To the editor: Act 181 road rule disincentivizes sound planning

As someone who has taught Environmental Economics over the course of 27 years at three colleges, and as a past administrator of a regional planning commission, I must strenuously oppose Act 181 in its current form.  While I embrace the need for environmental stewardship and proper planning, I also have serious concerns about the “road rule” as it is currently envisioned.

In short, it creates a perverse disincentive to build in the most ecologically fragile, high-hazard areas, which is the opposite of the stated intentions of the act.

In much of Vermont, roads were built along rivers. They followed the flattest ‘path of least resistance,’ and river valleys and flood plains provided that path. Now, having experienced three floods in the last nine years that wiped out the road I live on (as well as some adjacent structures), we know this is not the best place to build from an environmental or financial hazard perspective.

However, the road rule actually encourages this in two ways.

First, if you build close to the existing road (and by extension, a parallel river), your drive is short and no Act 250 permit is triggered. However, if you build more responsibly by trying to build away from the river valley with a road that ‘snakes’ to climb terrain, surpassing 2,000 feet, now you have to file for a permit. It creates a disincentive to building responsibly, and an incentive to build closer to the road and river to avoid the bureaucracy, expense, uncertainty, and time-delay of an Act 250 permit.

Secondly, I believe it errs by using an 2,000-foot “road length” rule, rather than targeting a development that is 2,000 feet “as the crow flies” rule from the road. The worst type of road or drive is one that follows a straight line on rising terrain, where runoff – whether on the road itself, or in adjacent gullies – simply rushes straight downhill, carrying sediments with it and increasing erosion.

Here in Chester, we see that very phenomenon with each heavy rain event.  A better choice is to include bends and ‘snake’ a roadway from the main road to new housing sites. However, by using a road-length rule, the Act discourages such snaking out of fear that it will trip a permit. A 2,000 foot road that snakes up terrain is far better than a 700 foot road that rises straight up a hillside. Why penalize the better option?

If the purpose of the act is to preserve environmentally sound planning and building, it incentivizes the exact opposite.

I strongly recommend the works of Elinor Ostrow, the economist who won the Nobel Prize for her work in “Governing the Commons.” In that work, she clearly showed that in cultures around the world, planning and sound environmental decisions are best made locally by those immediately affected with intimate knowledge of the landscape, and not by one-size-fits-all policies.

Thom Simmons
Chester