This commentary is by Kennedy McCarthy, who is studying environmental science at the University of Vermont.
Lake Champlain, once Burlington’s premiere recreational attraction and a cultural and historical mainstay, is riddled with disease. Cyanobacteria blooms continue to fester due to the excess phosphorus funneling in from our farmlands.
The biggest foe to the Champlain watershed is not these local farmers, but the ineffectual and fragmented government that punishes environmentally conscious farmers with excessive paperwork, delays in payment, and endless hoop-jumping.
The Vermont government has helped stymie two potentially significant programs. The first is the Environmental Quality Incentive Program, a voluntary project that pairs farms with environmental professionals to create sustainable practices and solutions while addressing their farming needs. The program provides both one-on-one guidance and financial assistance to carry out improvements such as reducing animal feedlot contamination and runoff.
The Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program is another program that helps farmers to protect environmentally sensitive land.
Only about 14.3% of agricultural land in Vermont is enrolled in the environmental quality program, and far less in the conservation reserve program, despite the benefits these programs bring to both the farm and the environment.
Farmers believe the transaction costs for these programs are too high and the paperwork too complex, leading to 20% of farms ending their contract in the first five years. As one frustrated farmer said, “I don’t know who sets the standards for these things, but they’re not farmers.”
Runoff from agricultural sectors accounts for 38% of the phosphorus in Lake Champlain. Minimizing this runoff is the only hope the Lake Champlain basin has to achieve a healthy ecosystem.
According to studies, the main reasons that farmers reject the Environmental Quality Incentive Program are bureaucracy and over-regulation. As shown in interviews from the scientific study by Ecosystem Service, the majority of farmers all individually claimed that reduced government bureaucracy would improve both programs.
The Vermont government cannot still claim to be environmental stewards when it is discouraging eager farmers who are voluntarily seeking out these eco-friendly programs. One farmer said it took five to six rounds of signatures to approve a single project. Another stated, “I don’t see that money for a long time. … I won’t get paid until the job is complete, inspected, they’ve crossed their t’s, dotted their i’s and then take three weeks of vacation to think about it, and then they’ll pay me. … That’s a huge deterrent for any of those programs.”
Our lake is dying due to the inefficiency and heavy-handedness of the state government.
The organization and distribution of government funds are tasks that are neither easy nor small. Ensuring projects are done safely and government money is going to the right places is a difficult process that takes energy and time. But we will face even greater costs if this process does not move with greater urgency.
Every day wasted is another day Lake Champlain suffers. This, in turn, will continue to sicken our lake, make our beaches less inviting, and weaken our economy. Vermont will ultimately spend even more money on cleanup/adaptation projects. We will do more harm perfecting a system to reach cost-benefit equilibrium than by meeting the needs of farmers and moving the process along quicker.
I believe that we can have it all. We can have an efficient system that allocates money properly and ensures projects can be done safely. This is a call to action for the government to communicate directly with local farmers, find the avoidable blockades in the system, and together eliminate obstacles facing farmers trying to limit their pollution.
Through proper communication, and a direct partnership between farmers and the government, we should see a drastic decrease in phosphorus levels in the lake and a larger profit margin for these local farmers.
The people of Burlington deserve to swim, play and jump in the lake without fear of liver damage and skin rashes. We must stop poisoning the ecosystems surrounding the lake. We have lost too many days in the sun due to beach closures.
We all have the same goal in mind. We should make the path to reaching it as easy as possible. And this should be the top priority for our elected officials.
