[L]oggers in Vermont must take certain steps to reduce erosion and related water pollution now that the Agency of Natural Resource has adopted new forestry standards.
By reducing runoff, the revisions are meant to help the state meet limits it agreed to for how much phosphorus can flow into Lake Champlain.
The general counsel for the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation said the rules aren’t expected to be costly for loggers and foresters.
The revised regulations, adopted Oct. 22, don’t depart far from what was already in place, said one logger.
“Some people I know have expressed some concerns,” said Gabe Freitag, of Brookfield-based Central Vermont Logging and Forestry, “but I’m not particularly worried about it.”
“We try to keep the water clean anyway. As long as (state regulators) try to work with us, I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” Freitag said.
It would be nice if some of the requirements were recommendations instead, Freitag said.
The rules require erosion control structures called water bars in dirt roads under most conditions, but Freitag said water bars aren’t always possible or necessary.
The rules also require that landings — the flat spots where workers cut felled trees into lengths and load them on trucks — be built outside certain distances from running water, unless no other feasible alternative exists. It’s sometimes hard to find good spots for landings under the conditions the rules prescribe, Freitag said, but it’s also unclear “whose definition of feasible” the rules rely upon.
Of much greater concern to most loggers, Freitag said, are the rising costs of worker’s compensation and the seeming arbitrariness of sales tax as applied to logging equipment.
Freitag’s concerns echo those of the state’s logging and forestry organization, the Vermont Forest Products Association.
“There are a lot of guidelines in there for water-bar placements, stream crossings, and how to do that. Previously, it said what you should do, and now it says, ‘You shall do,’” said the group’s president, Steve Hardy. “We’re just a little concerned about how it’s getting more iron-clad.”
Most logging and forestry operations in the state already follow what’s prescribed in the new rules, Hardy said. But weather, soil type and a variety of other factors all influence how a logging operation is carried out, Hardy said, and these conditions are variable and unpredictable enough “that we need a little bit of flexibility.”
The Agency of Natural Resources did make several concessions to loggers and foresters, Hardy said, and what the agency came up with won’t impose any significant new burdens. But the trend is worrying, he said.
“Are these insurmountable problems? No,” Hardy said. “But they keep tightening the screws.”
The revisions tell loggers and foresters how to control runoff from roads and trails and how to manage stream crossings, said Purvee.
The rules, called accepted management practices for maintaining water quality on logging jobs, haven’t undergone any significant changes since they were written around 30 years ago, Purvee said. Staffers in her department began analyzing that set of rules several years ago, she said. They’ve reached out repeatedly to the public for assistance in writing the new rules, she said, beginning more than a year before a first draft of the revisions was even written.
The rules are meant to balance the need for improved pollution control measures with the need to preserve an important Vermont industry, Purvee said.
“These revised rules reflect and represent significant public outreach and significant public input, in considering what can be most protective of water quality while also recognizing the importance of the working lands enterprise, and forestry as a whole, for the state of Vermont,” she said.
