Economic prosperity needs environmental foundation

Article published Mar 15, 2010 in the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus and the Rutland Herald

Elizabeth Courtney

Last week, in honor of the 25th anniversary of her inauguration as Governor of the State of Vermont, Madeleine Kunin and the University of Vermont held a symposium on the role of government. I participated on a panel discussing whether and how economic prosperity and environmental quality can coexist in Vermont.

My position is that they not only can coexist, they must. The very foundation of sustainable economic prosperity is a healthy environment - one that helps fuel economic activity associated with everything from tourism and recreation to farming, forestry and manufacturing.

Economic prosperity and a strong environmental ethic have coexisted in Vermont for many years. We've implemented visionary and vital laws like Act 250, the billboard ban, the bottle bill, water quality standards and more. And through these years, our economy has grown.

Just last week, for example, VermontBiz.com announced that Vermont's economy was the second-fastest growing in the nation. Many believe it was laws like Act 250 that protected Vermont from the speculative, boom-time real estate development that helped decimate so many state economies across the nation.

But despite all this progress, we actually have a pretty good chance of piecemeal developing ourselves out of the Vermont Seal of Quality. We are steadily and incrementally squandering our natural resources and ecological services to poorly planned development. And we really can't afford to do that, as we face the added stresses of climate change and energy security.

As it stands now, only 40 percent of development projects trigger Act 250's jurisdiction. And what is reviewed by the district commissions is done in piecemeal fashion, site by site - with no way of tracking cumulative impacts on our finite natural resources or the limited capacities of our built infrastructures.

In 1985 Governor Kunin appointed me to the Environmental Board where I served for nine years. During that time I found that, even though we had Act 250 working to protect our state's finite natural resources, we were incrementally eating away at them with every permit we issued. How long, I wondered, would it take to exhaust our natural capital - our economic livelihoods - in our farmland, forestlands, water quality, fisheries and mineral resources, with no sense of when enough was enough?

Interestingly, around the same time Governor Kunin appointed me to the board, she was identifying a problem stemming from the state's inability to engage in a planning process to guide future growth. After much debate, the "Capability and Development Plan," intended to be a part of Act 250, died in the 1984 Legislature. The Governor realized that the lack of a comprehensive state land use plan was a problem that was enhanced by a surge in economic prosperity. Exercising her leadership as governor, she named a Blue Ribbon Commission on Vermont's Future, also known as the Growth Commission.

The report it issued in 1988 was a visionary document. One of its many good ideas was a strategy to guide future growth into our town and city centers while at the same time increasing the regulatory requirements for development outside these growth centers. These twin recommendations, one incentive-based and the other more regulatory in nature, are key to ensuring a sustainable economic prosperity for Vermont.

But it took nearly 20 years to pass half of the growth center legislation envisioned in the report - the easier half, the incentives half, giving tax benefits and Act 250 allowances to developments in designated growth areas. Now we have the challenge of securing added protections for the dwindling natural resources and ecosystem services outside these compact settlements, in order to avoid wasteful sprawl and strip development.

Looking ahead, we would be wise to recognize that with the added stresses of climate change and energy security, we would all benefit from an efficient and resourceful pattern of growth that ensures clean abundant water; food, fuel and energy sources close to home; minimal reliance on the single occupancy vehicle; and more resilient, intact ecosystems capable of adapting to change.

This slate implies, at least in part, significant updates to the Act 250 criteria and a strengthening of the growth center legislation. If we want sustainable economic prosperity - one we can pass on to our children - we must develop the political will necessary to make these changes.

Let's let our gubernatorial and legislative candidates know we care about these issues.

Elizabeth Courtney is the executive director of the Vermont Natural Resources Council, Vermont's leading statewide environmental organization, and also recently served as one of six members on the Governor's Climate Change Commission. She can be reached at ecourtney@vnrc.org.