Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: And you've brought a whole crew of people. But I'm so glad we're live.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Welcome back, folks. This is how it starts with the Institutions Committee. It is dated January 28. We are still working on our capital budget. We have Section nine. We're dealing with dam safety. We have line 74. And we also have line 80 with us, which is fish and wildlife. Dam maintenance and safety plans, but they are also working with DEC with that. So we are going to start with Ben Green from Department of Environmental Conservation. On line 74, we just need, there's no budget adjustment. We had a half million bonds last year, half million bonds for FY '27. We we have been looking at dams for a long time and the flow of money. So, it would be a good opportunity to get caught up on where we are with some of our dance safety program, we've done so far in the use of this money but also previous support. Welcome, Ben.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Thank you. Are you okay to share my screen now?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: If you could also identify yourself.

[Speaker 0]: Now we're going to do the Waterbury Dam, and go into depth on that at a separate time. But that's part of you can

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: We have some information today as well if there's time. Okay. So for the record, my name is Benning Green. I'm the section chief of the Dam Safety Program in the Department of Environmental Conservation. I'm joined today by Emily Bird, who is the director of the Water Investment Division. Emily Bird took over for Eric Flat during July. Also joined by a couple of colleagues from Fish and Wildlife. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. Just going to provide a very brief overview of the dam safety program for those who are not familiar. We're located in the water investment division as I indicated, and our mission statement's listed here. It's a little bit different than others in DEC, and our focus is public safety relative to dams. We have two primary responsibilities, but rough roughly fifty fifty, and that's dam regulation and dam ownership. Our current staffing numbers are listed there. It's it's been an exciting time, and our team has grown from the time I've been here eight years ago from two to four, and now we're trying to get to nine. So, our team is growing. Our capacity and capabilities are increasing as well. On the regulatory side, we operate under 10 VSA chapter 43 dams, so we regulate all non federal, non power dams in the state. And on the ownership side, we're directly responsible for 14 dams, including the three Windusky River flood control dams, Waterbury, Wrightsville, and East Barrie, as well as, as able assisting our sister departments, FPR and Fish and Wildlife, with some of their dam work. Here to mainly talk about the capital proposal. Fiscal kind of go back and look at where we updates on fiscal twenty three dollars that we still have that we're working on, fiscal year '26 '27, and also discuss the capital budget adjustment that we've requested.

[Speaker 0]: Can you say that again? You were talking really fast. What about FY '23?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: FY '23 dollars that we're still spending down update from last year, and then where we are with FY '26 and upcoming '27 projects as well as the capital budget adjustment. The on section section nine that you were were prefer at the beginning.

[Speaker 0]: So what what is being shown up there is just f y twenty six point seven.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: And the cap this is just a

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: this is where it is in point. This is just a screenshot of those dollar amounts, 500,000 for '26, 500,000 for '27. This is just meant to help

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: you find where I was referring to these things.

[Speaker 0]: Right. But just you're still expending money from f y three. Right. I'm trying to remember. I know we have put in money and pulled it back out. So you have f y '23, you have f y '24, you have f y $25 at play. And currently f y '26.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: We have f y '23 and then $26.7 in play.

[Speaker 0]: So that's what I need to I need to refresh our memory.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I was gonna go through the next line. There's a updated spreadsheet from the one that we presented last year.

[Speaker 0]: But I Right. But what

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I with the projects and the status.

[Speaker 0]: What I'd like to know is how much money we put aside in f y twenty three, how much money we put aside in f y twenty four, if any, in f y twenty five. What we what we allocated. I know it's important to see what you've spent, but we need to know what our starting point was.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Right. FY twenty three, the starting point was 3.115 on this next slide. I have some handouts. Can

[Speaker 0]: What you've encumbered? I wanna know

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: So that's starting dollar amount. Mostly the that's the total amount. This is not encumbered or remaining. This is that is the total amount.

[Speaker 0]: I want to know what and Scott, maybe you can help us. If you can go back to our spreadsheet for f y twenty twenty three and twenty four, what we authorized, what our starting point was. Because I know we did a lot of work. Mhmm. And there was even money in that flight time too.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: You're back in our committee notes there, there was Troy, Gina and I. I

[Speaker 0]: figured you're looking for that, Scott. Okay. I wanna know where we started. I know I've got it, but it's.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Chair, I see in PAC January 2022 the safety improvements 3,115,000.000.

[Speaker 0]: That was for FY 2324?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Correct. This is the final act after the budget adjustments we've done.

[Speaker 0]: Was that all bonds or was there any catch?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I believe this is all bonds. And '23, you wouldn't have seen a cash section. That's true.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That'll be all bonds.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Let me go look at the next.

[Speaker 0]: The next one will be FY twenty five-twenty six.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: This is twenty one-twenty two, so it will be FY '22, calendar year 2122, fiscal year twenty two and twenty three.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So fiscal year twenty two, fiscal year twenty three, there was 3,100,000.0 plus. And then for FY '24 FY '25.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Looks like, again, safety and hydrology projects, 275,000 bond.

[Speaker 0]: For both years? Correct. No cash?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Looks like originally we had first suggested 500,000, then we reduced that to $2.70 plus.

[Speaker 0]: Because we wanted to make sure the 3.1 got out the door. Yes. So that's our basis.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So so the the 3.1 is here is for two year two fiscal years is what you're saying?

[Speaker 0]: FY '22 and FY

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: '20 So just to understand the process of before. So, like, the next the next fiscal year was very low. Couple 100

[Conor Casey (Member)]: a few 100

[Speaker 0]: Because they weren't getting the 3.1 out

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: the Okay. Is that normal? Like, is that the normal pattern? Just like I'm trying to level set myself Sometimes

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: it is and sometimes

[Speaker 0]: it is. So they went through some changes in terms of how the dams are assessed. So then it changed the priority list. And then it was also getting the construction out the door. Okay. So so

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: it really can be hit or miss with what it there's no consistent dollar amount. It can be very high or very low. Right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So Ben, I know on the bottom line here on this, it says the 3.115. I just wanted the basis of where we appropriated the money in previous capital.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I'm gonna get that handout if it's helpful. Pass it around if I could. Here we go. By seventeen.

[Speaker 0]: So let's

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Prepare to go down line by line and give you update on this. Yeah. So starting at the top, the Wipesville Dam Engineering Assessment project. That project's underway with GEI consultants.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I see.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The field work is planned for the spring and summer to get that project completed so that that project is underway. Then contracted for the full $500,000.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: So

[Speaker 0]: what is the difference on the chart between the green and the white?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The green is updates from last year's chart. We presented the same chart

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yep.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: All last year. And then the things that changed between last year and this year are are in green.

[Speaker 0]: In the column for f y twenty three?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yeah. And any green on the chart is new or updated information from what was there previously. So

[Speaker 0]: for the Wrightsville Dam Yes. So When you say project kickoff completed, what do you mean by project kickoff completed?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It means the project's underway. We're working with GEI actively on the project.

[Speaker 0]: If you put a shovel in the ground?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: No. It's not shovel in the ground type project, but we are doing geotechnical explorations in the spring, drilling test formulas in the dam. We can't do that in winter, unfortunately.

[Speaker 0]: So when do you anticipate going to construction?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: That's that's not a construction project. It's a it's a preparation project. We're evaluating the dam doing geotechnical test warnings in the dam to better understand the condition of the inner workings of the dam, determine what what projects needed next.

[Speaker 0]: So the half million is going towards those test warnings?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Test forings and seepage instability analyses and analyses of the spillway system.

[Speaker 0]: So it's just the analysis of the dam? Yes. There's no construction?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: No construction related to that at this point in time. No. That data gaps. We do not have this information that we currently do not have. And we did our when we did our risk assessment project. These were data gaps that made the damn rank relatively high in the risk assessment. So we're filling these data gaps to understand. So we can update our risk assessment, understand if this is a project that we need to move forward sooner, is this just less of an issue? It's hinging on, expecting this information and understanding what's going on.

[Speaker 0]: So it's more testing.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: And so when after the big flood Yes. At Wrightsville, was up at, what, six inches before it was gonna go over? Yeah. Did it did it show any signs of of failure? No. It didn't. The dam performed quite well, all things considered. One thing about flood loading is it's it's you know, even though it was flood loaded for almost twenty days, which is an extended period of time, that's often not enough time to alter the seepage pattern in the dam. But what we were expecting on a daily basis during that time period, we did not see deficiencies. However, it's sister dam, Waterbury Dam, which was constructed very similarly to, has had a lot of seepage issues. We have a lot of unknowns associated with this dam. So we wanna make sure that we understand those and make sure we're not missing a potential risk factor that exists. Got it. Thank you. Yeah.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So just to understand this better. So when the hazard class, like for example says high, does that mean that there's a high risk that the dam is going to fail? Is it that if the dam failed, that their risk is high?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It's your second one. Dams are classified basically by three classifications in the state of Vermont and nationally. A high hazard dam is one. If the dam were to fail, loss of life is probable and probably result in loss of life. Significant hazard. So dam if a dam were to fail, loss of life is not anticipated, but significant property damage. Yep. Yep. Not to say it's not it's not impossible, but it's not probable. And and a low hazard damage is one. Dam were to fail, essentially, consequently, minimal downstream, makes you minor property damage. Shit. Yep. We're moving on to the next line. We have six comprehensive assessment projects that are underway. Crystal Lake, Kent Pond, Lowell Lake, the two Nat Pond sites, and Colton Pond. These projects are under contract with three separate firms. Each firm doing two all the firms doing two except for one firm doing one of the dams. And that that work is underway as well. That's part of our work workflow and our planning is a comprehensive assessment is the first step. After risk assessment, then we have comprehensive assessment. Then we have design, then we have construction. So these are in the assessment stage. I'm gonna have a slide a little later on that explains that workflow in more detail. One change that was made here was that we moved we had to have some we had $130,000 of this money taken from fiscal year twenty six due to the pace of this project versus a different one. We've moved those dollars into fiscal year twenty three. So that's the adjustment that we've made there, the $1,130,182 now on fiscal year twenty three.

[Speaker 0]: Say that again. You've pulled one thirty from Equifax.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: In our previous years. It was helpful. The next slide or the next page in your packet shows last year's report. We were originally planning to pull $1,000,000 from fiscal year twenty three to fund this and $130,000 from fiscal year twenty six. Due to the pacing of this project versus another one, we've moved. Basically, we've we're gonna take the $11,130,000 out of fiscal year twenty three to complete this project. So that's the best move that we've made. We're gonna do the pacing of the projects.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I don't

[Speaker 0]: didn't follow you on this one. So you've got you had a million in f y twenty three, and you're pulling 130 from f y twenty six.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: This was the last year's presented table. Right. Looks exactly the same. These are the six comprehensive assessments. Last year, had $1,000,000 in fiscal year twenty three dollars and we're going to fund the remainder with fiscal year twenty six at $130,000 Due to the pacing of the project, we're proposing to and to said like, use the 130 of fiscal year twenty three dollars instead. So we're not gonna use fiscal year twenty six, and we move down here that that does the reverse of that.

[Speaker 0]: We found enough money in f y twenty three to cover that 130,000.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Essentially. Which then frees up that 130,000 f y 26 for other projects. Correct.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: So the next line down from the comprehensive assessments is the Noise Pond Dam final design engineering and permitting. This project is under contract with PAR Engineering. It's well underway. Away permitting is nearly nearly complete, and our 60% sign is nearly complete. So far to date, roughly $64,000 have been invoiced, and we're anticipating a sizable invoice soon. This project was budgeted to be paid for fiscal year twenty three, and and that's what they're doing. We're we're hoping to do the project.

[Speaker 0]: So why aren't you putting a shovel in the ground?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Oh, the design will be completed this summer, and we were originally hoping to get funding for next construction season, but that's unfortunately not gonna be available. So it's probably gonna have to wait a year. And during next year's capital request, you will see roughly $1,800,000 project on there for noise Pond dam construction.

[Speaker 0]: So you're anticipating going to construction during f y twenty eight. It will be next year, capital bill, calendar year '27.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It would be following year for construction probably because we have to bid the project and to actually do the construction. But we have we have bid ready documents essentially ready for construction at the end of calendar year '26, end of this year. But in the current world, we would have had the construction money and put out to bid this fall and gone to construction next year. We're gonna be requesting

[Speaker 0]: Next year. Next

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: funds next year and have to do construction the following year.

[Speaker 0]: And how much are you anticipating again for construction now?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Right now, the estimate's 1,800,000.0. Next line is Gail Meadows Dam And Dike comprehensive assessment. This project was performed in in cooperation with Fish and Wildlife who owns the dam through a memorandum of agreement. GZA was a con was the engineer, and that project's largely completed. To date, we've received invoicing for about $42,000 of that and are anticipating the remaining will be invoiced by Fish and Wildlife in the coming months as the accounts are settled. That that project's largely done, and very shortly, that will hopefully be zeroed out or near zeroed out. $199.07 65. No changes there.

[Speaker 0]: So the 157,000 plus is gonna be billed by Fish and Wildlife?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Fish and Wildlife hired the engineer and paid directly. And then through a most memorandum agreement, we help them with backfilling fish and wildlife for that work. It's a way to get that

[Speaker 0]: Well, it's coming out of your budget Correct. For a fish and wildlife dam.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Correct.

[Speaker 0]: It's not connected to their request on line 80. Correct.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The next project down the list is Wrightsville Dam flood operations flexibility study. It's a study we've been talking about for a while and actually was born from the July 23 flood at Wrightsville where we got within 10 inches of a spillway. Shortly after that flood, we wrote to the wrote to the armed report of engineers and requested assistance. We were sort of put on the put program of the public assistance to the state program. And as you may recall, last year when we met in March, it was not clear if we were gonna get into that program or not. And we had set a date of July of if we get into the program, then we're gonna go with the core and we're gonna get 50% match. We're gonna be able turn around three fifty into 700 for the work. Or if we don't get into the core program by July, we're gonna go at it alone. You may recall that. Come July, we've gotten to the program. We got accepted. And the force had indicated the agreement should be available by October and November last fall. Fortunately, we got to October, November last fall with the people at the federal level. There was not adequate funding for their portion of the project. So we have the DEC management who made the decision that we would basically wait the court out till March. And if we don't hear from them by March, then we're gonna go out alone just as we had the previous plan. But the good news is the court actually contacted us a few weeks ago, and they have the money in place, they're ready to move forward. An agreement has to be signed no later than February 13. So that project's gonna be starting very soon, and that is a pay upfront project. So that $350,000 is gonna be paid upfront to the poor. That project will be moving forward.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: When's the date?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: February. We have to have that agreement signed with COR. Everything's in order to meet that date. A really good news. It's a little bit slower than we had really wished, but we're getting there. On the next one on the line is DEC dams instrumentation installation and startup. That project is under design, and that design is due to be completed in March '26, at which point we're gonna turn around and bid out those designs for implementation this construction season. One change noted here is that this was originally a $400,000 budgeted item, and you'll see $3.50 in that column now. And that is because we had an overrun on a on another project that I'll get to in a moment, and we've sort of taken funds that originally allocated for instrumentation to cover that overrun. That's part of the and that's part of the budget adjustment ask. So that project has kind of been reduced to $350,000, but we're hopeful to get the, budget adjustment so we can refill it and be able to complete that project.

[Speaker 0]: I'm curious when you say get the budget budget adjustment. What are you referring to? Because we don't have any budget adjustment for DEC, dam safety projects.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: We have 201,000. Thousand on it. 150,000

[Speaker 0]: That is Waterbury.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: 70 Yeah.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Or 50,000.

[Speaker 0]: Waterbury. There's nothing on line 74 for budget adjustment. We have half 1,000,000.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It's at line 75, DEC Waterbury Dam Penstock project with cost overruns. 150,000. And 75.

[Speaker 0]: So this So part of that that 150,000, does that go to the Waterbury Dam or not?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Part of it is gonna go to yes. But part is going to backfill money that was taken out of the instrumentation project to cover cost overruns of that construction. The part is gonna go to pay for work at Waterbury, part is gonna go hopefully, put $400,000 back into the instrumentation projects when we bid that out this spring.

[Speaker 0]: So up a 150 that's being requested, line 75

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: Waterbury Dam. 50,000 of that is going to make the $3.50 here whole?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes. But 50 has been taken from the the from the instrumentation. Oh. A 150 really is for Waterbury. It's just use the micron instrument, $50,000 for an instrumentation project to keep that project moving. So $150,000 is ultimately for Waterbury. However, we didn't have, in order to keep that project moving, we used the capital funds that were originally allocated for an instrumentation project, keep that project moving. So when we get the 150, hopefully, we'll we'll finish this. We'll sell out the Waterbury project, which will be completed this spring, and then we'll hopefully help them right to backfill instrumentation dollars.

[Speaker 0]: But you said the instrumentation should be at 400,000, not 300. Right.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Excuse me.

[Speaker 0]: My question is, is a 150,000 that's being asked in budget adjustment for the Sudbury Dam? Correct. So to make the instrument to make this line whole, the instrumentation line whole, you're pulling 50 from that new 150.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes. But my money was pulled from instrumentation to work on water bearing. So we're essentially putting it back so it's the same. Already pulled it. Yeah. It's already

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: They took it from the facility to put the water bearing, and now they're gonna take the water bearing money, put it back in. This moved to 50, and borrowed 50 and paid back 50.

[Speaker 0]: Well, that's what I'm saying, that there's 150 total for water.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Right. The more

[Speaker 0]: 50 is gonna be used to backfill.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: They're just

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: gonna use a backfill that was already spent, and then 100 and cover the additional things that go above the 50. So $150,000 at Waterbury. Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: And, Owen? Also just support Ben on this one? The exact costs of how those are going to settle are still unknown because the work is still underway and we're doing the final billing and invoicing under the Tunnel and Penstock project. So we wanted to be conservative to make sure that we're able to cover anticipated overruns. We already know that there's $50,000 in overruns, that there's likely to be more. And Ben will get into it in a slide coming on some of the complications that were encountered.

[Speaker 0]: For the Waterbury Dam. For the Waterbury Dam.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Yep.

[Speaker 0]: I was having a hard time following this one, but okay. So I said committees don't

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: know

[Speaker 0]: and understand it. Do members of the committee understand this or am I the only one? So

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: we had the 400,000. This is the previous year's one that we presented last year.

[Speaker 0]: 400.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Thousand was in the instrumentation project. So now we have 350 in the instrumentation project. And you'll see down here a requested budget adjustment, water, bury, dam, tunnel, and pencil. Let's see, you've brought the 50 from there down to here. We have a request, then it gets a budget adjustment request.

[Speaker 0]: Right, so I'm just saying of the 150 that's here on our spreadsheet, 50 of that is going to backfill to make 400,000.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes.

[Speaker 0]: That's what I'm saying. And the 100,000 that's left is going to stay with the Waterbury Dam.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Correct?

[Speaker 0]: That's what I was thinking from the get go.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Apologies. Well, I guess that was my question. I'm not really following it either in that I don't see the 400,000 spreadsheet. Because it's on the

[Speaker 0]: old It's on the old year. It's FYI twenty three.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The old is in the next page. Previous year is the next page. Like, April from the previous year. Oh, it's fine. '15 like this. And then the updated one that's the same.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Okay. There you go.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: So they

[Speaker 0]: pulled 50,000 from that 400. So of the 150 that's being asked for Waterbury Dam, a 100 of that's for the Waterbury Dam, 50 thousand's to backfill that $3.50.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Kevin says it's fungible. He just said that.

[Speaker 0]: That's most money around. Yeah.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The next project on our list is the silver Silver Lake Dam final design permitting and construction project. That project is currently an RFP, and this is part of that shift comes into place is fiscal year twenty three is only using a couple thousand dollars of available money, and then the majority of that is being funded out of the fiscal year $26. And that will hopefully that's right now in going through final legal reviews with that RFP out to bid. So, hopefully, that will be out to bid next few weeks. The next two lines are fiscal year twenty seven projects, and we have allocated or planned Kent Pond Dam final design and Low Lake Dam final design for 250,000 each. It's kinda what the patients on the project will be tracking that. If we have changes from those projects, we can certainly look at committee, but that's what we have there now. And then the next line down is the requested budget adjustment Waterbury Dam Tunnel and Pemstock project. And we've reviewed this already, but this has the additional asset for the 150 and to backfill the, instrumentation project and complete the Waterbury Dam Tunnel and Pentstock project. I have a a slide coming up that will provide additional information about that. And then the final line, which is new excuse me, $35,000, which is allocated to DEC staff services, which is spent on agency facilities, which is a a program within water investment division that's, in a way, like an internal engineering group within DEC. And they have helped us administer some construction projects this year, including, like, kind of high dam, then some other capital eligible work. And so that that shows up in fiscal twenty three.

[Speaker 0]: So this is paying for staff that's doing the engineering work to support all of these other dams?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Not all of them, but, yeah, some of them. Some of them assist the work. And they're they're their own separate program from us, and they also do work for Fish and Wildlife and other A and R.

[Speaker 0]: Do do the staff members who are working on providing the engineering and documents for this, are they working on other items that are not funded through the capital bill? Other projects?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: They work on a wide variety of projects. Don't know if I can speak to everything they work on.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: They work on a wide variety of projects across multiple departments in A and R. And most of the projects, I believe, are capital funded, but there are also other funding sources that the departments draw down. So they're an in house engineering group that can do direct capital engineering and construction at the site.

[Speaker 0]: So this is a new add on.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Has the capital bill paid for staff before to do engineering work? Only in very narrow circumstances where we have engineers on staff that are directly working on design and implementation of capital projects. And that comes generally out of savings versus outsourcing to consultant engineers to do that same body of work. So it can vary narrow eligibility to make sure that they're doing direct work on project implementation.

[Speaker 0]: So this staff services and DEC as narrow as what you just explained for this 35,000? Because bonded dollars cannot be used to pay staff. Yes. But it's connected to a project. So that's the nexus, but we have to make sure it's very, very narrow and that those staff members are not being used for other items within the department or agencies, and we're supporting their salary through the capital bill.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: The only cases where their time is coded to capital funds is when they're doing direct work on a capital funded project and not generally to cover salary for dependent staff.

[Speaker 0]: Those bonded dollars cannot be used for operating expenses or for paying staff unless it's a real narrow, they're doing the engineering for those specific capital projects. So this is a new topic for a lot of members here in the team.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah, don't think I totally understand. So are they like limited service positions?

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: No, They're permanent positions. It's a team called Agency Facilities Engineering. They've been around for decades, as far as I know, and it's a team of in house engineers and technicians. They do survey design and construction oversight work directly on behalf of A and R facilities. So they do a lot of work for city parks, for fish and wildlife boat launch areas, for the dams that DEC owns. And they really are an in house engineering consultant group that we're able to tap into their capacity and expertise to move a lot of projects through the agency.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: So they're contractors, though, right? They're classified employees?

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: They are classified employees. Oh, okay. I apologize for saying in house consulting because that was probably not the right choice of words. Are classified A and R employees who are doing direct engineering support for implementation projects. So they'll work on dams. They do quite a bit of work on boat launch programs, also state parks, water, drinking water and wastewater infrastructure, they do quite a bit of work on that. And they also support some of the work for our sibling departments to meet the three acre storm water permit for firewoods as well. Direct engineering on specific projects, and they code their time accordingly. We don't need

[Speaker 0]: it. I

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: trust you, but $35,000 for engineers is peanuts. How many people are we talking about?

[Speaker 0]: This is specific for dams. I

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: understand that, but it must be very specific activity within the engineering, because $35,000 worth of effort is nothing when you're paying for engineering.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: That's correct. So that 35 ks is roughly what we anticipate that team will do to support the dam safety program infrastructure projects. Over the last year, example, they had a pretty big role to play with the Lake Carmai dam project construction. And so that's an example. They quoted, I think, about 18 ks of their time to support that project specifically.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: It's not all their time, or they're specific to specific projects. So it could be, like, say, week's worth of work done.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I I hear you. It's it's it's so small that I must be very focused.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So this is new. We haven't seen this before. You're putting it towards f y 23 work. So where did the money come from before? Through the general fund?

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: So I believe that the time that agency facilities has supported projects has been accounted for in the past, but this is new for us to pull it out as its own line item in our spending plan for these dollars, but we wanted to make sure that we were transparent about those dollars and that the bottom line of Ben's spreadsheet adds up to the total appropriated amounts. Not too good coincidence.

[Speaker 0]: 35,000. I'm just wondering. We haven't seen this before. We've seen it in BGS when we used to pick up the engineering costs, when it used to be picked up by general fund. When the general fund got in trouble, we ended up picking that up. Now the money's gone back to general fund. And I'm just wondering with this. This has popped up. I know it's 35,000. You want to be transparent, but I'm wondering where the dollars taken out of your general fund operating budgets prior to this.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: My understanding, and I am relatively new taking over some of this support work for Eric Blatt, my understanding is that the agency facilities team, their staff time is coded to a number of different funding sources. But historically, whenever they are doing work directly at a capital bill supported project that there has been some allocation to their time to support that work and would be happy to do some more follow-up if there's more questions around that. But we certainly understand the capital eligibility and the need for there to be a direct connection to specific projects that are under engineering and construction.

[Speaker 0]: And the 35,000 just makes it equal to 3,115,000.000. So a little bit too much of a coincidence for me. And I just kind of wonder about it. If it's a shift shift to the capital bill, if we're gonna see this in other projects in DEC that we haven't seen. Just wondering if it's pushed to the capital bill versus the general fund operating budgets of respective departments. Brian?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: This seems akin to something we did a year ago, rural fire suppression, but I cannot remember the outcome.

[Speaker 0]: They pay for the engineering costs upstairs. We're in a probes, wherever the committee is now.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Okay. So we pay

[Speaker 0]: the ambassadors. We pay for the actual infrastructure and parts, but the engineering comes out of general fund. Capital dollars, you have to be really careful that you're not paying staff. Unless And that's

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: what I couldn't remember is if it got project. Yeah. I believe there was a position in, and I could not remember if it got pulled out because we talked about it at this table. But I can't.

[Speaker 0]: It was the trihydrinase. Yeah.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And that was like the veterans' home, and they wanted a position for the farming they were going to do. There was a project. They wanted it for a position, and they pulled that as well.

[Speaker 0]: We just have to be careful.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Once you open that can of worms. James?

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: If it would be preferred, we could also We pulled that out for tracking purposes, but all of those scholars will go to support other projects in the pipeline. And so it could be embedded within the project costs as well. It's not so much a change in practice and pushing more pressure onto the capital bill. It was just how we are trying to present it to make sure we're transparent about that. James

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: and Kevin.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So what I'm hearing you say, I have no way of knowing this update, but what I'm hearing you say is that the 35,000 has always been built in this way, it's just always been incorporated into the cost of whatever project, say the Wrightville Dam or whatever, just built into the thing and now you're making an attempt to separate it out to show it for transparency. Again, I don't know if this is true or not, I'm just like, is that what I'm hearing you say? Okay. And you have an ability to kind of show that to us in some way, you're a high level name?

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Yep. The agency facilities team, when they do their time sheets, they go to specific projects. And so we can't go back and itemize how those dollars are being used at the specific project level.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: And I also want to say that I wasn't saying that's not how it's happening. Just wanted to clarify what I was hearing. Thank you.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Thank for the opportunity to clarify. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I don't know whether this is helpful, but I can understand if there was a very specialized piece of equipment that Vermont does not have within your engineering group, and these people supply a particular test with that equipment, and it's $2,000 for each test times 17 tests, that would make sense for $35,000 Because it's necessary for the assessment, all these different assessments, and you don't have the ability, so you have to pay for it. It sounds like that's the kind of thing it is, but I don't know. I'm wondering if that helps.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Yeah, there's a whole range of engineering needs related to supporting the dams that we own and operate, And some of those engineering work and services can be provided in house, and some of it needs to be outsourced. So that's why you'll see in some cases, like for example, the assessments, those are outsourced to external engineering consultants. And then some of the work, especially when it involves doing project design and construction oversight, our agency facilities team can support directly without us outsourcing to external engineering consultants. And so it's a mix project by project what services they can provide. But it has proven to be, I think, a pretty efficient partnership and saves us some resources overall. But happy to do some more follow-up on this if there's concerns or questions. And apologies for any confusion that this may have raised.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I can just say that as our program, we use them pretty sparingly. Their specialty is not damp safety particularly. They do have engineering skills that at times are very helpful and useful for us. We use them quite sparingly. But we do use them on when we can and when it makes sense and when their schedules line up with our projects and their skill set lines up with what we need, is

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: yeah. Maybe simply seeing the definition of the code, why they charge that particular Maybe that would help us understand.

[Speaker 0]: This is paying salaries for state employees, and it is connected to the time that they spend on these particular dam projects. It's paying the salaries.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: So salary and also they have specialized survey equipment that sometimes is also brought to the projects.

[Speaker 0]: It's kind of fun. 35,000 brings it equal to three point one hundred and fifteen thousand. It's not 30,000 or 40,000. Just comment.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Yeah. It might be more of a discussion while we get into it, but isn't it just cleaner to do it with cash? Just removing a lot of cash anyways?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Instead of a $100. Yeah. Because cash can be used for that. Dollars 100, you have to be careful.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: We'll be doing some shuffling anyways, yeah. That

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: concludes review of the spreadsheet. The next couple slides I have the next slide is just to review that requested budget adjustment on line seventy five to a hundred and fifty thousand exactly we're doing with that. As I mentioned before, the project is the Water Brewery dam tunnel and penstock project. The budget for that project is approximately 1,800,000.0. That includes engineering and contractors. And the budget adjustment is a $150,000. I've already talked about how that how that's come to be. But just to give you a sense for some of the cost overruns, why fall drought results in a delay of this project. Usually, the dry weather is a great time to be doing dam projects. But unfortunately, on this project, since we're working on the tunnel and penstocks, it normally conveys water from the reservoir to the downstream channel. We had to shut the head gate and have that be dry, so we have to move water around the site a different way. And so we have to push water through our spillway, which is a higher elevation. So during the drought, we actually had to raise the reservoir level. So while every other pond in the state was going down, Waterbury, unfortunately, was slowly going up, and that delayed us. That put us into, unfortunately, into a very snowy and cold December doing a lot of this work. Were supposed to be out of there well before, and we were hoping for a mild December, and that, unfortunately, didn't didn't come to a pass. So we had costs associated with snow and ice removal. Keep in mind, this project was cleaning the interior of our penthocks and tunnels. So we have clean water getting pumped in and wastewater being pumped out. We're separating it in frac tanks out in the yard, and that's what that picture kind of shows. So we have a lot of water and very cold conditions, so it was a lot of hardships related to that. We had costs associated with heating blankets and trying to keep water lines clear and unfrozen. It slowed production. Even right now, we're unable to completely unfreeze our tanks. So while they're supposed to be off-site by now as the cleaning got completed recently, they're still on-site and are gonna probably be there till spring when they we can do kind of the final cleanup and get them off-site.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Are you paying

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: rent on those? We're not not thankfully paying rent. Okay. Good. But they are still there, and they still need to be managed. Water and wastewater needs to be managed and needs to be getting off-site. We we we negotiated that out, but we can't negotiate out everything, unfortunately. Mhmm. Additional item additional inspection during the inspection of the penstocks, which is really the and tunnels, which is really the most important element of the whole project. That's why we cleaned them, to do a thorough inspection, thorough evaluation of this infrastructure. It's over 80 years old. We found some unexpected conditions in the penstocks. It extended the duration. Every time we enter the penstock, it's through a confined space entry, so there's costs associated with that. We had do some additional preparation of the interior of the penstocks and testing of the welds that hold the penstocks together. There's a very expected configuration for the welds on a penstock of that era, and these were actually different and unexpected. So we had to spend some we need to spend some additional money on preparation and testing of those welds. And then lastly, part of this project as well was servicing our actuators on two of our valves. The actuators are actually the mechanisms that operate the valves. These have not been serviced since original installation in 1985, They're in logistically difficult locations. When we got them off and got them shipped out to the Midwest where they were rebuilt, it took a little bit more than we initially hoped to do the work that was needed on those, and there's no one to go. Those were the reason for the

[Speaker 0]: So would the crossover runs all come in at about 100,000?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: 150 is what we have budgeted. We have the associated with the I think we have, like, 25 associated with winter conditions right now. We're waiting for the updated information on the inspection work. Then one of the actuators used all of the budget. So I don't have that number on top of my head, but the other actuator is going to need additional funds. We think 150 will cover it. We have some conservatism there because we don't have all the numbers.

[Speaker 0]: We're using 50,000 of that to backfill the instrumentation. So you're left with a 100

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yeah. To complete those items.

[Speaker 0]: That was my question. Is a 100 gonna cover the cost of the loans?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes. Hopefully, a 100 will cover. And, hopefully, we're conservative, and there's gonna be a little bit left over. But we're still waiting for some of the numbers to come in, so I don't I can't give you a hard term number to what it is. The project's still ongoing, and it's not gonna be completed till the spring.

[Speaker 0]: So it could come in at more than 100?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yes. Come in at more than 100, but I don't believe it's gonna come in more than a 150. I think that's a safe number.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. I I feel like I'm going around in circles here. Help me, committee. I'm missing something.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The hundred fifty?

[Speaker 0]: Fifty is going to go of the 150, 50 is gonna be back going to the instrumentation project. So that leaves a 100,000 for these cost overruns. And my question was, is a 100,000 going to cover these cost overruns for the Waterbury Dam?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: They bought the 50

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: put to order about it.

[Speaker 0]: But they so you're minus 50.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yeah. So $100,000 is gonna be enough to cover the rest of it.

[Speaker 0]: Thousand gonna cover the cost overruns.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It absolutely should. There's some conservatism there, and hopefully there'll be some left over. But we don't have all the numbers right now to show you the exact number.

[Speaker 0]: So I was focused on a 100,000.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Understood. Just on a fun note, I learned what a penstock is today. AI. And I was gonna ask you, and I was like, what in God's name is a penstock?

[Speaker 0]: So we're gonna have a whole presentation at some point next week or some point on the Waterbury Dam. Because this has been a long process over the last five years. It really involves the Army Corps of Engineer. The bulk of the money is coming from the Army Corps, but we've had to put state monies as well, particularly for the design, the study, and the design documents.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: That's for the spillway project, which is related but different than this project. It's a very large facility. It's the third largest dam in the state, the largest state owned dam, 187 foot tall, over 2,000 feet long. It's a big facility, and it's a lot of fun out there. I'm sorry.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Bennington, could you remind me, we were talking about last year, what's the contract with Green Mountain Power like there? It seemed like there was a long standing deal that they sort of benefit, but aren't necessarily on the hook for the cost of maintaining. It's In basic Yeah. Remind me what I Correct.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: In basic terms, they owned the property where the dam site is located prior to construction. And so there, they essentially procured water rights in perpetuity by donating the property to the state so the project could be built. So they had a very favorable deal.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: It's a good deal.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Guess they had to give up a pretty desirable real estate for hydro project, but they it's a good deal for them, I would say. Yeah. This next slide is just to help you envision how our, dam safety program workflow is for dam rehabilitation projects. We started with that portfolio risk assessment, which we finished back in 2024 of 18 high and significant hazard dams that passed our priority list by risk of the dams that we need to be working on. The next step after that is comprehensive assessment. That is a detailed study of the dam that includes engineering study, hydrology, hydraulics, geotechnical, structural engineering, and most importantly, kind of develops alternatives to bring the dam into compliance with with upcoming rules and basically increase the service life of the dam. And then from the comprehensive assessment, ultimately, we just we select an alternative to move forward to final design and permitting. And, again, the projects are in these steps are listed below. Move to final design and permitting. We have noise pond dam in that step and a couple of point RFPs shortly on that. And then next, we move to rehabilitation construction and actually make those changes in the field. And, that dam sort of goes, for lack of a better term, back to the bottom of the list, and we continue to move forward. So our goal is to have projects in each one of these buckets every single year, at least one hopefully in rehabilitation construction. And Noispond Dam is the next large rehabilitation project. That's the $1,800,000 that will be asked for in the future. And then our goal is to have Silver Lake next and then Troy Gale Meadows after that. And then in time, Kent Pond and Lowell Lake will move to final design and then we'll get other projects that are on from the risk assessment and move both to comprehensive. In a way, as you can see, there's almost eight or nine projects in comprehensive assessment. Those are all gonna be lined up for design and construction. So in a way, we can kinda move these through. Ideally, move this through so we have enough construction money each year to be addressing one project. It's almost a ten year plan right here, just as what you're seeing. So Cool.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Who does the work?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is it is it a low is it a Vermont company? Engineering work? Well, the and the both.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yep. The construction work is on on most of these smaller dams is usually a Vermont based contractor. The engineering work, it it depends. We do contract both with Vermont based firms and ones that that that are more regional as well. Kinda depends on the flex of the project and kinda what the strengths of the individual firms are. Thanks, Ben. So next slide is just to discuss briefly some work in force and continuous process improvements. Downloads that we do have kind of pushing these projects along is the time and resources that we spend moving multiple very similar contracts through the whole process of RFP, contractor selection, the contract negotiations, and execution. We also have challenges moving engineering contracts, particularly through legal, because it's often legal issues associated with liability, insurance, and other issues that require quite a bit of back and forth between various legal teams and the contractor. So one couple opportunities that we have is we're in the process right now. We're very close to prey on RFP for dam specific engineer retaining contracts, retainer contracts. This has been something we've been trying to figure out for a while, and we're very close to having this in place. Basically, it will allow us to preselect qualified engineers and then basically execute a simple purchase order to quickly and efficiently get them onto the project because the contract and legal language and and other term issues will only have to be negotiated at the time of the retainer, so once every four years. So it'll allow us to have a pool of multiple skilled engineers that we can much more quickly move from concept to project with. So that that's exciting. Hopefully, that RFP will be going out very soon. That's in final legal review. And then other otherwise, we also have our d f DSP staffing as we we continue to work staff up to the total of nine. We're at seven right now. We have an open engineering position and opening management position, but we're our our capabilities are are increasing with that.

[Speaker 0]: And for that increase in staffing, was is that being recommended in the f y twenty seven state budget, or is that previous support?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: That's previous. That's already here.

[Speaker 0]: It's already here.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: We have those two positions. We've tried to hire an engineer for quite a while, just have difficulty filling engineer positions that are not entry level. And then the other is a project manager position who we actually we I probably brought project manager on board this time or a little later than this time last year. Actually, got some overlap with Eric. It was really great. And then, unfortunately, he resigned recently to take his dream job over in Lincoln, New Hampshire. So we're back to trying to fill that position.

[Speaker 0]: So what's difficult about hiring engineers?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It's challenging to compete with consulting engineers in terms of flexibility they can offer and salary and benefits they can offer compared to what we can't state. We've been seeing we've been losing out to firms that provide sizable signing bonuses and benefits. And I think as a whole, post COVID, we've seen the community the consultant engineering community really upped their game as to what they allow and what they what they're paying and what they're what benefits they're getting. And fortunately, it widened the gap.

[Speaker 0]: The state can't compete.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It's difficult to compete to find

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: There are salaries.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Suppliers we can offer and the flexibility we can offer.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: But we have no paved roads and no housing and stuff, so we have those things to sell.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: That concludes portion of the presentation. I know some other gentlemen need to go as well. We did have some slides on waterburry. If you guys care to continue

[Speaker 0]: I'd kind of do all of Waterburry on its own, because that's a whole different piece. The the photos are really

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: helpful, though. To see the inside of it is really kinda cool. It's fascinating.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: How big the how big the pipes

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: and stuff are. You know,

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: the doorway that you fixed, and it's really it's really cool.

[Speaker 0]: Because we this committee, it was a number of years ago, got a real in-depth review of the Waterbury ban.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: It's the way project.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I I would say in the last I'm sorry.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Oh, yeah. Go ahead.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I was gonna offer in the last calendar year, progress has somewhat slowed on that project. What we have to report is not particularly expansive with the core's head with the uncertainty of the core. Their pace on that project slowed a little bit as they lost a lot of staff. And so yeah. I mean, certainly, there's been progress made since last year, but it's not as grand as as other years.

[Speaker 0]: And why did they lose so much staff? Was it just

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I think they were offered they were downsizing. They were offered a retirement program, and they lost a tremendous amount of their capacity. So they had a hard time backfilling.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Ben, first off, thanks very much for helping me communicate some of this language to my constituents over the summer. That was very helpful. And I think, you know, people in flood impacted communities are really grateful for the work you guys are doing. And it's good to hear from the department. I think just kind of a tangent question and it might not be a fair one, but we got three different departments owning dams under A and R, which seems to create different levels of bureaucracy. What's the rationale for that? I'm sure I know they have different purposes and everything, but would it just be easier to have it all under one umbrella?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I think

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I think this is a sensitive subject maybe.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Answering I guess I can answer the question from where I stand at my level. There's certainly some challenge. I think the probably the original reason is because like many of the forest parks and recreation owned dams are at state parks and many of the fish and wildlife dams are associated with wildlife management areas and, other resources like that. And then DEC, ultimately, we have the flood control dams. Yeah. But we do own a we own one of our dams, Noise Pond Dam is at Sam Lodge State Park. So it's not entirely clear why it was done that way. I think as an agency, recognize particularly with upcoming dam safety rules, increasing requirements on dams and being combined to all three of largest single dam owners in the state of real need to provide better pool resources and and kind of more efficient planning for our for our dams. And I think we've had a few fits and starts on kinda how to do that before working through it, but we're we're not quite there yet. So I I think we we hear what you're saying. We don't disagree, and we're trying to attack the problem as we can as we're able. You guys have a different opinion

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: on that.

[Speaker 0]: That's really a transition to fish and wildlife. So I don't know if both of you wanna come up or one of you, but I know Dee sees also sort of in the mix here with Fish and Wildlife on these dams or not?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Therein lies some of the challenges of when we have money available and capacity available, we assist sister departments. We don't always have that capability. So sometimes they go at it alone. Sometimes we assist them. Gail Melo is a great example. That project, the Missouri spillway nearly failed the dam during July 23 flood. A staff member of mine actually worked with agency facilities. They surveyed the spillway and did an emergency design and implemented it with a contractor that Fish and Wildlife hired. And then Fish and Wildlife moved on to the comprehensive assessment project, which we helped them fund. And now they're moving on to design. We're sort of helping them in and out kind of as available and as money's available and staffing resources are available.

[Speaker 0]: It moves up between the two.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: There's formal way not that this is done across the board, amount of assistance we're able to provide is variable on a bunch of factors.

[Speaker 0]: Let's transition to fish and wildlife. Hope both of you want to hop. This is line 80 on the spreadsheet. This is a new request. It's 200,000 in cash for development of down maintenance and safety for those dams that are owned by Fish and Water. Whomever wants to come up, I might even go to Mike's last name. I'm gonna front Mike.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: For the record, my name is Tim Appleton. I'm the Public Lands Section Chief in the Lands and Habitat Program in the Wildlife Division, Fish and Wildlife Department, Agency of Natural Resources. Thanks for the opportunity to be here to talk about line item number 80 in the capital adjustment. And I'm here to take the committee's questions and try to attempt to provide some clarity on some of the questions that have already been posed.

[Speaker 0]: You probably got scared. What's the $200,000 proposed to be used for?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. So we're hoping to acquire the $200,000 to help the Department of Fish and Wildlife with the dams that we own, which is approximately about 76 dams. And to with the dam safety rule when it was enacted, it's at one sixty one, was enacted in 2018, that brought to light some heightened awareness of our responsibilities as a dam owner. And so we began to assess our responsibilities and and really come to grips with what that means. And and one of them well, there's several of them. One aspect was to begin to adjust the backlog of maintenance issues that we have on all of our dams and also to meet the requirement of each dam having an operations and maintenance plan, an o and m plan is what we refer to it. And and lastly, for those dams that have been determined through inspection reports to be have a a hazard rating of either high or significant, which in terms means that there's if those dams fail, there's significant implications to life and property.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Those

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: would require development of what we refer to as an EAP or an emergency action plan. We from Fish and Wildlife, we we do not we're not up to to current standards on development of those types of plans. So we're hoping now 200,000 would would allow us to hire a consultant to get us up to speed and be in compliance. Phase two of act 161 will take place on July 1, which is more of the regulatory aspect of the act. And so we're trying to demonstrate a good faith effort as a department to to come into compliance with act one sixty.

[Speaker 0]: So the 200,000 is to go towards the emergency action plan?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes. To the extent that we can cover them. If there's anything beyond that, we will direct it to the operations and maintenance.

[Speaker 0]: You'll direct it to operation and main

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Operation and maintenance plans, o and m plans. So each dam is required to have an operations and maintenance plan.

[Speaker 0]: So have you been doing that for each dam?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We have not, unfortunately.

[Speaker 0]: So the 200,000 would cover you doing an emergency action plan. If there's won't be. And if there's money left over from that, you would do the operation and man maintenance plan.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Right. I think the highest priority would be to establish the the plans for our significant and high hazard dams to get those emergency action plans.

[Speaker 0]: Right. You would do that for your significant and high hazard. And if there's any money left over of the 200,000 after you've done the EAPs, then it would go to the O and M.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Correct.

[Speaker 0]: And if there isn't any money left over, then what's the plan for O and M plans?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It's unsure at this time. We'll just have to keep advocating to find funds either through capital appropriation or other means to adjust our our needs as a dam owner.

[Speaker 0]: So it could be future requests for the cap?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Correct. Sorry? You

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: said the 200

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: k was at least in part, or can you articulate how much of that is for this consultant? And do you have a contract in place for a consultant?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: No. This is a relatively new opportunity for us. So haven't done any planning or any didn't do any work ahead of time because we weren't sure we were gonna So what's the consultant for? The consultant would actually develop the plans. Create a plan for each individual dam. And based on, like, the regulations that they have to follow. Correct. And we would work with Yeah. And dam safety program to make sure we incorporate all the elements that are required in each plan. Okay. Great.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So when the act was implemented, we didn't give you any money. That's what I'm gonna We gave you a requirement, but no funding to accomplish it.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Essentially correct. Yeah. I mean, I I can elaborate on my perspective as an employee for three decades on how we got to this point if you're interested. Sure.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: You know what? Fair.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I mean, the department is primarily comprised of of biologists, and we have, you know, expertise toward managing wildlife and fisheries habitats and and species. So we we also own a variety of dams both for fisheries purposes and for wildlife purposes that have are a manifestation of historic decisions and and programs. For better or worse, a lot of our required Either we didn't understand our obligations as a damn owner, and it wasn't until the enactment of the Dam Safety Rule in 2018 that all of a sudden we had an moment, And we realized, oh my gosh, we're really behind. We got to up the ante and step up to our responsibilities as a dam owner. And so working with the Dam Safety Program, we've determined which dams have a certain hazard rating, we're trying to deal with those first and then also with maintenance. To this, as we speak, staff are implementing maintenance work on our on our dams now to just get the ball rolling and and meet our obligations. So things like cutting back trees and brushing, mowing of the dam itself and the dam footprint and 15 feet beyond that. Any kind of riprap, erosion control, things that we need that we've neglected. So we're actually starting to do that with the funds that we have. But we don't have enough capacity to develop the plants that are required under the dam safety rule. We're hoping to hence, our application for the 200 k.

[Speaker 0]: So the Fish and Wildlife budget, a lot of your budget, you don't give very much general fund operating money. A lot of your operating money comes through licensing. Is that pretty accurate?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. And I have to be careful because I don't have I'm not one to speak on the entire budget. But yes, in a general sense, yes.

[Speaker 0]: So when we're putting together our general fund budget, and yes, this is a requirement, Quite often because we don't wanna increase taxes and we don't wanna increase our budgets, we ask departments to absorb these costs within their current appropriations. That happens a lot because there's a constant pressure. We don't wanna increase staffing. We don't wanna increase the state employees because it's gonna cost too much money in the budget. We don't wanna raise taxes or keep it at a minimum, but we also need to provide the services. So quite often in the whole budgeting scheme, we ask the department to absorb those costs within their operating costs. So I'm just putting that out on the table because that happens a lot in the budgeting because we don't have money to go around. So we ask the departments or agencies to move money around and absorb that within your operating costs. So now this has really raised it's come up to the surface Mhmm. That you really need to develop a plan in terms of how you're gonna address your Yeah. Shawn?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Is there some scale with the 76, you know, dams? Are they able to kinda like do they go see everyone, the consultant, or do they see pictures, or do they just kinda come in and how how does that work? Like, because it's a lot of dams. You know, it's 76 places around the state. I mean, that's that's a couple weeks just driving around and seeing them all. Anyway

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. We would have to probably have some discussions internally about what realistically we can accomplish with the 200 k Right. And set that consultant on a a subset of those dams

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Got it.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: In an effort to try to just chip away into the future.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: So go to the high ones first. Go go deal with the hardest ones first and, you know, the hot the the ones that the the emergency it doesn't seem like you're gonna get to the LNP

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: with 200 k. Correct. And and that's why we're putting a focus on the emergency action plans. Yeah. The ones that are high and significant hazard. Those that rep if they fail, would represent an impact to either life or property. And I I also saw that they got rid

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: of some dams this past year. Right?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. A good point.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank you. Pictures of, like, they got rid of, like, three

[Conor Casey (Member)]: or four of them.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes. Correct. And and so that that is we work with a multitude of partners to help identify and remove dams. And we're also internally working on a a document, a justification document to help reduce our overall burden of just dam ownership. There's a variety of dams out there that we know are are not providing any function. But but, again, that takes money. And the formal process that we have to go through with getting a design, an approved design, and going through the formal process of a dam order in order to actually remove that dam and get it off the the Vermont dam inventory is the plural list of dams statewide. So yes, we recognize that, and we're gonna try to work simultaneously to remove those dams, as many as we can. Alright. Thanks.

[Speaker 0]: James and then Kevin.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: At a very basic, very basic level, just a reminder from last year, most of these dams are pretty small and they're old. Not many new.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I mean, there are many that are small and old.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Is there very many that are less than 20 years old, or most of them older than that?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Many of them, I would say, were developed in the 50s and 60s. The department at that point in time were developing a lot of dams for increased angler opportunities where dams were constructed for trout fishing. Many of them to some degree of success. Many many of them ended up being too warm to support trout. What? Warm. One, the the water was too warm to sustain trout over the course of time even though there are what we refer to as put and take. So we put them in for the immediate satisfaction of the anglers. They can catch them in the spring before the summertime temperatures get too high, but most of them are consistent warm water fish species. And then on the flip side of that, we have a lot of dams that are associated with things like Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area where we have waterfowl production zones. So the goal was to maintain and enhance waterfowl habitat. So we have a variety of dams that serve that function.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you. Kevin?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That answered my question. Thank you. Hope

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: you sound good today.

[Speaker 0]: So for the emergency action plan, have you already I just want clarity here. Have you already done an assessment to figure out which of your dams are high and which are significant?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. We have roughly 12 dams, 12 to 13 dams that are rated either high or significant hazard. It gets confusing because there's another condition there's a physical condition rating, and then there's a hazard rating. Yeah. So the physical condition is the actual the actual physical description of the condition of the dam versus the hazard rating, which is more you know, has implications again for for the potential, you know, implications for, you know, life and and and property.

[Speaker 0]: So for the EAPs, are you targeting those 12 high or significant, or are you just targeting the high?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I would say as many high is probably the top order of our priority. So we would start there and then move to significant and then down the list as we go as a as a more matter of priority.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Do

[Speaker 0]: you want to weigh in at all?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: No, I was just here

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: to support if there were any questions

[Mike Wutrowski (Administrative Coordinator, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: that Tim couldn't answer. I don't need to talk.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: Need Share.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I don't think

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: you did fabulous.

[Speaker 0]: That's my calling. You don't share, right?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: No, I

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: was clear. Thank you.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I appreciate it. Really helpful.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Can I just ask you a curious question? A lot of why? The why is curious. It's not really related to the capital. Controversial is this topic of your GAM removal, specifically, for folks who use them for whatever trout fishing waterfowl? Like,

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: are there do you have constituents who are like, no, no, no. We're not doing this? I think in in some cases, that could be true. And it's not always with the hunting and angling community. It can be just the local residents who have an affinity for that dam for whatever reason, nostalgia. Sometimes it's a it's a famous a preferred swimming hole. Sure. They have had experiences being out in the out of doors that they just connect with that body of water. And so sometimes the local communities resist the removal

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Does of that factor in as to when you rank? Like, what's first for removal?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I would say yes. We start with the easy one, but we're not afraid to engage with the public. And we have a variety of partners who have gotten very good at this and have been able to engage with the local community to help justify the removal, either ecologically or otherwise. I think as we progress into the future, the general public has just come into an understanding of society's burden with maintaining these dams, but also just the ecological benefits in a variety of ways, whether it's fish passage or something else, a product connectivity. Those heightened awareness is building amongst the public. Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: I hope we aren't too hurt on you.

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: We're too hurt on Ben.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Well, I appreciate the opportunity to come before you, so thank you. And just to address, this is Mike Wutrowski. He's Administrative Coordinator. And so, and I work together. Mike really works with Ben in the Dam Safety Program, but we kind of split up. His focus is a lot on the fish division, and I tend to oversee staff that work with dams that are associated with wildlife management areas. That's why both of us have come here today.

[Speaker 0]: How many dams are in wildlife management? I mean, I know Doug Creek is one, but

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I don't know I have that answer specifically for how many are strictly associated with wildlife management area.

[Speaker 0]: But they built specifically for the wildlife management area?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'd say generally, yes. And in fact, like something like Fairfield Swamp, it it actually defines the character of the wildlife management So in some cases, we might have a justification for why we wanna keep those dams, because it provides such a variety of benefits to wildlife and other things. So if we were to remove that dam, it would drastically alter the character of that WMA and that ecological context and location.

[Speaker 0]: Anything else?

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank you.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Okay. Thank you

[Conor Casey (Member)]: very Thank very much. Appreciate it.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So we do have some committee time for discussions. I just think we need time as a committee to check-in because we got a lot of moving pieces.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And I think one of the pieces what was

[Speaker 0]: recommended yesterday was to put up on the board all of our little sub groups.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Speaker 0]: Yes. Be there.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Get up. Somebody could get up with a marker.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: He did. I'm And you're headed. Good luck.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: See you.

[Speaker 0]: Good luck. Keep us toasted. Why, Shawn? Hopefully tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow. If not, you can always zoom in and not have the camera on. I'd

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: say it's funny.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: The other day is like, wait.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: See you, Shawn.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Regarding 294,

[Speaker 0]: we're not there

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: at the commissary. We're just talking about myself and Kevin had been charged with getting some information last year. And I did well, Haley and Summer, we didn't hear you yesterday. I think it's Christmas coming. But we we just need some more information. So I I we emailed this question yesterday, and I asked for it verbally. So, hopefully, we can specifically get the the exact accounting for commissary funds are dispensed. And then the second question is, who is empowered to make those decisions and at what level? Galfetti's earlier testimony indicated that individuals in the correctional facilities had some influence in that. Just haven't got enough testimony to

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: really make it or turn it

[Speaker 0]: into birds. So for the subcommittees on commissary is Joe Luneau. And then for the telecommunication piece is Will and Shawn. And that is Together H two ninety four.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Well, that's gonna get into what? Wait, please.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: That's the Troy Committee.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Committee of one. I could be pragmatic. That's something for vortex.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Am. We're trying to figure out who the rest of the people were. Gina was not, and I know who wasn't, it was not Gina, Mary, Joe, Kevin. But I'm not sure if it was Shawn or if it was Conor. I think it was Shawn. I believe it was the third person.

[Speaker 0]: Shawn's on a lot of them. And then why don't you put Shawn with a question mark? I work for.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: I got the budget one, the five of us.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. We got the budget one. Not all fun. Budget. So that one is Conor, Mary, Brian, Joe, Kevin.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And at this stage on that, I think we're going to reach out to BGS and DOC to see if we could get their materials ahead of time so we could start formulating that's the that's last session, right?

[Speaker 0]: Well, it doesn't matter. It's the structure of how they're done. So that shouldn't change. Just to give you some background or so what moving pieces are within PTS.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: No. That's helpful.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Is there still the subcommittees on drinking water and wastewater stuff? No. That disband.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: And for

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: what it's worth, repo is going to. Repo?

[Speaker 0]: That'd be the right repo. It should. That is Mary, Brian, and Troy. Mary,

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Toby and Moe.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Hey, was gonna say, how could I forget?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I'm Moe.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Where's the ball from? I think that's it.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I think your analysis in the first. I

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: almost love the

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yep. Our most recent goal breaker for replying to the entire membership is a member from sets of So

[Speaker 0]: our liaison to approves our liaison to appropes for BGS is Gina.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Oh, I think think too much delta. I'm sorry. L

[Speaker 0]: I a.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I know there's another I

[Speaker 0]: in there. Lee a

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I a I. Yes.

[Speaker 0]: S I o n.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Isn't that I That's how I

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: would spell

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: it. Just wanna make sure.

[Speaker 0]: And it's for the b liaison to a probes. BTS for the BGS piece for their budget is Gina. And then for the DOC budget is Kevin and Shawn. And just for information on the appropriations side, the person who takes care of the BGS budget is Wayne LaRoche. And the person on the prop side that takes care of DOC's budget is Trevor. That's just who they have to hook up with.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: No.

[Speaker 0]: He's BTS. And Trevor Squirrel is DLC.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Like the animal? Yeah. It is. I'm gonna spell all sorts of mythies. Don't know what I mean. That was the guilt down. He was

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So it's like, I'm not getting scared.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So

[Speaker 0]: And then we've got some folks who are working on the victim notification with Troy. We got Kevin and Shawn and Mary. They're victim notification subcommittee.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Sent that up yesterday, didn't

[Speaker 0]: I? I think you did.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I sent those yesterday.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: The definition of working is a good question in my mind on crimes. I don't know what we're working on. We're waiting to hear what's the I success that

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: didn't hear the first part of

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: your question.

[Speaker 0]: We've got the report.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: We've got

[Speaker 0]: the task force report that Shawn has some real concerns about. The mayor are what Troy sent out in terms of our action plan or questions we need to ask going forward. So I've asked you and Shawn and Mary to sit down with Troy and go through Troy's document. And you had that Zoom meeting with Murad, which then gives some indication to the direction that they're going. He was on there. It was Mary Morrissey. Kevin was not available. The task force is still working, I believe, until the February.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: And they they had indicated that they're authorized to add

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: something. It's in February.

[Speaker 0]: So they'll be out with something finalized. But Troy had a really good synopsis after the group came in here and testified the second week of the session. It wasn't last week, it was the week before, about questions that we need to pursue and strategy going forward. And Shawn over the weekend, the draft report, the task force, victim notification. He had a lot of questions. So I sent to Shawn Troy's document and Shawn said Troy and here on the same page, and that's when I thought, well, maybe the working group.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Working group.

[Speaker 0]: Alright. And then that will help the whole committee on how to go forward.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Do I need to write anything else down, dates for when we need to do things by, etcetera?

[Speaker 0]: Just so everybody knows. Okay. So the next thing I want to work on, Troy developed a community college of Vermont with DOC, who set up a letter of recommendation, a letter of support. He's sending it out. You can one

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: for everybody, Kevin, just in case we want to do edit.

[Speaker 0]: You to do a paper copy? Because it's also for Commerce Committee, and I sent it to the chair of Commerce Committee. He seems to be supportive of it. He's gonna bring it before his committee. So it's if the two committees can send along this.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Did ask Brian from CCB what's a good timeline on this. I'm just going

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: to see what he said. I can't remember.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Did I send you that one?

[Speaker 0]: Me?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I ask, like, when would you need something like this? He says, I think it would be helpful almost any time before the February. So there is some breathing room. Our proposal is scheduled to be discussed at an Ascendiant board meeting on April 4. I believe materials go to the board members the month prior, and it would be ideal to have PACT with those materials in early March. But ahead of the curve.

[Speaker 0]: Wait for those copies. The other thing, too, once this just came to mind, do we want to get some testimony in terms of what they're going to do with upgrading their Wi Fi? We can get the money from the broadband group.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Because

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: we promised that that would be a piece of it.

[Speaker 0]: And get the money, even though we sent a letter of support.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Yeah, I've been curious about that. And so has Chris Morrow, who had worked with me and Kevin.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Is there any sort of second chance available for us on it?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Don't know.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Could you

[Conor Casey (Member)]: just be the closest friend?

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: We have a different plan.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I don't if we don't have

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: them come and talk to us.

[Speaker 0]: So we can see if we can schedule that. Also, this afternoon, we have a wide open 02:00. They canceled because they're sick. So we don't have anything scheduled from two to 03:30.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Cribbage? Is a cribbage board here. It can accommodate two What's do?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: It's not quite with the ball season.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I'll start here.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: An update.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It will be coming later, you're right.

[Speaker 0]: On 294?

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: They're just about who I've reached out to that's

[Speaker 0]: You want us do that at

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: 02:00? We can do

[Conor Casey (Member)]: that too.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: For ninety minutes?

[Speaker 0]: Gotta fill in ninety minutes.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Amazing. It's like forty five minutes.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: You're looking for a Julio's working group or something? No. No. I was gonna

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: dinner at six, and I gotta drive home. That would be very I I in CX News tomorrow.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Sure. That's been my only thing that's been done. If I may, we are live.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Or any other finest action. I have

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: an idea just based on conversations, maybe we could have a brief committee meeting and just chat about not policy.

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: About what? Not policy. Like

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: different concerns people may have,

[Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: which doesn't need to be on here. I do have few things I can bring up. Concerns about Eddie, Seth? Yeah.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Just Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So, Tate, one thing we were talking about possibly was scheduled next week. There's something with DOC and their Wi Fi, and they didn't get the money last year that they were hoping for.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: So it's sort of what their plan is going forward.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Okay. I hope there's some point in all the positions or or projects that we say they're going to do or the legislature says they're going to do then it never happens.

[Speaker 0]: Troy, you want to walk us through this?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I'll let you read it. It really is just, as CCB seeks funding outside of the general fund to continue their work that is proving to be incredibly worthwhile for the community. I came away with that meeting, as I always do when I hear about their work, appreciative and grateful. And I asked in our joint meeting if a letter such as this might be helpful. As they were seeking the grant, they indicated Brian responded back to me and indicated that it would be. So this is what I drafted.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Do they know across the hall?

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yeah, she shared it

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: with Monaca.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I would want to probably format this a little different so that it fits on.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: That's accurate. Over ten percent of the census population that's enrolled in some sort of CCD program?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Based on their test. That's what they said. This proposed center is just for the post secondary stuff. CCP specific, so yeah. Right? Yes. I guess that's sort of what I'm asking. They don't have any community high school

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: or Right.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I guess technically CCB does that bridge program, but that's not this is all in support of an associate's degree. Yeah, Okay.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And just for my signature, if you can put an A for the middle initial.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Right, oh okay.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Because the judge who's Mary A. Morrissey, it's not as someone always defining it by A, my middle initial.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I don't remember. Did they talk about the size of the grant? I don't remember. It was a worthy grant, though.

[Speaker 0]: Any changes? Did folks recommend any changes?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: That music?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I didn't find a Mhmm.

[Speaker 0]: Same was one boarding future was get out of berries.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Jesus, we Wow.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: That's the committees at

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: You didn't bury

[Speaker 0]: anything at the same time.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: The way, we should be paying them. I

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I gotta make sure you didn't put anything

[Conor Casey (Member)]: else on the page.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: That's what I was missing when I just read it.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Let's be frank. I trust you.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: You wanna have a work study program? We reckon.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: So you're going to format it, put it on letterhead, and then bring it to everybody.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Do you think we

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: need to put our names and signature and things like that?

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: I think because it's all from people all over the state, I think it's important for them to see all the people engaged in it. Maybe that'll get them to move on it.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: 20 think that's

[Speaker 0]: two people.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And from all parts of the state. I think that would, know, of course.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: And a lot of the Liberals like to kiss out of the office.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Alice, will you just get a sense

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: from about

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: it if they're all

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: on board with this?

[Speaker 0]: He's gonna bring it he thought it was a good letter. He's bringing it before him. He didn't see a problem. I'll double check one.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I can get

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: a paper copy to our

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: matter that we can then scan and send to Brian. And I can get him a paper copy to him.

[Speaker 0]: Check the mic.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: No edits. You got it. I said no edits.

[Speaker 0]: I know.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And we except for my stupid day.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah. I'm not I'm not complacent. I just I read it. Too young. I can make up some false concerns,

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I decided to come see.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's a fairly short correspondence. It is.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: And it's a sensible program. Straightforward. Alright.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: I'd more detailed if you're asking for $10,000,000, but you're not.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: But yes,

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: to the earlier point, the Wi Fi thing is an impediment.

[Speaker 0]: I'll check with Mike, and then if it's a go with that committee, we'll just do it. Sounds good. I also had a conversation with Martin along and here on 05:40. It's a reparative program?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, I also had no audits.

[Speaker 0]: I know. It seemed pretty simple. They are gonna do a drive by. They're not gonna formally get the bill, but they're gonna do a drive by probably next week. They're gonna get judge zoning and maybe some folks from the CJCs that served on the working group. I said it was unanimous from the working group. This is the language that they all approved. I said, we're not thinking of amending anything. It's straightforward, but it does create a sentence.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Mhmm.

[Speaker 0]: And it does ask the judiciary to consider new factors placing someone in that program. So they're gonna do a drive by. So we'll hold back on it until Kevin drive by. They're not gonna physically get the bill. It stays here. Oh. But they're gonna look at the bill. Okay. That's a drive That's a term we use, drive by.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Night official.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Before we vote it out. Because I don't wanna vote it out and get surprised on this. Yeah. Because it is creating a sen it's, you know, creating a new sentence for that. So that's on that one should be a go. Would is there anyone in particular who would be interested in reporting that bill?

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: You put notes yesterday.

[Speaker 0]: You'd be interested in doing? K. You can do some work on it in the intro. K. Get

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: you early in the season while you're still energetic.

[Speaker 0]: And I I spoke to Hillary yesterday. She is going to do another a new draft on the role board one to kind of incorporate some of the testimony we've received. So we can schedule her next week. But she asked

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: She's coming on Tuesday. She's coming on

[Speaker 0]: Tuesday. So there's that. I'm still waiting from commissioner for information on the expansion of support to the MOUD program within correctional facilities. That's the governor's initiative, accountability court, how that gets spread out through all of DOC. He's supposed to send that to me, what the plan is for the therapy and behavioral support so that Katie McLennan can go through age 32 and see what needs to be updated, see what new language needs to be added to comply with, have the law comply with state practice. But I'm waiting for

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: that

[Speaker 0]: because that's an initiative for the governor's office to do this. So we have to make sure that the law tracks for that.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Just reliability issues if we don't.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: And it was something.

[Speaker 0]: Driver's license. I spoke to Richie Westman this morning And DOC, this is where they wanted to expand. Remember, I sent it out to you folks. It's in the senate miscellaneous DMV. You know, I sent it out to

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: you folks last week, Friday.

[Speaker 0]: There's total language on a whole new section that deals with any individual who's incarcerated would have access to blah blah blah. So Senate Transportation's taken testimony this week from DOC on that. We're gonna hear from Damian tomorrow, I believe. At 01:00. He will go over the language that DMP is proposing, but it is connected with H549 where we have the driver's license for detainees.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Did you all see the news last night where our former commissioner of DOC is?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We talked about Are you sure?

[Speaker 0]: So we got to coordinate. We may one thing that Richard was thinking is if we have language, that we we add that language to 549, but they will also add that same language to their miscellaneous DMV. It'll be in two places don't know where we're headed with that, but that's the thinking right now. Have

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: we had any information on the cost associated with non driver's license?

[Speaker 0]: $3.30, and AOT pays it.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Not counting staff time. Right.

[Speaker 0]: That's an agreement that they've worked up since 2019.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Did they testify Were you here? Or you I don't think they had gone.

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: Think she

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: was a

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: dollar before.

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: Cents? 30.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah. 30. Cause of the idea.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Staff rendered it, but it's the labor behind it.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: It's probably

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: That doesn't sound credible to me to issue an official government ID without some kind of research to verify the information.

[Speaker 0]: So the research is done by DOC, and they submit all the documents. Submit the birth certificates and Any documents. Social security numbers, any any any documents to verify who they are.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah. They do all the legwork.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: One thing that came up there that was pointed is that Gina actually pointed out and asked DOC why they can't accept their own records. You know, obviously, DOC knows who they have incarcerated.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: I would hope. You know? They should.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Of course, they do. So why can't that be used as as baseline to create a a non real ID

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: instead of

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: running around looking for birth certificates?

[Speaker 0]: Well, you're tied into the federal requirements.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yeah. That's for a real ID.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Right. So one thing for Kevin real quick because I'm not smart

[Speaker 0]: enough to come to this. Yeah. Ask What's

[Emily Bird (Director, Water Investment Division, DEC)]: the more language in team?

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Team. He can tell you

[James Gregoire (Vice Chair)]: on the agenda or you can look online. And what agenda is look up and watch the testimony that we got on that particular subject on YouTube. And then it will answer some of the more detailed questions and it will answer every question. Let's start there.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yeah. That's that's really the only one I have because It's a

[Speaker 0]: non driver's ID. It's not a driver's ID. No.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I understand. I'm not trying to muddy up the waters, but if they don't have a birth certificate and if they don't have a social security number, they talked about that.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. That's where DOC works to get all the debt, all the information, and then they submit that to DMV. But DOC verified with the person.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: But you're currently so I've become the $3 and so on.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: It's said figure. It's what they actually DMV pays the vendor to create one of these.

[Speaker 0]: It's not the driver's license.

[Tim Appleton (Public Lands Section Chief, Wildlife Division, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It's

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: the By the way, yes.

[Speaker 0]: If an inmate wants to have a driver's license, then they pay for it, like we do for that. But there is language in that DMV that loves to have it as a real ID, non driver ID. So there is language. So we'll have to get into that. Because it's all driven by needs

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: and what's really important. You're right. So I

[Speaker 0]: I can't think of anything else. We have dangling out there. Do we have anything else?

[Conor Casey (Member)]: We got a DOC report in response to the ICE stuff. Right? Is is that this week? Or

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: No.

[Speaker 0]: Mhmm. Well, now we're trying to get commissioner Farrell in to talk about the inventory.

[Benning "Ben" Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, DEC)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. BGS submitted to Well, it's Housing Community Development department. Right? Housing Community Development. And commissioner Farrell is the head of that. So BGS doesn't know what happened to the information. They just submitted it. So it's up to housing and community development to analyze it. So, and I heard the commissioner M. N. O. Lee was willing to come in along with commissioner Farrell. So we're gonna schedule that. And I'd like to kick it out at age 50 at

[Mary A. Morrissey (Member)]: some point. Get that puppy out of here.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Get rid of it. Mhmm. Yeah. Well, thank you. So I don't have anything else. Anything else? Pick an early lunch? Early lunch? I think we figured something.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Two weeks since Well, want you to think about directly. Yes. We're good. So

[Speaker 0]: let's go up a few. We're back here at 01:00.