Should Vermont keep throwing money at cleaning up the state’s polluted waterways—without providing funding for preventing future pollution?

Vermont’s Clean Water Board is taking public comments through September 6, on the board’s priorities for funding the cleanup of Vermont’s waterways.

You can submit comments in writing here.

Better yet, deliver your comments in person at the board’s public hearing, 10 a.m. Thursday, August 22, at the National Life Building, Winooski Room, in Montpelier.

More than half of the state’s water woes are directly attributable to industrial factory farm dairy production, where too many cows create too much manure in ecologically-sensitive areas.

According to a report from Regeneration Vermont—”A failure to Regulate: Big Dairy & Water Pollution in Vermont“—from 40 – 79 percent of the phosphorus and nitrogen pollution, and almost all of the pesticide pollution, comes from the industrial mega-dairies that supply Cabot Creamery and Ben & Jerry’s. 

Cabot’s and Ben & Jerry’s rake in billions in sales every year, while paying farmers less than it costs them to produce the milk. Yet these two companies want Vermont taxpayers to foot the bill for cleaning up their mess!

The best way to clean up Vermont’s water is to stop polluting it in the first place. And that means cleaning up Vermont’s industrial factory farm dairy industry.

Don’t miss this opportunity to tell the Vermont Clean Water Board that it’s time to start preventing the pollution of Vermont’s waterways by funding a transition to organic regenerative dairy production. The more people who attend Thursday’s meeting, the better!

It makes no sense to throw money at yesterday’s pollution while allowing today’s—and tomorrow’s—pollution to continue.