Environment Committee

The House Committee on Environment considers matters related to conservation and development; climate change mitigation; land resources, air, water, fish, and wildlife; solid waste management; and other similar policies.

This year the House Committee on Environment worked on a variety of bills related to land use and natural resources. The committee took testimony on the impacts of recent federal actions, implementation of Act 181 (which modernizes Act 250 land-use policy), and permit reform efforts underway at the Agency of Natural Resources and across state agencies.

Wildlife: 

H.723/Act 90 (An act relating to posting of land) addresses barriers to posting one’s land from hunting and fishing, or to allow hunting and fishing by-permission-only, and is intended to reduce landowner-hunter conflicts. The law no longer requires dates on postings, but continues to require annual registration with the town clerk for land to be legally posted. It also ensures land will be considered legally posted if there are minor ways in which the property is not perfectly posted. (e.g., if an occasional sign is missing or damaged). The committee also passed H.928/Act 159 (An act relating to technical corrections to fish and wildlife statutes). Both bills passed the House and Senate, and were signed into law by the Governor (30 April 2026 for Act 90 and 17 June 2026 for Act 159).

Dam safety:

There are over 1,000 dams across the state, including 77 state-regulated high-hazard dams. High-hazard dams are those that pose risk to human lives if they were to fail. This classification does not take into account the current condition of the dam and does not mean that they are at a risk of failure. H.778/Act 114 (An act relating to dam safety) ensures Vermont’s Division of Emergency Management provides needed support to municipalities downstream of high-hazard dams through development of emergency operations plans. The bill ensures that emergency responders and municipal and state officials have a coordinated communication, evacuation/, and esponse plan in the highly unlikely but very dangerous scenario of a dam failure or emergency release from a dam. The bill passed the House and Senate, and was signed into law by the Governor on 27 May 2026.

Wilderness and wildlife:

The committee took testimony on the health of our forests, the value and need for more old forests and wild lands in Vermont and the region, and the potential for Vermont to take steps toward the reintroduction of mountain lions. No action was taken on these topics this session but much was learned about work and efforts underway on these topics.  

Land use policy: 

The committee heard testimony throughout the session regarding the implementation of Act 181 of 2024 (An act relating to community resilience and biodiversity protection through land use), a bill intended to modernize Act 250 and Vermont’s land-use regulatory policy.  Act 181 created the Land Use Review Board, a professional board to oversee Act 250; initiated a process for the development of regional future land-use maps; created the opportunity for municipalities to request delegation of land-use regulation such that Act 250 permits would not be needed in municipal areas that meet the criteria to manage housing or development without Act 250 oversight; and initiated rule making for a “road rule” that would trigger Act 250, and “Tier 3” areas that would require additional oversight for development in areas with critical working lands and natural resources not sufficiently protected. It also included a variety of Act 250 exemptions for certain kinds of development, particularly for housing in downtowns and villages. 

In March, the Senate passed S.325/Act 152 (An act relating to regional planning and Act 250 Tier jurisdiction) to extend the Act 181 rule making process to allow for more public engagement and input, and to make other updates (after hearing public concern about the rule making process for the Road Rule and Tier 3). The House Environment Committee heard well-articulated testimony that there were equity concerns with the use of Act 250 permitting to protect the identified critical natural resources, and a lack of public engagement and input to identify natural resource concerns and inform approaches to these protections. Rule making was suggesting that Act 250 permits might apply to individual and small scale home construction in much of Vermont outside of downtowns and villages, significantly limiting small scale development by rural communities and farm and forest stewards/landowners.

The committee made changes to S.325 to repeal the Road Rule and Tier 3; initiate planning for a robust public engagement process to explore how best to protect working lands and critical natural resources; create a legislative oversight committee to increase communication and coordination between the legislature and the Land Use Review Board and the Agency of Natural Resources; and align the expiration dates of Act 250 permit exemptions for housing, starting with municipalities in Tier 1A and 1B areas where Act 250 permits will no longer be necessary.

The bill passed the House and Senate, and was signed into law by the Governor on 16 June 2026.

Water quality: 

S.212/Act 174 (An act relating to potable water supply and wastewater system connections) creates a general permit at the Agency of Natural Resources to streamline permitting for connections to community water and wastewater systems. Permitting authority can also be delegated to municipalities in certain circumstances. The bill passed the House and Senate, and was signed into law by the Governor on 18 June 2026.

S.223/Act 175 (An act relating to water quality of the waters of Vermont) evaluates our current statutory and regulatory frameworks, policies, and procedures governing water quality and the classification of the waters of the State. This system is in need of improvements to ensure we do not see further degradation of our state’s waters and that we meet federal US EPA anti-degradation requirements. The bill passed the House and Senate, and was signed into law by the Governor on 16 June 2026.

S.218 (An act relating to reducing chloride contamination of State waters) was intended to address the overuse of road salt and the resulting chloride contamination of our surface waters, as well as impacts to drinking water, roadway infrastructure, and vehicles. It would have created best management practices for salt application to roads, sidewalks, and other surfaces, and a voluntary certification program to train commercial salt applicators in best management practices along with providing limits to liability for certified municipal and commercial salt applicators. This bill was passed by both the House and Senate, but unfortunately was vetoed by the Governor. This leaves communities and landowners utilizing more salt than is needed to protect public safety, often out of fear of liability, and leaves the state vulnerable to actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as more streams and waterways in the state become polluted with chloride.

Producer responsibility: 

H.915/Act 158 (An act relating to establishing an extended producer responsibility program for beverage containers) makes improvements to the bottle redemption system in Vermont. It makes bottle redemption options more convenient and efficient; ensures a minimum of three bottle-redemption centers per county and one per municipality over 7,000 people; modernizes the equipment utilized for redemption collection and sorting; and reduces manual sorting at redemption centers. This bill does not expand the kinds of bottles that would be redeemable, nor increase the five-cent deposit. The bill also includes important improvements to the collection system for household hazardous products. The bill passed the House and Senate, and was signed into law by the Governor on 17 June 2026.