By the time attorneys had called and cross-examined all witnesses in a high-profile farm runoff trial over the course of six days, there appeared to be little disagreement among them that a vast amount of runoff is likely flowing from a Panton dairy farm through the neighbors’ property.
The question now before the judge in Addison County Superior Court is whether the farmers should be held responsible for that runoff and make changes to prevent it.
The trial — which started in mid-December and resumed last week — wrapped up Tuesday. Judge Mary Teachout is expected to reach a decision sometime after attorneys submit final documents in the coming weeks.
The flow from the farm — owned by the Vorsteveld family — has repeatedly belched plumes of milky brown water into Lake Champlain’s Arnold Bay. Attorneys for the neighbors — the Hopper family — said it’s a nuisance, a continuing trespass to their property and a product of changes the farmers made to their practices.
Water running through the property and into the lake contains “high concentrations of nitrate, phosphorus, total suspended solids and other pollutants” and “very high levels of e-coli — at times close to levels found in sewage before treatment,” according to the Hoppers’ complaint against the Vorstevelds, filed in April 2020.
It’s coming from the farm’s tile drainage system, a network of perforated underground pipes that carry the water away from the field, the Hopper family alleged.
Neighbors want the court to require that the farm implement a specific plan to stop it. They proposed a series of measures the farmers could take, compiled by Harold van Es, a professor of soil and water management at Cornell’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Throughout their past three days in court, attorneys for the farmers argued the water is a result of precipitation and more extreme weather due to climate change and not due to the Vorstevelds’ management decisions.
While both sides brought a number of witnesses before the court, a moment during testimony Tuesday encapsulated much of the trial. Rob Woolmington, an attorney for the Hopper family, was cross-examining Joshua Faulkner, a witness for the Vorstevelds.
Faulkner coordinates the farming and climate change program at the University of Vermont’s Extension Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and he’s conducted studies on the Vorsteveld’s fields related to the tile drains they installed.
He had testified that the increased runoff coming from the Vorstevelds’ farm likely comes from increased and more extreme precipitation due to climate change, rather than from management changes.
As he did with many witnesses, Woolmington held up a photo of a brown plume splaying into Lake Champlain and asked whether Faulkner agreed that the sediment was coming from the Vorsteveld farm. Faulkner agreed.
“This is not acceptable agricultural practice,” Woolmington said.
“That’s difficult to say,” Faulkner said. “We don’t know how much sediment there is entering the bay.”
Faulkner previously testified that the clay soils found throughout Addison County are colloidal — that is, the particles are so small that they’re easily suspended, making water look more turbid than it is.
On the other hand, van Es, the Cornell professor who testified on behalf of the Hoppers last month, said colloidal soils decrease the amount of filtration that takes place in the soil. Water running through those soils likely sends sediment and manure into the lake, van Es told the court.
Referencing the photograph, Woolmington pressed Faulkner, asking: “This is not a condition that you endorse at UVM, or soil scientists working at Extension, is that correct?”
“That’s correct,” Faulkner said.
Still, Faulkner said, the Vorstevelds have implemented a number of practices that are intended to slow or control the flow of water off their lands, and he did not think the measures proposed by van Es would stop the runoff.
“I don’t want to say for certainty that the Vorstevelds could do anything on their property that would change the effects — the discharge of water, the flow rates, the sediment, all of the things we’ve been discussing,” Faulkner said.
Meanwhile, environmental groups including the Conservation Law Foundation, the Lake Champlain Committee and the Vermont Natural Resources Council recently sent a letter to Anson Tebbetts, secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, asking that he work to strengthen farming regulation in the face of climate change.
“Not to be flip, but as a society, we need to address climate change, or we’re going to see much more of this occurring, and this is already, I think, widespread across the state,” Faulkner said during testimony.
Later, a similar encounter played out between James Foley, an attorney for the Vorstevelds, and Kirsten Workman, who until recently worked for UVM Extension in Middlebury and has used the Vorsteveld farm as an example of conservation techniques for other farmers.
“Many people who have sat in that seat have had this picture presented to them, and the question was asked, ‘is this acceptable? Isn’t this terrible?’” Foley said. “Let me ask the same question. Is this acceptable?”
“Well, I don’t think anyone wants that,” Workman said. “It’s hard to look at, for sure. But there’s a lot that’s going on there.”
Editor’s Note: Rob Woolmington is vice president of the Vermont Journalism Trust Board, the parent organization of VTDigger.
