Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I mean,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: we lost

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Joe, Joe. Welcome,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committees, Thursday. It is Thursday, February 5. We are struggling to have a quorum because we have some folks who are working in the subcommittee and then some other folks are doing something somewhere. But we are gonna get started. We're not taking any action. We're just hearing some testimony. We're working on the capital bill, section nine, And we're working on the Waterbury Dam. It's 175 for our spreadsheet. There is a governor's recommend of $150,000 be used for the Waterbury ongoing project. This Waterbury Dam project has been going on for eight years, ten?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Well, it started in 2024. I

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: know, but when we really started working in here, was probably a good it was a big COVID, started working on.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I'll start with the answer to that question when it's my time.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's been a while. We've worked on this. So we have ANR folks here to give us an update of where we are with the Waterbury Dam project and with 150,000. In previous appropriations. So we have the deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation. So welcome. If you could identify yourself, Neil, that would be great.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Good morning. Thank you, Chair Emmons. So my name is Neil Kamen. I am the Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation. With me to my left here is our Chief Safety Engineer, Ben Green, whom you've heard from before. Let's just start my remarks by saying you all sleep better at night because this gentleman does what he does.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I'm doing one peeler, if I tell

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: you this. No, I'm very, very serious about that. He does that's actually true. He does not. The answer to your question is about 2016 when we started to attach initial feasibility money to this project to look into what we needed to do for the structure that you see behind you. And yours. Yeah, exactly. And I've actually been part of that. I've been a little bit of Engine That Could along with Mr. Eric Blatt, who's now retired, if you all remember him. So what we'd like to do today is just take a take a little bit of sort of open time to reorient you to the Waterbury Dam project. And in addition to just walking through some basics around it, I actually asked Ben if he would kind of provide some real schematics so you can actually see, you know, what is being planned for the dam and the magnitude of the project. Because, you know, I I'm I'm sensitive that when you all see a capital project that comes along and we're building a building or, you know, we're improving dams. This project really has advanced, and we have initial design. It's it's in Ben will tell you the whole deal, but we wanna show it to you. So if it's too much, just say next slide, please. But there's Ben has provided some very, very informative slides in this presentation. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You know, I think it's also important for the community to realize we're also working with the Army Corps of Engineers Correct. On this society. Just us, and the bulk of the money is coming from the Army Corps of Engineers. Correct. Yeah. So to my sort of second to last point on this slide, this is a partnership Army

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: frankly, with our congressional delegation. So I don't think a three month period goes by that I don't have some kind of conversation with the Army Corps, I don't think three days goes by that Ben doesn't on the operational side of things. So you've heard a little bit about the dam safety program already. I won't go into much of the details except to just remind you all that Waterbury is the largest dam that we own and operate, but it's one of three incredibly important flood control facilities in the Winooski River Valley, the other two being Wrightsville upstream of us on the north branch, then, East Barry up along, a little bit further upstream in Barry. So what I'm gonna do here, I'm going to get out of the hot seat and let Ben take you through the overall project. And then at the back end, I'm gonna sit back down and I'm gonna walk you through the funding stack, including what we've spent previously, where those dollars came from, and where capital and cash fund bonded dollars are right now for this project. I know that's something that y'all would want to know. So with that, I'm just gonna let Ben take it away.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome, Ben. You're back in the hot seat.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: For the record, my name is Bennington. I'm the section chief of the DAM safety program, and my team is the one that owns not does the primary ownership responsibilities and operation work at Waterbury Dam. Hoping just to give a brief overview of the dam for those that are not familiar. Here's some image aerial image of the dam and of the gate system in particular and the spillway system that's really the subject of the project. Waterbury Dam is has a drainage area of a 109 square miles. It's located in Waterbury, but the drainage area extends all the way to the peak of Mount Mansfield to the North and bounded by the Green Mountain Range and Worcester Range to the West and East. The dam's a 187 feet tall, making it the third tallest dam in the state. In terms of storage capacity, it's the fourth largest. So this is one of the biggest dams in the state, and it is, as Neil indicated, by far the largest dam that we own and operate. This is hazard potential. Reminder, high hazard potential dam means that in the event of a dam failure, loss of life would be probable. The population at risk located downstream of this dam per of recent estimates from the army corps of engineers reminder, population at risk is basically the number of people that are located within the estimated flood inundation zone of a dam failure. It's roughly 5,000 people, and the estimated life loss should we have a failure under a flood event is is roughly between eight and nine hundred. In the event we had such a failure, we'd be looking at roughly 1,400 structures inundated and damages in the $308,100,000,000 dollar range. So the downstream of this dam, it tends down to the Winooski River through 16 communities all the way to Lake Champlain is is the flood zone of

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: this

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: dam. The dam provides flood protection and roughly estimated at $4,000,000 in flood damage presented prevented annually. The dam has had other additional uses. The second reason the dam exists is for hydropower. The dam supports a five megawatt hydropower plant that's owned and operated by Green Mountain Power, who have been essentially project partners at this dam since day one where they actually gave a bunch of the land that made original construction of this dam possible. And then, really, the third main use of the reservoir is recreation. This reservoir record sports two state parks, the Little River State Park and the Waterbury Center State Park, as well as several boat ramps and access areas, And it's a very popular recreational asset.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When was the dam built?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: The dam was completed in 1938. The three flood control dams are in existence right now, came into initial concept design following the nineteen twenty seven flood, which is the most severe flood on record in in Central Vermont. Fifty five people were killed in that flood. Actually, more dams than just these three were originally conceptually designed, but these those were the three that moved forward in in a construction, and that work was done by the army corps of engineers. So they've also been a project partner throughout the entirety of the existence of this dam.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Excellent. I gotta back you up. What what is EI five ninety two six seventy eight?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Elevation. Yeah. So so that that image is of the the flood floodgates. There's three of them. There's two that are 20 feet wide. They're on the right side of the image that were the original ones. And then the nineteen fifties, the third one, which is the left side, was added. The base elevation of those gates is elevation five ninety two. Once we get above that elevation of essentially, we're in flood storage mode. And from elevation five ninety two to elevation six thirty three, that's what we call the flood control band for the dam. That's essentially actually from five ninety two to 617 and half is the flood control band. The way the dam essentially works in a flood control mode is when you gauges along the main stem of the Windusky in Waterbury hit a certain level, that is our instruction for army corps procedure and regulation manual to come and close the gates. We essentially shut off the majority of the flow in the little river and start storing it in dam until reservoir levels in the Windiscus River recede back below flood stage. And then we have a procedure for which we slowly discharge that water that we stored in the dam. So it's an active flood control dam. We have some others, Wrightsville and Eastbury, they're considered passive because we don't actually we don't go out and operate gates. They they're sort of designed to self regulate in a in a similar manner.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The question the part of the issue too, if you have a heavy rain like Irene, you don't want the water you've you've held all the water back. This could even go above what you're seeing where the word fire rope is. If the water gets so high,

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: it could go above that.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Could go above that. That would be a very severe flood, but, yes, they could go above that. If it were to go above to that level, the original design procedure for these gates is they're not designed to be over topped. If we were to have such a severe flood where water came over the top, there's a procedure for us to slowly open the gates and track reservoir rise so water is never coming over the top of them. And I have a next slide that talks a little bit about this, but we jump ahead a little bit. In thousand in the early 2000s, there were some issues with the gates jamming and operability issues. And at that time, the Army Corps did a structural assessment of the gates and found they were structurally deficient and placed a load restriction on the gates, which we've been operating under for more than twenty years. That basically that while the gates should be designed to have a water level at the top of it, these gates are only designed to have water levels up 70% or only can like safely kick hold back water at 70 of that height. So God forbid, if we had a flood of that level, we wouldn't wait till water started to pour over the top to start opening them. We'd have to start opening them when they got to that

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's 70.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Lower 70% level. Correct. So these so and and that has to do with, you know, the the the the design of the the way that the gate's designed, it's actually a a a issue that's not just it's this style of gate that has that that that challenge and as they've learned over years of this being in in service.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: They've been updated at all since '38? This is were these the original?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So the two gates on the in the right side of this image, the 20 foot wide ones, essentially, have seen very little or or really no no updates.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Big one or the

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Big one, it was put in in the fifties.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: The little ones?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: The two little ones or two two twenty footers. The the main improvement that's been made to these is in the early two thousands when there was gate binding issues, these gates were actually trimmed and new side seals were put on and new side works were put on the gates. But, functionally, those gates are as they were installed in the in the 1930s. In 2024, we actually had do some reinforcement on the strut arms, the the the reinforcement on the back for the center gate because there was a weak point. So we're having bandaided together a little bit in that regard.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I could add, it's very cool bandaiding. It's a

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: big pain thing.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Large plates of steel. Large plates of steel. They get tested weekly

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: or monthly or yearly? Test operate them, typically, we make a concerted effort to test operate them at a minimum quarterly. Get operated, test operated for a variety of other reasons more frequently, and they also obviously get operated during floods. So we operate them Yeah. A couple times per year, both in floods and for testing purposes and other reasons. Thank you. So the Waterbury Spillway project, as I had mentioned earlier, has the spot project itself has really been around since the early 2000s when that gate jamming occurred and the study was done that ultimately led to the load restrictions that I've already mentioned. This has been a really kind of a priority project for this program for a long time. Project scope has been around for roughly ten years moving forward with the Army Corps of Engineers moving through initial risk assessment and then to dam safety modification study and now we're into design phase, followed hopefully by project implementation and construction. But the project scope includes full replacement of gates one and two, which, again, are those two smaller gates, and then restoration of Gate 3. As a reminder, Gate 3 was installed in nineteen fifties, so it has better quality steel and had more sophisticated engineering analysis done on when it was designed. So it's doesn't have some of the issues that the other two gates has. There we have some erosion just downstream of the gates in the bedrock channel. It's gonna be stabilized. The spillway bridge that extends over the top of the spillway and supports the lifting equipment is is is in very bad condition. It's gonna be fully replaced. And with that means all new lifting equipment for the gates themselves. And there's going to be basically still way wide concrete repairs going on. Unfortunately, the concrete in the dam since original construction has a in it that causes expansion, which has led to cracking and accelerated deterioration. It's called alkali silica reaction. It's basically a chemical reaction between the the sand and the concrete and the coarse aggregate and the cement paste. Something that in modern construction is tested for, not really an issue, but in the nineteen thirties, they didn't fully understand. And, unfortunately, the spillway has has that issue. So in terms of where the project is, we originally did a risk assessment that with the army corps of engineers, that was the first portion of work that that that looked at the whole damn holistically and said, is the spillway really the biggest risk factor at the dam and what's the entirety of the dam, other risk factors? And their assessment did point back to the spillway being the biggest risk factor. And then the dam safety modification study got underway and is basically under final review right now, but that was the study that basically went into. What do we specifically do we wanna do to fix the dam? And that includes, as I mentioned, the scope above. And now we're into the design phase, which is planned to go through 2028, which will hopefully followed by construction. In terms of the project schedule compared to where we were last year, we presented on this project. It has bumped a year. Originally, construction start was hopeful for maybe as soon as 2027 pending funding, but now it's looking more realistic that it's gonna be 2028. The Corps of Engineers has been a great partner on this project and advanced this project a lot. They had some staffing challenges and and some other issues that slowed the project a little bit, and we also had the drought this past fall that delayed a project that we were doing that delayed decor and get doing some of this up their work as well. So that's the reason why we the schedule has essentially stood one year from what we presented the year before.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Why does it take three Okay. Okay. Why does it take three years for design? '25 to '28. It's lack of funding or personnel or That's part

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: of it. It's a it's a $76,000,000 project to design. So there's a lot of work to do. There's a significant field exploration program that I'll talk about in a future slide that's planned for the spring, and that holds up some of the design work. And once we have that, then they'll be able to really start to advance design, and they'll have updated cost estimates. Hopefully, I was told by the corps in about a year to a year and a half from now. So it's it's a significant amount of engineering going into this project. And so it just it takes time. It's also not the only project that this corps of engineers is working on. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're pretty secure that the federal funding will come through in a timely manner?

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I'll speak to that when we get together. I'll kinda walk through where we are exactly now, what our pluses are, and what our risk factors are. I've got

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: a slide on that too, actually. And I offer this link that's here on this page is a link that we update every few months on the status of the project. It kind of has the full rundown from start to where we are now, and it's updated fairly regularly if interested. So now moving on to it's kinda what's comes from the conceptual and and and roughly 30 to 60% design work that's been done. Believe it or not, a major element of this project is even just getting access over to the spillway. The spillway is located on the far east side of the dam away from the access roads, and it's fairly difficult to access. So one of the first things that can be done in the project construction is a 30 to 50 foot reservoir drawdown or reduction in reservoir level. And the reason why we need to do that is essentially we need to be able to provide the same level of flood protection that we can with our gates operable during the project. Not only will we have our spillway torn apart and be in a somewhat gradual state at the spillway, but we also can't be putting more water downstream and causing flooding issues during the project. So it's gonna be a reservoir drawdown, unfortunately, for probably two years of construction. And then the first thing that's gonna happen is construction of access roads just to get construction equipment, trains, etcetera, to the spillway. This plan shows the plan construction of a construction access road going from roughly the midpoint of the dam along the upstream slope and then access areas and crane pads being installed. There's roughly 20,000 cubic yards of material will need to be delivered to the site in order to construct that those work roads alone. And just for context, that's roughly 2,000 truck deliveries of material, and that's just to get access before we even start physically working on spillway itself.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So it's a two year construction cycle that you're gonna have to draw down the reservoir.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Let's hope we don't have a main a major rain event like an iron. Because what happens then?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Well, that's the reason for the for the large drawdown is to be able to store that water, basically give commensurate level flood protection during this project as we would have with operable gates by having a much, much lower flood pool starting pool. So that's the reason. It's not popular recreationally. It's not necessarily popular environmentally, but it's necessary to maintain the flood protection And during that's the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: part that used for recreational purposes.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Shawn?

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: Ben, is is there a plan to kinda leave all that stuff there so that we can use it again twenty years from now so we don't have to rebuild it when we

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: have to switch these all out again? That's a great question. That's sort of under debate right now from my program's perspective. It's a large advantage to leaving it there, only for future projects, but just even for access for maintenance and things like that. Yep. It's it's really enhanced by leaving it in place. Think that's a kind of a conversation that's happening on several different levels. I know state historic preservation is very against leaving it there, and it's even against that alignment due to impacting the short structure of the dam. So it's unclear where that final decision is gonna land. So to us, it makes sense to leave it in place. It saves the cost of taking it out for one, and it provides us future access that could be valuable for other reasons for maintaining the dam.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: I am in full concurrence with your part of the plan. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is there any environmental impact of keeping that built in for access? Is there any environmental impact on that?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That's a good question. I

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I That's still

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: being evaluated. I was struggling to see one, but I can't fully speak

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: to that. So it would be historic preservation of the vast wind environment?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Historic preservation, the upstream face of the dam is surface with hand placed stone, almost like a cobblestone road. They're very unique, very, you know, very unique. And so by following this, we're essentially removing that and covering it with this kind of construction road. So that's the concern is that that that loss of that riprap, the the hand placed riprap. In the early two thousands, they did that. It's watering wells on this side. They had to disrupt this large area. And so that was sort of there's some talk back to that time frame when the decision was allowed to was it was permitted to allow that disruption, and it wasn't made to be put back to original. And now this project adds on to that. So it's an ongoing conversation. I don't know where it's gonna land at the start. We've

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: been in this situation a little bit with one of our state owned properties, the Windsor Correctional Facility, that there are buildings there that are of historic value. And there was quite a time frame that we could not demolish those buildings. So they really need to be demolished to make the property more usable. And we work through with historic preservation as a way to document those buildings. There'd be if you discuss that with historic preservation in terms of a way to document what they really want to preserve there?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah, that's an ongoing discussion. And it's largely being held with the core. I I have some involvement. I know one of the preferences Is it

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Vermont historic or is it national?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Vermont historic. One of the the preferences one of the push pulls is is where one of the push pulls is another alternative that they prefer. There's a the port is to go out far enough with a boat ramp at the west end of the dam. Their preference is once the reservoir is drawn down to build a temporary construction road under will be under the normal water level. Challenge with that is it's, like, three times the length.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Might get eroded.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It's it's it's full of yeah. Add add duration and a lot more work. It's a project to do it that way. So those are discussions that are being had right now. I don't know what they're gonna do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you have to get agreement from the Army Corps as well, no matter what we may decide on the state level, the Army Corps. Correct. They're damned, Or that more so they're damned.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It's it's our damned.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Or damned. Yeah.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Unfortunately, our damned.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We're in partnership.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: We're partnership. We we are a minority. Guess we have arguably a minority owner with the cost share, but we are actually the owner. We do get quite a bit of input and say. This next slide is just is here to show some of the modifications being made to the spillway. As part of, as I mentioned, the spillway bridge being replaced with a vehicle with bridge to provide access out to the lifting equipment. It required widening out the spillway piers. So that's what's shown here in the light blue. If you add additional concrete, they will be constructed to expand the width of the piers to support a wider bridge that will give us the first time vehicle access out to lifting equipment, which is very important. It's actually very difficult to do work on our lifting equipment because it's only full access to it now. We actually experienced that, and I'll talk about that in the slides upcoming. So those are examples of some of the construction that's going to be happening is expanding the piers. The image on the left here addresses that rock or bedrock erosion issues we have at the outlet of the channel, outlet of the spillway, where continued flow has essentially eaten the way of the bedrock and caused potential stability issues with the spillway itself. There's gonna be a a, basically, a concrete stabilizing unit installed along the downstream side of the spillways to address that issue. This next slide shows some of the proposed designs of the new gates. It might be difficult to kind of discern from what the original gates look like to this, but gates one and two are being fully replaced. And so they're basically new units that will be probably constructed in two segments off-site, brought on-site, bolted together, bolted and welded together, and then installed via crane. Gate three, that's the larger 50 foot gate. It's going to it is in much better condition. So that one's gonna be structurally reinforced, you can see in the image on the this image here, the additional steel that will be added to the gate to to improve it. It's about 7,000 additional pounds of of steel will be added to to reinforce gate grade.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: And and that that then allows it to to have the water going up higher, not the 70, but a 100%. Yep.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: No. That when the project's completed, the load restriction will no longer be in effect. That's be able to operate as we're basically originally designed. Fantastic. The next The next big step is this design level boring, pouring, and soil exploration project that's planned for the spring. It's going be a multi week project where the court will have a consultant and a drilling contractor visit the site and perform basically boring and testing of the concrete, the bedrock, the concrete bedrock interface, the soil of the embankment near our crane pads to allow for basically get the data needed for final design. That pouring will also help us to better understand the condition of the concrete of the piers that support the existing gates. It'll help to inform the degree of demolition that's ultimately going to be necessary. There's sort of two foods of thought on that one where one is we work with we keep as much leases in concrete there as we can and work with that. And but the concrete has some challenges, and the other is simply demolish the entirety of the pier and build it back, which has a lot of advantages in terms of being able to better kind of predict what's gonna happen with the project, but potentially, you know, it's kinda it's it's it was supposed to try to work with what's there. So that's gonna hopefully give us that data to be able to make a good decision, a cost effective decision on degree of demolition necessary. So that project is is weather pending the spring. Core has to unfortunately be in the spillway to do this work, and that that it's always challenging because whenever you're working in the watercourse, you know, so it's it's really a difficult time to to schedule that work, but, hopefully, we'll push through and get that get that data this coming spring.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that's the goal. You're gonna need to go out to bid for contractors to do the work?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: The army corps is handling that. Yes. The army corps is actually already out to bid to procure the contractor.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So they're out to bid right now?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It's a procurement contract. Yeah. To to for the engineer boring, you know, boring boring team that's gonna do that for the

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, I was jumping to the construction.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Oh, construction phase. Okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Gonna take some time to

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It's absolutely gonna have to go up to bid. Yep.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And is it the army corps that goes out to bid for that?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Army corps is gonna technically run the bidding process. Yep. And they're gonna use a you know, we're gonna be using that procurement process for the for the production contractor.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So would they just go out to bid in the state of Vermont, or are they gonna go out further than the state?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: They go out further than the state of Vermont. It's a pretty sizable project. And while there certainly are some quite few contractors in the state capable, there's also a lot of expertise outside the state on projects of this magnitude.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Alright. This is gonna take major work that our contractors in Vermont may not be able to handle.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: We can comp plan it. We can comp plan it. That's what he's saying. Oh, so

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's not doing it.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Well, he built the first ones.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes. So talk a lot about what's going on at the spillway. You know, the the dam itself is a very large structure, and there's a lot of infrastructure associated with the dam. In support of the spillway project, as I mentioned, we're gonna need to do a 30 to 50 foot drawdown during the project. And in order to do that, we're gonna need to be conveying 100% of water, 100% of that, those two years, through our tunnel system and penstocks, which basically sit at the foundation level of the dam, 100 feet under the normal water level. The tunnel is 14 foot wide and 11 foot tall, arch shaped tunnel, concrete tunnel that extends from basically up in the reservoir for the intake through the dam and discharges through the buildings, the downstream end of the dam for them, and that's where GMP is tied into. So we thought it very wise to do an assessment of the tunnel and Penstock prior to relying on them solely during this project. They have not been evaluated in detail in many years. So we've been working through and are still working on this tunnel and penstock evaluation project. Essentially, objective is basically to inspect and evaluate and perform destructive and non destructive testing of the steel penstocks and concrete tunnel to evaluate their condition and and remaining service life. The scope is listed here. All of it is really just in support of that data collection and analysis that's being done as to the condition of these other tunnel and penstock. The project's underway and and should be as I mentioned, it's largely mostly more towards the complete side. It will be completely completed in spring twenty six. The cleaning work and inspection work was recently completed. We're still doing some work on there's several gates and valves associated with with the tunnel and penstock. We're still working on some of the actuators there. We're still doing some cleanup from the cleaning work. We are awaiting the final report from the consultant that that did the assessment and engineering. Indications are that for the steel penstocks, which you can see in the image here, for the steel penstocks, we want to essentially avoid probably very costly replacement. We'll probably will be looking at a a coating and a lining project sometime in the next ten year time frame. So essentially, our penstocks are in fair condition. They are reaching close to the end of their service life in the beginning, being over 80 years old, and they are in need of some some repair.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: So why wouldn't you just do that now while there there's no water going through them for two years?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Money.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Water is gonna go through them for two years. Water's gonna solely go through them for two years.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: Oh, I see it not

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: the spillway. Right. So well, Roger that. We we want to evaluate these and make sure there's no fatal flaw in the concept that we're gonna simply be relying on these a 100%. I think we all feel pretty confident they're gonna be reliable for the project. But in making that assessment, we also sort of learned that they are in need of that they are in need of some work, and that's something we need to program in post spillway project most likely. And with this final report still coming, so I don't have all the information, but that's sort of what we know, and that's sort of what the cliff notes are telling us at this point.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: One little I know this is, like, nitpicky, but why is the ladder hand built in the picture? The ladder's hand built because

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: it has to go through a 20 inch manhole to get into that space. This is a this this is inside the tunnel. It's combined space entry. Okay. So typical commercial printers don't fit through such lot.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: I'm wondering. Thing or but it was just

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: We custom built it to Yeah.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Got you. Okay. Thanks.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: This image here is that we call the transition plate between, so halfway between the crest of the dam and the downstream toe, there's three steel penstocks that are sleeved inside the tunnel. Two of the penstocks, these two are 54 inches diameter, they send water to GMP's plant. This 48 inches penstock above sends water around to what we call a low level outlet. That's how we would draw down the reservoir if we had to, and there was emergency or we need additional capacity. This is essentially a picture of that transition plate in the lateral, just to gain access to for inspection and access to the upper one. This image is of our head gate. This is in the press of the dam. There's a gate house that houses this gate. This gate's lowered to 130 feet down into this position to basically shut the tunnel off. So upstream of this is a 100 over a 100 feet of water. Just upstream of that gate. That's it. It's closed, sealed position.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I mean, a 130 feet. That's like, you know, that's

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: like a 13 story building downwards. Wow.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That's cool. Let us know when you'd like to go see it. Yeah. I would love to see it. Absolutely.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I don't want to. Yeah. This

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: is the best time.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: I think that the only way we can evaluate was comparison, so we also need to go to Uber Day.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It's the same, James.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I've in

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: three counts. This is

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: the inside of the penstock. This is a gentleman's doing a scan of them but that gives you some sense for the condition. Old age not. Yeah, they're they're derivative and welded. One just kind of interesting finding that's interesting to me as an engineer was most on that era, most penstocks were were sheet steel that were spun into a circle welded at the top. And that's what we all expected. And that's what our engineer who's an expert in this field expected. And these were actually were not built that way. There's actually two sheets of sheet two sets of sheet steel that were turned into a semicircle and then welded on the at the string line on either side, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but unusual. And so that's probably a little bit extra evaluation.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: And that's what you're talking about coating?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes, it's coating and lining. So coating would be coating the inside so we would need to basically do a much more thorough cleaning of the inside of the pen socks and coat them with a durable spray applied epoxy style material. Then would be lining. Then the exterior of the penstocks are also showing some signs of degradation. Those would coated with a similar material. What's the lifespan of those coatings? Typically over fifty years, but it it depends on the product and and and and, you know, a lot of variables. One one challenge is is, you know, installation criteria and conditions. It's not the greatest conditions in the world in these areas, and certainly time of year and things like that. Doing this work would turn out to be in early winter, December, early January was not ideal. Certainly, that work couldn't be done under those type of conditions that would need to be done in in a better time of the year, which would is not ideal for environmental or recreation purposes, but that's just some of challenges.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Just because we're paused, I don't know

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: if you covered this.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I was late getting in, but what is destructive slash nondestructive testing?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So destructive testing is when we take, like, a sample out of the dam and essentially we break it to learn about the engineering properties. Nondestructive is we can do it without actually Dig it. You know, having to do that. An example of a destructive testing is in the in the concrete tunnel, we poured out concrete samples and then backfilled them with structural concrete and then took those concrete samples to a lab and broke them to understand their strength. The nondestructive testing were scans and things where we could get engineering properties without having to actually impact the the material.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: That's very clear. Thanks.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: And then this next slide is just to talk about a little challenge that we had this fall at the spillway during routine annual inspections that we have of our hoist systems. In September, Gate 3, which is the large 35 foot gate was red tagged. The brake system that runs on the hoist equipment was found not to be reliably stopping the gate per the specifications. Due to that, we put the place the gate in a fully closed position. We activated the dam's emergency action plan on the non emergency advisory level just to let everyone know downstream we had one gate essentially out of service. It it it could be could have been operated in a true emergency, but the reliability of it was a little bit uncertain. We worked with our consultant to design a replacement. Unfortunately, it had to be like a special ordered item given the the low conditions that those gates have. Installation was completed in January 2026. Project cost wasn't terribly high. I mean, equipment purchase, and logistics of installation was roughly 20,000, but it it was a bit of a project. EAP was deactivated following that, and all three gates are fully operable now. But it serves as a good reminder that this lifting equipment we have is all most of it's over 80 years old. It's near the end of its service life in the beginning where, you know, we got this project kind of on the precipice of of of replacing all of this equipment. So we're hesitant to go and replace everything. But if you had, you know, twenty or thirty more years before we were gonna do that, that's a project we'd probably be looking to do. And this is a good example that, you know, this equipment is is, again, kind of starting to age out and and nearing the end of its reliable service life.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So where did the 20,000 come from? Pay for it.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: 20,000 came from? I believe that came from

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Yeah. They're

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So let's see. The design was done by GEI consultants. That was general funded. The equipment purchase was purchased through Northeast Handling. That's a general services contract. That was done by general fund.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So when you say general fund, just for terminology, what world is that? Is that your operating budget, or is that some of the money we've already put aside for this project?

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That that was in your 3.115 from three years ago. That was cash fund general fund. Okay. So just to

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Did I get that right then? It's not capital money.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Right, but it was in that $3.1.5 appropriation in Newbury.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We had a cash appropriation of 4.5.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah, I'll speak to that.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: is the 3.1 that you're referring to part of that 4.5? Or is it 3.1 No. Was that part of, did you mean, ARPA money? It was part of ARPA.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It was your ARPA. I'll talk money

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: in a couple of minutes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It was part of

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: our You have given Ben dollars to work on this dam, and we've also given Ben dollars to do this Waterbury Dam Spillway project. These engine these these motor replacements did not come from Waterbury Dam Spillway projects. That's it. These came from capital appropriations or a general fund that you have.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: This came from general this we piecemealed that $20,000 project together. The contract or the engineer that was under a contract that was being funded by general fund. The contractor that does the annual inspections for us is a it's not capital eligible expense. It's like a maintenance contractor that's paid by general funds. And then logistics, we had to we have a contractor that does snow plowing and earthwork and other small projects for us. We needed their assistance logistically with the logistics of getting this equipment installed because of the challenges of just getting in and out of there. So that was that that's also general funded because that's maintenance work and not not capital. Operating. Again, it just serves as a reminder, you know, this equipment is is close to the end in the beginning. This next slide, it just kinda go over an in-depth analysis that one of my colleagues did in our program of the maintenance and capital costs of Waterbury Dam from 1982 to 2025. Pretty fortunate that our predecessors kept good quality records, although maybe a little bit difficult to interpret at times of the money spent and maintenance that was done at the dam in that time frame. So as part of that analysis, we're also fully aware of those major capital projects that were done in the mid two thousands. That was a seepage project that was roughly $26,000,000 That was kind of set aside as a special project, as is the planned spillway project. It's also kind of set aside as a special project. But as we strive to come up to date with upcoming dam safety rules, be good stewards of this largest flood facility that we have in the state and that we own and just become better dam owners and better do a better job maintaining this facility long term. As we look at those costs from 1982 to 2025, they're they're they're put into current current year dollars. Roughly, the average spent over that time frame was roughly $200,000 a year in current dollars. The low we spent was $0. The high was $1,600,000. As we look ahead, we're we are kinda find ourselves in a situation where we're playing catch up. I guess the Telen Penn talk would be a good example of that. Not a lot had been done with that infrastructure in many years. And now we're finding that, you know, while not necessarily imminent issue condition, it's it's not too far off over horizon where we need to spend some money to keep that going. We have we've learned a lot about our gates and actuators and valves that weren't necessarily passed down to us with a lot of awareness that we should what we should be doing, and and we're learning we need to be doing more than we are to make sure that you maintain maintain reliability. So we find ourselves playing a bit of catch up, and we've kinda estimated over the next ten years in terms of just the sort of major maintenance work that we're have an annual need of roughly $500,000 a year, which is annualized. So in theory, there's gonna be some years that are lower than that, some years that are higher than that. But, essentially, we need to continue to invest in this infrastructure to, you know, really bring it up to us up to speed to where it needs to be and make sure that everything's in good condition it can be and and reliable as it can be.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's in the ideal world.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That's in the ideal world.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Half mill of year, depending where it comes from, which bucket. Some could be capital because you might have infrastructure, and others would be just general.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yep. And this this is just for Waterbury. We're extending that analysis to Eastbury and Riceville, and then eventually, we're gonna hopefully be extending that analysis to all in our own dams. Fortunately, I think it's fair to say that we've underfunded these assets for extended period of time, and we sort of find ourselves a little behind the eight ball.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: Ben, is this a rhetorical maybe? Is this do you feel like you're able to kind of get on this stuff more now because you have more people work like yourself? And you're saying there's three or four people that used to not be these people. Correct. So you're feeling that you guys are doing your job of looking at what we have, do an analysis on it. So that's why we are finding that we need

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: to do this. We we are we we we had the appropriations in past years that allow us to look at these things and things that our press never had access you know, money that our press have never really had access to. So allowing us to kinda start to really understand better what needs to needs to be done here. So, yeah, between this, you know, our staffing, are we able to put more staff focusing on this facility as well as the money that's been allocated in the past to allow us to really evaluate these things and better understand kinda where things are. Unfortunately, we've it's kinda been maintenance has been underdone historically on these facilities, but it's certainly fair to say across the board, and Waterbury is no no exception. Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we got about five minutes more. We can push through this. This is the important piece.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: We can

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: play the switch. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Thanks, Ben. I love working with Ben. I mean, it's so it's so impressive, but then the magnitude of the infrastructure up there is impressive. And anytime the committee wants to come have a look, Ben does an amazing tour of it, and it is incredibly it's it's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: good tour in the spring.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah. The magnitude of it when you finally see it, like looking down 13 story building down to the bottom of the pit, you literally can do that. You go into a little building, a little rail, you look down, and you are looking at all the cabling. It's very impressive. So I just let you know that I would talk through what we have for federal funding in hand and where we're at in terms of appropriations. So this slide right here does that. The cost estimates are refining on the project. So about a year and a half ago, I was sweating because the number was $92,000,000 based on their whatever tier two or tier three cost estimate. We're up to tier five or six or something like that. So now that they've got a better bead on on what exactly we're going to do, the costs are coming down. So we're in and $76,200,000 is the cost estimate right now. I wanna talk a little bit about the cost share. There was a big success in that. The cost share for this project started at, $65.35 for the very initial feasibility design that we used some state money to support. It was not capital money. This was back in 2016 when the project started. Use some Lake Champlain Basin program money that senator Leahy had directed to make the initial assessment happen. And then as we came into the project, the way the project would have structured would be $50.50 cost share for the dam safety modification study that Ben mentioned, and then $35.65 for design and construction, full implementation. We successfully advocated with the congressional delegation that in prior years when this was built, the cost share for the state was much more advantageous, and that Congress should really honor that more advantageous cost rate. And so the cost rate we have now is 7.1%.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: That's the amount that we paid when the dam was built.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Correct.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: 7.1%. And that's why we argue that we should be at that same percentage.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Right. We made that argument.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We did. The state made that. That was a couple years ago because we were at the point of almost fifty fifty for this.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So that was you know, we can thank senator Sanders and his team for getting that for the Water Resources Development Act, WRDA. We're gonna talk about WRDA a couple of times here. So federally appropriated and federally authorized. So those are two different things. Right? Federally appropriated, we have $40,000,000 of federal funds in the bank. We have an authorization ceiling of $60,000,000. And about every six months, I talk to Mr. Ethan Hinch from Senator Sanders' office about getting into the budget committee and plusing that number up. A little bit more about that in a moment. WRRDA, Water Resources Development Act, is being negotiated now. The likelihood is it won't pass out until the very end of this year. It's an election cycle. It's an election year. WRDA must pass legislation, so it will. A lot of states rely on it for a lot of things. Army corps, major army corps projects, drinking water projects, but it may take a little while. So I frankly am not displeased that this project slipped by a year. As long as we're all comfortable holding those state match dollars that I'll talk about in a moment, stable to fund the project, it gives us an extra year to work with a different congress, maybe an extra two years to work with a different congress. It's more functional. Perhaps. You know? So I think that's really kind of an important thing. And, you know, our senators obviously, Senator Sanders, very senior. Senator Welch is gaining in seniority and influence as well. So and and and congresswoman balance. So there's hopefully growing leverage in the budget space.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that 80,000 on top of the combined 100,000?

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So okay. So let me explain that. Current, there are $40,000,000 sitting in the bank, federal dollars sitting with the army corps already fully appropriated to this project appropriated. The authorization ceiling right now is $60,000,000. So if congress were to be willing to authorize appropriate additional money, they've got 20 of headroom. The congressional delegation for word of 2026 is going in for a lift of the authorization to 80,000,000 and to include language that the authorization ceiling lift, all they need to do is to receive the Army Corps' acknowledgment that that's the amount of money necessary to do the project. That's important, because that means that they don't argue whether or not to raise the authorization ceiling. It's simply the army court says this is how much money we need. We have that language now for up to 60, which is helpful. So that's what senator Sanders' team is trying to get done for with senator Welch. And then, of course, you have to lift appropriations too, so in order to reduce our maximum exposure. And there's two mechanisms for that. Appropriations is one, and the other is exercising leverage over the US Army Corps of Engineers' annual work plan. So the corps itself has a lot of money, a lot of federal money that they can direct into their portfolio of activities, and they can be directed by congressional action to take some of their money and put it into this account. And that happened a few years ago. But the ceiling is still there. Well, nominally, we'll get that ceiling up to 80. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So then you've got two mechanisms. You've got army work plan, army corps work plan, or you've got appropriations to get the money into the account. At at whatever at 60 or 80, though. Correct.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: It's not like we can say, let's let's make an 100.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah. Limit is still gonna be. Well, what they're doing I mean, they were going to go for 95. And then the cost numbers came down. So they're tracking along the cost numbers, which is good, right? 80 seems right. It's being honest with respect to what the core is learning. So essentially, if we get full appropriations against an $80,000,000 authorization, our maximum exposure for Match is only one more million dollars than what currently have. However, that's all contingent on the appropriations themselves lifting. If we don't get the authorization ceiling lift beyond 60, then our exposure is 13. And if nothing else happened and we needed to fund this project, this is a scary number, but I just wanna offer that maybe it's not that scary compared to the magnitude of the infrastructure. With what we have in the bank and our matching funds, our maximum exposure, if we were to bid and go today, would be 32. That's a lot of money, but we're over halfway there, and our delegation is working hard with us. But if it damn fails, it's 300 to 800. Oh, I do. You know, I So this is cheap insurance. I'm not. I'm just acknowledging that that's a lot of money, and I just wanna put on the table, as I said, Chair Emmons, the full set of where we are, where we would be. And that's why in that slide, I really tried to spell that out clearly so that you have that. We're not asking for anything this year. And then finally, this last slide just shows sort of the breakdown of design and implementation costs and how it all sugars off into the $76,170,000. And I won't take you through these numbers exactly because these are coming out of the cost share tables from the dam safety modification study report. So obviously, there'll be some adjustments in there. I do wanna note that we've already spent $3,000,000 in total, 1.5 of which came from capital appropriations. So that's the first two lines of the bottom table, and that paid for the dam safety modification study. So we've got 193,000 left to spend on the second seven fifty k iteration that you gave us in capital bonded dollars, and that was back in 2021 and 2022, those two debt IDs. And then lastly, in 2024, in the cash fund, given all those excess receipts we're seeing, you appropriated $4,500,000. We are holding on to that for the bidding and construction. So that really breaks down the money for you. Deputy, I

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: didn't quite follow you where you said the 3,000,000.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I don't know where

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: I I see the starting amount.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: My fault. I wanted to add a different line to this table, but I kinda ran out of time last night. Okay. So if you look at the bottom table and you see original appropriation Yes. You see $7.43, $2.40, and then $7.50.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That totals just about $1,500,000 Okay. Those were our matching funds for $1,500,000 of federal money that didn't show up on this top table. What I should have done would have been to add a row on the top table that said dam safety modification study, dollars 3,000,000 federal, 1,500,000.0, state, one point I five

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Kevin Winter, Member)]: just needed that clarity.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: You bet. And that's that's that's the rundown.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you're what the governor is putting in is 150,000 in cash. Right. What is that 150,000 for?

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: So Ben, if you don't mind, I'll answer and then you fill in the gaps just for time here. So Ben just walked you through the Pennstock project, and you saw the people inside of the Pennstocks cleaning testing. We had a super low water year, and because we had a super low water year, we actually couldn't get the water out of the dam quick enough to get in there. Did I get that right? Correct. So the team, Ben's contractual team, was delayed by a number of months, literally months, while waiting for conditions to be adequate to get those tunnels dewatered. And so that basically added some cost to the project, Bennington's belt and suspenders asking you for a $150,000 just to make sure that we get that funded and that we don't have to dip into the 4.5 in order to do it. Can I explain that, Lance? Did I get that right then?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes. Yep. That's that's correct. Cool.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Any questions on those folks? Because we are running a little late. I wanna bring in Michelle to talk about a definition for corrections and then offer time for the little group to get together for a while, dealing with the budget. Anything else?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Great presentation.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: That'd be

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: a good field trip too, Ms. Frank.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It would be a good field trip.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah. You really would see it. It's Yeah. I'm I'm impressed every time I go. It's, sir, you mentioned Hoover Dam, and, you know, it's not quite that. But, you know, it was for me to go see Hoover Dam after having learned about Waterbury from Ben really contextualized it. So Or you can

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: go into reverse and go with the one in my gate. Or get down. Exactly.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you, madam chair.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You. I

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: will leave this Zoom, and you all have an excellent day.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thank you.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: We'll be back anytime you need us.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: K. Well, you will be because we're gonna be doing some of the DC on clean water, drinking water, municipal pollution grants.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That's right. Patrick and Emily will be here with you this afternoon.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: we had a lot of DEC today.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Have a

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: good day.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Thank you. Yes. You bet.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Thank you. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm gonna hand out to folks I'm going to hand hippocopies of our agenda because I'm thinking a lot of folks aren't aware of our agenda, not looking at our web page. Is that the same?

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: What changes.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Changes every day. So I'm thinking it would be good practice for folks to our agenda is always posted on our webpage, but I have a

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: feeling it's not being looked at. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: and it does change every day.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: It's very broken. Brian?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Yeah. I'll tell you that I've gotten the

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: gender question, which is do you save them anywhere?

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Because if I ever wanna go

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: back and figure out what day something happens, like, you have have

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Okay,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: we're going to shift gears really quick. Charles is here, legal counsel, to give us a quick review of the current definition in statute of recidivism. I'm bringing this up for a variety of reasons. One is there's been committee questions about recidivism, and there's a layman's understanding of what it is. We do have a definition and statute as to what it is, and it's a number of years old. There is also a proposal in house judiciary committee to change the definition. And that will also impact how DOC classifies drugs. So we're gonna get involved in this to a certain level once house judiciary figures out what the new definition is, and then it will have an impact on DOC, which we'll need to So we need to know right now what the law says in terms of the definition of recidivism. So that's why I've asked Michelle to come in. She and I both have some history on this a little bit, but it's better to hear it from the legal counsel than from me. Good morning.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Thanks for having me in. There's a few of you who I haven't worked with much, but as the chair said, I'm part of the judiciary team. I actually used to do a lot more of corrections issues when we were just a team of two, but that's been well over a decade. So I just want to let you know I'm not up on the latest, but the chair asked me in because the definition that you're considering actually was adopted in 2013. And so I had drafted that at the time. And my memory is not a fraction of what representative Emmons' memory is, which is unbelievable. But I do recall a little bit about kind of the history with that. And if it's okay, I'll share my screen and I'll show you.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Well, it looks like we have two documents from you. Are we starting with the BSA?

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I think

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: so. Maybe not. Am I in

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: the wrong place?

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: No. I'm still sure. But that's actually not what we're working off of. I

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: only have one.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I hope with paper copy that was distributed is the correct. So I wanted the current definition of Right.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: And I can pull that up. I can show you that. I'm having Sorry. My

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Is that entitled 28, chapter one?

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Yeah. It's section four. Yeah. We've got I'm having a little bit of hard time Yeah.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We've got the paper copy of it, Michelle.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: It's on our website too.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: What I did want to show you, though, I was going to show you the original act. But that's Okay. Maybe not. So as I had mentioned, it was adopted in an act in 2013. The General Assembly had been talking about, as part of Justice Reinvestment I, looking at and saying, how do we assess our programs and our pilot projects and all of those things to see whether or not they are actually working. Is there any benefit to it? Should we have a standard measure of recidivism? My recollection at the time is that the General Assembly was working a lot with council state governments on Justice Reinvestment I. And my recollection is how this new definition in 2013 came to be was that it was a measure that was being used by some other states and was shared with the General Assembly here and Senator Sears, who was longtime chair of Senate Judiciary, introduced a bill. And there were two pieces to that bill. One was this definition in '28 VSA section four, and the other one was what was at the time, kind of the annual extension of the, prohibition on using correct you know where I'm going? Correctional facilities to house. And I don't know if this is the term anymore. What is the term now? In caps? In caps. Public inebriates was the name that was constantly used at the time, but I was guessing that's probably evolved since then.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Maybe hertz and caps or Yeah, so every year

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: there would be like a push out of that date. So there were only two things in that bill. I went back and I looked at the legislative history. We don't have the files here. They're in archives. But I went back and looked at the legislative history, and there was a total of one hearing for less than an hour in the Senate on the bill. It was me and Andy Toledo, who was our future full DOC commissioner for many years. And then there was one hearing in this committee, and it was me and Lisa Menard, who was the deputy commissioner at the time. So there was not you know, there's not a real lot to go on based on the record in terms of where this came from. I went back and I looked at old legislative reports. I found actually one from 2011. So predating that language on recidivism, the general assembly had asked the crime research group used to be called the Vermont Center for Justice Research back when Max Schluter was running it and had commissioned them to do a study doing kind of a literature review and looking at all the other states and what types of programs are out there, what kind of results are they seeing? This was kind of a new thing at the time. Now you guys are so focused on data driven programs. But again, at that time, it was still kind of emerging, that thing to say, we need some standard measures to say, all these programs that we're doing, are they effective? Do they have the impacts that we're wanting to have? And so there was actually this report that was in 2011 from Crime Research Group on evidence based initiatives to reduce recidivism. And the one thing that I'll just note about that is, again, there wasn't any standard measure at the time. And then when they looked at the Vermont programs that were operating at the time, they found that some had a standard kind of measure, some did not, but they all used different standards kind of to determine whether or not there was recidivism. And so, like, looking at the different programs, some would consider recidivism if the subject had a criminal contact with the police. Some would be the subject was rearrested for a crime after they completed the program. Others, that they were charged with the crime. So there was, you know, a charge and then maybe probable cause and arraignment. So it got to that stage. Others would use if the person was convicted. And so again, I'm speculating, but I'm thinking at the time, it was like, well, maybe use a standard measure and everybody's using the same measure. And so that's what you have in your current law for Section four, which I'm sorry that my sharing is not working. Under the current definition, it's at the Department. So when we're using the word Department in this title, it's going to be me being DOC. So calculate the rate of recidivism based upon offenders who are sentenced to more than one year of incarceration, who after release from incarceration, return to prison within three years for conviction for a new offense or a violation of supervision. And then the new incarceration sentence or time served on the violation is at least ninety days. So pretty complicated. So I'm sure that somebody gave me that exact language because I don't think I could have come up with it myself. And so that's been there. What I've generally heard is people kind of forget that it's there. I don't think it's necessarily being used. My understanding from the wonderful folks at Crime Research Group is that it really kind of you may use a different standard depending on what type of program you're looking at, the type of folks. Are you talking about certain populations, and that it can change. So it's not necessarily that you need to have a very specific formula like this in statute. But I think what you should do is you should hear from DOC, have they been using this? Because this is specifically directed to DOC is to make calculations based on this formula. Are they still doing that? I don't know. Do they find any value still in this? There is, as the chair mentioned, a bill eight thousand four ten in house judiciary. And the plan there is to do a strike all to that. They're looking at doing a new definition of recidivism to be kind of a little more streamlined, clearer. I'm kind of working with the chair on that, but generally kind of this idea that recidivism means the tendency to relapse into a habit of criminal activity as evidenced by a person who is convicted of a criminal offense after they've gotten a conviction for a previous one. So it's like a much simpler kind of idea of how we would use the word a recidivist colloquially. And then the idea is that they create this new subchapter, and we may put it in Title 20, we might put it in Title 13 with crimes, to start putting in statute some provisions around collection of criminogenic data. And so to kind of focus on that, but to not necessarily say purposes of all programming and things like this, it has to be measured each time according to something very specific. But you have a more general definition, and then there may be some more specific goals with the information you're trying to get. And so that's their idea. And so my understanding from Senator was that mean, Vice President of Lalonde I am from Senator Lalonde. Is that they wanted this committee to look at the Title 28 definition and say, Should we keep it? Should we amend it? If you do keep it, I think their suggestion would be to call it something else, figure out how is DOC using it, why is it valuable, and to be a little more specific about maybe in that statute how it's to be used. But I think you want to hear from the crime research group and DOC about, honestly, I think whether you even still need it doesn't have value for you anymore.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: No, wait a minute. I didn't mention. Whether we need a definition of a recidivism?

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Of this existing definition that's Title 28. This particular one. Because I think what the work that's going to be going on in house judiciary is they're gonna be doing it, tracking it to certain types of data collection throughout the criminal justice system. And the question is,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: do you need this? Based

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: on what you know is happening in the judiciary right now, whether that's proposed bills or this bill, is this purely to square up our data collection? Or is there also talk about enhanced penalties for recidivism once we redefine it?

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: I have not been part of any discussions around enhanced. So there's obviously, there's certain legislation that's been in

[Brian Minier (Member)]: I assume,

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: that kind of a thing. But my my my understanding is just purely about data collection and, definitions, but not about creating any kind of structure for enhanced penalties based on recidivism.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: That is a slippery slope on which we're about to say.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Brian and then Kevin.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yeah, well, I may

[Brian Minier (Member)]: go to yours too, actually. It's a two parter. One is back to Rick Winter's question, which is we need some definition of recidivism. Is there a world in which we get rid of this and something doesn't happen in judiciary and we're left with? Okay. And the other one is

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Mike, if I could follow-up Yeah.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Please. Please.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: I don't know. But my guess would be that because they have possession of the bill, the h, the recidivism bill, they'll be working on that. You would give them a recommendation about what to do about title this particular definition, and they would include that into their committee amendment, H four ten.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: And then the other is actually a follow-up on Rep. Headrick. And so I think you had said that you weren't quite sure why was it one year, why was it ninety days, whatever. If we were to change the definition to what I think you suggested, automatically we're going to see an increase, aren't we, in recidivism? Because doesn't building stipulations

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: are something else that

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I think

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: judiciary is not proposing to the kind of definition that I talked about, about changing it here. They want to use a definition of recidivism that's more general. We'll certainly, as part of that look, we'll look at where recidivism is used in statute, whether it does indicate anything in terms of penalties or substantive rights or things like that. But I think right now is that they're they're saying that it rather than kind of this this exists, but it doesn't appear to be being used into let's pull all the data stuff together. But it's really for the purpose of of data collection.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: But to use the imperfect analogy, it's sort of like what's going on with autism perhaps. And we're gonna see an increase in

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: In the numbers.

[Brian Minier (Member)]: Our recidivism rate regardless of what means if we do what's

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: being said. Because it's a much broader Right. And I think that that's going to certainly be part of the conversation there. But again, I don't think I'd have to look, but generally, penalties currently are not based on recidivism. So we have things specifically in criminal law where it will be first offense is this penalty, second and subsequent offense is this penalty, things like that. But we don't have, I'll do a statute search, but it's not like where our criminal titles in terms of like expand, are not affected by this definition.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Good time would be. Pardon? Good time would be. Earned time. Just had the conversation yesterday that proposes looking at prior felonies, which is going to be defined by recidivism. And if we broaden that to the extent that this proposal is suggesting,

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: oof. So for that on the Good Time Bill, and I think is Eric? Eric? Does Good Time Yeah. Did you have Eric come in on this? Would look at it and look at the language, but you can make adjustments in that so you're not triggering certain language. So you say for purposes of good time, this is what qualifies. This is what doesn't.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: I'm gonna show my ignorance, but I would think that a three strike rule would be an example of where this definition becomes critical. Because if you haven't defined what first strike is, second strike, third strike, by the time you get to the third strike, the incarceration is longer, the penalty is greater. I think we need a very clear definition. That is. That's obvious. Is there a federal definition? Or is this strictly state definition? We don't have it with restrict No, no, I understand. But that would be an example where if this changes and you had a three strike rule, that would make a major difference in the Is there a federal definition? That's the only thing that I

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Of recidivism? Which I

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: don't know.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: I don't know. But I think that we can take a look at where is it used currently in statute. So let's say for purposes of title 28, see where it comes up.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Title 28 is corrections.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: I hear your concerns, and I think I understand about that because you guys are dealing with a lot of corrections data and things like that. But right now, as far as I know, there's nothing that we work on certainly in Title 13 in the crimes and criminal procedure that is linked to recidivism. It's all very specific because when you're drafting a criminal statute, you have to be very clear about the prohibited conduct and the penalties.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: You have

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: to give fair warning, all of those things. Something isn't like if someone is a recidivist, we don't use those terms. It's that if someone can be charged with aggravated domestic if they have a prior conviction for a domestic, things like that, where it's very specific in how we craft those. We do have actually habitual offender statutes. But again, it doesn't use the terms like in terms of someone is recidivist. It's like, if someone has a conviction for three violent felonies, then you can charge under this other statute that will add for an enhanced penalty. But it's very specific to type of offense. Is it a misdemeanor? Is it a felony? Is it violent? Is it nonviolent? Is it first, second, third, those types of things? So this is just about focusing on the data collection and what do you consider to be recidivism. And again, it's used primarily in the context of assessment of programming and the types of things that you do in here all the time and to be able to say, Okay, what were the outcomes there? Did people get out of the program and able to get housing and a job and not wind up back in the criminal justice system? Or did we not see necessarily any particularly positive results from this?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the reason why there's some timeframes in there, because you are looking at the rate. So the reason there's that three year time frame is wanted to from my recollection, time for the person to adjust being out in community, participate in programming, that type of thing that that's why the three years is there. So there's a timeframe. The ninety day is because at that time, and that's still true, there's a lot of churn that comes in our correctional facility. And there could be a violation of some conditions, they may be charged with petty larceny or whatever, they may be in the facility for a few days and then they're out, or they could be there for a month and then they're out, but they're not creating a new crime. So that's why there's some structure to that definition. It is also the people are very clear. A lot of folks will say, well, you've got this program out there. How successful is it? What's the recidivism rate? You needed some measure to determine what that recidivism rate is. You've got to have a definition of recidivism if you're going to figure out what the rate is. So this is why we've put together that.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: But if may, is what I was hearing from the folks at CRG is that they don't necessarily use one measure, right? Because it may depend on One measure for programs For recidivism, right? And so I think that is why there's this idea of going to a more general definition of how you use the term recidivism in the statutes, which is to mean just generally reoffending. And then you can pick where, how you measure that from, however they decide to do it, date of conviction from, and then until a person is arraigned. So probable cause is found or whether it's the date of conviction to date of conviction or sentencing, you can make those choices. But I think the idea is to have a more general definition. And then when you're focused on gathering certain crime data, you may specify that for purposes of calculation of this or that. And then I think when you had Did you have the crime research group Yesterday, in just to talk about general

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: data. The question that some members of the committee really posed isn't it more cost effective to incarcerate folks than to have folks out in the community creating damage? And isn't it more cost effective to incarcerate folks than to have them out in the community? So we really got a history a little bit about the crime research group and what their purpose is, maybe how they operate. Also they gave us- Yeah, they're tremendously helpful.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: Robin's been there forever. Then Monica used to be at the Department of Corrections. So they really know their stuff. And I would suggest that you have them come in and talk to you just about this recidivism issue. When I went back and looked in the file, because Ben had originally written H-four 10 and they were giving comments and back and forth. So they're very knowledgeable about this and can talk to you more about what they think would be valuable. May speak to the title 28 definition. Does that still have value? If so, you know, what do you call it? And for what purposes would it be used?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I have another question to James that you have

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: some No, actually, covered most of mine. And then I was just gonna say, regardless of what definition you use, because Alice is dead on about what she said about the timeframes and stuff. And then there's the colloquial use. And is there a value of having your definition line up with what society thinks it is for data collection and for other reasons? But no matter what the definition is, how we choose to use the results of that is our purview to, it doesn't have to be used in a certain way, I. E. To limit earn time or anything else. Anyway, you covered everything pretty

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: much as I'm saying. So this has been very helpful, Michelle. I'm so glad. I it.

[Michelle Childs (Legislative Counsel, House Judiciary Committee)]: The chair asked me, I was like, oh, well, I haven't got anything to remember from back then.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: More. Fascinating. But I think it's really important for the committee to have some grounding in terms of what the definition the statute is. And that the purpose was there to measure how successful programs were. It's not for general public things. Oh, they created a crime. They've been released. Now they've created another crime. That's which it is not necessary. But I think there's a lot of misunderstanding out there. So give us an opportunity to go back the issue, really see how effective it is in determining whether a program is successful or not. And also finding out how DOC uses it. Because the term is thrown around there pretty loosely.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Very loosely.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And there wasn't any understanding behind it. It's what I'm saying. So I just wanted to put that on the table for folks.

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Thank you. You.

[Ben Green (Dam Safety Section Chief, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: You can

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: talk me through any time. Thank you very much.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: At 435.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: It took longer. We're just certainly behind a lot today. Thank

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: you. Thanks

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly Troy Headrick, Ranking Member)]: a lot.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Thank you So very I wanna offer time for you five for the budget to do some work. Was hoping to give you a few, five minutes. And do you think you can you wanna stay here and get rid of some of us?

[Unidentified Committee Member (possibly James Gregoire, Vice Chair)]: Yeah. I think that's better. Always.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: I won't be offended. I won't be offended. So

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: they can stay. We're not gonna be on YouTube because we do not have a forum. There is just a small group of folks who are gonna be working on budget issues. Prepare us to do work next week with appropriations. Yeah. So let's go off to YouTube. We'll be back around need to do this, Gus is coming in around 10:30.

[Neil Kamman (Deputy Commissioner, Department of Environmental Conservation)]: Yes. Yep. Enjoy your