MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Efforts to come up with a long-term funding source for Lake Champlain’s cleanup fizzled this legislative session with Gov. Phil Scott’s call for no new taxes or fees.
Sponsors of the funding bill who say the lake is at a crisis point are frustrated by the lack of progress.
“We need to move forward on this. Our economy absolutely depends on it,” Democratic Sen. Ginny Lyons said. “Our fisheries, our fishing economy, just for aesthetic purposes, for public health, you name it, for all of our tourism that we have in the state.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandated Vermont clean up the lake, specifically by reducing phosphorus runoff that causes toxic algae blooms. The Legislature in 2015 outlined a plan that relies on several measures, including the management of manure from farms, buffer zones near waterways and ditches and the reduction of runoff from parking lots.
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The administration estimated the state will need up to $25 million annually over the next 20 years on lake cleanup. Federal funding and other sources will help to cover costs.
Short-term funding is now being used from the capital bill, which is allocated to pay for construction projects.
The administration estimates it will not have sufficient resources to meet its funding commitments after fiscal year 2021, said Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore.
“There’s still more work to do and ultimately to have a long-term funding strategy that we can hopefully get broad agreement is robust,” she said.
Lyons said projects take time to get off the ground and she worries there could be more finger-pointing the source of phosphorus and perhaps legal action.
She said farmers want to do what’s right but for some it’s extremely expensive “to clean up hundreds of years of phosphorus.”
“That’s why we need to the money so we can help them do the right thing,” she said.
Bills had included funding mechanisms or studies of how to fund the cleanup but those didn’t make it into the bill the Republican Scott signed into law last week.
“We are ultimately disappointed that the clean water funding bill didn’t have any clean water funding or didn’t have a mechanism or path forward toward clean water funding,” said Jared Carpenter, water protection advocate for the Lake Champlain Committee, a citizen’s organization.
Lyons said she believes the legislation takes some steps forward, by expanding a board that will be making funding