Stormwater accord bridges political rifts

Vermont Business Magazine, Jun 01, 2004 by Kelley, Kevin

Business and environmental groups stitched together an unusually harmonious agreement on a key issue in the legislative session that concluded last month. With only three dissenting votes in the 180-member General Assembly, Vermont lawmakers approved a bill aimed at ending a long and rancorous stalemate over stormwater permits.

"It was a remarkable achievement," says Environmental Conservation Commissioner Jeffrey Wennberg. Legislators and lobbyists who had been on opposite sides of the stormwater controversy agree that the bill strikes a rare balance between the interests of developers and environmentalists.

The complex compromise was engineered by a "Stormwater Collaborative" consisting of business organizations, conservation groups, municipalities and state agencies. The parties worked for months to break a deadlock that had virtually halted large-scale development in Chittenden County.

A deal became possible because the two contending camps were each able to accomplish a prime objective, says Representative Margaret Hummel, a principal sponsor of the legislation.

"The environmental community was very clear that impaired waters had to be cleaned up as quickly as possible. The business community was very concerned about what would happen if you want to sell your property and you have an expired (stormwater) permit," Hummel, a Democrat from Underhill, explains.

The bill responds to environmentalists' demands by establishing what all parties acknowledge to be a stringent set of antipollution standards that will remain in force for the next three years.

The legislation also allows sales of properties with expired permits, provided that the titleholder files a "notice of deferral" with the state Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) and inserts it into local land records. The buyer would then be responsible for bringing the property into compliance with stormwater regulations that ANR must finalize by September 2007.

Also of great significance to business groups, the legislation enables ANR to begin issuing stormwater permits for developments in 17 watersheds where runoff from impervious surfaces such as parking lots has resulted in major pollution problems.

The basic aim of stormwater regulations is to prevent heavy rainstorms from washing pollutants such as motor oil into nearby streams and ultimately into rivers and lakes. Contamination has become particularly acute in Burlington-area tributaries of Lake Champlain. Nine of the 17 "impaired" streams are in Chittenden County, with the other eight scattered around the state.

As is the case with any effective compromise on a divisive issue, the two sides are not entirely pleased with the outcome.

Some of the provisions in the bill are "difficult for developers to swallow," says Mary Sprayregen, a lobbyist for the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Burlington Industrial Corp. But builders did ultimately gulp it down because "in order to have a predictable permit situation and to be able to move forward, they needed to get a bill through the Legislature," Sprayregen says.

"The environmental community would have liked to see stronger legislation," says Patrick Berry, a lobbyist with the Vermont Natural Resources Council. "But given the political pressures that were at play, we at least avoided backsliding." And the bill may actually result in significant improvement in water quality over the long term, Berry adds, "depending on how the money in it will be spent."

Passage of the bill "isn't the end of the process; it's really the beginning," Berry says.

Included in the multifaceted measure is a $700,000 outlay intended to enhance ANRs stormwater monitoring capabilities. The funding will allow the agency to hire three specialists in its stormwater division and to compile data needed for formulating the standards due to take effect in 2007.

ANR has been sharply criticized for its handling of the stormwater permit system during most of the past decade. Due to bureaucratic inattentiveness that it has since acknowledged and pledged to correct, the agency allowed more than 1,000 stormwater permits to expire in the 1990s.

"The success of this legislation will be entirely contingent on whether it's adequately supported by ANR," says Berry. "Based on the past performance of the agency regarding stormwater, we don't have a whole lot of confidence that this will happen."

Wennberg, whose department is part of ANR, argues that the agency's performance of the issue during the past two or three years has actually been "exemplary," He adds that the stormwater permitting program outside the 17 impaired areas "has been working like a Swiss watch."

At the same time, Wennberg admits that a key component of the compromise legislation may not be easy to implement. He describes the section of the bill establishing an "offset" mechanism as "very cumbersome, very complex and likely to be controversial because this sort of thing has never been tried before."

This provision was included in the bill as part of the trade-offs between environmentalists and business representatives. Developers agreed to accept the strict new stormwater standards in return for creation of an offset program.