Vermont ANR tells Senate panel it will ramp up CAFO permitting after EPA found gaps

Julie Moore, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, told the Senate Natural Resources Committee that ANR submitted a corrective action plan to U.S. EPA in December and received follow-up feedback Jan. 17 requiring more detail. The agency plans to begin joint inspections with the Agency of Agriculture this spring, with ANR staff taking the lead on determinations about whether farms are discharging and therefore need NPDES CAFO permits.

The matter began after the Conservation Law Foundation filed a de‑delegation petition with EPA in March 2022 alleging that Vermont was not meeting its Clean Water Act obligations for concentrated animal feeding operations. "If there's a discharge, it needs a discharge permit," Moore said, summarizing EPA's legal position that any observed discharge from a farm is subject to NPDES permitting regardless of how long the event lasted.

The petition prompted an EPA Region 1 letter dated Sept. 9, 2024 that identified seven programmatic deficiencies, ANR officials said. Key items EPA asked ANR to address include: inspecting potentially jurisdictional farms, reviewing nutrient management plans for adequacy, building a permit-and‑inspection tracking system, taking enforcement where farms discharge without required permits, obtaining sufficient personnel to implement the program, and proposing necessary statutory and regulatory authority and a timeline with milestones.

Pete Laflamme, director of the Watershed Management Division at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, described CAFO (CAPO in the testimony) permits as federal NPDES documents that cover direct discharges — for example, a production‑area pipe that routes waste straight to a stream — and in some cases chronic field discharges when nutrient management plans are inadequate. "The primary pollutant concern is nutrients, phosphorus being the key there," Laflamme said.

ANR officials said EPA reviewed records from Feb. 2021 to Jan. 2023 and examined complaint investigations. EPA found 113 complaints in that review window: 26 unresolved, about 51 classified as "no violation" when EPA concluded discharges had occurred, and roughly 7% classified as violations without sufficient follow‑up in the files ANR provided. ANR staff said the agency is still compiling specific counts and will provide them on request.

Moore and Laflamme described the practical effects if a farm obtains an NPDES CAFO permit: the permit covers storms up to the 25‑year design and provides regulatory clarity and a shield against citizen suits when a farm is in compliance. CAFO permits typically run on five‑year terms; ANR said compliance measures must reasonably show water quality standards will be met within the initial permit term, though specific implementation schedules vary with the complexity of needed work.

ANR is proposing a four‑year corrective action plan with milestones to build staffing, inspection capacity, permitting, and compliance systems. EPA provided initial feedback on ANR's draft corrective action plan and gave the agency roughly 60 days to respond. Secretary Moore said the governor's budget will likely include a "modest" appropriation request to fund additional ANR positions to carry out inspections, permitting, and follow‑up compliance work, and ANR is discussing a data‑integration option that would use the Agency of Agriculture's existing farm data system rather than building a parallel database.

Committee members pressed for scale. ANR officials estimated roughly 30 large livestock farms, about 150 medium farms, and the balance of roughly 600 farms classified as small; the agency is focusing initial CAFO‑level work on the roughly 180 medium and large farms. Officials said they do not yet know how many farms will ultimately require CAFO permits; if the number is small ANR believes current and modestly increased capacity will suffice; if the number is large, more significant statutory or budgetary changes could be required.

Committee members asked about funding and technical assistance for on‑farm fixes. Laflamme listed common practices to reduce discharges: disconnecting or removing unauthorized pipes, right‑sizing manure storage, updating nutrient management plans, diverting clean stormwater away from production areas, and installing retention or storage where needed. Moore noted multiple funding sources that can assist farmers, including Natural Resources Conservation Service grants, state clean water funds, and ARPA‑sourced grants targeted to particularly costly sites.

Officials also discussed the related "three‑acre" stormwater retrofit work, noting about 700 sites in the Lake Champlain and Memphremagog basins are identified for retrofits and that "a couple hundred" of those sites have applied for assistance. ANR said roughly $25 million in state general fund clean water money, $10 million from the capital bill and other dedicated revenues yield roughly $50–60 million annually for clean water investments, with roughly a third directed toward agricultural projects.

ANR urged the committee that the path forward should be narrowly tailored to meet EPA's Clean Water Act requirements; advocacy groups have signaled they may press for a wholesale transfer of farm permitting authority from the Agency of Agriculture to ANR, a broader policy proposal that goes beyond the changes ANR says are necessary to satisfy EPA and avoid de‑delegation. ANR officials said their preference is to resolve the issues with EPA and avoid federal litigation that could return delegated NPDES permitting (including stormwater and wastewater) to EPA Region 1 in Boston.

The committee did not take any formal votes. ANR said it will return with more detailed legislative proposals when the agency has tallied inspection and permitting needs after at least one or two field seasons of joint inspections and after responding to EPA's January feedback.

The testimony and documents ANR cited (EPA Sept. 9, 2024 letter; ANR corrective action plan transmitted in December; EPA response Jan. 17) are posted on ANR's public page, and Moore offered to bring the department's annual Clean Water Performance Report to the committee for further context.

ANR officials characterized the next steps as: respond to EPA's Jan. 17 feedback in early March; begin joint ANR–Agency of Agriculture inspections this spring with ANR as lead on discharge determinations; permit farms where a discharge is determined; and return to the legislature with statutory/regulatory changes and any budget requests after initial implementation experience.

Ending: The committee hearing did not resolve the scope of long‑term statutory change, but it established the sequence ANR intends to follow to address EPA's findings and to limit the risk of de‑delegation: detailed corrective action steps, joint inspections with ANR making discharge determinations, targeted permitting, and a possible modest budget request to support added staff and data integration.