Clean water is one of the biggest challenges facing Vermont in the twenty-first century.

With an economy largely based on agriculture, we have some difficult choices to make as to how best we direct our limited financial resources in order to address the challenge.

Having lived in the Lake Champlain watershed for close to forty years now, I can say we have made disappointing progress on that front.

As part of their mission to hold government accountable, Doug Hoffer and the State Auditor’s Office recently undertook to provide a non-audit report to the Legislature, reflecting on how well our clean water investments are serving the most pressing needs of Vermont’s waterways and wetlands.

(I will admit from the start that I do not have the technical background to do justice to the topic, so this is a pretty superficial effort. I will gratefully accept correction if I have misunderstood or omitted crucial details.) 

Not surprisingly, Auditor Hoffer finds reason to question the state’s funding priorities, as they seem to be skewed more toward urban and suburban wastewater projects and less toward agricultural runoff which represents the greater environmental threat in Vermont.

Since municipalities are better resourced and more highly motivated to engage with the state and other sources for scarce funding than are farmers, guess who gets the “lion’s share” of mitigation dollars?

So, while the deposit of phosphorus on the floor of St. Albans Bay stubbornly continues to put forth noxious algae blooms to choke Lake Champlain, sewer treatment and wastewater projects intended not just to support existing populations but also to service new development seem to have the edge in clean water budgeting.

According to the Auditor’s office:
“…wastewater projects received the largest
share of State clean water funding in the (Lake Champlain) Basin
even though the share of phosphorous pollution
from this source is the lowest by far. Wastewater
accounts for 4% of phosphorus pollution, but
wastewater projects accounted for 35% of
expenditures.”

In responding to the Auditor’s observations,  Emily Boedecker of the Vermont Dept. of Environmental Conservation says that the auditor’s report places too much emphasis on phosphorus reduction, overlooking, for instance, the benefits to general sanitation and public health that arise from new sewer and wastewater infrastructure.

There is value from improvements to general sanitation, but the priority of Vermont’s Clean Water mandate should be to address the most critical threat to our waterways which, for many years, has been from unchecked agricultural sources. Subject to statutory limitations on funding sources, one would think that there would lie the obvious priority.

It should not be a matter of either/or, but it could be argued that it is the job of the Legislature, local municipalities and developers to come up with additional funding so that all of the state’s clean water priorities can be adequately addressed.  

The purview of the auditor, in this case, is to assess how effectively the state’s environmental priorities have been addressed with the limited funding available.

It is clear from the dialogue between Auditor Hoffer and Commissioner Boedecker that additional tools must be developed so that the cost-effectiveness of different approaches to water quality management may be assessed in greater detail.

As always, a checkup by the state auditor is rather like a visit to the dentist:  a little pain is to be expected; but, in the long run, the patient gets the benefit of some necessary and healthy perspective.