A Vermont judge has found Panton dairy farmers to be in contempt of court for failing to prevent waste from their fields from polluting a neighbor’s property.
Addison County Superior Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout ruled the owners of the Vorsteveld Farm “took no meaningful action” until recently to address her August 2022 order to stop the brown, foamy runoff from polluting a neighboring property and flowing into Arnold Bay.
Neighbor Vicki Hopper, owner of a property on Aerie Point, sued the
Vorsteveld brothers after her complaints to the state Department of Agriculture failed to prevent the runoff, which continues to this day.
Pollution from farms represents about 38 percent of the phosphorus flowing into Lake Champlain annually. Reducing it is one of the key strategies the state has identified to clean up the lake, which is increasingly choked by toxic blue-green algae during summer months.
After a six-day trial in December 2021, Teachout found that runoff from the farm’s tile drainage system polluted Hopper’s property. Tile drains are networks of buried perforated pipes meant to help soggy agricultural fields drain more quickly.
She ordered the farm to find ways to resolve the problem but left it up to the farm to figure out how.
Hans and Gerard Vorsteveld told the court they tried to comply with the ruling, but Teachout called their testimony “vague.”
The farm estimated removing the drains could cost up to $3 million. Teachout noted, however, that a specialist hired to help the farm address the runoff issues submitted a plan only days before a December 2023 court hearing. “The Farm did not seriously investigate options for diverting water from the discharge outlets in other ways or for other uses,” Teachout ruled in her January 5 decision.
She ordered the Vorstevelds to pay attorneys fees and allowed Hopper’s attorneys to apply for “coercive sanctions.”
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