Secretary of Natural Resources Julie Moore speaks about efforts to clean up the state’s lakes and waterways during a preliminary legislative briefing in Montpelier on December 4, 2019. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDiggerTwo Vermont agencies submitted a proposal this week to the federal Environmental Protection Agency to change the way they regulate farms that discharge wastewater into state waterways.The state Agency of Natural Resources and Agency of Agriculture Food and Markets have overlapping authority to regulate large and medium-sized farm operations in the state. That arrangement led to a complaint from the Conservation Law Foundation, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, and the Lake Champlain Committee alleging that the agencies had failed to regulate pollution from those farms into the state’s waterways and therefore violated the federal Clean Water Act. The EPA investigated and in September issued a letter with new requirements for the agencies. The state’s proposed regulatory restructuring would stand up a new permitting process for confined animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, overseen by the Agency of Natural Resources. Confined animal feeding operations are often defined by the number of animals in their care, but even large CAFOs would only need a Clean Water Act permit if they send farm effluent into state waterways, Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, said in an interview. She does not yet know how many farms would need a permit under the proposed process.“There are absolutely deficiencies in the program we are currently operating at (the Agency of Natural Resources), as evidenced by the fact that there are discharges documented in some of the records that EPA has, and yet, we have no farms in the state of Vermont that have obtained a CAFO permit or obtained CAFO permit coverage to date,” Moore said. READ MORE Scott Sanderson, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation said on Tuesday that the new proposal does not go far enough to address the problem. While the EPA letter was “clear that only comprehensive change would fix the broken regulatory system that Vermont is working with right now,” Sanderson said, he called the new plan “a start.” “It’s really more adjustments,” he said, “and I think because of that, it ultimately falls short.”Sanderson said the law firm needs time to review the proposal in more depth before determining whether it plans to intervene in the process and formally object.Currently, the state Agency of Agriculture typically conducts investigations and makes referrals to the Agency of Natural Resources based on its observations, partly because the Agency of Natural Resources does not have enough staff or resources to conduct the inspections, Moore said. “What EPA has indicated is we need to be making direct observations and taking the lead and determining which farms, if any, require coverage under a federal CAFO permit,” she said. If the EPA accepts the new proposal, both agencies would participate in inspections of medium and large farms, with the Agency of Natural Resources taking the lead, Moore said. Gov. Phil Scott plans to include more resources for the agency in his next budget proposal, Moore said.While the Agency of Natural Resources carries the ultimate authority and responsibility to implement the federal Clean Water Act in Vermont, state lawmakers decided in the 1990s to split the task and allow the Agency of Agriculture to oversee the implementation of the Clean Water Act on some farms. “While the parties to this agreement had hoped this interagency configuration would yield dividends by providing a holistic framework to control agricultural pollution, in practice, the application of this dual authority over agricultural water quality has resulted in ANR’s nonperformance of delegated (Clean Water Act) duties,” David Cash, the regional EPA administrator for New England, stated in the September letter. The letter stated that “the current division of responsibilities” between the two agencies “is interfering with the regulation of Vermont’s CAFOs and preventing Vermont from adequately addressing agricultural water quality.”“My hope from the perspective of farmers is that, while they may have a different regulatory agency, that they will continue to have the same level of regulatory certainty, meaning having a clear understanding of what’s expected of them and what they need to do to comply,” Moore said. Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts said there’s room for improvement in the inspection and permitting processes, but also credited farmers’ work in recent years to reduce pollution that can cause nutrient overloads in Lake Champlain. He said farms regulated by the new permitting system are likely to experience some increased scrutiny under the new program. The Agency of Natural Resources and the Agency of Agriculture are holding a joint informational meeting to answer questions from farmers and the public on Dec. 16. Read the story on VTDigger here: Following push from EPA, state proposes changes to farm regulation .