Senate Agriculture hears Clean Water Performance Report as state charts progress, gaps in 20-year plan

The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources on Thursday presented the annual Clean Water Performance Report to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, describing how state and federal dollars are being spent to meet long-term pollution-reduction targets for Lake Champlain and other waters.

“For the record, Julie Moore, secretary of natural resources,” Moore said, adding that the report “provides a really comprehensive look at these significant investments that Vermont is making in water quality.” The agency said the work covers sewage and stormwater infrastructure, municipal roads, and agricultural and forestry best-management practices across multiple state agencies.

The report frames the clean-water effort as a 20-year implementation plan. “This is a 20 year effort. We are in year 8,” Moore said. The plan is driven by total maximum daily loads, or TMDLs, which set pollution budgets that the state adopts and the Environmental Protection Agency approves. Emily Bird, Clean Water Initiative Program manager at the Department of Environmental Conservation, told the committee the performance report is intended to provide accountability to the legislature, the public and EPA on investments and results.

Why it matters: Vermont’s TMDLs set multi-decade targets for nutrients such as phosphorus, which can fuel harmful cyanobacteria blooms in Lake Champlain, Lake Memphremagog and other waters. The report aggregates investment, project output and modeled pollution reductions so state leaders can track progress, adapt programs and target resources where they are most needed.

Key findings and figures: the agencies reported more than $600,000,000 in state investments in clean water since state fiscal year 2016 and said the most recent year showed a sharp increase in funding availability, driven largely by federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The presentation cited an estimated $185,000,000 invested in the most recent reporting year and said state reporting shows the Lake Champlain Basin is about 26% of the way toward its modeled phosphorus-reduction target; the Memphremagog Basin is about 17% toward its target.

The report attributes a large share of accounted phosphorus reductions to agricultural conservation practices. Claire Madden, tracking and accounting supervisor with the Clean Water Initiative Program, said agricultural measures reported include nearly 250,000 acres of conservation practices implemented over the reporting period (cover crops, reduced tillage and similar practices). The agencies also emphasized that some output measures lag the funding year because monitoring and data collection follow different schedules; Madden said the program backfills missing data each year.

Regulation and funding framework: presenters reviewed the statutory and regulatory framework that underpins the work, including Act 64 (Vermont’s 2015 clean-water statute), the Clean Water Service Delivery Act (Act 76 of 2019), and federal requirements tied to the Clean Water Act and EPA-approved TMDLs. Bird summarized several permit programs that apply to developed lands — including the three-acre general permit, municipal separate storm sewer (MS4) permits and the municipal roads general permit — and described new grant programs created under Act 76 to distribute clean-water funds through regional clean-water service providers and other channels.

Questions from committee members focused on flood impacts and data certainty. Committee members asked whether the floods of 2023 and 2024 set back progress; Bird and Moore said major storm events can move larger amounts of sediment and phosphorus into waterways but that the TMDL modeling includes margins of safety and climate considerations. “Those events carried a significant amount of sediment and phosphorus into our surface waters,” Bird said, but added that many projects also deliver flood-resilience benefits.

Committee members also raised concerns about the short-term nature of ARPA funding and whether positions created to administer that funding would persist after the federal money is spent. Moore and Madden said some limited-service positions were created for ARPA administration and are scheduled to expire with the ARPA performance period; they said they were not aware of plans to move those positions onto the general fund and offered to follow up with more detail.

Data gaps and adaptive management: presenters repeatedly noted that data availability affects year-to-year estimates. Madden showed how the program retroactively backfilled previously missing data, which raised estimated phosphorus reductions for past years when better data became available. The agencies described ongoing efforts to expand tracking systems, improve data quality, and use adaptive management at five-year tactical basin planning cycles. Vermont is divided into 15 basins for tactical planning; those plans are updated on a five-year rotating schedule and feed five-year accountability report cards for the Lake Champlain TMDL.

Legacy phosphorus and in-lake response: committee members asked about legacy phosphorus in soils and lake sediments. Bird and Moore said the TMDL modeling accounted for baseline loading by land use, soils and slope, but that lakebed legacy phosphorus remains a complicating factor and may require additional study or in-lake management. “It will take time for the lake itself to recover from that excess phosphorus pollution that is in the sediment of the lake bed,” Moore said.

Implementation partners and next steps: the report credits more than 50 programs and partners for contributing implementation data, including the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets; Agency of Transportation; Agency of Commerce and Community Development; the Lake Champlain Basin Program; USDA NRCS; and the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. Presenters said many of the state’s grant programs are transitioning to regional administrators or clean-water service providers to scale delivery, and that those shifts require continued capacity-building and training for local partners.

What the committee asked for: senators sought more information on the status of temporary positions funded to administer ARPA dollars and asked for clearer year-to-year staffing and cost details. Committee members also requested more complete data on recent project outputs when those data become available.

The session concluded with offers from agency staff to return with follow-up materials and with an acknowledgment that while significant investments have been made, the state remains in the early half of a 20-year implementation timetable.