Rules

The Stream Alteration Rule regulates activities that take place in or along streams. A permit is required for movement, excavation, or fills involving 10 or more cubic yards annually in any perennial stream. Permits are intended to prevent the creation of flood hazards, protect against damages to aquatic life, and protect the rights of neighboring landowners. The types of activities that are regulated include streambank stabilization, road improvements that encroach on streams, bridge construction or repair, and utility crossings under streambeds. This Rule applies to stream alterations in both emergency and non-emergency circumstances.

This is a superseded version of the Vermont Wetland Rules

This is a superseded version of the Vermont Wetland Rules.

This is a superseded version of the Vermont Wetland Rules.

As of the effective date of this Rule, this Rule supersedes the state of Vermont’s “Combined Sewer Overflow Control Policy,” dated June 1990.

(a) These Rules apply to the subdivision of land, the construction, modification or change
in use of a building or structure, the creation or modification of a campground, and
the construction, modification, replacement and operation of their associated potable
water supplies and wastewater disposal systems.
(b) These Rules regulate soil-based disposal systems with design flows of less than 6500
gallons per day and sewerage connections of any size.
(c) These Rules regulate potable water supplies that are not subject to regulation under
the Vermont Water Supply Rule as public water supplies.

The purposes of these rules are:
(1) to obtain and maintain state water quality standards;
(2) to make efficient use of scarce public funds by providing financial assistance, with limited
exceptions, only to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW) and Municipally Sponsored
Privately-Owned Wastewater System (MSPOWS) projects that: abate existing public
health and/or environmental problems, and serve locally designated centers, unless there
are health and/or environmental problems outside of growth centers and;
(3) to assure there are appropriate controls on the use of the Agency of Natural Resources
(ANR) funded treatment facilities in order to: minimize polluted runoff from unplanned
land development, the state’s fastest growing source of water contaminants; and to prevent
scattered development and its negative impacts on surface and ground waters, wetlands, air
quality, wildlife habitats, natural areas, threatened and endangered species, and land use
patterns within the host and adjacent communities.
This rule establishes the priority system to be used by the ANR Department of Environmental
Conservation (the Department) for awarding grants and loans from federal and state funds for
POTW and MSPOWS projects. These rules set forth a two-tier system for determining a
project’s eligibility for receipt of a grant or loan from the Department.
To be eligible for a POTW or a MSPOWS project grant or loan from the Agency for the final
design or construction of a new wastewater treatment facility, an increase in the treatment
capacity of an existing wastewater treatment facility, and/or a sewer line extension the
applicant must demonstrate that the project is designed to serve only a locally designated
center, unless there are significant health and environmental problems located outside of a
growth center. If a sewer line serving a growth center must be located partially outside of a
designated center in order to abate an existing pollution problem or to connect a treatment
plant with a growth center or to connect one or more growth centers, the municipality must
demonstrate that the impacts of growth resulting from the infrastructure can be adequately
managed, and will not contribute to scattered development. After an applicant has met this
initial test, the rules set out a pollution-based priority system to determine the order in which
POTW of MSPOWS projects will be awarded grant or loan funds.