Another Small Town Gets the State Hammer

In a year where voters all over the state are wailing about high property tax burdens, it is worthwhile to see what the state Agency of Natural Resources just did to the property taxpayers of the City of Newport.

Last year the city made major investments in a new public waterfront area at the foot of Lake Memphremagog. It also tore up several hundred yards of Main Street and put in a new street, curbs and gutters, and eye-pleasing improvements. These changes cost Newport's taxpayers a good bit of money, but the city's "new look" seems to have been worth it.

This would be a happy story if this were the end of it. Not so fast. After all, this is Vermont.

The city had to get rid of the remains of the old Main Street, tons of broken conrete and asphalt. Fortunately, there was a common sense solution. The city's old Coventry Street landfill, long closed to solid waste, needed additional fill to bring it up to grade for future recreational uses. So the city hauled the remains of Main Street out to the old landfill site, dug a hole, buried the stuff, and graded the dirt back on top.

That activity prompted the appearance of the folks from the ANR, with their now-familiar greeting, "That'll cost ya!" ANR fined Newport $3,000 for burying old concrete on city owned property without an ANR permit.

As is customary, part or all of the fine can be remitted if the victim agrees to make environmental improvements with the money. The city was in the process of creating a boat washing station, to wash off baby zebra mussels to keep them out of Lake Memphremagog.

ANR had recommended the boat washing station to Newport in the first place. But ANR would not allow Newport to use $2,000 of the fine for this worthy environmental project. The fine had to be used for a project related to the crime of burying rocks.

Under this gun, Newport agreed to invest $2,000 in planting bushes and trees at the old landfill site. But wait, what about the buried rocks?

ANR required the property taxpayers of the city to dig up the rocks, fill in the hole, truck the rocks over to Derby, and pay a construction company to accept the rocks. The company will then crush the rocks and use the product to fill in holes somewhere else, not on the city's sacred landfill.

Could the city have obtained an ANR permit to do what they did, bury the rocks in an old landfill site as a step toward restoring it to municipal use? Possibly. But once the city acted to bury its own rocks on its own land without the blessing of the Great Oz in Waterbury, it becomes a Violator and must be punished.

Would the city have needed a permit to grade out a quarter mile strip at the landfill site, pour a foot of concrete in it, and make it a municipal drag strip? Even in Vermont, a local government could probably do this without a permit from the state. Nor would they need a permit to later change their mind and cover the strip over with dirt.

But rip the same amount of concrete out of Main Street, lay it on the same piece of land, and replace the dirt on top, and it becomes a Solid Waste project. Do that without a permit, and woe unto you (and your taxpayers).

A $3,000 fine doesn't seem like much, especially when it bought $2,000 worth of landscaping in the town. But that doesn't count the cost of digging up the rocks, trucking them off, paying somebody to take them, replacing the dirt, and someday putting some other fill in the same site to make it useful again. Nor does it count the city manager's time and headaches, the street department's time, and the cost to the state of the ANR enforcers.

Wouldn't it be a glorious day for Vermont's towns, if the legislature looked carefully over the mountain of laws and regulations they have put in place, restricted their effect to real environmental hazards, and let our local governments solve local problems they way their citizens and taxpayers think make sense?

July 1996