Vermont is rolling out ambitious new stormwater requirements — and some businesses, towns and nonprofits are concerned about the costs of compliance.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation put out a draft stormwater permit earlier this year that will apply to development or redevelopment of one or more acres of impervious surface, extending to development of half an acre starting in 2022. The public comment period for the new requirements ends Nov. 25.
The landowners and developers poised to face the biggest costs are those who own properties with more than 3 acres of impervious surfaces, such as parking lots and roofs, that were either never permitted or permitted before 2002. Ski resorts, colleges, government entities, retail developments and industrial parks are the largest holders of impervious surfaces in Vermont.
The new stormwater permit was required by the state’s 2015 landmark clean water law, Act 64.
After the federal Environmental Protection Agency rejected Vermont’s Lake Champlain cleanup plan in 2011, called a “TMDL,” the state had to come up with a more ambitious plan to cut down on phosphorus going into the lake.
Runoff from developed lands contributes an estimated 18% of Vermont’s portion of Lake Champlain phosphorus pollution. Although agriculture is the single biggest source of phosphorus to the lake, developed land actually contributes twice as much phosphorus per square mile as agriculture.
Padraic Monks, stormwater program manager for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the so-called “three acre permit” originated as a spitball idea. DEC staff had identified various ways to achieve the needed phosphorus reductions under the TMDL, including imposing new stormwater management requirements on owners of large property owners.
“We noted that we probably want to undergo further review to figure out precisely what permit thresholds we should establish,” he said. Lawmakers then “essentially codified it before we took those next steps.”
The state has reached out to owners of over 700 different parcels that appear from GIS data to contain more than 3 acres of impervious surface. And that’s just in the Lake Champlain watershed and part of the Lake Memphremagog watershed.
Property owners could have to do anything from installing a rain garden to hiring an engineer to put in an underground stormwater infiltration system. Monks said the state has estimated that complying with the more stringent requirements for new development could cost around $50,000 per acre.
“As it stands, the 3 acre sites are looking at significant costs and the projects of less than 3 acres are not,” said Monk. “So there’s a fairness question: does it make sense to have this relatively limited subset of property owners incur these costs where most landowners would not incur any costs?… What’s the solution? It’s kind of infeasible to make everybody get a permit.”
Elena Mihaly, an attorney at Conservation Law Foundation — the nonprofit whose lawsuit prompted the EPA’s rejection of the state’s lake cleanup plan — said the new permit would make Vermont a national leader in terms of stormwater management. Vermont has been seeing more intense storms, which are overwhelming existing wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, due to climate change.
“There has to be changes to the way we do things to keep that Vermont we want in the future,” she said.
Austin Davis, government affairs manager for the Lake Champlain Chamber of Commerce, said that businesses are concerned about meeting the deadline for the new requirements. As it stands, some property owners could be required to apply under the permit by July 2020, though Monks said the state would likely push that date back due to the delayed rollout. Projects in the Champlain, Memphremagog and stormwater impaired watersheds will need to be permitted by 2023 while those in other parts of the state have until 2033.
“We’re the biggest proponents of cleaning up the lake of anybody … but we also understand that we need to have a reasonable timeline and we need to adjust to things like this draft permit coming out late,” he said.
Davis stressed that the Chamber’s members understand the importance of cleaning up Lake Champlain, but have some concerns about the inflexibility of the permit. For instance, in more developed parts of the state, there could be multiple property owners with shared stormwater challenges each funding their own engineering studies and treatment options.
“It makes everybody pay it alone and creates this disconnected patchwork of people with their heads down trying to (achieve) an uncertain target for an uncertain price,” he said of the new stormwater permit.
Davis said the chamber prefers the approach taken under Act 76, passed last session, which will create new clean water utilities charged with selecting the most cost-effective projects to achieve non-mandated pollutant reductions.
In addition to landowners, certain municipalities in the Lake Champlain watershed are required to upgrade their stormwater treatment under a different municipal stormwater permit updated last year.
Dominic Cloud, St. Albans city manager, said that the city is looking at over $10 million in upgrades to comply with that permit. So the city received a grant from the Lake Champlain Basin Program to explore opportunities for public and private collaboration to meet various stormwater mandates. The city is hoping to manage runoff from over 50 acres of impervious surface with a treatment system on Lower Welden Street. Private landowners would help pay for the cost of the project to treat some of their runoff.
“For us, it’s about community vitality,” he said. “Communities have to figure out a way to address the stormwater challenges and continue to grow.”
The Champlain Valley Exposition in Essex, which has just shy of 34 acres of impervious surface, installed a stormwater retention pond under an old stormwater permit, said executive director Tim Shea. He is working with an engineer to try to figure out what else the nonprofit, host to the annual Champlain Valley Fair, will have to put in to comply with the new permit — and how much it is going to cost.
“Everyone wants clean water, but the financial impact of it — there’s only so much you can charge for a fair ticket,” he said.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect that the comment period on the new stormwater permit was extended from Nov. 8 to Nov. 25.
