[F]RANKLIN — Residents fired up over toxic algae in Lake Carmi told lawmakers Monday that agriculture — a source of phosphorus feeding the algae — should no longer be exempt from most of the state’s land-use laws.
More than 50 people packed the meeting, where dozens took to the podium to express their frustration with the condition of the lake that is the town’s centerpiece. Members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee listened for nearly two hours but said little.
The state lawmakers arrived at the joint hearing from a two-hour afternoon tour around Lake Carmi and the surrounding farmland.
Franklin residents and owners of camps on Lake Carmi suggested numerous actions the senators could take to improve their lives, but probably the most often-repeated request was to eliminate agricultural exemptions from Act 250.
Farming is responsible for about 85 percent of the phosphorus dissolved in Lake Carmi, according to a 2009 federal mandate ordering Vermont to stem its flow into the 1,400-acre water body.
Phosphorus is concentrated in Lake Carmi to such an extent that this year it fueled explosive growth of an ancient species called cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae. Between August and November the bacterial bloom turned much of the lake green, malodorous and toxic.
“We are under siege from industrial waste and industrial farming,” said Robert Cormier, who lives a quarter-mile from the lake’s shore.
“We have the wrong people growing the wrong crops on the wrong land right now,” Cormier said. “We need to end all exemptions with ag — effective immediately.”
A group of lawmakers separate from the one in Franklin on Monday is investigating whether it makes sense to continue exempting agriculture from most of the regulations that govern other industries’ effects on the Vermont landscape.
The state’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets is expected to present a rationale for the exemption in a report to that panel next month.
The current cleanup plan for Lake Carmi is scheduled to last 20 years, and it began in 2009. Speakers at the hearing in Franklin said the effort has not been working and the timetable is far too long.
“Twenty years? … I’ll be dead in 20 years,” said Greg Tatro. “I hope you guys can do something, because it is the job of government to keep us safe … and that stuff’s dangerous.”
