Recently, the State of Vermont has come under fire for a new plan to address pollution concerns in Lake Champlain and other bodies of water. Many sources of water in Vermont suffer from nutrient pollution, such as high levels of phosphorus that can result in excessive plant and algae growth.
Earlier this month, state administration officials approved a pollution reduction plan costing $10.4 million over the next two years. The price tag was based on expected revenues from a 0.2 percent surcharge tax on all property transfers in Vermont. In May, the Vermont Senate and House of Representatives approved H. 35, a water quality bill that includes this tax as a source of funding. As of now however, actual revenues are coming up short of the plan’s expected cost.
Concerned citizens and advocacy groups alike are expressing frustration with the project, specifically the feasibility of its funding.
James Ehlers, Executive Director of Lake Champlain International, a non-profit organization that works to ensure the health of Lake Champlain and its surrounding communities, stated that his organization “did not support [this plan] from the outset.”
According to Ehlers, giving “agency secretaries” instead of the elected legislature the authority to solve to the problem of pollution “adds another layer to the bureaucracy,” and makes the process much less “transparent.” Additionally, Ehlers argues that “property values are not related to water pollution,” but they are subject to the “whims of the economy,” making this plan an “unstable” source of revenues.
Rebecca Ellis of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation admits that current revenue levels are not meeting original expectations.
“We will need to see if revenues adjust themselves,” she said. However, she acknowledged that in the event that they do not, officials will have to “make a choice to either supplement or reduce funding [for the project].”
However, Ellis does defend the plan, pointing out that H. 35 passed in the Vermont Senate by a margin of 27 to two and got through the House of Representatives with a 133 to 11 vote. “This bill was widely supported by Democrats, Republicans and Progressives,” Ellis says.
Yet aside from the possibility that the surcharge plan will fall short of funding goals, the State is now up against further criticism of its approach to water pollution. Ehlers argues that $10.4 million is “not even close” to what is needed to adequately clean Vermont’s bodies of waters. He suggests instead an estimated cost of $156 million per year for at least a decade. For several years also, he has led a coalition of 59 organizations that advocates for increased funds spent on water pollution cleanup. As part of this, he has come up with a revenue plan that uses an income tax surcharge instead of a property transfer tax surcharge, which would both go a lot further to address the costs of cleanup and result in a more conspicuous funding process. “The state already has the authority to do this,” he maintains. “So it would be both transparent and easy to implement.”
Ellis counters that the State of Vermont considers the current plan a good starting point in the process of addressing water pollution. Much of the $10.4 million allocated by it is intended for “conducting inventories, research, planning and initiating projects.”
“This effort will take a long time and we are just beginning to analyze the costs,” Ellis says. Certain costs, such as those incurred from improvements to road maintenance and construction will be spread out over periods of up to twenty years. She also points out that any source of funding that relies on sales or income taxes would also be “variable” and “subject to the “economy.”
However, according to Ehlers, politics has gotten in the way of proper measures to address the pollution problem. Legislators and the administration feel that “Vermonters are maxed out and would not support this,” he claims.
“The State doesn’t feel [the coalition] has emboldened them to take necessary action,” Ehlers said. Yet he points out that a survey conducted by the University of Vermont found that 55% of state citizens are willing to pay “extra dollars” for water quality improvement.
“All Vermonters benefit from [clean water] and all are negatively affected by [pollution],” Ehlers said. “If we can pay for artisanal teas and craft beer, we can afford a buck or two each week to ensure that the water that our lives actually depend on is clean.”
