawmakers have put forth a menu of funding sources, including tax increases, to demonstrate the state is taking the cleanup seriously.
The committee’s bill includes a 0.25 percent increase in the state’s rooms and meals tax; a 0.25 percent increase in the liquor and wine sales tax; and a 1 percent fee on rental vehicles – scraping together more than $4 million annually, according to a brief committee report.
The Agriculture and Forest Products Committee will take up the bill next before it heads to several money committees.
Stephen Perkins, director of the EPA’s Office of Ecosystem Protection, said in an interview Monday the agency wants to know what the state plans to do and by when.
“A plan that sort of shows us all of the large-scale things they intend to do and over what time scale,” Perkins said.
He said the state will need to staff the necessary agencies that will be working to clean up the lake, but how and when the state does that, he said, is up to Vermont to decide.
“We’re trying not to dictate what Vermont has to do,” he said, “but leave it in their hands at this point.”
And if the Shumlin administration does not make any financial commitment this year?
“That’s probably not going to fly,” Perkins said.
He said funding from the EPA and other federal agencies is always available. For the last federal fiscal year, the EPA put up $1.4 million for Lake Champlain, an amount expected to increase as the state moves forward with its lake restoration plan, he noted. He said the recently passed federal farm bill includes more than $14 million for agriculture over the next five years – money that can be used for agricultural runoff mitigation programs.
Vermont farmers have been working closely with the committee on new acceptable agricultural practices for small farms. But the Vermont Farm Bureau, which represents the agricultural community, said the committee’s bill does not put up enough money for state agencies to help farmers meet the standards.
“Here’s what [the bill] does: it creates lots of demands on an underfunded and understaffed agency that won’t be fulfilled,” said Bill Moore, a lobbyist for the trade association, referencing the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.
The committee’s bill sets up a certification requirement for small farmers to comply with new accepted agricultural practices (AAPs). These farmers will receive money from a special fund designed to provide technical assistance to farmers.
Moore said the agency – which is already struggling to administer current accepted agricultural practices – needs more money to manage the new standards.
“The agency does not have the staff to educate them and help them implement the AAPs,” he said. “And that’s the answer to the water quality problem with small farms.”
