[T]he Vermont Agency of Agriculture has filed with the Legislature’s rules committee its final draft of new farming practices required for small farms.
The agency filed the rules, known as required agricultural practices, with the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules on Wednesday after having worked since October to draw them up.
Agriculture Secretary Chuck Ross said the process of writing the rules involved extensive participation by farmers and other stakeholders.
The rules come in the wake of new maximum limits on agricultural pollutants that the federal government will permit Vermont farms to emit into the Lake Champlain watershed. Agricultural pollutants carry phosphorus that nourishes toxic algae.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in response to the lake’s deteriorating water quality, has specified maximum amounts of phosphorus with which Vermont farms, roads and other development may pollute the Lake Champlain watershed over the span of a day.
Because 40 percent of Vermont’s contribution to the lake’s phosphorus problem comes from the state’s farms, much of the responsibility for curbing ongoing pollution has fallen on farmers.
The Agency of Agriculture’s new rules are an attempt to force farmers to abide by pollution-management practices that have been recommended for years. Although manure runoff is a leading contributor of Lake Champlain’s phosphorus pollution, it has long been illegal to permit feces-laden stormwater drain from farms into Vermont state waters such as its rivers and lakes.
The Agency of Agriculture sought through its new rules to balance the needs of what officials called a “thriving agricultural community” with the competing pollution control requirements set down in state law, and with demands from the public for improved water quality, the director of the Agriculture Resource Management Division, Jim Leland, said in a statement.
The Agency of Agriculture was required by law to conduct at least six public meetings as agency staffers wrote up the new rules. Instead, the agency held 89 public meetings, and worked through two separate sets of revisions to the rules in advance of the statutorily required rulemaking process.
The rules will set stricter limitations on when farmers may spread manure across their fields, and will impose greater responsibility on farmers to ensure that stored manure won’t flow into rivers and streams when rain falls.
The rules will also forbid farmers from permitting their cattle to trample riverside areas, many of which contain fragile plants essential for filtering stormwater before the runoff enters rivers and lakes.
The rules will require Vermont’s smallest farms, which number in the thousands, to undergo certification proving that farm owners actually follow the mandated farming practices.
Critics have said the rules will put some farms out of business, as it’s not economical for them to continue if forced to comply with state and federal pollution laws.
Other critics complain that the rules don’t have the necessary teeth. Some farms are located where they’ll pollute the lake regardless of how well farmers manage their manure, critics charge, and the state won’t take necessary action because Vermont farms enjoy a special status.
The Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules will have 30 to 45 days to review and approve the rules, which won’t take effect before Nov. 22.
