Flaws in a Vermont program are preventing the state from controlling phosphorus discharges from certain farms, contributing to serious water quality problems in Lake Champlain and other bodies of water, according to a letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to state officials.
Monday’s letter to the secretary of the Vermont Natural Resources Agency says the program does not comply with the Clean Water Act. It directs the state to make significant changes in the way it regulates water pollution from concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, that raise animals in confinement.
According to the EPA, there are 37 large and 104 medium-sized CAFOs in Vermont, along with 1,000 small farms that could be considered such operations.
Two state agencies — Natural Resources and Agriculture Food and Markets — regulate agricultural water pollution in Vermont, where the problem lies, the letter said. The division of responsibilities “impacts the regulation of Vermont’s CAFOs and prevents Vermont from adequately addressing agricultural water quality,” wrote David Cash, EPA administrator for Region 1 in Boston.
Excess phosphorus runoff from farms, roads and urban areas has fueled toxic algae blooms in Lake Champlain, sometimes forcing beach closures. Sources of excess phosphorus in lakes and waterways include fertilizers, leaking septic systems or discharges from wastewater treatment plants, the EPA says.
The EPA ordered the state to clean up Lake Champlain and in 2016 set new limits for phosphorus pollution in the water body.
In Monday’s letter, the EPA concluded that the Natural Resources Agency should be responsible for licensing, oversight and enforcement of CAFOs. This includes conducting routine farm inspections, enforcing management plans for placing manure and other nutrients on fields, and administering discharge permits.
Vermont Secretary of Natural Resources Julie Moore said Tuesday that the agency takes its obligations under the Clean Water Act very seriously.
“At the same time, I think it’s very important to remember that this is about the functioning and governance of government and not about the work done by farmers,” she said.
The state has regulated farms through discharge permits issued by the Agriculture Department, “so nothing is allowed to leave the farm,” Moore said. The EPA shows evidence of accidental discharges from farms, often in response to extreme weather, she said.
The Conservation Law Foundation, the Vermont Natural Resources Council and the Lake Champlain Committee, an advocacy group, filed a 2022 petition with the EPA to take corrective action or revoke the program’s authorization for regulating CAFO farms. The foundation released the EPA’s letter Monday, and Elena Mihaly, vice president of Conservation Law Foundation Vermont, said it’s a step in the right direction.
Similar concerns were raised in a 2008 petition filed by Vermont Law School’s Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, which resulted in a 2013 corrective action plan in which the state agreed to take steps to improve parts of its program, including its handling of CAFOs, the letter said.
It is clear that Vermont has not adequately addressed the deficiencies in its CAFO program and has not met the requirements of the 2013 plan, Cash wrote in the letter to the state.
“EPA has closely monitored program activities in Vermont for more than a decade, and despite ample time and opportunity for ANR to address the program’s longstanding shortcomings, many of which were detailed in the 2008 withdrawal petition, ANR has failed to do so,” Cash wrote.
Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts said the problem “really only affects a handful of farmers” and “appears more like a regulatory box that hasn’t been checked.”
Farmers and the agency do a tremendous amount of work to keep pollution out of the lake and waterways, he said.
“The evidence shows through some of the science that the people who have helped solve this problem over the last 10 years have been from the agricultural community,” Tebbetts said. “So the program of education, technical assistance, enforcement and inspections is working.”