Lawmakers weigh scope of CAFO regulation, buffers and emergency exemptions in S.124

Michael Grady, legislative counsel, told a Vermont legislative committee that advocates disagree sharply on how broadly the state should regulate concentrated animal feeding operations under draft bill S.124. "The environmental advocates say treat the Clean Water Act as the regulatory floor," Grady said, while some agency language would "treat the Clean Water Act requirements as the goal, as the ceiling of what you would have to do."

That basic choice — whether to limit CAFO permitting to discharges to waters of the United States (the federal Clean Water Act definition) or to the broader state definition of "waters of the state" — threaded through committee questions. Grady said the bill as passed by the Senate used "waters of the state," a definition that explicitly includes "waters of the United States," but the Agency of Agriculture has proposed narrowing the CAFO program to discharges to waters of the United States to make the program more implementable. Environmental advocates urged keeping the broader state definition.

Why the distinction matters: under the broader state definition, the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) has primary permitting authority for discharges to waters of the state, but in practice ANR has rarely issued CAFO permits and most operations have been run through the…