[W]ith Democrats and Progressives holding together a “veto proof” majority in the Legislature, environmental advocates are hopeful this session will bring more progress on priorities that the governor rejected last year.
They’ll be pushing for legislators to secure long-term clean water funding, take action on climate change and increase toxics regulation.
Clean water funding
Although clean water funding was a prominent topic of debate under the Golden Dome last session, lawmakers and the governor could not come to a consensus over how to pay for lake cleanup projects.
“We are at a point now where we are running out of funds to support the necessary work to clean up Lake Champlain and our other waters,” said Jen Duggan, Vermont director of Conservation Law Foundation.
Vermont has to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of the next 20 years to comply with a federal pollution reduction order. Since the 2015 passage of Act 64, Vermont’s Clean Water Act, the state has used short term sources, like appropriations from the capital bill, for its share of the funding.
The only bill to pass last session to provide new funding for clean water was an update to the decades old “bottle bill”. Unredeemed bottle deposits will now go to the state’s clean water fund.
Lauren Hierl, executive director of Vermont Conservation Voters, said clean water advocates hope to see the Legislature come up with at least $25 million in new money annually for clean water funding. That amount comes from a [2017 report by Treasurer Beth Pearce.
Gov. Phil Scott said lawmakers will see a proposal to provide long-term clean water funding in his budget proposal for fiscal year 2020. Both Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe] and House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, have cited finding a long-term clean water source as priorities this session.
One clean water funding proposal has already come out this session — Rep. Dylan Giambatista, D-Essex, has put forth a bill that would create a Champ license plate to raise additional revenue for the Clean Water Fund. Champ is the likely mythical monster sea creature said to inhabit Lake Champlain.
Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Bray, the chair of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said he will be introducing another clean water funding bill with a per parcel fee this session — something that was [removed from the limited clean water bill] that passed last year. He said the fee could make a “big dent” in the funding gap.
“The per parcel proposal — if it’s $40 per parcel flat across the state — that raises $14.4 million,” he said.
Toxics regulation
Gov. Phil Scott drew the ire of the environmental community last session for vetoing two toxics regulation bills.
One of the bills, S.197, would have allowed Vermonters who are exposed to toxic substances from a large company to sue for medical monitoring. The bill came in the wake of the discovery of PFOA pollution from two former ChemFab Corp. companies in Bennington.
“I think you would find a great deal of support for taking up that issue again as we see ongoing problems in drinking water,” said Paul Burns, executive director of VPIRG.
The other bill, S.103, would have granted the state health commissioner broader authority to regulate toxins in children’s substances. The bill also would have required new drinking water systems to be tested before use.
Scott said last year that the bill would introduce needless complication and not make children safer as the state already established a system in 2014 to regulate chemicals.
Hierl said the system currently in place for a chemical to be listed is “overly burdensome” in that it requires the Department of Health to use a stricter requirement than is in place in other states.
“We think it should be more in step with how every other state does these lists,” she said.
School drinking water
After a testing program this fall showed elevated levels of lead in drinking water at some schools, the state Department of Health recommended all schools test for lead. Advocates want the state to go further.
“We feel that it is a priority for the state to catch up to other New England states and require mandatory lead testing in schools,” said Duggan. New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island have all recently enacted lead testing requirements.
CLF would also like to see the state set a lead “action level” at the current health advisory of 1 ppb — meaning schools would have to replace plumbing fixtures or take other measures to remove lead from drinking water.
Single use plastic
Banning single use plastic — like bags, straws and takeout containers — has been gaining traction internationally due to a growing concern about plastic pollution.
Burns said that, after the positive reception from an effort this summer to get Vermont businesses to pledge to only provide straws upon request, VPIRG would like legislators to build on that momentum to consider a ban on single-use plastic bags.
“I think both of those provisions will certainly see attention in the Legislature this year as we look at this plague of plastic that we’re facing,” he said.
Brattleboro became the first state in Vermont to ban plastic bags last year and other municipalities, including Montpelier and Burlington, are considering similar bans.
Act 250
The six legislators tasked with reviewing Act 250 — the state’s major land use law — and proposing 21st century updates released a report last month recommending a major overhaul. The final report — out this week — is headed for review in the Senate and House Natural Resources committees.
Key proposals include updating the assessment criteria to account for climate change, encouraging development in town and village centers and better protecting blocks of forest.
Environmental advocates said they’ll be keeping tabs on the Act 250 reforms taking shape this session.
“We will be monitoring that process and advocating to keep Act 250 strong,” said Duggan. “Limit the exemptions of Act 250 and make sure that we’re building on the success … over the past decades.”
Sen. Bray’s priorities
Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, who has chaired the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, said environmental policymaking will be different this session without his House counterpart, David Deen. Deen, who retired this year after 30 years in the Legislature, chaired the House Committee on Natural Resources, Fish and Wildlife last biennium.
“I would always meet with David Deen, in the past, and we would discuss all the work that we thought needed to happen in the session,” said Bray. “And then we would organize ourselves so that he would take up something with a commitment to get it to me by crossover or vice-versa.”
He named clean water funding and Act 250 updates as the “major” environmental bills this session that will require coordination between the two chambers.
