A Vermont House and Senate conference committee is in tense negotiations over the shorelands protection bill.
House members want to scale back the scope of the legislation, which is designed to preserve aquatic and shoreline habitat along Vermont’s lakes.
Senators, meanwhile, are unwilling to budge on stronger environmental protections in their version of H.526.
Agency of Natural Resources officials who helped to shape the Senate bill say weakening the legislation will undermine the agency’s implementation efforts.
Sen. Diane Snelling, R-Chittenden, made shorelands protection a personal priority this session. After serving on the Lake Shoreland Protection Commission over the summer, Snelling worked with the Agency of Natural Resources to create permit language in the bill that sets conditions for development of shoreline property.
The House proposes to replace the statutory permitting guidelines with a public input process for new conditions and legislative rulemaking.
Snelling, who is vice chair of the Natural Resources Committee, insists the statutory guidelines must stay in place.
“If the discussion is should we go to a totally different approach, or should we go with something that we worked out over a long period of time with a lot of voices, we’re going to stay resolute with what we have done,” Snelling told her House counterparts.
Trey Martin, senior policy adviser for the Department of Environmental Conservation, said the department has drafted a flexible permitting process that includes limits on cutting vegetative cover within a certain distance from shorelines.
“That’s the bill that we believe in,” Martin said. “That’s a program that we are working really hard to implement right now.”
Scaling back the bill to the House version would be “a major sea change,” he said, and would require the agency to undo work it has already begun.
“This bill is a totally different direction; it’s back to rulemaking,” he said, in a reference to the House version. “It’s going to offset a lot of work that we’re currently doing.”
Environmental groups say the Senate bill is an improvement to the House bill, which originally spurred anxiety about what new permitting guidelines the agency would hand down.
Anthony Iarrapino, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, said the House approach “was widely panned by folks on all sides of this issue because it created uncertainty and delay.”
Rep. Bob Krebs, D-South Hero, recommended a provision that would allow the agency to certify private “shoreline consultants” to approve the permits, a new proposal neither chamber’s version of the bill considered.
Snelling rejected Krebs’ recommendation because she said it has not been properly vetted in either chamber.
Under the Senate bill, projects within the protected zone (within 250 feet of the shoreline) would be subject to a new set of standards: no construction on a 20 percent slope; less than 40 percent of the parcel’s area can be cleared of its natural vegetative cover; and less than 20 percent of a parcel’s area can contain impervious surfaces that prevent the absorption of water runoff.
The Senate proposals includes permit exemptions for clearing a 6-foot wide path down to the water, for projects within the existing footprint of a home, and the maintenance of existing lawns, gardens or beaches. Lakeshore projects less than 100 square feet in size, such as the construction of a shed or boathouse, would require a 15-day registration.
The House version of the bill requires a permit for construction projects that are larger than 500 square feet, clearing areas of more than 500 square feet or the creation of an impervious area that is more than 20 percent of the shoreland lot or more than 500 square feet.
