Committee hears concerns over funding, liability and timelines for Vermont’s 3-acre stormwater permit

At a Natural Resources & Energy committee session, state environmental staff outlined the rationale for a draft permitting program that would require stormwater controls on developed parcels of three or more acres as part of Vermont’s strategy to reduce phosphorus loading into Lake Champlain.

The committee heard that the three-acre threshold and technical standards are intended to capture larger, previously unregulated impervious areas and to help the state meet Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) targets tied to the Vermont Clean Water Act (Act 64 of 2015). Emily Burke, Clean Water Initiative Program staff, summarized funding proposed alongside the permit: “5,000,000 initial investment from the Clean Water Fund and then $1,000,000 every year thereafter for municipal 3 acre sites,” paired with the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, she said.

The program’s purpose and technical basis State environmental staff explained that the three-acre cutoff was selected as a balance point based on modeled average phosphorus contributions from impervious surfaces and to avoid either under- or over-including sites. The permit would require retrofits that manage a water-quality “one-inch” storm for 50 percent of existing impervious…