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Act 250 seems to me to be a double edge sword. My feeling, it is too onerous in the permits and various departments you have to go through. I personally think that should be streamlined and made easier for development projects. I do not however feel that the goal of of act 250 is that far off. It is designed to protect us from the effects of development and the way it impacts the environment and the community. The focus is on a number of criteria
Will not result in undue water or air pollution.Included are the following considerations: (A) Headwaters; (B) Waste disposal (including wastewater and stormwater); (C) Water Conservation; (D) Floodways; (E) Streams; (F) Shorelines; and (G) Wetlands.
Has sufficient water available for the needs of the subdivision or development.
Will not unreasonably burden any existing water supply.
Will not cause unreasonable soil erosion or affect the capacity of the land to hold water.
Will not cause unreasonably dangerous or congested conditions with respect to highways or other means of transportation.
Will not create an unreasonable burden on the educational facilities of the municipality.
Will not create an unreasonable burden on the municipality in providing governmental services.
Will not have an undue adverse effect on aesthetics, scenic beauty, historic sites or natural areas, and 8(A) will not imperil necessary wildlife habitat or endangered species in the immediate area.
Conforms with the Capability and Development Plan which includes the following considerations: (A) The impact the project will have on the growth of the town or region: (B) Primary agricultural soils; (C) Productive forest soils; (D) Earth resources; (E) Extraction of earth resources; (F) Energy conservation; (G) Private utility services; (H) Costs of scattered developments; (J) Public utility services; (K) Development affecting public investments; and (L) Rural growth areas.
Is in conformance with any local or regional plan or capital facilities program.
As you can see this cover a lot of area the reason developers have a hard time with it. In the developers defense it is a difficult process with a lot of people and hoops to jump over and through. The process should certainly be made as easy as possible by the state, while at the same time holding our standards. Now for those who want to drop the standards I would just point to Florida where I am currently. Here the developers reign, do as they will. Pave over everything, rollout an endless concrete strip mall that essentially runs down the the whole east and west coast with nothing but a repeating landscape of corporate strip malls, box stores and fast food chains. Housing developments go in overnight. There is one down the road from me being built. the plan is 30,000 homes. The forest is clear cut, the roads laid, you pick your one of 7 styles of homes and you get to pick one of 5 colors. A month later the house is up, the turf brought in and rolled out. A few palm trees and you are good to go. Meanwhile, water table depleted, traffic over the top at a standstill, schools underfunded, every lawn full of "weed be gone" and pesticides, lots of chemical fertilizer pouring into the waterway. No nature, eat your meals at a gas station....that I am sorry to say is what I see all up and down the coast in many states. It is called progress. My feeling on Vermont is we should stand firm against this and while it may seem onerous. in the end, we will have something very unique that others do not. I already sense this is happening in Vermont. How does the 49th least populated non-industrialized state make it. The answer I believe is we brand ourselves. We brand ourselves as the cleanest, least developed place, a progressive state that consistently ranks very high in many areas of living. I for one am in favor of promoting this ideal while other states follow a completely different path. People will pay for things that are rare. Whether it is gems, antique cars, books, the rarer it is the more people covet and value it. We should be very careful and thoughtful on how we let development into the state. I am not opposed to it, I just do not want the developers making the rules.
Here, on Long Island, the chickens are coming home to roost. A number of the issues you've pointed out in Florida have happened here over the last 70+ years. We have 3 aquifers under Long Island from which we get our potable water. We have cesspools and septic systems in the eastern half. The top aquifer is polluted and not drinkable. As more and more homes and businesses were built, we've started to taint the 2nd aquifer, which is still in use.
Chemicals for lush lawns, pills flushed, companies which improperly discarded chemicals have created an environmental time bomb. We have higher than average cancer rates. Google Grumman Plume. I grew up near it. Today, it has reached my childhood neighborhood.
Has anyone learned? NO!
As our taxes have soared due to sweetheart union deals and political paybacks, and deals in Albany. Buinesses and retired people have left; young people aren't coming back after leaving for college. Politicians and developers (a scary combination) are now saying we need Transit Oriented Development and are building high density apartment complexes near train stations. To hell with the aquifers!
Imagine seeing the place you were raised poisoned, your resources in danger, and those in office caring only about their payday -- because there weren't sufficient measures in place to allow for sensible, non-destructive progress. ACT 250, while appearing almost draconian, is preventing wholesale, irreversible damage to Vermont.
squarpeg, the original intent to not let VT look like NJ made sense and supports the mystique of VT, but the folks in charge have carried things to an extreme. The criteria is such that any zealots who don't want any development use Act 250 as their mechanism to stop it, and some of the zealots are people who work for the State. The end result is often either significantly increased cost from jumping through the regulatory hoops, or businesses that just walk away and go to NY or NH.
Biker53, As I said, I am for streamlining the act, making it as easy as possible for the applicant to navigate and apply at the least cost. I am also for making sure it is applied fairly to all. That we do not have zealots as you say making opinionated decisions.. I do agree with you on these aspects. I do not think Act 250 should just be eliminated though. There has always been a lot of calls from folks to just outright repeal it and I think that would be a mistake.
The upside however is our fields and forests are not under development pressure. Not much of anything is getting built, and we lose more homes to demolition or abandonment to mother nature than new ones get built. Another upside that is in plain view for all to see is our history. It is a reminder of our heritage and is culturally important. In urban/suburban areas it has mostly been swept away in new development like where my daughter lives. There are no signs of what used to be there. Its all gone. They live solely in the present which to me is kind of sterile.
It is seeing things like this that prompt my wondering about the implications of our very slow but ongoing depopulation (except for the Burlington area).
Unfortunately, our forests and fields are being overlooked by our gov't. The insect damage to our forests prevents me from purchasing from my local lumber yard. I have to buy from a company in NH. The hay fields in the area have been overtaken last year by an invasive knapweed that has turned my once beautiful fields into shrub grass. If the State doesn't address this problem, Vermont farming will not survive. The farmers in my area are spending a lot of money to spray their fields but the State has to help finance and come up with a plan to rid these fields of this weed. If it isn't mandatory for all the fields to be sprayed, it will not kill this weed. I noticed the change in one of my fields last Spring and by my second cutting of hay, this field was covered. I have round bales that I can't, nor would I, sell or feed to my steer or horses because they won't eat it. I have contacted someone in the State about this, as have other farmers, and they refuse to address the problem. The director never responded to my email, which is not surprising.
If Vermont continues down the path it is going, the only people living here will be the trust fund babies, who haven't worked hard for their wealth, and the poor that they will support. When I saw that one of our Legislators submitted a Bill for a license to use a non motorized vehicle (kayak, canoe, etc.), I couldn't believe it. I started reading some of the other Bills submitted by the Legislators....H.88, an attempt to stop their constituents from voting for the President in the primary and general election. H.478, An act to establish a "task force", with unlimited funds and assistance from Black Lives Matter, to study and consider a State apology and proposal for reparations for slavery. This is wasteful spending and it never ends.
Biker53, As I said, I am for streamlining the act, making it as easy as possible for the applicant to navigate and apply at the least cost. I am also for making sure it is applied fairly to all. That we do not have zealots as you say making opinionated decisions.. I do agree with you on these aspects. I do not think Act 250 should just be eliminated though. There has always been a lot of calls from folks to just outright repeal it and I think that would be a mistake.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the manner in which Act 250 is currently administered is contributing to Vermont's population decline. Their criteria is so expansive that anyone that doesn't want something can file suit based on some aspect of Act 250, and then file suit again and again until the project gets abandoned. There's one woman in my town that literally wants the homes built in the past couple generations torn down and the land restored to farming. Her serial Act 250 suits chased a manufacturer away who was looking to relocate his small company to VT into a long vacant former warehouse building. She thought it would be better if the building got torn down instead and the land revert back to farm use.
Also in my area it took a car dealer 2 years to get an OK to build a new facility next door to several other car dealers on a 4 lane highway. Amongst the State's Act 250 objections was the dealership wouldn't be within walking distance of residential neighborhoods. It was if they thought car dealership's customer base was literally people within a few blocks of it.
Act 250 means well but somehow the crazy needs to be purged from it.
The population bomb theory presumably gained considerable traction in Vermont versus many other states. What the doomsayers did not tell you was that once childbirths go below the replacement rate it elicits a whole new set of problems which aren't necessarily any better than that of the reverse situation. Humans solve problems by working together. If there are no people, all you have is problems.
Yup. You can only play 'musical communities' for so long. Once the fertility rates drop; you are circling the drain.
There was a nice article in VTDigger today about 3 private colleges in VT closing at the end of the current semester, blaming it in large part to the shrinking number of students in Vermont and the Northeast in general. All three were small colleges that just could not weather the fiscal impact of declining enrollments. The closure of those colleges take with them many well paying jobs. This is how decline is self-reinforcing; in this case the loss of jobs, students, and all their associated spending which will cause ripples throughout those communities.
At the VT State College level, some here may recall the merger of Lyndon State College and Johnson State College a couple years ago, both of those schools having felt the impact of fewer kids in VT to feed their pipeline.
Given college experiences are what brought of today's residents to VT, fewer college students today can have an impacvt years down the road.
I really don't view population decline as a bad thing. Life is better with less crowds. And that isn't merely personal views of an introvert. There's research showing urban areas are not good for our mental health: How the city hurts your brain - The Boston Globe
I've mentioned this on this forum before but part of the problem facing rural areas today is everyone has bought into an urban mindset and approach towards economics. People think in terms of jobs to get money, buying your food, buying your fuel, taking out a mortgage to buy a house, etc. That's an urban economic model and it never works in a truly rural area. The decline in rural areas has coincided perfectly with the widespread adoption of that urban mindset. A century ago people in the rural towns of VT were not commuting to a job everyday. They were far more independent and were farmers or self-employed tradesmen, professionals, etc. There was a very, very strong barter economy in VT in the past. And despite the claims of the capitalist crowd that such an approach doesn't work, that was probably the most prosperous era in VT history. Capitalism is based on an entirely impossible notion of constant growth in a closed system. Eventually the realities of our planet will force a change in mindset towards economics.
I also don't believe the U.S. on the whole is in for a bright future either. I don't think we should emulate the failures of other states. Those bustling places are not often very nice places to live. I've had work the past few years that required considerable travel and I saw much of this country to some degree or another. There's a depressing monotony to urban and suburban America (one city might as well be another, they all have the same big chains and cookie cutter sprawl, just the scenery in the background varies) and abundance of aggressive behavior and crime throughout this country's more populated areas (and some rural ones too as I saw for sure in California).
About the colleges mentioned above, I found it shocking particularly considering some of those colleges are quite old and existed with far fewer students in the past. But again I think they bought into the growth mantra. They spent money on expansions that required expanding student enrollments. The big push to get kids into college when I was growing up and the recession pushing people into college was a temporary expansion of student populations but those colleges took it for something it wasn't.
Act 250 if changed as proposed in the current legislative session is a serious threat to rural areas. It's been proposed to strip the exemptions for forestry, agriculture, and the slate quarries. It's proposed to include everything above 2,000 feet and ridgelines above 1,500, and to encourage people to live in developed centers rather than the more rural parts of towns. There's talk of using the information mapped out by the ANR in https://anr.vermont.gov/maps/biofinder in Act 250. I think it is important to draw a distinction between the intent behind the original Act 250 as in effect now and the proposals.
Originally Posted by Tyler Grievance The population bomb theory presumably gained considerable traction in Vermont versus many other states. What the doomsayers did not tell you was that once childbirths go below the replacement rate it elicits a whole new set of problems which aren't necessarily any better than that of the reverse situation. Humans solve problems by working together. If there are no people, all you have is problems.
Yup. You can only play 'musical communities' for so long. Once the fertility rates drop; you are circling the drain.
I am afraid I have to disagree with these points. The reason we are now facing global extinction is not because we have to few humans on the planet. The population bomb is actually real. It may not have played out as the author of that book predicted, but it is not that far off. Being a person, it is sad for me to say I am the problem. I think if we really want to move into the future as a species we need to radically alter our economies and mind set. Do I think that is going to happen, no. Do I think it is theoretically possible? Yes I do. I just don't see at this point how it happens. I do think we need to get rid of ideas such as... we need more people because each additional person is a mind that could possibly solve the issue. That is deeply flawed as we already have the solutions at hand. We do not need to search for a savant by birthing more people. We also do not need to think that somehow a god man will come flying in on the clouds and save us when we are on the brink of annihilation. These thoughts to me seem so flawed I find it hard to have conversations with people about them. What we really need is a lot less people and a lot less environmental destruction. I think the time is short, although I will be gone from this earth before the great reorganization of life forms. As George Carlin said, I don't worry about the earth, the earth will be fine, it is going to shake us off like fleas and when we are gone it will cleanse itself.
archie & squarpeg, I partly agree that population decline isn't entirely a bad thing in terms of preserving the natural resources and visual splendor of VT, but there is no going back to the rural economy of even a generation ago. Our economy isn't isolated from the larger economy and our farms and forests have to compete with the mega operations elsewhere in the country. Meanwhile the infrastructure that the modern technologically based economy needs is spotty at best in VT and our geography poses problems in addressing that problem.
The larger population problem we have is the mix. VT as a whole has been fairly stable, but the number of children has declined precipitously. We are relying upon middle aged and early retiree transplants to keep the overall total stable. If they stop coming we'll see decline in real numbers rather quickly. Those transplants frequently bring a lot of money with them which is a good thing but lack of a young workforce is a disincentive for businesses to move here.
Long term I think VT will see a renaissance of sorts due to the crime, terrorism fears, and general stress of urban living. It will cast the comparative oasis that VT is into a whole different light and for some money and convenience won't be quite the be all and end all anymore. Until that point, thinking through our situation is in order if we want to manage it vs it managing us.
Biker, I don't think the mega farms out west are going to be competitive or simply possible much longer. Petroleum prices and eventual global scarcity (particularly as developing nations develop and consume more as we do) will make the heavy reliance on chemicals and fuel to transport food long distances uneconomical. The water issues out west too are not going to get better long term. There may be a wet period here and there as always but the long term trend is more droughts, more development in extremely dry areas, sucking more water out of underground aquifers that isn't being replenished at an equal rate as withdrawals. It's really quite striking to go out to CA and see hundreds or thousands of acres of dead fruit or nut trees in the desert because they could no longer irrigate them. I think agriculture will make a comeback here out of necessity.
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