Vermont fails to comply with the mandate to conduct an independent audit on Lake Champlain cleanup
“Vermont Was Supposed to Get an Audit of Its Lake Champlain Cleanup. It Never Happened.”
Forensic Headline Assessment: The original headline reports directly on an unfulfilled fact, while the sanitized version formalizes the finding as a direct institutional failure.
An investigation by ProPublica and Seven Days revealed that Vermont has failed to carry out a legally mandated independent external audit regarding the use of nearly one billion dollars allocated for the cleanup of Lake Champlain. Despite deadlines set in 2021 and 2023, a lack of consulting proposals and limited follow-up prevented the evaluation.
Over the past decade, Vermont has invested approximately 928 million in state, federal, and local funds into water quality projects, focusing primarily on Lake Champlain. The Clean Water Act of 2015 stipulated the submission of an external audit to verify the effectiveness of these investments and agricultural regulation.
However, the Clean Water Board received no bids in the 2020 and 2023 calls for proposals. Authorities indicated that the requirements were too broad and complex, and the matter was not revisited by the legislature or the executive board.
State officials defend that the annual reports from the Agency of Natural Resources provide sufficient transparency. Conversely, current and former lawmakers believe that the absence of this independent evaluation limits the ability to ensure the cost-effectiveness of public investments.
- Vermont has invested 928 million dollars over the past decade to improve water quality.
- The 2015 law mandated an external audit originally due in January 2021.
- Requests for proposals in 2020 and 2023 went unanswered due to the complexity of the audit.
- A previous 2019 audit warned of an imbalance in resource allocation toward treatment plants instead of the agricultural sector.
Corroborates: Vermont Was Supposed to Get an Audit of Its Lake Champlain Cleanup. It Never Happened.