Editor’s note: This commentary is by Sandra Levine, a senior attorney at the Conservation Law Foundation.
For decades, Vermont’s premiere land use law, Act 250, has provided important protections for Vermont’s natural resources and communities.
Prescient when it was passed in 1970, Act 250 provides for development to conform to the natural resources on which we all rely. At a time when some large and shoddy developments with inadequate pollution controls were proposed, Act 250 was established to give Vermont citizens a voice. Since 1970 Act 250 has provided an objective, citizen-oriented environmental review of major development projects. Over the years, Act 250 stopped a strip mall outside of Stowe, kept a golf course out of bear habitat, and kept farmland available for farmers instead of pavement.
Over the years, efforts to weaken Act 250 have mostly been defeated. This year a number of bills being considered by the Vermont Legislature, and the alliances created to support them, cast doubt on Act 250’s continued success.
There is no doubt we are all poorer if we abandon efforts to keep Act 250 strong.
In other states where big box stores and shopping malls are the norm, Vermont still has farm fields growing food and grain and helping Vermont be a leader for local agriculture.
One bill, H.448, weakens protections for agricultural resources by making it easier to develop valuable farmland. The bill expands the availability of “off-site mitigation,” which allows more acres of farmland to be developed in exchange for paying money into a fund to protect farmland in other areas. The bill rejects longstanding Act 250 precedent that off-site mitigation should only be used as a “last resort,” and should not become a cost of doing business to make it easier to pave farmland.
A drive along many roadways in Vermont highlights the value of Act 250. In other states where big box stores and shopping malls are the norm, Vermont still has farm fields growing food and grain and helping Vermont be a leader for local agriculture. At a time when agriculture continues to blossom in Vermont and more farms, including farms close to town and on smaller tracts of land are profitable with new generations of farmers looking for good land, it is more important than ever to maintain Act 250’s protections for agricultural resources.
Another bill, H.823, creates new and broader exemptions from Act 250 for developments in downtowns and other areas. While encouraging development in downtowns makes sense, the bill fails to provide incentives for development in appropriate locations. Instead it relies on expanding Act 250 exemptions, which eliminates review of a project’s impacts.
The Shumlin administration and developers have joined forces to push these changes. In part they grease the skids for new development – from ski areas, including new developments at Jay Peak and Killington, to highway interchanges including the state’s support for a large development at the Randolph exit, to new big box stores including a new Walmart in Derby. This is a scary prospect. The scale and scope of new development is increasing. Now is not the time to cut back on Act 250 protections.
