Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. Well, good morning, Caroline. Happy New Year. New Year. We're going to spend the next half hour or so hearing about Rural Vermont's priorities for the coming year so that we're aware of what they are. So what? Yeah.

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Thank you so much. Happy New Year, dear committee. For the record, Caroline Sherman Borden. I'm the legislative director of Rural Vermont, And, really appreciate the opportunity just to present on ongoing policy priorities and organizing priorities of the organization. Also appreciate you taking the time to hear from Graham on Friday, our policy director. We shepherd different policy priorities for the organization, so I really am not equipped to speak on the priorities that he will present on Friday, so I really appreciate you taking the time to hear it from both of us. Yeah, and then you also are going to hear from Rule Barman our opening remarks on the municipal exemption issue later today, so I'm going to not talk about this this morning already, but really just focus on giving you sort of the broad overview of other programmatic work we're currently been working on over the last year. One of the issues I want to start with is the PFAS issue. The legislature over the last couple of years has really done tremendous work to make sure, there's a phase out from PFAS from consumer products. And we've been working with Vermonters for Clean Environment to also work on H303, which is currently pending in house environment, which would be a policy to ban the land application of sewage sludge on farmland, which is known to also have amounts of PFAS contaminants. You might know from what happened in Maine a couple years ago when farmers had to cease operation and destroy all their product and basically close-up shop. Vermont's Clean Environment and us, we've been traveling to Maine to learn from farmers firsthand on how this impacted them and build some good relationships there. So certainly would have connections to farmers there who would also be willing to speak to Vermont committees to just raise that awareness. Last year when H303 was introduced, certainly the House Environment Committee has started to take some testimony on the issue, but the Agency of Natural Resources has testified, if my memory is correct, that they're actually currently only testing five of about more than 1,500 chemicals for residue in the soils. They said the levels they find are not concerning to them, so that they didn't see the urgency in the policy. Together with Vermonters for Clean Environment, we're now also starting to have conversations about in the Senate just because we believe this is not an issue we want to let go of. At the very least, we would want to see a policy that would prohibit the expansion of the practice of land application of sewerage slush in the future. We know through articles from The Guardian most recently that PFAS contaminants have been found in drinking water, leading to fetal diseases of newborns and also to Alzheimer's potentially. Really not my expertise, but there's just more reason of concern related to PFAS and certainly spreading sewage sludge that's known to have those contaminants in our food bearing soils does not continue to be a good idea, and we need to proactively also think about how to phase that out and set policies in place to assure that. So definitely encourage this committee also to take testimony on that issue and progress H303 if nothing comes over from the Senate. Then obviously the Community Resilience and Biodiversity act is still on the in the make, as that that was act 51 of, 2023. And, as you might remember, I was serving on the agricultural lands working group in the inventory phase of that process. So there was an agricultural stakeholder group when the question was, should agricultural lands even be a subject of this conservation? That was a rather confusing and upsetting process because the mandate in the law was very clear that as natural working lands, as natural resource management area, there was a defined category in law that clearly incorporated also agricultural lands. We kind of wasted our time in the process to just discuss if that actually should be the case. We did not have any say in how agricultural lands should be considered in this process. Now this process has entered its second stage this last year in the planning phase. In that process, there's a technical advisory committee that has a single representative from agriculture on the, on the group. It's a single farmer who has not been involved in the inventory phase at all, and neither of the leadership from Housing and Conservation Board nor ANR has reached out to any agricultural stakeholders to our knowledge to further inform what the conservation plan for agricultural land specifically should look like. So that's very upsetting to us. We've been over the course of the last two years claiming also in committee here that there are significant shortfalls to public engagement in that process and that public meeting laws have not been honored in that process. And we believe that the complicated nature of the Housing and Conservation Board has something to do with that as well. Then we have this issue of composting food residuals on farms. That's a legacy issue for Rue of Vermont. We've been quite successful on advocacy on that issue in 2021. We changed the definition of farming to make sure farmers who want to compost food scraps can do that as a farming practice. I wanna remember the committee. We have viability issues across farming sectors. Waste management is among the top three most earning industries in the country. Farming is the least earning industries in the country. Right now, when you go onto the agency's website to look up the RAP rules, you find a version of the rule from 2018 on their website. You do not see any definition of farming that includes composting food residuals on the agency's website in their specific cited rule. They have not opened a rulemaking process to incorporate rules for this process. We've been meeting with the agency last year with a whole handful of staff there and got the promise that in April they want to open up the rulemaking process for this practice finally. Apparently they've been hung up because of wetland rules that need to also be updated in the RIP rule. And we've stressed with them that any further delay in making transparent what the rules will be for practitioners is really a hindrance of business plan development for this practice. Beyond that, of course, for Vermont as a whole to achieve the goals of the universal recycling law where in the management hierarchy for organics on farm composting of food scraps is one of the highest tier of resource management there. So we will not see more practitioners for this practice until this issue has been settled in rule. Then, obviously as my role as legislative director, I'm really happy this year. Have again a very qualified legislative intern, Summer Lang Weller, who will also probably be sitting in your committee whole bunch. Together, we will do a lot of work to also just make transparent on our rule of Vermont website what issues you guys are working on. We personally find that even navigating the legislative website or maybe finding the current agenda is quite easy, but then finding the old agendas and then correlating that with the videos of YouTube can you know, that's a lot of management to find that out. So we actually have a website that we call our build tracker where we populate that website that so that people can really see week by week and issue by issue what you guys have been working on, find all the relevant documents there, and also the YouTube links on one side. So we want to encourage advocacy and engagement among our members through that service. And that's what most a lot of my capacity will be focused on. And we also do that, of course, so that if you come forward with your priorities and bills you are working on, that we have done our part of the work to brief our members on those issues, also through legislative updates that we will be writing regularly, and so that we can hopefully be well equipped to also bring member voices in response to the issues you are working on proactively. Then further in organizing priorities, so kind of moving away from priorities pending in the legislature from our perspective is kind of land equity access and reform more broadly. We mentioned this to you. We don't really have sufficient land access policies in the state that you know, prevent farmland laws and make farmland more affordable and accessible to farmers. We also caution to we wanna we wanna we are a member led organization, so what we're really seeking is to organize for a broad coalition that comes forward with a reform proposal. I think any reform in that space must be seen as radical to some degree because we need sort of a drastic shift in effectiveness on that issue. So we're very grateful that the Land Access and Opportunity Board has organized quite a number of stakeholder group meetings over the last year that were very diverse and where we really had a chance to foster deeper relationships and connections to all kinds of stakeholders involved on that issue, land trust, etcetera. And, yeah, we hope that work will continue. We are also engaged in the front to plate network on on those topics. So what we keep stressing is that we need substantive discourses and certainly have some of our own legislative ideas that we're bringing to the cable table in those discourses. And, yeah, I really find it most difficult in that space to to get to a point where we can, like, get to the nitty gritty of having substantive policy discourses, a lot of time wasted just to get to know each other and kind of setting the stage for that sort of engagement. Obviously, everyone's capacity is always an issue too. So it seems like this will be trickle trickle more work to come, but, I can only stress like that. That is a very important issue to the whole agricultural community. This is something we've been learning about from our members over decades. There's not much more information to glean there from our members. It's really, really changed, and we need to discuss actual proposals for that for that change. Then accessory on farm businesses. Last year, we've been working with members who had an issue with the land use review board where they were asked to, acquire an active 50 permit on a farm structure they've erected, at Houston Field, and we've been working with the senate ag committee to potentially clarify statute that, also farm structures and the multiuse of them are active 50 exempt. We are dropping that issue as a policy priority for this year because our members are actually in a legal process around that topic, and we actually do believe that through the legal path, they likely have much greater chances to succeed in gaining the legal clarity they deserve. We also received last year significant pushback from environmental organizations as well as from the land use review board on that issue that we know that if we were to open up the accessory on farm business statute this year, while we also work on the municipal exemption issue, that we're much likely risking to lose ground on that issue rather than gaining ground. Last year, there was legislative language presented in committee that, has let us know that there are significant forces who would like to see any activity of an accessory on farm business to needing to go under permitting for each event. That is, would be, a whole whole new world for farmers. Right now, you need an active 50 potentially if you build new infrastructure, certainly not when you organize a specific event. So this would add tremendous bureaucracy on farms that we don't believe anyone would want to go through and would further disincentivize anyone from farming and doing all that labor of love of organizing events and all that sort on farms. So that's why we're holding off. We've been certainly trying to organize a sales stakeholder group. We had a handful or more farmers engage with us and trying to work towards a proposal over the summer, but we have not come to a uniform proposal. And we also think it might be wiser to keep working towards the uniform proposal as it is also a very complex subject and there's more, areas of concern with the excess of unfounded business statute so that we would rather come back with that issue in a full for a full biennium. And we also know that there might be individual members who still stress the legislature to work on this issue. And we also know that there was another Supreme Court ruling that incentivizes the legislature to pick this up. And yet, because of the pending municipal exemption issue, we don't think it would be wise to open up the municipal exemption and Act two fifty for farming exemptions at the same time, given the strong opposition in the state house. Yeah. What else can I share with you? I think, of course, there's other stuff we're doing, education, workshops, and so on. We also still have our federal bill, the Local Foods Act, which would clarify in federal law that on farm slaughter is legal. There's been a law that rule of Vermont has kind of advocated to introduce to begin with. We now have a much broader coalition, including the National Family Farm Coalition, a bunch of others, and we actually have two bills that are identical in DC and the House and Senate chambers. On that issue, we're kind of lucky that the Farm Bill did not progress last year and that we have another year to build that momentum for the Local Foods Act. We think that is a very good policy to include in the Farm Bill because we're asking for nothing more than a clarification in law. We're actually not asking for anything new, so we don't see any problem with that passing into law. So it would basically just update the federal statute from those who raise livestock and slaughter it on their own behalf to those who own livestock and have it slaughtered on their own behalf. So that's already visible in USDA guidance, but guidance can change any day on upon discretion of the agency, and we know that farmers need the planning security to have that actually be a statutory provision. That's that. And I think with that, I'll just leave it for questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Great. Representative Lipsky?

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yes. Thank you, Caroline. Earlier in your report and update, you were talking about the the classification of, you know, crop land, grazing land. Were you referring to how that's considered with regard to 30 by 30 bill, 50 by 50, which initially, the Vermont version did not include grasslands, crop land, rangeland, but it's the national bill that it was based on.

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: That's not quite correct. The Vermont bill also included those lands, and the agricultural lands working group has determined that those lands should be included. So we're anticipating farmland will be in the preview of the conservation agenda as well.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: So when you say should be included, to be considered permanently conserved, what sort of easements, conservation easements, are necessary for all of that farmland Well, to be

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: that's exactly the problem. Of course, we alright. We are We're looking

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: for forests.

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Obviously, we're exclude as I mentioned, we're excluded from the process. So we don't have any insight on what they might be planning. What we stressed is that currently conservation easements are insufficient to adequately protect farmland from developments such as because easements are also a voluntary tool, a. And b, once you, conserve, farmland once, well, once that farmer who had got had that benefit from selling their development rights retires, the next generation farmer might not be able to afford that land and that because they won't get the ability to conserve that same parcel again and make that revenue work for themselves. So the tool for that reason is, in a way, the best we have, but certainly not all we need. And instead of exploring and having that discourse that that we now have, as I mentioned with the Land Access Opportunity Board, the process that was legislative mandate is not having those discourses sufficiently, so we don't really know what will come out of the conservation plan. Certainly, trusts have millions and millions of dollars of revenue to acquire more land for conservation easements, but as again, that will be a slow process. It will be the trickle and the needle in the haystack approach continuously so. It will not be a strategic approach to conserving farmland. It will possibly not incorporate the lands that are most valuable for our food security in the future. It will likely not include sufficient and smaller farms that are valuable for food production in the long term. So what we really need is a broader discourse, the legislative mandated process for that, but does not achieve that. In addition, thank you for bringing that up again. What I didn't touch on in my my remarks just now is another issue we've been coming with to you here is that we have act one eighty one and the regional planning effort where regional planning commissions are rewriting their future land use maps. And we've been educating this committee and the Senate Act Committee last year that we know that regional planning commissions are not taking their mandate seriously and also planning for future agricultural land use, even though that's also specifically part of the law. And it always has been specifically part of the law that there should be distinct maps for future agricultural use. Instead, what they're doing is they're writing maps where all of agriculture and forestry is just one map. It all looks very green outside of town centers, but it doesn't show that actually 83%, I will mention that later again, 83% of development in Vermont occurs on rural residential developments. So just because it looks green on the map doesn't mean that's actually agricultural land or ever will be available for agricultural food production if we don't have other policies that get at that. Go

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: ahead. Caroline, any of these bills in committee, this role remote, wanna see them move?

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Well, I know you had a lot of current use bills last year. Those were rather bills of concerns to our membership because they, again, would make it easier for farms to, you know, not get met with penalties if they sell farmland that are in development zones. We see that there's interest in that, but we see that because of the value of that land anyhow that farmers would likely be well equipped to make good revenue on the on the sale of those parcels. What we think is really needed is not on the wall.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Wanted to ask about the composting rules and what the impact has been of not having a rule developed so far. This predates my time in the committee and some of us were here. But in 2021, when that bill was passed and required a rule, has there been, what's the impact been on my farmers or your members? Have they been, and I really just don't have any sense of whether they've been able to do what we want them to be able

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: to do or not. Yeah, could invite the Compost Association of Vermont on this issue specifically. They're doing technical assistance to farmers who want to diversify into this practice. So I've been in close connection with them and know that they are hearing from farmers, so to speak in limbo, and whether they would or would not do that. I'm one of those farmers myself. Business plan is foreseeing to diversify into this practice, but you see the rule will, for example, set like setbacks into rule, like when you build a composting facility that operates year round, you like build that like concentric next to your barn that's right by the road, or will the agency require you to build that in the middle of the field 200 feet away from the road? That's not clear right now. So you will not invest $200,000 to build anything until the rule is clear. So what we see in the annual reports where the agency shares, like, who are the farmers who are currently doing that, that yes, legacy farmers who have been doing that also before the act has passed continue to do that. They are protected now. Great. That was our goal, but also really our goal was that this becomes an incentive for more practitioners to diversify into the practice. And so there's just a logic consequence when you're anticipating a comprehensive rule that you don't know, like, what will be the bureaucracy of it? What will be required of me? Will I really want to do that? That you will not make the move to do this. Maybe there have been a couple of new practitioners, and certainly there's also the whole sphere of community composting projects that are not farms, but that are also under ANR still. But I think we could really get much more practitioners on board if this would be settled. We don't have other proof for that, but it seems just to be logic, and we've been stressing that with the agency year to year.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Do I understand that the bill, when passed in 2021, protected You talked about legacy operations. So did it grandfather in or protect existing on farm composting operations? And this is really a question of future projects.

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Yeah. I forget how it was exactly written. I didn't I don't think it was really necessary to have a grandfather provision. I think just because we changed Act two fifty and also the RRP rules statutorily that the cases where existing practitioners were, like, in a legal gray zone, so to speak, or, like, in dispute with the agency of natural resources, that their that their legal basis has changed for them to be under the farming umbrella moving forward.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Yes, Representative Lipsky. Carolyn, again, going back to your testimony about PFAS, and I know we've heard a few years ago about what the Maine farmers, you know, the devastating impacts of years of using sludge waste on ag land is. And you allow that what's been reported back to you is it's negligible. But two years ago, the federal EPA said lower the standard, I think, from and correct me if I'm wrong, 20 parts per billion of, you know, PFAS or PFAS was acceptable, and then they lowered it just for drinking water to 10 parts per billion, and then it was gonna go down to three or zero. Do do you have any update? I know that may not be your

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: That's of expertise. Right. Do you know where the EPA is on that PFAS drinking water standard?

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: I would have to prepare specific testimony on that, but really would probably recommend hearing from Vermonters for Clean Environment on that. So John Braben, my colleague there used to be used to be working for ANR and he really also knows who else would be best to inform you on that issue specifically. The channel we're hearing from the agencies over the years has always been like the more we learn over PFAS, the more it becomes clear we we need to do something to get it out of the environment. It's a ubiquitous issue. As I said, we might ban the land application from sewage such we can't ban rain to fall on our land. And that might we know that's also an issue that even the PFAS chemicals are in our the life cycle of the planet embedded so much ubiquitously that they they start they start going through our bodies and the whole ecosystem. And yeah, so really, we have to make sure we don't create the products that contain them and that we contain them from there on further and make sure we kind of eradicate them from our lives.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Thank you. When Mike O'Grady is in later this morning, let's ask him for an update, because I believe that L. Carr had last week on his agenda an update to the rule, the drinking water rule for PFAS. Didn't because we've got so much else going on, I didn't follow-up to see whether they went ahead with that or not, but he should know and can clarify some of the other questions. John?

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: Thank you. Just to follow-up on the chair's food scraps questioning. It seems to me that, I mean, I just looked up the inverse pyramid there on the hierarchy of where food scraps supposed to go. And I suspect most of Vermont food scraps still go probably to the cotton tree. Next, I heard that the next biggest chunk goes to Maine for biodigesters, which is priority number four. So is there anything this committee could do? Because it's always been a solid waste issue mostly except for chicken farming food scraps. House Natural gets it, but since 2021, now we've become really the committee of food. So is there anything this committee can do to catch that food before it gets to solid waste?

[Caroline Sherman Borden (Legislative Director, Rural Vermont)]: Well, that's a really good question. And I think there is some exciting progress from ANR, even though I'm not aware that they have really finalized their rulemaking on the packaging facilities. Like the year after we passed act 41 from 2021, we also are protect our soils pollution also was able to pass act one seventy of 2022. And that mandated to re regulate the packaging facilities where those are facilities that mechanically unpack packaged food scraps to comply with the organic management hierarchy because what's actually the mandate of the law that all food scraps should be separated from their packaging at the source of origin and then, like, separated and sourced in accordance to the management hierarchy. And we know that has just not been happening. It was not feasible for for some for some part of the waste stream, and that's why these packaging facility has been developed. There's one in Williston, and what ANR has been working on in their rule is to really prohibit source separated residuals to land there. So that the whole big chunk of the waste stream where generators actually have done what's the mandate and law is to separate the residuals at the source from their packaging, that that is the waste stream that is really going to be eligible for composting and on farm composting and not by default. You know, you might see when you go to your own dump, Cassellas advertising for zero sort, the convenience way. And what we really need to rule out and and any legislative policy that would further advance that would be welcome is to rule out that that mandate gets watered down by the convenient idea of just doing zero sword and we can like mechanically like crush and grind it and it'll all be good. It'll generate more of the PFAS issue likely as well. There was some research done around that resulting from ACT 172 PFAS residuals and couples.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yes. Thank you all so much. We're going to have you back in later today, right? Yes. And hear about Municipal, it? Municipal, yep, and then Graham later in the week, I think. Friday. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, we don't have, I think, Michael Grady until 10:15. He may hop in a little bit sooner, going to go over the amendment to X and speak when we've got fifteen minutes scheduled for that. It shouldn't take any more than that. We will need to have a stucco on the amendment. I think we'll hold off on that until this afternoon, though, because Michelle had to step out. And since it's her bill, or she's just holding the bill, I think she should probably be here from struggle. Is everybody here after lunch? Yeah. Actually, probably not gonna be here after lunch. Okay. So when you're looking to do the straw poll We could do it before lunch because I think Michelle will be back again. So if we can just do that quickly before we all break for lunch. Okay.

[Rep. John O'Brien (Member)]: I got to check some back this afternoon. Okay.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: Chairman, sorry, is that down here? Produce some printed forms for the straw poll?

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Yeah, maybe during the break now you and Patricia could consult like that. But why don't we go, we can break now, Patricia, and just don't go too far because if Mike gets here early, we can start. David, I have to go six