Vermont DEC presents draft Otter Creek tactical basin plan; public comment open through Oct. 24

Angie Allen, a watershed planner with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation's Water Investment Division, presented the draft Otter Creek tactical basin plan to the Addison County Regional Planning Commission on Oct. 9 and invited written public comment through Oct. 24.

Allen described tactical basin plans as five‑year, collaborative guidebooks used by the Agency of Natural Resources to protect, maintain, enhance and restore surface waters. She said Basin 3 (the Otter Creek watershed) covers about 1,100 square miles across 46 towns and roughly 27 HUC‑12 subwatersheds. "You can think of them as like large scale watershed management plans," she said.

The draft includes state fiscal‑year investment data from 2016–2023. "In some, we've invested over 76,000,000 into clean water projects in this basin," Allen said, noting the majority of that funding went to developed lands (roads and agriculture) and that federal funds are included in the tally. She said the 2019 basin plan listed 56 strategies; about 93% of those strategies are now either active or complete and she is preparing a Basin 3 report card to document progress for the Clean Water Initiative performance report.

Allen discussed monitoring and impairments. As of the 2022 priority‑waters list, she said, 22 river segments in the basin were listed as impaired and eight lakes were impaired; primary lake pollutants include phosphorus and mercury in fish tissue. The draft also flags elevated chloride concentrations in five streams, which Allen linked to road‑salt application in more developed landscapes and for which the plan proposes contractor and municipal education on appropriate use.

A prominent portion of the draft incorporates Phase 3 of the Lake Champlain phosphorus TMDL; Allen said that section is still under EPA review and "there may be minor changes to this section of the plan," but that the plan presents phase‑3 content by source sector. She said Chapter 5 lays out the implementation table (47 strategies) and a monitoring table with 36 monitoring priorities for the next five years, and the plan presents estimated phosphorus reductions by sector and a 2028 target year.

During public Q&A, a participant asked whether the document could show trends over time for impairments. Allen said DEC can compare prior priority‑waters lists and confirmed Jerome Pond and a reach of Little Otter Creek (River Mile 4.2–7) were added to the impaired list in 2022. On pollutants beyond phosphorus, Allen said recent plan updates will include PFAS where monitoring data exist and emphasized the plan is driven by available monitoring and assessment data: "If we don't have monitoring or assessment data to support that, we don't include it in the plans," she said, but acknowledged that agricultural pesticide data from the Agency of Agriculture could inform future inclusions.

Allen described sector‑specific strategies: nutrient management and equipment‑rental assistance for farmers, funding and technical assistance to implement stormwater master‑plan projects, road erosion inventories and private‑road phosphorus estimates, assistance for towns exploring village wastewater systems, riparian buffers and high‑priority culvert/bridge work, lake‑watershed action plans and aquatic invasive species programs, and wetland restoration and assessment work. She also noted opportunities to partner on projects on U.S. Forest Service lands but clarified that forest‑service roads are federally controlled and would require collaborative agreements for implementation.

Allen closed by offering to share a story map and the draft by email for those who want to provide written comments for the responsiveness summary attached to the final plan.

Next steps: the draft Otter Creek tactical basin plan is out for public comment through Oct. 24; Allen said a related hearing is scheduled Oct. 15 before the Rutland Regional Planning Commission.