S.124: A Decade of Drowning in Vermont’s Water Policy

Ten years and over $200 million later, Vermont is right back where it started—struggling to comply with the Clean Water Act, while farmers, taxpayers, and lawmakers all try to catch their breath.

At the center of this legislative whirlpool is S.124, a bill pitched as a necessary alignment with federal law. But in practice, it looks like a regulatory do-over of 2015’s Act 64, a law already funded, staffed, and operational—at least on paper.

So how did Vermont end up here?

From Lawsuit to Legislation

This saga starts not in Montpelier but in the courts. In 2008 and again in the early 2010s, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) pressured the EPA over Vermont’s failure to enforce water quality standards in Lake Champlain. The EPA, in turn, pressured Vermont.

In response, the state passed Act 64 in 2015, known as the Vermont Clean Water Act. It was ambitious: define farm types, restrict manure spreading, create the Clean Water Fund, develop new stormwater rules, and coordinate the Agency of Agriculture (AAFM) and the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) under a memorandum of understanding (MOU).

Legislators expected the EPA to back off. And for a time, it did.

The Money Flooded In

From 2015 to 2025, Vermont poured over $200 million into water quality efforts:

$75M+ in state funds through the Clean Water Fund and capital appropriations.
$45M+ in federal USDA conservation funding.
Millions more through fee increases on fertilizer, pesticide, feed, and stormwater permits.

Staff were hired. Nutrient Management Plans (NMPs) were mandated. New manure storage pits were built. Municipalities faced new road runoff standards. But when the dust settled, the water stayed dirty—and the EPA wasn’t impressed.

In 2023, EPA issued Vermont a Corrective Action Plan: clean up your permitting system, or risk losing authority to regulate farm pollution under the Clean Water Act.

Enter S.124: The Legislative Reset

S.124 is Vermont’s official response to that federal ultimatum. It doesn’t repeal Act 64, but it rewrites much of its enforcement structure. It strips AAFM of primary regulatory control and shifts that power to ANR, especially over large animal operations and any farm where a discharge is suspected.

It also formally creates Vermont’s own Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) permitting system, mirroring the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) program but tailored to the state’s geography and politics.

The bill requires:

New permitting rules for all large and medium farms, with eventual expansion to small farms.
Public nutrient management plans, enforceable by ANR.
On-site inspections tied to discharge risk—not farm size or type.
Permit fees of up to $2,500 annually, plus infrastructure requirements.

Even the MOU between AAFM and ANR, central to Act 64, is now being replaced with a more rigid “interagency document” to ensure EPA oversight.

So What Went Wrong the First Time?

Despite the funding and rulemaking under Act 64, two core problems derailed Vermont’s effort:

Lack of enforcement muscle. Act 64 was heavy on mapping, education, and planning, but light on direct inspections or penalties. AAFM’s nutrient plans were confidential, and no centralized permitting database tracked who was doing what, where, or when.
Agency turf battles. AAFM and ANR operated on different regulatory philosophies—education versus enforcement. And the MOU never created the accountability the EPA wanted. Farms were largely shielded from direct Clean Water Act oversight.

In effect, Vermont spent a decade building a compliance framework it never used, and EPA lost patience.

The Threat to Small Farms

S.124 was sold as a tool for regulating only the “big polluters.” But the bill says otherwise.

ANR now has sole authority to:

Reclassify any Animal Feeding Operation (AFO) as a CAFO based on discharge evidence, even on a small hillside pasture.
Require site-specific NMPs with field maps, soil tests, and phosphorus indexes—even for operations selling as little as $2,000 annually in farm goods.
Publicly disclose plans, permit status, and violations.

Add in the infrastructure costs—manure storage systems ($50k+), consultant-prepared plans ($2k–$6k), and buffer fencing—and it’s clear: the small farms aren’t being spared.

In legislative testimony, Michael O’Grady, Vermont’s lead legislative counsel, was frank:

“I expect small farm permitting might be more of a complaint-driven process… but they’ll have inspection done as well.”

And Senator Russ Ingalls, a strong S.124 supporter, offered this warning:

“The majority of farms lose money… the average age of farmers is almost 58… keeping farms on the land is essential.”

In a separate committee, O’Grady laid the stakes even plainer:

“If you have issues that are identified, you will have cost.”

And in the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Campbell voiced what many farmers fear:

“They can’t even do it themselves—they need a certified service provider… the plans are far too complex for me to understand.”

Even the agencies admit the risk. In a joint letter, ANR and AAFM acknowledged that farm obligations under S.124 could expand, stating:

“…before their obligations and related expenses potentially increase.”

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And It’s Not Just Farms

S.124’s enforcement comes alongside Vermont’s broader 3-Acre Rule for stormwater, now in effect for:

Commercial parking lots
Churches and schools
Campgrounds and driveways

Anyone with 3 or more acres of impervious surface—even if built before the Clean Water Act—must now retrofit their property to meet new runoff standards. It’s a sweeping, expensive, and ongoing burden, especially for towns and small businesses.

What About Legacy Phosphorus?

And nowhere in the 50 pages of S.124 or the accompanying testimony and documentation from 2015 until last Thursday is there a single word pushing back on the EPA’s refusal to credit Vermont for legacy phosphorus—nutrient loading that built up for decades from federally permitted discharges and practices.

Neither the Attorney General nor ANR have challenged the EPA’s accounting, which effectively punishes today’s farmers and property owners for yesterday’s government failures.

The irony? Vermont’s AG is suing the federal government over housing rules, emissions standards, and student loans—but refuses to lift a finger when Vermonters are being forced to retrofit their farms and properties to solve a problem they didn’t create.

Conclusion: Flailing, Not Fixing

Vermont’s water crisis is real. But the policy response increasingly resembles a bureaucracy drowning in its own paperwork.

The EPA has every right to demand accountability. But S.124 doesn’t represent smart reform—it’s a legislative admission that Act 64 failed, and that no one really knew how to run the system they built.

Meanwhile, small farmers, local governments, and taxpayers are being asked to pay for another round of planning, permitting, and compliance—with no guarantee it will work better the second time.

In the end, Vermont’s clean water system doesn’t need another plan—it needs political courage. Instead of regulating its way down to the last hobby goat, the state might finally consider asking why the EPA still refuses to account for its own role in Lake Champlain’s decline.

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Dave Soulia | FYIVT

#fyivt #VermontFarming #CleanWaterCrisis #RegulatoryOverreach

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