I just wanted to add this link to an excellent piece from The Valley News, featuring comments by Kim Greenwood of the Vermont Natural Resource Council.

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In the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, Governor Shumlin’s “git ‘er done” directives regarding stream bed recovery efforts, may have plumped the machismo of his national image, but they flew in the face of regulatory wisdom.

This raised an angry welt within the administration as ANR’s Deb Markowitz publicly protested; but it delighted the target audience of weary locals and developers impatient with regulatory constraints.

The governor drew his line in the sand then and there, and he did not stand on the inconvenient side of sustainability.

Now Vermont’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has released its annual report, and unsurprisingly, it is getting little attention from the press or the governor’s office.

The report explains that, in the normal course of things, when a major storm event such as Irene occurs, if stream beds are allowed to recover without significant interference, populations of fish and other aquatic life return to normal within two to four years.  

By contrast, the kind of dredging and stream-straightening that occurred after Irene, when the governor allowed regulations to be temporarily waived, degrades habitat so that it will take much, much longer for aquatic life to recover after all.

Where aquatic habitat has been severely altered through streambed and natural wood mining, channel widening and straightening, complex habitat features will need to re-establish before improvements in fish and aquatic populations can be expected. While relatively short reaches of impacted streams may recover in a matter of years, the recovery of longer reaches may take decades and will depend upon the availability and mobility of upstream sources of coarse streambed material and natural wood, as well as the magnitude and frequency of future flood events.

That means dollars and cents to Vermont, where angling tourism represents a significant source of state and local revenues, demonstrating once again one of the many ways in which responsible regulatory enforcement is not the enemy of economic vitality, but it’s essential counterpart.

Consider this little nugget of facts lifted from the report:

The 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife Associated recreation estimated that over 63 million dollars were spent by resident and nonresident anglers in Vermont (USFWS 2008). Of the variety of sport fisheries available in Vermont, stream trout fishing has always been one of the most popular. A statewide survey of Vermont anglers confirms this and estimated over 875,000 trout fishing trips in streams and rivers by resident and non resident anglers in 2009 (Connelly and Knuth 2010). Degradation of aquatic habitats will likely impact the quality of stream fisheries in several Vermont watersheds.

We already know that the unplanned effect of stream dredging and “straightening” is to increase the risk of flooding from subsequent major storm events, since such ill-considered engineering serves only to speed up the course of water traveling in the artificial channel.

You have to wonder if anyone from the Governor’s office is listening, though.  I have heard no acknowledgment of lessons learned, and even as I write this, the Governor is advocating to weaken citizen access in Act 250 regulation of development.  He still seems to want to telegraph the message that he is anti-regulatory when it comes to anything other than VY.

But somehow his arguments for “streamlining” the permit process (like those of former Governor Douglas) recollect all too figuratively the negative effects of guttering the streams in the aftermath of Irene.  One of the only things that saved Vermont from the recent real estate collapse experienced in most other states, was the “braking” effect of our considered permit process.

Governor Shumlin’s sense of urgency about all matters regulatory may be more a reflection of the need to move to a four year gubernatorial term than anything else.  Perhaps if it were unnecessary to begin crafting a reelection campaign immediately after taking office, we might see our governors do a better job of concentrating on job one.  

Not all accomplishments are a matter of speed, and not all growth should be a matter of breadth. There is depth and “topography” to be considered.  

Just ask the trout.