Owners of a large Addison County dairy farm already found liable for polluting a neighbor’s land want to expand, raising concerns that increased runoff could damage a public water supply and worsen water quality in Lake Champlain.
The Vorsteveld brothers want to add another 580 animals to their Panton herd of about 1,500 mature cows and 1,500 young stock. The new animals would produce an additional 6.1 million gallons of liquid manure annually, according to the farm’s application.
About 60 people crowded into the Panton Town Hall on a blustery weekday morning earlier this month to hear details of the proposal, now under review by the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. Many residents spoke about pollution problems in Lake Champlain and the farm’s record of environmental violations.
That history includes dredging and filling wetlands without a permit and allowing agricultural waste to flow into a tributary of Dead Creek. In 2021, the farm agreed to pay $21,750 to settle the combined state enforcement actions.
“I used to swim in the lake. It was pristine, clean waters on Arnold Bay and now we’ve got algae blooms.” Paulette Bogan
The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency last summer also sued the Vorstevelds, saying the farm destroyed wetlands and discharged pollutants in violation of the Clean Water Act. The case is pending in federal court. The Vorstevelds, through their attorney, have denied the civil charges.
Locals said they’ve seen the water quality worsen over time. They blame the farm for degrading the lake.
“I used to swim in the lake,” Paulette Bogan of Panton said. “It was pristine, clean waters on Arnold Bay. And now we’ve got algae blooms. We have this gigantic, brown, bubbly runoff directly into the lake … And we never had that 20 years ago.”
Panton resident Eileen Brennan said the Vorsteveld operation is not “an old nostalgic Vermont farm” with cows grazing on verdant hillsides. “We’re talking about a big business,” she said. “I think, in the interests of the town, we ought to consider this a business [that] could potentially have negative effects on the environment.”
One aspect of the Vorstevelds’ plans has residents particularly worried. The farm, which encompasses about 2,500 acres across multiple parcels, uses 119 miles of buried tile drains to divert water from its crop fields. The farmers are under a court order to stop the outflow from eroding and damaging a nearby property. They now hope to pipe that water downhill to nearby Arnold Bay, from which the Vergennes-Panton Water District draws water for about 5,100 households.
The problem, as many at the meeting saw it, is that the district’s water already fails health standards. It has exceeded limits for potentially carcinogenic chemicals formed when organic material reacts with chlorine used for disinfectant. Brennan and others worry that the Vorstevelds’ runoff could exacerbate the problem.
“We have an issue with our water supply,” Brennan said, turning to speak directly to farm owners Hans and Gerard Vorsteveld. (Rudy Vorsteveld, the third owner, was not present.)
“And I think about you every day when I have a glass of water or I cook my food or I brush my teeth, to think about my body in terms of absorbing contaminants. Now we don’t know that the runoff has been the cause. But we do know the runoff has been very proximate to the water facility.”
The pipeline project is not part of the farm expansion proposal under review by the ag agency. The Agency of Natural Resources said in an April 2 letter that no work should begin on the pipeline until “regulatory issues are resolved.”
The Vorstevelds’ farm expansion project falls under state antipollution regulations that have been found wanting by the EPA and are being revamped.
The state divides regulatory authority between the Agency of Agriculture — which also has the mission of promoting agriculture — and the Agency of Natural Resources, which is authorized by the feds under the U.S. Clean Water Act to regulate water pollution. In essence, the ag agency regulates farm practices to prevent polluted water from flowing from farms. ANR is supposed to step in if polluted water reaches a stream or lake.
That’s the theory. The system doesn’t work in practice, the EPA said in September, noting that farm pollution continues with little enforcement to curb it.
“The flaws in this program are preventing Vermont from adequately controlling phosphorus discharges from CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) which contribute to severe water quality problems in Lake Champlain,” the EPA said.
Phosphorus is the prime pollutant in Lake Champlain. A natural fertilizer found in organic matter, it fuels the toxic cyanobacteria blooms that foul the water and close beaches.
The EPA pointed out that Vermont has never issued a permit for a “concentrated animal feeding operation” even though there are 37 large operations in the state. The administration of Gov. Phil Scott hopes to address the EPA’s criticism with legislation and a plan that clarifies the role of the two state agencies. The legislative fix is attached to bills pending in the House and Senate. ANR Secretary Julie Moore said she’s hopeful lawmakers will act this session.
In a letter to Moore earlier this month, the EPA said the legislation shows the state has made progress in mending the bureaucratic divide. But the EPA has also repeatedly stressed that ANR needs to take the lead in controlling farm pollution, noting that Vermont has been on notice about its deficiencies for more than a decade.
At the meeting in Panton, resident Skip Masback said the EPA had rightly called out the “dysfunctional” relationship between ANR and the ag agency. He also questioned why the Vorstevelds should get a permit to expand when a state court has found that they have failed to address the runoff that’s damaged a neighbor’s land.
Judge Mary Miles Teachout has twice ruled the farm is in contempt of court for failing to stop the runoff as she ordered. “The effect of the farm’s contempt over the last two years has been to continue using [the neighbor’s] land as a disposal site for its agricultural waste, thereby causing continued trespass, nuisance, and permanent injury to the land,” she wrote in a September ruling.
The farm’s neighbor says the damage continues. The Vorstevelds say they have complied with the court’s order by plugging the tile drains. The judge says the farm has to prove that, and a hearing is scheduled for April 24.
Masback asked the state to pause its review of the proposed farm expansion until the legal problems are sorted out. “You’re being asked to approve a scaling-up of the farm, which is not in compliance with the [court] order,” he said. “You say it’s not your business because it’s not in the regs you apply. But I don’t understand why scaling-up their operation when the operation is in violation of a state judge’s order is not something you should take into consideration. Nor why you shouldn’t take into consideration that our water is not healthy.”
The bifurcated state oversight was on full display at the Panton meeting. Almost every time a resident raised concerns about water quality, Laura DiPietro, the ag agency’s director of water quality, directed the question to ANR. But no staffer from that agency was present.
When Masback asked whether the Vorstevelds needed a CAFO permit, for example, DiPietro said that’s not her call. “That is, again, the process of the Agency of Natural Resources,” she said. “I’m sorry. I feel like I keep saying that. But the reality is, when we do a consultation with ANR, that is their decision to make.”
DiPietro said Vermont is actually a national leader in farm regulation. She said the ag agency conducts frequent inspections of farms — a level of oversight she likened to a cop car at a speed trap that forces all the drivers to slow down.
As DiPietro explained, the agriculture agency’s review is not based on water quality testing. Instead, it relies on the numbers and models in a farm’s “nutrient management plan” to determine whether it could handle the amount of manure produced.
In the Vorstevelds’ case, the agency has already signaled approval. “Yes, they have adequate land base and adequate storage for the increase, plus what they currently have in their permit,” Brittany Cole, a water quality specialist at the agency, told the Panton crowd.
“I can see that people are concerned. I don’t have answers for them. We’re doing what’s required by the state.” Gerard Vorsteveld
But some farm experts doubt that assessment. “If farmers are operating within their regulated nutrient management plans, yet the water quality of Lake Champlain continues to decline, maybe it is time to question the effectiveness of the regulations,” said Meghan Sheradin, executive director of the Vermont Grass Farmers Alliance.
In an interview, Gerard Vorsteveld said they would build up the herd over time, not add 580 cows at once. “I can see that people are concerned. I don’t have answers for them. We’re doing what’s required by the state,” he said.
Some farmers at the Panton meeting praised the Vorsteveld operation as well run and technologically advanced. “These guys have done a great job for a very, very long time,” said Loren Wood, whose family owns three farms in the area. “They’ve got you folks from the state looking over their shoulder. And if they had done something wrong, you would have done something by now.”
But looming over the Vorsteveld’s operation is the EPA review, which is likely to change which state agency regulates the farm in the future.
Moore said that once lawmakers pass the enabling legislation to give her agency more regulatory control, ANR would clarify rules and rewrite permits. Soon, she said, her agency will have muck boots on the ground to check out farms. That work will “enable us to participate, or lead, I should say, farm inspections this summer on some high-priority farms, and kind of getting that part of our house in order.”
Moore said she would “hazard a guess” that the Vorsteveld farm would be among the 10 slated to be inspected this summer.
Meanwhile, an environmental group that brought the legal action that led to the EPA’s review said the state’s proposed fix is still inadequate. Scott Sanderson, director of the farm and food program at the Conservation Law Foundation, said “shared jurisdiction” is the root cause of Vermont’s broken regulatory system. Yet the plan proposed by the state would continue to give the agriculture agency a major role in oversight.
Sanderson said that’s a mistake. “Consolidated authority can deliver what split jurisdiction couldn’t: effective, fair and predictable regulation that benefits water quality, communities and farmers alike,” he said.
The EPA said in January that the state’s “corrective action plan” should clarify that the agriculture agency “does not have authority to regulate farms pursuant to the Clean Water Act … ANR is the only state entity … authorized to determine, for Clean Water Act purposes, whether a discharge to a surface water has or is occurring.”
But ag agency Secretary Anson Tebbetts pointed out that the Vorsteveld expansion is being reviewed under Vermont’s current regulatory regime, which gives his agency the lead in permitting large farms.
“The thing that’s before us today is an application. And they are asking the Agency of Agriculture, ‘Can I build some structures, and can I add some more animals?’ And that’s what we’re dealing with,” he said.
The agency has 45 days to rule on the brothers’ application.
Right to Harm?
Farmers seek protection from rare lawsuits
Panton dairy farmer Gerard Vorsteveld and his brothers lost in court three years ago after a neighbor sued them over polluted runoff. So now they’ve taken their argument to a new venue: the Vermont Statehouse.
The Vorstevelds and other farmers are urging lawmakers to make it harder for neighbors to sue over the sights, sounds and smells common in Vermont agricultural operations. They argue that the state should beef up legal protection in its existing right-to-farm law.
The legal battles that the Vorstevelds have faced have been emotionally and financially draining, and they don’t know if the farm can survive, Gerard Vorsteveld recently told lawmakers.
“The neighbor has way more resources to throw at this case than we do,” he said. “We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this, and the end is nowhere in sight.”
His voice at times choking with emotion, the Addison County farmer told the House Judiciary Committee during a public meeting that the pressure has been so intense and the potential $1,000-per-day penalties for contempt of court so frightening that he has considered selling his property to a developer. He’s even contemplated suicide, he said.
“I just don’t know what to do,” Vorsteveld said. “We do a good job farming. We’re good people. We work hard.”
The state’s current right-to-farm law contains language to protect farmers from nuisance suits when they are following the law and operating “consistent with good agricultural practices,” which are not defined. Critics say this unfairly puts the burden on the farmer to prove they deserve the legal exemption.
“The law is completely confusing and inefficient and really doesn’t accomplish its goal” of protecting farmers, one of the Vorstevelds’ attorneys, Claudine Safar, told lawmakers.
The bill, S.45, would offer protection not just from nuisance suits but also from trespassing claims. In 2022, Judge Mary Miles Teachout ruled that the torrents of brown water that gushed off the Vorstevelds’ fields and onto neighboring lakefront property on its way into the lake was a form of trespassing and ordered the farm to put a stop to it.
The bill would protect farms from such suits if they follow state rules for things such as buffer zones around waterways and safe application of pesticides, and if they operate “consistent with proper and accepted customs and standards.”
Importantly, the bill would shift the burden onto the neighbors bringing the lawsuit to prove that a farmer was operating outside those standards.
The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets strongly supports the change.
“Agriculture really is the backbone of Vermont, but the backbone is breaking,” Steve Collier, the agency’s general counsel, told lawmakers.
Vermont’s small dairy farms are struggling, and farmers such as the Vorstevelds have been running ever-growing operations in order to survive. The number of dairies in the state has decreased from 4,000 in the 1970s to 439 today.
As more former agricultural land is used for housing, the potential for conflicts between new residents and remaining farms increases, Collier said.
“No one is saying a farm should be protected from a legitimate lawsuit,” Collier said. “What we’re saying is the ground rules should be clear, and they should be protected from frivolous lawsuits.”
Senators strongly supported the bill on a vote of 25-5. The proposal is facing a tougher time in the House, however.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee expressed sympathy with Vorsteveld for what he’s been through. “I’m so sorry. This sounds really wild,” Rep. Angela Arsenault (D-Williston) told him.
But some committee members are hesitant to extend legal protections to farmers accused of trespass. It’s one thing to shield farmers from suits over dust or a stinky manure pit. It’s another when someone’s drinking water is being contaminated or their property physically damaged, said Rep. Martin LaLonde (D-South Burlington), chair of the committee.
In the Vorsteveld case, Teachout ruled that muddy water flowing off the farm was a direct result of the installation of a tile drainage system covering hundreds of acres of fields. The network of 119 miles of underground pipes discharges that turbid water downhill at high velocity “in a manner that physically invaded my client’s property,” said the neighbor’s attorney, Merrill Bent.
She shared with lawmakers photos and videos of the brown water running across her client’s land, known as Aerie Point, and the gullies left behind. She also showed images of foamy brown runoff flowing into Lake Champlain and the shoreline choked with a blue-green algae.
The Vorsteveld case was “an extreme outlier” and the only example Bent could find in the past 20 years of a farmer being sued over a nuisance or trespass claim, she said. That leads her to believe that the bill’s goal is not really to protect all farmers — just the three brothers in Panton.
In an interview last week, Vorsteveld said the bill was “not necessarily” related to his farm’s legal troubles.
But Bent contends otherwise. If farmers get immunized from trespassing claims, she’s certain the Vorstevelds’ attorney would immediately target Teachout’s judgment.
“That’s why the change is being pursued,” she said.
LaLonde said the bill needs input from the House committees on agriculture and environment before his committee can weigh in, a requirement that complicates its path to passage this session.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Flowing Downhill | In Panton, the Vorsteveld dairy farm has struggled to address pollution issues. Now, its owners want to add another 580 animals to their herd.
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This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2025.
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