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by Dave Soulia, for FYIVT.com
Ten years and over $200 million later, Vermont is right back where it started—struggling to comply with the Clean Water Act, while farmers, taxpayers, and lawmakers all try to catch their breath.
At the center of this legislative whirlpool is S.124, a bill pitched as a necessary alignment with federal law. But in practice, it looks like a regulatory do-over of 2015’s Act 64, a law already funded, staffed, and operational—at least on paper.
So how did Vermont end up here?
From Lawsuit to Legislation
This saga starts not in Montpelier but in the courts. In 2008 and again in the early 2010s, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) pressured the EPA over Vermont’s failure to enforce water quality standards in Lake Champlain. The EPA, in turn, pressured Vermont.
In response, the state passed Act 64 in 2015, known as the Vermont Clean Water Act. It was ambitious: define farm types, restrict manure spreading, create the Clean Water Fund, develop new stormwater rules, and coordinate the Agency of Agriculture (AAFM) and the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) under a memorandum of understanding (MOU).
Legislators expected the EPA to back off. And for a time, it did.
The Money Flooded In
From 2015 to 2025, Vermont poured over $200 million into water quality efforts:
- $75M+ in state funds through the Clean Water Fund and capital appropriations.
- $45M+ in federal USDA conservation funding.
- Millions more through fee increases on fertilizer, pesticide, feed, and stormwater permits.
Staff were hired. Nutrient Management Plans (NMPs) were mandated. New manure storage pits were built. Municipalities faced new road runoff standards. But when the dust settled, the water stayed dirty—and the EPA wasn’t impressed.
In 2023, EPA issued Vermont a Corrective Action Plan: clean up your permitting system, or risk losing authority to regulate farm pollution under the Clean Water Act.
Enter S.124: The Legislative Reset
S.124 is Vermont’s official response to that federal ultimatum. It doesn’t repeal Act 64, but it rewrites much of its enforcement structure. It strips AAFM of primary regulatory control and shifts that power to ANR, especially over large animal operations and any farm where a discharge is suspected.
It also formally creates Vermont’s own Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permitting system, mirroring the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program but tailored to the state’s geography and politics.
The bill requires:
- New permitting rules for all large and medium farms, with eventual expansion to small farms.
- Public nutrient management plans, enforceable by ANR.
- On-site inspections tied to discharge risk—not farm size or type.
- Permit fees of up to $2,500 annually, plus infrastructure requirements.
Even the MOU between AAFM and ANR, central to Act 64, is now being replaced with a more rigid “interagency document” to ensure EPA oversight.
So What Went Wrong the First Time?
Despite the funding and rulemaking under Act 64, two core problems derailed Vermont’s effort:
- Lack of enforcement muscle. Act 64 was heavy on mapping, education, and planning, but light on direct inspections or penalties. AAFM’s nutrient plans were confidential, and no centralized permitting database tracked who was doing what, where, or when.
- Agency turf battles. AAFM and ANR operated on different regulatory philosophies—education versus enforcement. And the MOU never created the accountability the EPA wanted. Farms were largely shielded from direct Clean Water Act oversight.
In effect, Vermont spent a decade building a compliance framework it never used, and EPA lost patience.
The Threat to Small Farms
S.124 was sold as a tool for regulating only the “big polluters.” But the bill says otherwise.
ANR now has sole authority to:
- Reclassify any Animal Feeding Operation (AFO) as a CAFO based on discharge evidence, even on a small hillside pasture.
- Require site-specific NMPs with field maps, soil tests, and phosphorus indexes—even for operations selling as little as $2,000 annually in farm goods.
- Publicly disclose plans, permit status, and violations.
Add in the infrastructure costs—manure storage systems ($50k+), consultant-prepared plans ($2k–$6k), and buffer fencing—and it’s clear: the small farms aren’t being spared.
In legislative testimony, Michael O’Grady, Vermont’s lead legislative counsel, was frank:
“I expect small farm permitting might be more of a complaint-driven process… but they’ll have inspection done as well.”
And Senator Russ Ingalls, a strong S.124 supporter, offered this warning:
“The majority of farms lose money… the average age of farmers is almost 58… keeping farms on the land is essential.”
In a separate committee, O’Grady laid the stakes even plainer:
“If you have issues that are identified, you will have cost.”
And in the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Campbell voiced what many farmers fear:
“They can’t even do it themselves—they need a certified service provider… the plans are far too complex for me to understand.”
Even the agencies admit the risk. In a joint letter, ANR and AAFM acknowledged that farm obligations under S.124 could expand, stating:
“…before their obligations and related expenses potentially increase.”
And It’s Not Just Farms
S.124’s enforcement comes alongside Vermont’s broader 3-Acre Rule for stormwater, now in effect for:
- Commercial parking lots
- Churches and schools
- Campgrounds and driveways
Anyone with 3 or more acres of impervious surface—even if built before the Clean Water Act—must now retrofit their property to meet new runoff standards. It’s a sweeping, expensive, and ongoing burden, especially for towns and small businesses.
What About Legacy Phosphorus?
And nowhere in the 50 pages of S.124 or the accompanying testimony and documentation from 2015 until last Thursday is there a single word pushing back on the EPA’s refusal to credit Vermont for legacy phosphorus—nutrient loading that built up for decades from federally permitted discharges and practices.
Neither the Attorney General nor ANR have challenged the EPA’s accounting, which effectively punishes today’s farmers and property owners for yesterday’s government failures.
The irony? Vermont’s AG is suing the federal government over housing rules, emissions standards, and student loans—but refuses to lift a finger when Vermonters are being forced to retrofit their farms and properties to solve a problem they didn’t create.
Conclusion: Flailing, Not Fixing
Vermont’s water crisis is real. But the policy response increasingly resembles a bureaucracy drowning in its own paperwork.
The EPA has every right to demand accountability. But S.124 doesn’t represent smart reform—it’s a legislative admission that Act 64 failed, and that no one really knew how to run the system they built.
Meanwhile, small farmers, local governments, and taxpayers are being asked to pay for another round of planning, permitting, and compliance—with no guarantee it will work better the second time.
In the end, Vermont’s clean water system doesn’t need another plan—it needs political courage. Instead of regulating its way down to the last hobby goat, the state might finally consider asking why the EPA still refuses to account for its own role in Lake Champlain’s decline.
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Categories: Commentary, State Government
This is precisely how VT thinks, works and decides on legislation that’s bogus and expensive. Now “do it again Sam”. It’s a wonder Gov people can tie their own shoes without tying both shoes together and tripping up then blame the other person for their faults.
They are making bank, they have no consequence for their ideas, it’s all done administratively, think bidens auto pen and you aren’t far off. Meanwhile they make 100k per year with the best retirement benefits on the planet. How could they be wrong?
The commentary below recently appeared in FYIVT & The Rutland Herald, written out of frustration, for a government out of control! And this includes both state and federal.
As Dave points out, all that’s gone wrong with Vermont’s water policy over the past decade, its clear to see clean water is not the biggest problem facing Vermonters or the nation. Its the system of ADVOCACY that’s taken over our government, disguised as benevolent planning and development, they identify our problems for us.
We have lost the integrity of our self governance.
Did it ever occur to anyone maybe this system of central planners is the real problem!
Commentary:
Edmunds: Self-governance integrity
Can Rutland County Agricultural Society and Vermont State Fair survive Vermont’s 3-Acre Rule?
The arbitrary nature of being placed on a list for sacrifice because of a 3-acre criteria is troubling. Especially when it seeks to erase the ancestral legacy of Rutland County and the Vermont State Fair. Wrong, in so many ways, it’s difficult to see how this rule ever passed constitutional muster? It speaks volumes about a system whose intention seems to guarantee its own sustenance through planning and development, above all else.
Have Vermonter’s asked for a sacrificial altar? Or is a system of advocacy becoming a new religion, that must be fed at any cost? So, what happens when the RCAS can’t comply? Will its property be confiscated in the process?
You can only self-govern if you maintain the structure of governance that allows it.
A century ago in 1924, the National League of Cities was founded. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., they began to lobby Congress as an American advocacy group, with a focus on municipal issues. Established as a nongovernmental organization (NGO), they commenced laying the groundwork for a system of targeted advocacy, focusing on state and local governments throughout the U.S.
Vermont would recognize this central planning concept in 1967 with Act 334 enactment, known as the Vermont Planning and Development Act. This would usher in the Vermont League of Cities & Towns and eventually, a system of regional and local planning commissions, all justifying themselves as advocates for municipal planning and development. But who delineates the fine line between advocacy and interference with a legitimate governing authority? And what happens when boundaries are blurred with financial grants flowing freely as incentives for participating in planning and development programs?
At first glance, most NGOs may appear benevolent; but benevolent or not, make no mistake, influence peddlers can be very disruptive to the organic balance of our system of self-governance, even when their intentions are for good. However, a shift toward imbalance may go unnoticed by Vermonters, having been conditioned since the late-1960s by a system of advocacy for central planning and development, a system administered largely through a concept of municipal zoning regulation. Over time, exposure to this controlling structure of zoning has slowly relaxed our grip on the ideals protecting individual rights and sovereignty making us more willing to accept top-down government without ever questioning the motives behind it, or the reversal of authority it perpetuates.
But understand, the greater-good zoning promises do not recognize a loss of personal liberty as a negative; rather, it celebrates the cumulative increase of regulatory power, garnished incrementally with the passage of time and each additional regulation.
There are approximately 1.5 million NGOs operating in the U.S. alone, with no prohibition on funding from foreign governments, corporations or the private sector. This makes for a very powerful lobby, with laser focus on promoting and influencing legislative agendas. But ultimately, whose agendas are prioritized when NGOs are allowed to operate as coalitions in a public/private partnership with your government? It might surprise you to know two forms of government can exist in parallel, pretending to be one in the same. However, eventually, the one you thought you had becomes only a memory, and the one you actually endure is what you are left with. But endure we must, when our system of governance is captured by too much collective influence and control.
Is it any wonder Vermonters fear benevolent legislation that leaves them less vibrant year after year? How ironic is it that, after over 50 years of planning and development, Vermonters now dread the fruits of remedy garnered by powerful advocacy. Vermonters are enduring a system of advocacy, wrought with compartmentalized manipulation that has the ability to almost exclusively monopolize legislative agendas once thought of as our own — all while creating legalese that blend in theory with our founding principles, yet frustrates the will of the people, making litigation to protect their sovereignty impossible to afford. We still endeavor to go through the motions of self-governing, but where do you go when your government becomes a closed system, leaving you on the outside looking in and feeling powerless?
It will be difficult to decouple from regional planning and development structures when we have allowed them to infiltrate our state and municipal governments for so long. But realize, too much advocacy and influence can negatively usurp our balance of power, while effortlessly shutting down public opposition in the process.
Now consider the possibility we may actually be self-inflicting and facilitating our own hostile takeover by allowing this arrangement to continue — an arrangement that sets the stage for conflicts of interest with coalition partners and special interest organizations gaining access to our government control mechanisms, through political subdivisions like regional planning commissions or municipal leagues.
This is not to cast aspersions on the good people employed by these manufactured, compartmentalized, political subdivisions of government. For as far as they know, the work they do is benevolent. However, the organizations themselves have been subtly inserted into the fabric of our power structure; for what reason, it matters not, the fact they are there at all is disruptive.
Now as a result of years of conditioning, our once-independent state of mind does not challenge synthetic advocacy because it cannot clearly see the threat it poses, as it hides in plain sight behind the benevolent work of its particular compartment and charge.
The fine line separating influence from interference no longer exists, because Vermont’s governance structure has been altered by an invasion of influence. The only question remaining is, are we prepared to make the necessary structural changes to reconstitute the integrity of our self-governance system?
The 3-Acre Rule is a good example of what happens when self-governance is consumed by a system of advocacy. This is when some will be sacrificed to satisfy the appetite of the system.
Lynn James Edmunds lives in Wallingford.