A first-term legislator is seeking solutions to a long-ignored consent problem inside ANR’s wastewater permitting. Party leadership told him to back down. He’s not backing down.

by Neil Ryan

Will Greer (D) Bennington-2 isn’t a multi-generational Vermonter. He’s a Texan. Heck, he’s gay, an Episcopalian, youngest in the General Assembly, and a hundred other identifiers and qualities. Everyone will find something to like and something to oppose in the bills he’s co-sponsored. In his legislative work, you get the clear sense that what matters to him is doing good work with whomever wants to work on it, always on behalf of other people, often in very practical ways.

Representative Greer seems honest, humane, and entirely coherent in his principles.

He represents an old and durable political tradition in Vermont: one grounded in going to Montpelier on behalf of your locality, embracing the practical concerns of common people, picking up the thread of an issue and going where it leads, and maintaining a keen sense of fairness.

On Wednesday, May 13, he walked into the House Committee on Environment and introduced a minor amendment on an obscure topic. It mattered to multiple constituents in Bennington, and it reveals a dysfunction embedded in Vermont’s water and wastewater permitting rules that most property owners are blind to, until the day it happens to them.

It’s called overshadowing. And if you own land in Vermont, it’s good to understand it.

When Vermont issues a permit for a well or septic system, it attaches isolation distances that protect water sources from contamination. In Vermont, isolation distances do not respect property lines.

When a landowner installs a well or septic system near the edge of their parcel, the isolation distance can extend across the boundary and onto a neighbor’s land. Vermont calls this “overshadowing.” The neighbor whose land is encumbered cannot install their own well or septic within that zone. They may lose the ability to build on a portion of their property. They may lose the ability to upgrade an existing system. They may lose, functionally, the value of what they own.

Vermont follows a first-in-time doctrine. The first permit wins. The neighbor receives a statutory notification and is expected to negotiate. As legislative counsel Michael O’Grady explained to the committee on May 13: “That doesn’t always happen and it leads to tension.” One alternative that has evolved is that neighbors drill what are bluntly called “spite wells” to block a neighbor’s permit. This represents the logical endpoint of a system that has left landowners with no recourse but escalation or litigation. It has often happened.

Representative Greer described three current constituent cases to the committee: one involving two adjacent parcels where a “spite well” is being contemplated at an estimated cost of $30,000.

Vermont is not the only state with isolation distances, but its combination of choices makes it a distinctive outlier in how badly it treats the encumbered neighbor. Michigan’s rules explicitly limit isolation distances to “property that is owned by the well owner.” The encumbrance stops at the property line as a matter of regulatory design. Minnesota requires that to extend isolation distances across a property line, that extension must be “legally controlled through an easement.” The neighbor must consent, a legal instrument must be recorded, and compensation is the normal expectation. Vermont requires none of this.

Vermont’s Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) itself acknowledged in its 2025 report that Vermont’s isolation distances “are larger than many other states.” Vermont’s encumbrances reach further, affect more of a neighbor’s land, and do so under a framework that requires no easement, no compensation, and no analysis of whether alternatives exist.

When Vermont landowners have tried to fight back in court, the Vermont Supreme Court has held that the presumptive isolation zone “did not constitute a per se physical taking as a matter of law” and that the Environmental Division lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate the property rights questions the encumbrance raises, leaving the affected landowner to absorb the loss in a civil court.

Vermont has managed to construct a system where a neighbor’s permit can shrink your usable land, devalue your property, prevent you from building your own systems, and leave you with no administrative remedy, no recorded legal encumbrance you can even point to on a deed, and no compensation.

The issue has been formally on the legislature’s radar since 2009. A comprehensive TAC report was issued in 2010. The legislature has not acted on it for sixteen years! Representative Greer, in just his second year in the legislature, recognized the issue and went to bat for his constituents and everyone else who may fall into similar scenarios.

His amendment to S.212, the session’s wastewater permitting reform bill, directed the Secretary of Natural Resources to reconvene the Technical Advisory Committee to formally examine the overshadowing issue and report back to the legislature by January 1, 2027.

The amendment’s scope was careful and specific. The TAC would be asked to summarize how isolation distances encumber neighboring property; evaluate whether state law should continue to allow overshadowing; if it should continue, explain why alternatives aren’t feasible and whether compensation should be required; and if it should not continue, recommend how the law should change. A formal report to two committees would be provided in eight months.

Bryan Redmond, Director of the Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division at Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources told the committee: “It’s an area that our staff spend a tremendous amount of time explaining the requirements and the laws to providers. And in addition, it’s an area that’s very heavily litigated within our program. So it’s a constant source of focus for us.”

He continued: “I think if the committee has an interest in queuing this up for a policy dialogue, which is worthwhile, we could support the amendment.”

ANR supported the study. Greer was asking for nothing more than good information to help guide good decisions.

Chair Amy Sheldon seemed somewhat uninterested. Ranking Member Larry Satcowitz delivered what should stand as an example of subjective dismissal: “I really have a hard time supporting the amendment*,” he said of compensation for landowners whose properties are encumbered. He called the harm “perceived damages.”

Representative Greer did not let it pass: “With all due respect, there is damage happening because they’re not able to use their property because someone else is building a septic system,” he said. “I find that deeply unfair. You’re taking someone’s land because you’re establishing a stake first by putting a septic leach field. That’s not giving land. You’re taking someone’s land.”

His comments carried an emotional and intellectual clarity. But the amendment was brushed aside with a level of impatience that revealed something deeper and more troubling about the current culture inside the House Committee on Environment. They seemed not to give credence to the real and ongoing issues of landowner consent and harm, a pattern on recent legislation. Rather, their underlying posture seemed to be that reopening examination of overshadowing might lead to an uncomfortable need to act on it. Theirs was an argument against inquiry.

The discussion in that hearing and subsequent failure to attach Representative Greer’s amendment to S.212 added to the growing frustration among more practical and constituency-oriented Democrats.

There is a widening divide inside the Party between legislators who view policymaking as an adaptive process responsive to the lived experiences of the people who elected them and those who view constituent appeals to the legislature as distractions or impediments to their preconceived agenda.

In the last few days, House leadership has put an unseemly amount of pressure on Representative Greer to pull his amendment for the sake of Caucus uniformity. It has caused multiple House members to wince. Increasingly, leadership appears to interpret deviation from their preferences as disloyalty rather than contribution.

Will Greer is not backing down. His amendment will be presented on the floor of the House today and the entire House will have a chance to support it. Democratic voters around Vermont should celebrate his principled independence and his tenacity on behalf of the communities that elected him.

Perhaps his background helps explain his stridency and his sensibilities. A person raised around rail yards with his dad, the family sawmill with mom, learns early that systems exist to serve people, not the other way around. That may sound like a no-brainer, but amidst the current Caucus dysfunction in Montpelier, Will Greer’s approach represents the restorative path to a more accountable citizen legislature.