allegations of brook pollution

Lisa Mancauskas, who lives on Main street down stream of us, says in her letter to the Times Argus on July 18 2008: “When I first purchased my home on Upper Main Street, we had a beautiful brook running through our backyard with clear water and abundant brook trout. Over the past few years, due to the careless operations of Vermont Compost Company, the water flow has been reduced to a trickle, the brook trout are dead, and the water that does remain is polluted.”
These are very serious allegations. They are also demonstrably untrue. We do not remove water from the brook, we do not impede its flow, and we expend much effort on systems to prevent the discharge of pollutants into the brook.
Ms. Mancauskas and others might want to consider these watershed facts: the Blanchard brook drains a small steep watershed of about 440 acres above Vermont Compost Company’s Main Street Farm. It is a torrent in the spring snow melt and it all but disappears in a dry summer. When it rains hard, the brook flows onto our land turbid from the run-off of the steep forested slopes, and the fields, roads, and activities up stream of us. 3000 cars and trucks rumble up and down Main street by our farm each day spewing anti-freeze, gasoline, diesel, hydraulic oil, brake fluid, air born particulates, fast-food packages, and etcetera, all of which flush into the brook. In the winter the road crews begin the massive salt assault on the fresh water brook so that those cars and trucks can travel un-impeded by ice and snow. Each road, driveway and ditch contributes a bit of turbidity. Global climate changes have increased storm intensities and droughts and this little watershed is not exempt from those effects. The Blanchard brook is not a registered trout stream though it may enjoy some seasonal trout activity, particularly on its lower reaches. In other words, this small winooski tributary receives many insults, but not mostly from Vermont Compost Company.
We are very proud of the water management structures which we have built to control and utilize the effluents from our husbandry and composting activities. We welcome informed and constructive criticism of our practices and we have regularly enjoyed the scrutiny of the regulators and the peer review by other practitioners of our crafts. .. Further, Ms. Mancauskas and others should keep in mind, that the action of the Natural Resources Board in this instance is not related to allegations of water pollution, but to the definition of farming in act 250. No one has a right to pollute the waters of the state. Period. Nothing about the farming exemption to act 250 exempts farmers from regulatory scrutiny by the Agriculture Department and the Agency of Natural Resources. Nor are they exempt from the judgment of their neighbors. What farms and farmers are entitled to expect, is that those folks who eat without farming, will accept the responsibility to study the issues involved, before condemning the folks who are growing the food, and then support improving the farming craft and crafts people.
We welcome neighbors to engage us directly when they have concerns, we are easy to find, and we look forward to the community process of imagining and building the gentle and beautiful farms of our future.
Sincerely,
Karl Hammer, President Vermont Compost Company