[T]he Vermont Attorney General’s office is investigating allegations that manure spread on a large Highgate dairy farm in November polluted a stream in Franklin County.
The case is one of a few that could result in penalties as investigators probe whether farmers violated water quality laws by spreading manure on frozen fields — a practice environmental advocates say is damaging to the state’s waterways.
David Huber, chief enforcement officer for the state Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, received two phone calls within an hour on Saturday, Nov. 24 about manure being spread on snow-covered crop fields in Highgate owned by dairy farmer Jacques Parent, vice president of the board of directors at the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery.
Parent’s 1,800-acre farm borders Lake Champlain.
The agriculture agency has received numerous calls this fall and early winter about dairy farmers spreading manure on snow — a practice now illegal under the overhaul of the state’s agricultural water quality practices that accompanied Act 64, Vermont’s Clean Water Act, passed in 2015.
The manure spreading ban had been temporarily lifted this November due to the early onset of winter and calls from farmers about manure storage areas filling up. The Agency of Agriculture granted waivers to 67 dairy farmers to spread on snow before the winter ban, said Ryan Patch, deputy director of water quality for the agency.
In responding to calls from citizens, Huber said his division prioritized investigating claims in which manure seemed to be running off of a field.
“We were really focusing on the calls where the person said, ‘yeah, it’s going on my property, it’s going on a neighbor’s property, it’s going into a brook,’” he said.
Because one of the complainants who called him about Parent’s property said they might have seen manure going into water, Huber sent enforcement officers to the farm two days later, the following Monday. While on site, they recorded a video they shared with the Department of Environmental Conservation. Kim Greenwood, the head of environmental enforcement at DEC, a division of ANR, called the recording “a disturbing video of what looked like a bad scene.”
“The video shows manure running off of the field and flowing toward a ditch with flowing water in it,” states the Agency of Agriculture inspection write-up. “The ditch leads to a surface water.”
Huber said the Agency of Agriculture has “zero jurisdiction” over a direct discharge into water.
The Agency of Natural Resources and the Agency of Agriculture have an agreement regarding implementation and enforcement of agricultural water quality practices. The Agency of Natural Resources has authority over point source pollution, which is anything directly running off into a stream, lake or other body of water, while the Agency of Agriculture has authority over other agricultural water quality violations.
On Nov. 29, Huber emailed DEC a referral containing a copy of the inspection write-up, photos of the fields and the video of manure running off the field. Laura DiPietro, director of water quality for the agriculture agency, said that the Agency of Agriculture had communicated with DEC before sending the formal referral.
Greenwood said for enforcement to be effective that referrals about direct discharges into waterways should be sent “immediately” to DEC.
DiPietro said that the two agencies decided to refer the Parent farm investigation to the attorney general in December because it seemed an “egregious enough” potential violation. She added that the attorney general was already investigating the farm for other potential water quality violations, so this was added to that investigation.
In cases where the potential penalty is over $10,000, the two agencies are supposed to meet with the Attorney General’s office to discuss possible referral. Either agency can refer a case to the attorney general.
Rob McDougall, chief of the environmental protection division for the Attorney General’s office, confirmed that his division was looking into the Parent case. He would not comment on the specifics of the investigation, but said that his division has prioritized looking into agricultural water quality cases in recent years, especially those that involve repeat offenders and instances of “significant harm” to the environment. In past agricultural water quality enforcement cases handled by the Attorney General, offenders have had to pay fines and take remedial action.
On Dec. 6, Huber contacted DEC to report that Parent was again spreading manure on the field. Reginald Smith, an enforcement officer with the DEC, went to the farm that afternoon, according to a copy of the DEC complaint form provided to VTDigger.
Greenwood said that DEC’s enforcement division prioritizes responding to cases where they could potentially halt actions causing environmental harm. However, Smith did not see manure running off the field during his visit, according to a copy of the complaint.
The agency has received 17 complaints this winter about manure being spread on snow and referred two of those, including the Parent farm case, to the Agency of Natural Resources, said Patch. The Agency of Agriculture received a complaint about manure being spread on snow-covered fields on a dairy farm owned by George Lawson in Irasburg, according to copies of emails provided to VTDigger. Inspectors visited the farm and, upon seeing “substantial runoff” of manure into waterways, referred the case to ANR on Dec. 4.
Dairy farmer Jacques Parent did not know his case had been referred to the attorney general when contacted by VTDigger. He said that he had spread manure on snowy fields in order to empty manure storage areas before the winter spreading ban went into effect. Parent said as a large farm operator, meaning he owns over 700 dairy cows, he could not qualify for an exemption to spread later in the winter when the ban was in effect.
In the past, dairy farmers have had a limited window of time for manure spreading after the fall harvest and before the winter spreading ban takes effect Dec. 15. The ban, which lasts until April 1, has been in effect for decades. But the recent overhaul of on-farm water quality practices required by the state’s Clean Water Act put further restrictions on manure spreading, including a prohibition to spread on frozen or snow-covered fields at any time.
Parent did not receive permission to spread manure on snow, according to Huber, but Parent said that his son-in-law and crop consultant did receive permission to do so.
“Anytime you’re (spreading on) snow and it’s below 32, things stay put. As soon as it gets above 32, things move,” he said. “I think everybody with a little bit of common sense would realize that.”
“It was fine when I applied it,” he added.
DiPietro emphasized that permission to spread on snow was conditional on manure not going into water, which the agency told farmers. Farmers who did spread on snow were supposed to take extra precautions, like using lower application rates and setbacks from streams and ditches, to prevent manure from moving off their fields, she said.
“There were a lot of farmers that applied on snow effectively and it did not run off into water,” said DiPietro.
Michael Colby, head of environmental advocacy group Regeneration Vermont, provided VTDigger with a copy of a public records request containing information about the Parent farm inspections. He said the Agency of Agriculture should have required farmers to go through the more rigorous winter ban exemption procedures, which require a written plan for spreading, to receive permission to spread on snow.
“The reason for banning spreading manure on snow is based on the reality that it is incredibly ecologically threatening,” he said. “It’s a very good rule — there’s a reason it’s called a required agricultural practice.”
Colby, who opposes large scale dairy operations because of their environmental impact, said that temporarily lifting the ban compromised water quality.
“If it’s an emergency that it snows in November in Vermont, we have some serious problems.”
