[T]he House Agriculture Committee unanimously approved a major water quality bill last week after stripping it of a penalty aimed at reducing fertilizer runoff from farms.
The bill, H.35, authorizes the state to enforce pollution control measures on farms and developed areas. The legislation includes a host of new agricultural practices required for farms to comply with the state’s water quality law.
The Shumlin administration proposed a penalty that would remove farmers from the state’s current use program if they were found in violation of the state’s water quality laws and refused to correct conditions that allowed pollution to flow from their farms. The current use program offers tax breaks to property owners who keep their land preserved for agricultural production or forestry.
Rep. Carolyn Partridge, D-Windham, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, said she supported the penalty, but her committee determined it was unfair given that it applied to fewer than half of the agricultural acres in the state. The proposal was unpopular among farmers.
“I supported it because it was going to be used as a very, very last resort and these are landowners who have taken advantage of a tax adjustment made for land use. They have seen a benefit in lower tax rates, so they should be held to the same standards of those enrolled in the forest program,” she said.
Water quality advocates applauded the bill, but will likely push to reinsert the current use penalty when it goes through the Senate.
“A unanimous vote of our Agriculture Committee, that’s great to see that unanimous, tripartisan commitment to clean water,” said Lauren Hierl, political director of the Vermont Conservation Voters.
Fertilizer runoff from agricultural land is the state’s largest source of phosphorus pollution into Lake Champlain — about 40 percent of total phosphorus loading — though in all but one segment of the lake, developed land causes the most pollution, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The nutrients create blue-green algae blooms during the summer months, which break down to produce toxins that have killed fish and pose a risk to drinking water supplies.
Manure runoff from agriculture has gone largely unregulated despite current laws on the books, environmental groups say. The reason, in part, is that the Agency of Agriculture has been understaffed and ill-equipped to enforce its water quality regulations.
The bill includes new agricultural practices required to comply with the law, such as larger buffer strips between waterways and fields and the fencing out of livestock from waterways, as well as new authority and penalties to support the implementation of the law.
The state will now require small farms — as defined for the first time under the bill — to certify that they comply with water quality regulations. The farming community has said most large and medium farms are familiar with the state’s water quality regulations, but not all of the small farms.
The bill includes a host of revenue generating sources, but the House Agriculture Committee removed them from the bill and made a recommendation to the House Ways and Means Committee of some possible options, among them a 0.5 percent to 1 percent increase in the rooms tax, a fee on bagged and bulk feed, a fee on bagged and bulk fertilizer, a nondairy certification fee, and a certification fee for small, medium and large farms.
Partridge said the committee is recommending that any new fees must be tied to the pollution they seemed to limit, easy to administer, fair, sustainable and reliable.
At the start of the session, the Agency of Agriculture proposed fees on fertilizer to raise roughly $1.2 million. The money would have been used to hire seven staff members to inspect farms for compliance and educate farmers on the rules. The money would also be used to leverage more than $60 million in federal grants made available this year for conservation practices.
The House Ways and Means Committee will take up the bill and find at least $13 million for water quality programs based on recommendations made by the Fish and Wildlife and Agriculture committees.
Gov. Peter Shumlin described the committee bill as a “comprehensive proposal for improving the water quality of Lake Champlain and its tributaries.”
“The Legislature has already made unprecedented, tripartisan progress to provide the appropriate tools and resources to improve the state’s water quality. We know our economic vitality and quality of life are inextricably linked to the health of our natural environment, and I am very encouraged that all parties are collaborating to make real progress on this problem that affects us all,” he said in a statement Friday.
