Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Does that seem to work? Okay. Alright. Good morning. Welcome. And maybe just quick introductions because I'm not sure that you when you were here, we had the same committee makeup. So just to refresh anyway, I'm David Durfee from Shaftsbury. I represent Sunderland and Glossenbury as well. John Bartholomew from Heartland also represent Windsor and West Windsor. John O'Brien represent conference in Hamilton.

[Rep. Gregory "Greg" Burtt (Member)]: Greg Burtt, captain Danville, Pichon.

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Michelle Bos-Londe, Westminster, Rockingham, and Brooklyn.

[Rep. Jed Lipsky (Clerk)]: James Lipsky, Lamoille, one Stowe. Richard Nelson, Orleans 1, Derby.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Great. With your permission, chair, we'll get started. Yes. Thanks. Good morning. My name is Oliver Pearson. I'm the director for forests within the Vermont Department of Forest Parks and Recreation, joined by my colleague, Dave Wilcox. He'll introduce himself when he takes over. And we'll be speaking about the what we call SLO Camp pilot program, which is also, as you pointed out, David, known as an expansion of the water quality assistance program. We're actually really excited to come in here and speak with you about this program. We're always excited to come speak to you, but we're particularly excited about to speak about SLO camp because it was a really wonderful opportunity provided to the Forest Parks and Recreation by the legislature through that appropriation in the big bill a couple of years back. And I feel like, and as we'll share with you today, we really made the most of it and taking some really important steps forward in addressing the needs that the program is set up to address achieving the objectives and really demonstrating success. And so this is a fun one to be able to share with you. Just make sure I can advance my slides here. So I'll get right into it. So let's rewind back a year or two. When we began talking about this, we had had two winters that were very warm, and the ground didn't freeze. Then we also had two summers that were very wet, folks know. And these climate change driven erratic weather events and catastrophic weather events had many negative impacts. And one of them was keeping loggers out of the woods. Loggers just couldn't work. The soil was not frozen in the winter. The soil was too wet in the summer. And the cost of complying with Vermont's water quality regulations, demonstrated that we'll talk about through the acceptable management practices for logging to protect water quality, or AMPs, were too high to make the logging work during these periods of erratic weather profitable. And you've heard loggers come in here, such as Sam Lincoln, who say the amount of days in 'twenty three and 'twenty four that they're able to work in the woods was onethree of what it had been in previous years. So loggers are really struggling with markets, with labor shortages, and now there's these weather challenges. And so we felt like this was an area where we could provide some assistance to loggers, sort of in the same vein as some of the assistance that's provided to farmers to comply with the required agricultural practices. And with your support, as I said, the legislature made $1,000,000 available in the big bill for a pilot program. Formally, it's an expansion of the water quality assistance program, which is an existing program on the books to support loggers with complying with other water quality requirements. Dave's involved in administering that. That does things like provide temporary bridges through rent or cost share and other support. But what this did was what SLOCAMP did was fund the implementation of proactive water quality protection and climate adaptation practices on harvest sites before, during, and for closeout of harvests to ensure compliance with the AMPs. Again, that acronym is acceptable management practices and enable loggers to get into the woods and complete their forest management activities. And it was something that was new. We hadn't done this before. Legislature made these funds available. And so we were really excited about this opportunity. We were also standing at the program from the ground up. And so what I'll do is hand off to Dave Wilcox here. SLOCAMP stands for supporting loggers to comply with the AMPs. We did an acronym, Water Quality Expansion Assistance, especially water closeness. It doesn't really roll off the tongue. SLOCAMP did. So we'll refer to it as the SLOCAMP program going forward. And Dave leaves our our, excuse me, our watershed forestry team. And so he'll go through the next few slides, I'll come

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: back in at the end. Great. Thanks, Oliver. Happy to be here. My name is Dave Wilcox. I'm the watershed forester with the Monarch Department Forest, Parks and Recreation. And Oliver said, we're very proud of this program and how things have been rolling out and what the feedback that we received. So we did starting up because it was a new program. Did lots of outreach and kind of ask for help in determining what the practice would be because this, you know, we had none of this before. So we did some public involvement. We had some meetings to get some input and we developed the standard practice sheets based on everything is based on the AMP. AMPs and those we have an AMP manual, have an AMP app. So they're very accessible. We do trainings on the AMP's all the time. It's really the industry standard for water quality and every state has them. Some states call them BMPs, best management practices. And the practice standards are based on the AMPs and the funding is essentially for of the sets of practices, for the labor associated with installing and maintaining the practices, but also materials that are used for implementing those practices. Sometimes that includes gravel, sometimes it's culverts or road fabric or stone, which we're seeing more use of kind of general, the stabilization practices that you would see on the side of a town road, we're starting to see more use of in the woods just because we have our roads need to be built to those better standards that are more flood resilient and durable. Flood resilient is really important. Practice standards are, go to the next slide, but the practice, you have

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a question?

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: Yeah, just quick. Is it also looking at erosion? Because when I think about road damage in my town, we didn't have a lot of flooding, but we had a lot of erosion from heavy, heavy rains like two years ago on July 31, or three years ago, and we are having stone repairs. So is is that part of what's considered as well in terms of the practices or is it really more about? Flooding. Well, it's it's all of those things, really.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: It's heavy rain. If you could sum up the principles of the AMPs in one statement, it would be spreading the water back out. Our roads and trails collect water because they're linear features. They're built so that you can travel on them and you need to have flat surfaces and the water hits those and they run off and they pick up speed and they cause erosion. That rain turns into erosion and the AMPs are designed to turn that water back out into the forest at certain periods based on the slope. And the stone and the gravel on those truck roads is what creates durability so that they aren't as erosive as regular woodster. Did

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: you have a question? Today?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: It was really the the clarity of for landings and truck access from a public way. It's hardening and it's armoring. So seven inch minus, that's called a lager mix. It's a very dense, and it does not erode. And that that's what is the standard. Gravel may be used in but it's always armored, particularly near string crossings or pitches Yep. In the lambing because you're talking could be 99,000 pounds.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Your question was right on the back because as you see one of the bullets up there is these practices are targeted to address high risk

[Rep. Michelle Bos-Lun (Member)]: areas, including

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: high erosion risk. Thank you.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: And another Maybe this is a

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: head of where you're going, are there

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: benefits to this work post blogging job? Certainly.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: One of the benefits is reduced erosion because we're, like I said, spreading the water back out, we're creating water bars, diversion structures, We're putting in cross drain culverts at proper distances so the water in the ditches don't pick up speed. So we have less erosion. Then we also have more durable access because logging is a long term proposition. We go in and treat a stand every fifteen, twenty years, maybe even more. And if those roads aren't there, then you have to rebuild those roads with every harvest and that money that you don't want to waste the money. So you want to prevent or I'm sorry, you want to provide durable access to your forest so that forest management can continue. So there's multiple benefits.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: And some of our logging roads are on lands that are also used for recreation.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: That's lot as well.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: And so a hardened logging road will also stand up to the hikers and skiers and the mountain bikers that want to get into the woods as well. Up in the Northeast Kingdom, the Kingdom Heritage lands, those roads are have a principle principally built for logging, but there's a long term access plan which allows Vermonters to access those lands for recreation. And we try to ensure those roads either at or get to with AMP standards. So doing this work for a logging job often has the secondary benefits as well.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Yeah. And that's a good point to bring up that increased recreation access. While we promote that and we like that, it does cause challenges sometimes that we have to make our practices even more durable because you have mountain bikes or snowmobiles, any kind of traffic that will knock down those water bars and cause those practices to fail. It's an added challenge and all of our practice standards have that built into them so that we account for that. And another thing I'll just say about the Vermont, this program based other than we did look at other states, New York State and Massachusetts have programs that similar to this, but their programs are mostly close out, which what happens after a logging job when you go back in and put into the water bars and pull the stream crossings and things. This slow camp is a proactive. So we do the practices ahead of time, maintain them during the job, and then make sure that closeout happens. So it's even, I think it's the gold standard for how that work should be accomplished. It is a cost share. It's a 90% cost share. For most practices, the exception to that is where we have permanent stream crossings, where it's a 50% cost share, which a landowner, and this not only benefits loggers, but it benefits the landowner who owns the land where the practices take place, because they have the access in perpetuity. And therefore with these permanent practices, they have to put more skin in the game, which is fair. For those, many of the practices that require graveling to be installed, we have the requirement that there's a pre award site visit by a licensed forester that PLC coordinates to go out and make sure that the practices are following all the rules. One of connect places where we run into other programs in ANR is wetlands. And we want to ensure that we're not violating any wetlands rules by adding gravel to a road where it isn't allowed. So we're sure not to do that. And I've got some slides of some of the examples of the practices that are supported. This is truck road and landing hardening. You can see in the center picture of a gravel road where that's crowned, that the ditches are cleaned out. Can't remember if these were cleaned out or constructed, but there's cross drain culverts at a certain rate based on the AMPs. And we have culvert installation with practices where you have to ensure there's compaction around the culvert and proper cover over the culvert so that it doesn't get lifted by the frost. Again, so that's it's durable, it's long lasting, it's not going to only last one or two years and then frost will pick it up out of the ground. Head walls, again the total in the top right you see some stone added. We're starting to see more stormwater practices in the woods, which is necessary. And then on the left is a picture of a landing that was hardened or where gravel was used to create a good surface. You could see all the equipment there. Equipment is getting larger and larger. Economy of scale with trucking, you need to have a landing that allows you big trucks, many big trucks. Other practices are skid trail improvements, Essentially spreading the water back out, water bars. I'm gonna try to move this. Log reinforced water bars in the top right photo where they build a water bar, they set couple logs in the berm so that it stays and doesn't get knocked down. What we call pole bars. The bottom left photo is a pole bar where you can see water sitting in that trail, but that water is not allowed to go down the trail. It's going to kick off to the side and all of these need maintenance periodically during the job. So after a certain number of days of forwarding on that job, they'll have to take something and make it so the water can get off the trail. But essentially the water is not allowed to go down the trail. And then the photo in the middle is kind of a pull bar that hasn't been utilized yet, but it's essentially a place for the water to get trapped and kicked off the trail to the side. And then stream crossings, one of my kind of favorite topics. Bridges, the bottom left photo was a 40 foot bridge that was used for skidding. That was a temporary bridge brought in, utilized and then moved out of the way, taken away, used. It's actually being used on another job. And so that stream crossing is put right back the way it was. So there's zero risk of flood damage from a structure being there that's undersized. Good,

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: Nelson. Yeah. Thank you. Dave, what's the carrying capacity of that 40 foot bridge? How many? 100,000 pounds.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I need one.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: We have four of them. We have two forty footers and two thirty footers, and they're truck bridges, and they're rated for a 100,000 pounds. It takes up so the 40 footer, you could span 35 feet with. Takes up two and a half feet on either end for an abutment. But they're they're great. The loggers love them. We can truck on them. We can skid on them. The photo on the top right corner is a 25 foot bridge. That's a little bit different design than the other one. It's rated for skidding, not necessarily trucking, but it's 42,000 pounds, I believe. The state, the FPR, through the Water Quality Assistance Program, has really beefed up our ability to help to support loggers that way with with rental bridges. We rent them for a $100 a day.

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I kinda need money long term.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And a long hauling job. How do you put these in and take them out?

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Great question. Big equipment. Actually, that bridge in the left photo, I helped the logger set that bridge. And we did it all with one skidder because it was a very easy stream to have access to. He dragged it up to one end, pushed it closer, and then went around to the other side. He had a Ford that he could use, but he can't skid across a Ford, but you can drive across it a few times. Went to the other side and then he winched it across and lifted it up with his grapple and set it on the abutments. And it was I bet it didn't take an hour. It was real Some situations aren't that easy. You need excavators, a 60,000 pound excavator to do it, but they're more and more common in the woods these days, bigger equipment. And then the center photo and the bottom right photo is a Ford, which is a great access for trucks. If you have a stream with a cobbly bottom, you just drive across. You can't skid across it, but you can drive across. And then when you're done, the photo on the right shows that bank all reshaped, put back to the original grade and mulched and closed out. And it's flood resilient because there's no crossing there and it's protected from getting out of the stream. But there's a significant expense of moving all that material, putting down the stone to get the truck out of the stream up onto the bank where it's hard and dry. So that's where slow camp was. I don't think that job would have happened if there weren't the funding availability, because it would have taken too much of the stumpage cost to the landowner and the logging cost from the logger to get it all, to get it complete. I don't know how I'm doing. That's a I usually

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: I've got one other question, and then we'll let you Okay. Sure.

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: I just wondered if how many bridges you had, if you have a waiting list, if you'd love more of those bridges. So

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: bridge rental is a fun thing. They're all out and people are in line waiting for them. Other times they're sitting there. So I think, we just got two bridges, two new bridges last year because we had, after the flood, we had allowed some towns to borrow our bridges and one town, Berlin still has one bridge, But we were able to get two more. And right now, three out of the four are being used. So one is available. And the skitter bridges, same thing. We have, I think two out of the three are being used right now. So sometimes I'd say, yes, we need more. Other times I'd say, no, we're okay. But if there's funding, it doesn't cost much for them to sit there.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Those are part of the clean water program support that is provided to FPR through the Clean Water Board and Humiliate. But we've to come back in and talk more about that.

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: James got your approach, Richard.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Maybe I'll jump in here. Have of these slides I put together last night, I can go through them quick. As we said to the committee, we basically decided that this was an important program and we didn't have the capacity internally

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: to

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: do it ourselves. We needed a service provider to help us implement SlowCam. So we designed a request for proposal. We put it out to bid last October 2024. And through the competitive review process, we ended up hiring the professional logging contractors of the Northeast or PLC to be our service provider. And that kicked off a really productive partnership between FPR and PLC for the implementation of SlowCamp. And they're registered as a nonprofit organization and is eligible to enter into these types of agreements with the state and have been working hand in hand with us since we made that award to them. And so the next six months was startup. We really had to start necessarily from ground up. Who are the key staff, licensed foresters, program managers, office people that can make slow camp viable in Vermont? And what are the key deliverables? How are we gonna give money away? How are we gonna make sure that the money was spent for the purpose that was intended for for these practices? What are the eligibility criteria? If I'm I live in New Hampshire, but I'm working in Vermont. Can I can I receive funding? And what kind of simple agreement are we gonna put in place so that loggers are comfortable signing that with with with PLC, whether service provider, and not get scared away by 20 pages of of red tape, but also have some accountability. And then how do we get the word out about this? And then how do we train loggers and how the program works? So all that was worked out. It was complex. It was a big effort. I really credit Dave and his team and PLC for making that happen. And the program went live in July, where we said, Okay, here's the website. Go to the website, and here's how you apply for funding. Applications started rolling in. Yeah. I'll I'll do one or two more slides and hand it back to Dave. So this is sort of just paperwork that from from July until December, which is when we put this together. So it's a bit dated. We received 33 applications for funding from loggers. 29 were deemed eligible. PLC set up a review committee. FTR provided oversight to that. And so we've basically funded 29 of these agreements. Eligible projects have been mostly been interested in, as David said, in stabilizing access roads to reduce erosion, but also targeted skid trail and stream crossing improvements. We've really prioritized those areas because those have the biggest potential to have negative impacts, but can, if properly accounted for and properly protected, really ensure that clean water requirements are met. So that's been the majority and we'll more into detail about what we've actually funded in the next couple of slides.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Yeah, so the funding, as you can see, the percentage of the funds mostly went to truck roads and landings. That's where the expenses, the adding gravel and stone trucking and that sort of thing, followed by skid trail improvements and then the stream crossings, both temporary and permanent. Mostly temporary, but some of them permanent. Obviously the permanent are more, well, even though we're only funding 50% are fairly expensive relative to the temporary crossings. And we worked out, that was one of the challenges was working out the cost because we reimburse loggers on what they do. But we don't require them to give us the load slips of the gravel and everything. We want them to meet standards. I guess with the gravel we require they have the certain amount of gravel. But for a water bar, has to meet the standard, has to be a certain size, has to be a certain width, length in the right angle and all that. So we're really through this process, we're building a culture of understanding of the standards and creating more buy in by folks that this is the right way to do it. And I think we're really, the loggers that I talked to, they look at this stuff and it kind of takes them by surprise at first because of all the one page of standards for a practice that they've been doing for thirty years. But when they read it and look at it, they're like, Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. That might Yeah, they've never seen it all written out. They know more than they think. Through going through that process, we've really been able to have great conversations with the folks in the woods, and while at the same time getting all these practices done. And Brian's got

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: a question here. Just to

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: be sure. So what's the relationship between the property owner and the logger as far as who picks up the tab? Has that worked out? That

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: happens behind the scenes. Our payments go directly to the logger. We have to, they sign a document that says that they have a contract with the landowner, that the landowner is aware of it and they're following all the standards that, and then all of our other eligibility things, that they make more than half of their income as a logger and so on. We don't track down the paperwork and make them present it, but they know that if we ask for it, they have to show it to us. That seems to have worked out really well. So the landowners are We don't see them. We don't talk to them, but we know that the logger is communicating with them as part of the logging operation on the contract that they had all set up behind the scenes. If there's

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: a problem, we'll hear about

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: it. Yeah. You know, and fortunately, hasn't happened.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: The the one of the just anecdotally, one of the projects that didn't happen, because there were a certain number that were applied for and then some that were eligible, the landowner, they had it all ready to go. They had the paperwork ready to get paid. And the landowner said, Oh, the market dropped. Or one of the owners said, No, we don't wanna do it. So they had to can the whole thing. And that was, it fell apart and that's what happened. Logging is a planning heavy endeavor. And we'll talk about that in a little bit, what we've learned from this. So this is the funding, we've allocated $3.76. This is a little bit dated. So there's roughly an average of 12,000 per practice. And we have a limit for a logger in the pilot program up to, you can apply up to three times and each application cannot exceed $30,000 And some have been close to that, many of them are less than that. And a total of 113 individual practices have been funded. And you can see the bar graph of where the funds are now. But it's just because a lot of jobs are happening right now. They get 75% of the funding when they implement the practices. But we hold back 25% until closeout is done. So we ensure that that closeout is complete. And that seems to work.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Do you do you want? Yeah. So as Dave, we've amount that we've allocated. So we got the million bucks. At least 700,000 is going out the door for practices. Some of that money has other purposes under statute, master logger training, and some of it is just the cost of administering the program. But we anticipate that the remaining unallocated slow camp funds will be awarded to logging contractors before the end of the calendar year and probably well before that. We're just being conservative with that. There's going to be a no cost extension to the grant award, like at the end of the year, to give PLC the time to fully implement the program. And just we get a lot of questions about how do you make sure that the loggers are doing what they say they're going to do? So practices are inspected by licensed foresters that PLC applies, and they go out to some of the larger ones, they randomly select others just to make sure that the standards are being met. And then at the end of of all this, PLC will submit a final report sort of recognizing this was a pilot summarizing, how do we fund the how do we what what do we fund? What were the most impactful practices? What do loggers want? What are the water quality outcomes, successes, challenges, and and feedback, which we'll talk about in a sec? And we'll document all that and share it with with this committee and others legislature as the pilot wraps up. So some of the feedback we've received from loggers is on this slide and the next slide. I'll let you read it. But the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive from loggers, which I think speaks to the great planning that Dave and his team and and PLC did and the solid implementation. So online application was fast and simple. Application requirements were easy. The site visit with the forester because our our licensed PLC's licensed foresters and Dave and his team go out and work with some of the the loggers to understand all as expected. Everything moved quickly. I like this one. So camp funding allowed us to do it right, not just the minimum that's required by the AMPs. And I think Dave wanted us to make sure we we get this comment in. Some of these logging jobs are prohibitively expensive to comply with the AMPs. And so as he showed with that forward, they won't get done if the logger or the landowner has to pay for all the AMP costs and that the timber will stay in the woods and not get out to market. But with this program offsetting the cost of A and P compliance, some of these logging jobs with marketable timber that support the forest economy haven't been able to get done. So that's that's a really important outcome. So what have we learned? Do you wanna come in there?

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: No, I did have a

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: I would just say that also with getting a job done that would not have gotten done, you're also, you're providing the wood to the industry and the working landscape. But you're also in most cases, because this is only for forest management purposes, you're improving the remaining stand. So by being able to do more work in the woods, we're creating a more healthy forest and a more productive forest. So that's also another benefit of getting to those jobs that were somewhat cost prohibitive. Then I

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: wanna just note that in order to stay on schedule, we're already into our break here. Yep. We did get started a little bit late,

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: but go ahead. Thank you, chairman Durfee. So

[Rep. Richard Nelson (Ranking Member)]: I I won't I don't need to elaborate on how successful this program's been, but I get a lot of feedback from all of the state and region, how exceptionally managed the slow camp and successful it was. So my question is, and around the lot of community, this goes to because we're about to start a budget season for twenty fiscal year twenty seven. If you're not getting a report on until the end of this year, you know, I personally would urge that this has probably been the most maybe the only initiative that supported lager's productivity, improved quality of stands. And what do you recommend for this year's budget to for another year with an extended pilot program from FBR? Or Yeah. We touched

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: on that. So we did submit a legislative report last month that I think prompted this testimony, and we have some thoughts on that question. That's a great question. It's an important question. Likely by June 30, almost all, if not all of the remaining funds will be allocated. We said by the end of the year, just to be conservative, but as Dave said, there's a lot of logging going on right now. Applications are coming into PLC. Money's moving out the door. So probably by June 30, that remaining funding to allocate for practices will be either spent or close to it. I think to answer your question, that's the last bullet on our final slide. I'll jump right to that in the interest of time. No, FPR recommends consideration by the legislature of continued or annual funding for slocamp to keep this pilot going, and if possible, it from something that's not a pilot anymore, but just part of an annual program of support to loggers to comply with the AMPs. I think Dave had feedback from loggers, and that's the third from the bottom bullet. If we could move to a two year planning, a longer planning horizon, maybe two years for future phases to accommodate weather and market variability, that example he cited with the landowner who was like, oh, markets stink right now. I'm going to wait. If we had two years, we could probably accommodate some of those situations. And I think the I don't want to be presumptuous, but I think the amount of funding that was allocated was suitable to get going because some of the high administrative costs to start the program. I don't think we need $1,000,000 annually. I think we could deal with a slightly lower figure, but I think we could easily move $500,000 a year out the door for practices and maybe add a little bit on top of that if we continue to work with a service provider for their administrative costs. So I think if things worked out and we're able to get $600,000 or a bit more a year, that could hopefully meet what we're seeing today from lager need and allow us to continue to administer the cost program through a qualified service provider. And, Chair, I think we can stop there, take any other questions in the interest of time. Key takeaways, measurable water quality benefits, sort of meeting the moment, helping loggers stay in the woods even with the climate change driven weather programs. There is strong demand, and that that indicates unmet support. We know that the loggers are committed to AMP compliance, but we also know the costs are significant, hence the need for this program. And I guess last point, it was interesting to note that we had a drought year this past summer, and demand was still high for the program as loggers sought to set themselves up for success in the future. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Happy to take any more questions.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Representative Bartholomew. You said that the funds are should be awarded by the end of the calendar year. How does that work with the fiscal year?

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Yeah. If there's any so what if How do guys have my Yeah. Great question. The funds are encumbered in an agreement between FBR and PLC. And if any of those funds are unspent towards the end of the fiscal year, we'll we'll request that they roll over into the subsequent fiscal year. And we've had good luck getting those requests requests approved. And so I'm optimistic that that request would be approved, particularly because, as I said, they're already encumbered in a in an award from FDR to PLC.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Who has to approve that request? I believe that comes in

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: it's a legislative request. I think we we send it in via the administration to either JFO or one of one of the budget committees here in in the legislature.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Okay. So that would be something that we ultimately have to okay in the budget project.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: In previous years, as I said, when we requested the carryover funds, we've had a good track record in getting those requests approved. Okay.

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: Just quickly, with the state as a client or if they are on state forest lands, are

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: there slow camp jobs getting done there?

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: That's a great question. We've set this up primarily with private forest land jobs in mind. I think if if if we signed a timber sale contract with a logger and the logger requested slow camp support to implement that logging job on state lands, they would they would be eligible. But we haven't had that request happen. And I think we, as the state, when we're overseeing a logging job on state lands, some of that skid trail hardening, log trail hardening is being done by us. It's lands that we own and properties we manage. And so you could argue that some of it is not quite as necessary. So this is a private lands focus, and that's been the requests that have come in and typically been in that area.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: The exception to the private land would be municipal lands, like on a town forest, certainly eligible. But on state land, in our contracts and our standards, we require pretty much, and through our stumping willingness to pay for it ourselves, it gets done at no or little cost to the logger. It's all taken account in the stump because because the loggers bid on the jobs with that in mind, with the expectations in mind. So they should be accounting for that.

[Rep. Brian Cina (Member)]: Would would any of this then work on on the Green Mountain National Forest?

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Similar situation. I I think the Green Mountain National Forest I think the short answer is no. And the Green Mountain National Forests would would do the the AMP compliance work themselves with their engineers and their and their foresters and their rotations.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: Great. You mentioned that there's a report, which is also on our website, and it was submitted per the direction of the legislature when we set this fund up or set the program up, came in in December. David, it's got it may cover more than you've had a chance to go over this morning, and I will invite you if you'd like to come back at some point. And if you think it would be useful for us to know more than you've shared today about what's in that report. We can read the report and I encourage everyone to do that, of course. But if you want to highlight anything that you didn't get a chance to highlight today, we're happy to have you come back.

[Oliver Pearson, Director of Forests, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: Good. Always happy to come in and get into more detail. There's a lot of detail about the practices, the cost per practice, and then some more detail about the process of implementing that we could go into if the committee is interested. Yeah.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: And then we'll look forward to when we get into our budget conversations, if there needs to be that rollover, and if there's a formal recommendation for more funding looking into the future, we'll be interested in talking about that too.

[Dave Wilcox, Watershed Forester, VT Dept. of Forests, Parks & Recreation]: I will be.

[Rep. David Durfee (Chair)]: All right. I think we'll wrap up there. Let's take five minutes, and we'll be