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Can Vermont ever clean up 480 million pounds of legacy phosphorus?
by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
In 2015, Vermont lawmakers passed Act 64 (H.35), a sweeping water quality bill meant to curb phosphorus and sediment runoff into waterways like Lake Champlain. Among its provisions: the 3-acre impervious surface rule, requiring properties with three or more acres of pavement or rooftop draining to a single outfall to retrofit stormwater systems to modern standards.
The goal was noble: clean up a lake suffering from decades of nutrient overload. The cost? Astronomical. The results? Questionable at best.
A Half-Billion Dollar Spend—For 124,000 Pounds
Since 2015, Vermont has spent more than $604 million on clean water initiatives, with stormwater retrofits, farm runoff mitigation, and riparian buffer programs accounting for much of the total. Over the same period, 124,000 pounds of phosphorus have been prevented from reaching Lake Champlain.
Do the math: that’s nearly $4,870 per pound of phosphorus removed.
Yet every year, Vermont’s rivers still deliver roughly 2 million pounds of phosphorus to the lake—a number barely dented by the current efforts.
The Scale of the Problem: A Never-Ending Cup?
To put it in perspective, 124,000 pounds of phosphorus—the result of nine years and over a half-billion dollars in spending—would fill a square just 33 feet by 33 feet and one foot deep if piled up in solid form.
But every single year, Vermont’s watershed adds about 2 million pounds (921 metric tons) of phosphorus to Lake Champlain, thanks largely to “legacy phosphorus” leaching from soils. Studies by UVM show this massive reservoir—built up over decades of heavy fertilizer use—is bleeding into waterways no matter what Vermont does today.
In fact, UVM estimated Vermont’s soils hold a surplus of 240,000 tons (480 million pounds) of phosphorus. At the current removal pace, Vermont would need ~3,800 years and $1.8 trillion to clean up just the legacy load.
By the Numbers
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total spent (2015–2025) | $604 million |
| Phosphorus removed | 124,000 lbs |
| Cost per pound removed | ~$4,870/lb |
| Annual phosphorus load | ~2 million lbs |
| Legacy phosphorus in soils | ~480 million lbs (UVM est.) |
| Years to clean legacy load (current pace) | ~3,800 years |
| Total cost at current pace | ~$1.8 trillion |
Who Filled the Cup?
The elephant in the room is that Vermont didn’t create this mess alone. Starting in the 1940s, the USDA and federal agricultural policies encouraged, subsidized, and sometimes outright mandated phosphorus fertilization:
- Programs like PL-480, EQIP, and the Soil Bank Act funded phosphorus-heavy fertilizers to boost yields.
- UVM and other land-grant institutions handed out recommendations backed by federal research dollars.
- Vermont farmers, following federal advice, applied millions of pounds of phosphate year after year—even when soils were already saturated.
By the 1970s, UVM researchers were warning about “soils saturated with phosphorus” and advising limits. Those warnings were ignored as federal farm policy stayed the course.
Now the EPA demands Vermont’s taxpayers clean up a problem that federal programs created—and do it on a budget larger than the state’s entire annual general fund.
The Legal Question: Why Isn’t Vermont Suing?
Some states have pushed back. Florida sued EPA over Everglades phosphorus standards and won partial relief. Ohio farmers sued USDA over Lake Erie pollution standards. Maryland environmental groups sued USDA over subsidized poultry farms (they lost).
But Vermont has taken the opposite tack—piling on more state mandates and funding, while groups like CLF sue EPA to crack down even harder on Montpelier.
Here’s the brutal truth: even if Vermont spends the projected $2.3 billion over 30 years, phosphorus loading from legacy soils and ongoing agricultural use will likely swamp any gains.
If there was ever a case for the Supreme Court, this is it:
“The federal government subsidized this pollution for decades. Now it’s demanding a small rural state pay billions to fix it.”
Throwing in the Towel?
At some point, Vermont may have to admit what everyone privately knows: this is a Texas-sized problem in a Vermont-sized state. It’s not financially, technically, or politically feasible for 640,000 Vermonters to clean up 480 million pounds of phosphorus at nearly $5,000 a pound while the system continues bleeding legacy loads.
Perhaps the only sane option is to hand the problem back to Washington:
“You broke it. You fix it.”
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Categories: Commentary, Environment
How about using the silt as fertilizer? Putting it back onto the fields, from whence it came? Doesn’t seem too terribly difficult.
That nutrient filled silt would make great fertilizer, by putting it back on the field from whence it came, it would be win-win……..surely there are some reasons why this can’t be done, the biggest being it would solve the problem.
See it’s not about solving any problems, it’s about complete control and manipulation /taxation of everything you own. All in the name of saving the planet…..just like they do with our school system, it’s all about the children they shout, when it could not be further from the truth.
The truth will set you free.
Vermont has septic regulations that can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new house or to bring an existing one up to standards yet dogs are allowed to spread their “phosphorus” with impunity with only the honor system in place for cleanup. People in Chittenden County like to blame the dairy farms but the number of those left in the county can be counted on two hands. Maybe it’s time to revisit the idea of harvesting plants out of the lake to produce fertilizer. The plants do us the favor of absorbing nutrients from the water and incorporating them in a solid form which can be easily removed. Gov. Scott put out a contest several years ago inviting budding young scientists to offer solutions to this problem and I believe a suggestion to harvest plants is what was chosen as the most promising. Perhaps someone can comment on whether this is practical or fantasy? Dotting the land with very expensive catch basins and stormwater ponds doesn’t seem to be cutting the mustard.
Where’s Belaint, Welch and the Bern? If it’s a Fed problem why is VT footing the bill? The government that knows all caused the problem as stated, but really knows nothing. Just like the 3 Mouseketeers.
Wasn’t there a shortage of world phosphorous? Isn’t it needed to fertilize crops?
This nonsense put fifty-five Morrisville homeowners on the hook to each pay for a share of a $400K stormwater mitigation project in their development because ANR says rainwater coming off their roofs and driveways will carry the phosphorus all the way to Lake Champlain. They had no clue about any of that phosphorus/stormwater/impermeable surface stuff when they bought their homes.
Some cities and towns have built infrastructure to manage “stormwater” (used to be called rain) and charges residents within it’s watershed for the benefit it supposedly provides them and refers to it as a “utility”. Vote for demoprogs and this is the result.