This commentary is by Stephen Leslie, co-owner of Cedar Mountain Farm and Cobb Hill Cheese in Hartland.
In 1970, Vermont Gov. Deane C. Davis, a Republican, signed Act 250 into law. The traditional Republican voters of old Vermont were sons and daughters of the soil — true conservatives.
Many were alarmed at the sudden spate of unchecked development that construction of the national highway system had brought to the state in the early 1960s (a time when many farm families lost their land to eminent domain). Act 250 was devised to get a handle on the situation. The aim was to encourage progress and prosperity without sacrificing our rural heritage.
This piece of legislation was the first in the nation to provide a comprehensive statewide review of all commercial development projects of 10 acres or more, with full legal power to withhold permission if they did not meet or exceed the 10 environmental and aesthetic regulations as defined by state law.
Further, projects were subject to review boards whose composition included abutters to the property in question — as well as other interested parties. Protection of natural resources and historic values of place were the essential criteria to be met.
The law also called for a statewide land use plan, but this was deemed too “socialist” by some at the time, and did not make it into the final legislation.
The district environmental commissions are responsible for assuring that developments or subdivisions comply with Act 250’s 10 criteria. There are nine district commissions, each composed of a chair, two members, and four alternates and each serving one of nine districts. They are appointed by the governor. Commissioners reside in the districts served by their commission.
Act 250 also established the Vermont Environmental Board to review appeals of district commission rulings. Its original members included a natural-science professor, an architect, a Realtor, a community leader and homemaker, a county Extension agent, a ski area operator, an engineer, a businessman, and a county sheriff.
This lay board heard district commission appeals for 35 years, until the general appeal function was transferred to the Environmental Court in February 2005.
Act 250 was progressive for its time and has certainly helped retain the rural character of Vermont. But the limit of 10 acres or more has meant that we have a lot of housing developments of 9 acres with nine houses scattered around the state. Forest fragmentation and loss of prime agricultural soils have continued at an alarming rate (forest loss is estimated at a rate of 1,150 acres per year since 2010 and 30% of cropland has been lost since 1987).
Since 1970, Vermont has seen a steady increase in its share of polluting industries, big box stores, trophy homes on the hillsides, and urban sprawl.
In 1989. Gov. Madeleine Kunin, a Democrat, signed Act 200, the Growth Management Act, which proposed to put more teeth into the environmental protections of Act 250, particularly of agricultural and forest resources.
The goal was to prompt all towns in the state to draw up municipal land use plans in order to qualify for housing funds. However, the law has remained largely unimplemented, with almost half of Vermont towns still without municipal land use planning.
Fifty-two years down the road, the world is a very different place. We must conclude that, for all its progressive thinking around environmental protection, in practice Act 250, especially without its counterpart Act 200, has been unable to safeguard the health and wealth of all of the state’s inhabitants — human and non-human.
We now face the urgent challenges of irreversible abrupt climate change and loss of biodiversity. There is increasing agreement among climate scientists and policymakers that “nature-based solutions” are the most immediate and cost-effective means to draw down greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the worst effects of the changing climate.
This approach has many co-benefits, not least of which is safeguarding and building out our local food economy at a time when increasing shocks and disruptions to national and international supply chains seem inevitable.
The implementation of nature-based solutions embedded within the Vermont Climate Action Plan — as mandated by the 2019 Global Warming Solutions Act — could be greatly facilitated by the reactivation of statewide land use planning.
We need this kind of broad inventory and wise stewardship of our remaining natural resources to respond effectively and intelligently to the climate emergency.
