Committee debates H.481 stormwater bill; DEC urges removal of required December report

At a Natural Resources & Energy Committee meeting Tuesday, Neil Gammett, deputy commissioner at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, urged the committee to remove a broad report requirement from H.481 and confirmed the department supports language that gives priority to projects serving primary residential housing under municipal and developed-lands stormwater grant programs.

Gammett told the committee the bill’s new Section 8 “provides a little bit of additional prioritization and establishes a priority that properties that are serving primary residential housing needs are the ones that are prioritized for receipt of funding under municipal and developed lands grant programs.” He said the department would implement prioritization as a scoring preference rather than an absolute prohibition on funding for nonresidential sites.

The bill’s Section 9 would require the agency to publish a stormwater management resource guide by 2027. Gammett said the department is comfortable with that requirement and with minor drafting tweaks already provided to legislative counsel. The draft guide described in the bill would summarize permitting requirements (with emphasis on the three-acre stormwater permit), recommend cost‑effective measures for parcel-level compliance, explain available financing routes, and provide a DEC contact for small permittees.

Gammett asked the committee to delete Section 10, a broad report due Dec. 1 that would, among other things, reassess Lake Champlain TMDL allocations and outline phased implementation options. “I respectfully ask you that we remove that section of the bill,” he said, arguing the provision would duplicate work already under way, conflict with other required program deliverables and place an impractical burden on agency staff. He also warned that reallocation questions touch federal commitments: the Lake Champlain TMDL is an EPA allocation and reopening or reallocating those loads could trigger federal review and risk more stringent state obligations.

Members and staff discussed tightening or clarifying the Section 8 language after several committee members said the draft read as if it could be interpreted to fund a single property once rather than apply ongoing prioritization. Gammett said the department’s likely approach would be to award higher scoring points to qualifying residential projects rather than to bar funding for other high‑value phosphorus reductions.

Independent engineer Serena Wolf, president of Stevens & Associates, told the committee many towns outside the Lake Champlain watershed face “orphan” stormwater systems with no clear maintenance or funding path and urged the committee to preserve routes for municipalities outside MS4-designated watersheds to create municipal or regional stormwater utilities. Wolf said a utility is not the right solution for every town, but that “many towns would like to have a clearer path or opportunity to access that, especially outside of the MS4 process.”

Gammett and other witnesses summarized existing and recently used funding tools: American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds had been used for competitive grants that are now fully allocated, DEC is building a Clean Water Fund‑backed financing and subsidy program for developed lands projects, and the agency has previously offered startup assistance (noted in the hearing as roughly $25,000 per year for up to five years) to help municipalities form stormwater utilities.

The committee did not take a formal vote on any provision. Members discussed moving elements of Section 10 — especially items about regional financing mechanisms and upstream contributing properties — into the study committee on stormwater management and creation of stormwater utility districts so that those matters receive a broader review. DEC agreed to provide an updated draft that incorporates the clarifications discussed and to continue meeting with committee members and the study group.

The discussion highlighted two timing constraints: (1) the draft language’s report deadline of Dec. 1 and (2) the longer federal TMDL schedule and its 2036 implementation horizon referenced by DEC staff. Gammett said EPA involvement makes reallocations of TMDL loads complicated and that the department prefers not to reopen federally negotiated allocations without clear federal agreement.

Next steps recorded at the hearing: DEC will supply a revised draft reflecting discussed changes; the committee will consider whether to remove Section 10 and will weigh routing several items to the regional stormwater utility study committee; no formal committee action was recorded at the session’s adjournment.