Vermont officials have outlined new steps to address agricultural pollution in Lake Champlain that emphasize stewardship and enhanced accountability.
The Statewide Plan to Enhance Stewardship and Accountability is an effort of the state Agriculture agency, Department of Environmental Conservation and attorney general’s office to more strongly deal with water quality issues.
The state plans to expand technical assistance to farmers and increase stewardship practices that reduce runoff into Lake Champlain. New partnerships are being created between agencies, farm organizations and others. Agency staffing is being enhanced. Enforcement action and authority is being ramped up and better coordinated between agencies.
Vermont Agriculture Secretary Chuck Ross outlined a four-point approach in St. Albans Monday that his and other agencies will use to address noncompliant farm activities. While enforcement has a renewed emphasis, Ross says the majority of the agencies’ effort is to help farmers engage in proper conservation practices. “We don’t want to get to enforcement. By the time we get to enforcement, something’s gone wrong. We need to build the culture of stewardship where we all take responsibility to help make the waters of this state better. Because we’ve all been complicit in the problem that we are now seeing in Lake Champlain and as a consequence we all need to be part of the solution.”
Enforcement actions could include civil fines, a loss of tax breaks for agricultural lands, and the ability to limit livestock. Vermont Attorney General Bill Sorrell has joined with other agencies for better enforcement of environmental laws. “We are actively discussing cases very early in the process. We would like to avoid these situations where we have to step up for enforcement, but we will. Both to deal with the individual who’s the subject of the enforcement action, but also as a deterrent to others and we expect to see more cases going forward.”
Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner David Mears plans to do better mapping to identify sources of dissolved phosphorous and pollution runoff. “The major sources of pollution that we have not effectively addressed are the polluted runoff that runs off of our parking lots, our roofs, or farm fields and the like. The extent to which we can build opportunities into our landscape for that rainfall, that water, that snowmelt to seep into the ground and slowly runoff in through the groundwater and our streams the better off we are.”
Franklin County Industrial Development Corporation Executive Director Tim Smith emphasized that Lake Champlain is the key economic driver in northwestern Vermont. With a nearly $100 million shortfall in the state budget, he believes a strong economy built on an environmentally strong lake is crucial to growing and bolstering the state budget. “The lake is responsible for driving the economy with hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism dollars, in room and meals tax, in salaries. We can’t lose track that if the lake continues to fail our economic development is going to continue to decline and our income on the state level is going to continue to decline.”
Earlier this month, Governor Peter Shumlin proposed a Clean Water fund in his inaugural address to raise $5 million for water quality efforts. Ross believes it will have an impact on their efforts. “We have a role in fulfilling our responsibility as a state as a part of the Total Maximum Daily Load plan. The EPA needs to see that the state is willing to contribute meaningful resources to do our part. The state’s got to be in with the fed partners, with our community partners to do our part, with our businesses, and with our farmers if we’re going to make a difference here.”
The attorney general reported that there were three separate water quality cases against farmers in 2014 that resulted in penalties being paid to the state.
