Lessons from Vermont

"The worse pollution becomes in New York and Boston," says Vermont Governor Deane C. Davis, "the more people will think about moving to the country." He means his own rural state, with its clean air, Green Mountains, free-roaming deer and "the view of Lake Memphremagog when the sun comes up in the morning." But will Vermont stay unspoiled?

Last spring Vermont enacted various progressive laws aimed primarily at the state's chief blight: slipshod real estate development (TIME, Sept. 26, 1969). In theory, the laws cure other ills as well. By mid-1971, for example, industries will be required to buy permits to pour effluents into rivers and streams; the fees are scaled to the amount of wastes discharged. Although the new rules seemed models for other states to follow, they have already disappointed almost everyone.

Warning Shout. The most important law set up nine regional commissions, appointed by the Governor. They review plans for all projects bigger than ten acres and require any changes needed to protect the environment. If a developer does not like a commission's decision he can appeal to the state's new environmental control board. To date, the commissions have decided 36 cases; five have been appealed. Only one of those appeals has yet been ruled upon --but it has served, in effect, as a warning shout.

The case involves Spruce Tissue Mills, a New York manufacturer of toilet tissue. Last spring the company announced that it would build a plant employing 100 workers in Bennington County, an area of chronic rural poverty where the unemployment rate stands at 7% and is rising.

Delighted by the prospect of new jobs for Vermonters, the state made every effort to accommodate Spruce Tissue, including a 35-acre site on the banks of the Hoosic River and a loan of $7.2 million. Everything was set--except the final approval of the Bennington district environmental commission.

The commissioners--a farmer, a contractor and a forester--took their responsibilities seriously. While approving the plant, they put ten severe restrictions on its wastes. Result: Spruce Tissue resented being told precisely what kind of low-sulfur fuel oil to use, and said it could not comply with water-pollution regulations that sounded as though the company would have to clean up the entire Hoosic River.

Fearful of losing the plant, the chairman of the state environmental control board publicly urged the company to appeal the case to his group. Governor Davis, running hard for re-election,.declared his opposition to the Bennington commission's action, thus vitiating the new law. When the company hired local lawyers to present its case, they turned out to be some of the very men who had drafted the environmental laws in the first place. Now the state board has revoked most of the restrictions, and Spruce Tissue will start building its mill next spring.

Legal Loopholes. "Everybody learned from the Spruce Tissue case," says Robert S. Babcock Jr., a member of the state board. One lesson: the need for sensible national antipollution standards to keep states from lowering their own standards when competing for industry. Another: many of Vermont's new laws, while too vague in some respects, are also too weak. Air-pollution offenses are measured visually against a fume-color chart that hardly applies to nighttime emissions. The laws controlling water pollution fail to set precise standards of water quality and thus cannot be enforced.

To correct such deficiencies, Vermont's environmental control board is now trying to plug legal loopholes and set more realistic standards. But it chose the hard way to learn how to serve the causes of both industry and good environment.

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