Two environmental groups have followed through with a threat to sue a large Panton dairy for allegedly polluting Addison County waterways. The Conservation Law Foundation and the Vermont Natural Resources Council filed suit against the Vorsteveld Farm Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington. The groups claim the dairy has been routinely discharging pesticide-laden water from its fields directly into Dead Creek in violation of the federal Clean Water Act. “Right now there are pipes coming out of this farm spewing alarming levels of toxic pesticides that are completely going under the radar,” CLF vice president Elena Mihaly told Seven Days. The groups tested water from 11 pipes draining Vorsteveld Farm fields and found dozens of chemicals. These include clothianidin, a pesticide thought to harm bees that is often used to coat corn seed corn, and Atrazine, an herbicide found at levels 50 times higher than what is considered safe for drinking water. The groups served notice of their plans 60 days ago to give the farm time to comply or regulators time to step in, but neither of those things happened, Mihaly said. Runoff from Vorsteveld Farm in Panton into Lake Champlain  Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, said the agency takes such concerns seriously, but had just received the suit and needed time to review it. It’s the first time she her staff recall that a suit has been filed in Vermont under the part of the Clean Water Act allowing citizens to sue to clean up waterways, Moore said. “There are novel legal arguments being made here,” Moore said. CLF and allied groups have long been critical of how the state regulates pollution from dairy farms in Vermont. In 2023, it urged the federal Environmental Protection Agency to strip Vermont of its power to enforce the Clean Water Act. It argued the state’s regulatory system, split between the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets and the Agency of Natural Resources, was so dysfunctional that the EPA ought to take over enforcement. The state has proposed a number of changes meant to institute a more rigorous regulatory and enforcement process, but it’s not clear whether the EPA will accept the changes. There are exemptions for farmers in the Clean Water Act, but they are largely for instances of natural runoff, Mihaly said. Those shouldn’t apply to farms like the Vorstevelds’ that have installed underground systems of drainage pipes known as tile drainage, she said. The system drains fields faster, helping farmers plant and harvest crops more efficiently. But they also increased the rate of runoff from the farm, which has led to lawsuits from neighbors. The Vermont Supreme Court held the farm in contempt in May for failing to address the runoff problem. Despite these issues, state regulators recently approved the farm’s bid to expand by adding 580 animals to their roughly 1,500 mature cows and 1,500 young stock. The expansion will create an estimated additional 6.1 million gallons of liquid manure annually, according to the farm’s application. Mihaly said her organization is not trying to make life harder for farmers, but merely to ensure that the herbicides and pesticides they use are kept on the farm as much as possible. The post Groups Sue Panton Farm Over Water Pollution appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less