Opinion ID: 1043675
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: State-Significant Natural Communities

Text: ¶ 29. The Towns next argue that the project will have an undue adverse impact on the natural environment due to the loss of state-significant natural communities. They maintain that the Board erred in finding that the MOU would limit the impacts of clearing to being adverse in nature rather than unduly adverse. According to the Towns, ANR’s expert, Eric Sorenson, specifically testified that not only was the loss of these areas of state-significant natural communities an undue adverse impact but the MOU would not mitigate this impact. ¶ 30. The Towns misconstrue the testimony at issue. The Board clarified its discussion of these significant natural communities in its July 12, 2011 order in response to ANR’s request. It found that the two montane forest natural communities were uncommon in the state, but that they were not rare. Therefore, the Board was not required to find that there would be no undue adverse impact to these communities pursuant to 10 V.S.A. § 6086(a)(8) in order to issue a CPG for the proposed project. Nevertheless, the Board was required under 30 V.S.A. § 248(b)(5) to find that the proposed project would not have an undue adverse effect on the natural environment, including the montane forests. The Board found that the mitigation and decommissioning measures provided by the MOU would limit the impacts of clearing to being adverse in nature, rather than unduly adverse. ¶ 31. The Board’s finding is supported by the record. While it is true that at the time of his prefiled testimony, Mr. Sorenson believed that the impacts to these forests would be unduly adverse, he also maintained that there were mitigating steps that could be taken to change this result. The MOU was entered into after Mr. Sorenson’s prefiled testimony. In his live testimony before the Board, Mr. Sorenson addressed the MOU and testified that the project’s effects on the two state-significant forest types had been mitigated such that they were adverse but not unduly so. The Board’s finding on this point is therefore supported by the record.