Efforts to make major changes in the state’s current use program stalled this session, but lawmakers this week passed several tweaks that the Shumlin administration says make the program stronger.
Sen. Bobby Starr, D-Essex/Orleans, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, introduced an amendment Thursday to the miscellaneous agriculture bill, H.869, that would lend more flexibility to the state’s working land conservation program.
The House on Friday voted to concur with the amendments.
One amendment removes a 20 percent cap on the amount of ecologically significant land a forest program enrollee can take out of timber production under the forest program.
The state’s current use program protects Ecologically Significant Treatment Areas (ESTAs) from forest production. These areas include riparian buffers, vernal pools, areas with endangered species and old growth forests.
More than 2.3 million acres of land are enrolled in current use, but fewer than 1,000 acres are protected under the ESTA program.
The Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation wants to relax this restriction on the ESTA program to encourage residents to enroll more land in current use, Commissioner Mike Snyder said.
“This is going to open up good stewardship of land for more people – in a more sensitive way, in a more ecological appropriate way,” Snyder said, “without undoing the working forests elements of the program.”
He said the department still holds the authority to deny applications to put current use land into the ESTA program.
Another amendment provides flexibility to landowners enrolled in the forestry program to update their 10-year forest management plan a year late if they were away from home at the time of the deadline.
Under the current program, some enrollees do not file their 10-year forest management plan update by the April 1 deadline due to “certain extenuating circumstances,” such as when the landowner dies, Snyder said.
“We have to move then to remove them from the program and nobody wins,” Snyder said. “[The amendment] just means that we have, what I would call reasonable latitude, to avoid these difficult and unfortunate circumstances.”
Act 250 changes
The bill amends the state’s Act 250 land use and development law to expand a program allowing developers to mitigate development impacts by conserving land off site.
Currently, the state’s Act 250 agriculture mitigation program allows developers to conserve land at a one-to-one ratio in designated growth centers. The changes expand this program to designated downtowns, pre-existing new town centers and neighborhoods.
“Prime ag soils are the very best soils for growing food,” said Sen. Ginny Lyons, D-Chittenden, “but they’re also good for growing houses and buildings.”
“We are continuing with this proposal of amendment, I think, a common sense approach to allowing for the growth and development of homes and businesses … where we have our development already taking place,” she said.
Brian Shupe, executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said primary agricultural land is good for development because it is level and drains well.
“That’s the challenge: our best agricultural soils can be our best development soils,” he said. “They say that the last crop a farmer grows is houses. And we’re trying to prevent that.”
Shupe said expanding the agriculture mitigation program targets high-density areas for development rather than rural areas.
“The theory is you’re taking the pressure off the countryside by concentrating development in these areas,” he said.
Pesticides
Sen. Peter Galbraith, D-Windham, introduced an amendment to require the Secretary of Agriculture Food, and Markets to evaluate whether neonicotinoid pesticides are harmful to human health and bee populations. The amendment passed by a voice vote.
If it is determined these pesticides are harmful, the agency would adopt a rule to ban the sale of this pesticide in Vermont, according to the amendment.
