Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Good

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: morning and welcome to the House Environment Committee. This morning we're going to take a few minutes to have a committee discussion and talk about what folks' priorities might be for the coming session as well as thoughts on the testimony that we've taken so far this week, which is already. Then at 11:15, we'll be doing a walkthrough of the DEC miscellaneous gun with our legislative council in the Grady. But I don't know if folks want Who's to willing to start? All right. Chris?

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: So just three things for consideration to the bills that we have. Hope maybe we can consider H four thirty four, which is Will Greer's bill.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Tell us

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: you can

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: tell us what it does.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: This is the bill that protects hunting, fishing, and trapping on public lands when public money is used to acquire it. Okay. And the other one You say that was four thirty four. Yeah. H four thirty four. Yep. And the other one is H two thirty six, that representative noise introduced, and it's basically authorizing the use of state waters by small hydroelectric generation. I have constituent, one of my constituents owns property. He a very small setup. And for years and years, he's been doing the proper things. He gets his permit to remove the salt silt, and and it keeps everything clean. And he just wants it protected. So I What's the number first? Age two thirty six.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: He wants his right to produce hydroprotectives? Yes.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard]: Yeah. So I went to visit him and showed him the bill, and I said, This is something that after looking at it, he says, Yeah, I would strongly support this. I said, Well, I'll bring it up for consideration. And the last thing I have, has nothing really to do with bills, but it's something that I've had going on for several months, and I want to share it with the committee. We finally finalized a date today. We are gonna on April 18, and the whole committee is invited to West Paulette. We haven't set the time. I think it's it's gonna be 02:00, but we are gonna have a dedication, and I'll just pass this around so you can see it, of the wild turkey restoration took place in Poland decades ago. And I feel I mean, the wild turkey has a special place in my heart, as everybody knows. But I feel it was probably one of the greatest conservation fish and wildlife success stories in the state of Vermont. We had a few dozen birds released in pollen. It's where it was initiated, and some in Hubbardton. And now birds are in every town, in every state, in every town in the state of Vermont, and for everybody to enjoy. So the process has been a little tough because don't know if it got off on the right foot, and what I tried to do was just bring in all the parties so we were all on the same page. The town of Pollock, the select board's wishes that the marker be located at the we have a rail trail in our town, and they they wish to have it there. Originally, the Fish and Wildlife wanted to place it at the fishing access on Route 30. I reached out to Commissioner Batchelder, and we discussed it. I think it's important that it's such a historic thing that I think it needs to be shared with everybody. The fishing access that they wanted, there was two concerns I had. One, the exposure at the fishing access would be limited, and it would be mostly by sports people, and I thought everybody should see it. And the other problem I had with it was the fishing access was located in Rupert, which was not even the town it occurred in. So what we've been trying to navigate through, believe it or not, there's about 25 different criteria for signs and fonts, and I really got a taste of government and locations. So I've reached out to Jason Batchelder, the commissioner. I've reached out to US Fish and Wildlife Service, and reached out to Tom Decker, reached out to the Select board. The Rupert Historical Society is involved in this, Rose Smith, and the people that have really been absolutely fantastic on this has been the rail trail folks, Jackie Casino and William Gray. I arranged a meeting Monday before I came up here, and we met with the select board and the historical society to try to find a location on the rail trail, which we've done. The other thing that they brought to our attention was that this rail trail in the last six months has had 5,600 visitors on the rail trail. So we're planning on having it at the entrance. William Gray offered, and we're just trying to clear it with Fish and Wildlife in Vermont, in US Fish and Wildlife. VTrans has a capability to duplicate this sign and make it look exactly the way it looks, except it will be on aluminum material that's like a stop sign. But we were gonna do a kiosk, and we wanted to use that sign, A, because we're worried about theft or damage to the original bronze plaque. And if it gets damaged, the time to replace it would be who knows how long, and it could be thousands of dollars for this plaque. They can reproduce this plaque that happens in a day. Where the discussion is now is the aluminum plaque will go in the kiosk at the rail trail, and the original plaque will be housed probably at the public town library. So as people, because that's another place that gets frequented often, and so people can see that. We're we're either talking about the the town office or the the library. So I've got the date. I'd like to invite the committee, the Rutland delegation. I'm gonna reach out to the governor. Saturday. And And if he can, I'll reach out to the lieutenant governor all other interested parties. I think Senator Brennan is gonna attend. So hopefully our four H club will be able to attend. I set it at 02:00 because on April 18, our four H club does their annual fundraiser at Kehoe, and we have a turkey calling contest. And so I'm trying to juggle it so those folks, if they'd like, and the club, the kids at the club can be at this presentation. 2PM. Appreciate that. It's April 18 at 2PM, and it's pretty much finalized. I tried to do that with Commissioner Batchelder today. And so

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That's really neat. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Thank you. That's very cool. I just put it on the calendar. That's all I got.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Great. Anyone else ready? Sure. So

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I just think about this a lot in terms of trying to inform about the tugs between the environment and how, and if that can be done in a very intentional way, and a fair way. But I am very concerned about the affordability issue and having people be able to afford housing and still protect the environment. So that I'm wondering about that, that happen or can it happen? Is there a way to make that happen? So both can's happen without just tomorrow.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Others?

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: I agree with Representative Austin. We need to find a way. I don't think we should ask Kenneth. We just need to

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: make it happen. I think there

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: are things that this committee can do to find ways to use common sense and put housing and the people who need housing at the top of the list.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: So I could go on, I'll stop there.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Let's see, I to just broadly, where my mind has been at a lot since we were together last year and coming into the session is, and it sort of came up naturally in many ways this week, sort of the confluence, I'll use that word, of a lot of the work we've done over the last, we collectively as a body have done over the last few years, as well as around sort of floodplain management, wetlands issues, and extreme flood events being here in Central Vermont. I'm trying to keep the awareness alive of what happened here and in other parts of the state in 2023 and 2024 back to back, and how it hits our municipalities and how it affects things like our attempts to reduce phosphorus in water bodies. Just, I would love to really learn a lot as a relatively still new member of this committee about how all of the work that we've done over the last few years that our agency and natural resources and others are trying to implement and the rest of the work that they already do, and sort of the complexities of our permitting systems. And then new wetland rules that they're trying to pull together that seem to come at a time when there were other wetlands and floodplain rules that were supposed to be implemented. Trying to further tease out. Mean, we've got like these little bites this week, but personally, I'd love to hear a lot more from the relevant parties about how all those different pieces are being implemented and the timelines around them and how may conflict or how they may support each other and sort of where some of the practical solutions are for simplifying processes, making sure we're doing the best job we can to sort of protect our environment while also making the work of the agencies as fluid and effective as possible, both to do that protection and also to consider the occasional square peg in a round hole that maybe needs some practical solutions. I don't know, I'm just sort of weaving together, I think a lot of the things we've been talking about and just it's so complex. And so how does our committee understand that well enough to do good work? Guess, honestly, think we all struggle. I certainly, I don't want to speak for all of you. I certainly struggle even with a solid background in a lot of these issues to even begin to understand what our agency's programs are really effectively doing and how they work and how complex they are and how new rule making and other things tie to that. So I know we can't spend all session on just learning, but I personally would love to dive into some of those pieces more, especially around the floodplain restoration. So for example, it came up from top of my mind, so I'm also gonna talk about dam safety in a moment, around that idea of a wild lands protection level for some of our state lands combining with the dam right below some of the property that they're trying to figure out the land management plan for, and just this sort of like, we are still even within our very large agency of natural resources working a little bit too much in silos, given the complexity of interactions in our environment that are rapidly escalating with larger events, larger rain events, larger flooding events. So I guess how do we as a committee learn enough to be able to detangle some of that and find good solutions is an area of interest of mine. And then I am working on a dam safety bill that hasn't been released. And I'm not even sure it will end up in our committee, but it comes from the work of this committee in 2024. Well, did that come out of this committee, right? Yeah. In the aftermath of some near damage to some very prominent dams and some lots of damage to lots of smaller dams around the state in 2023 and 2024. The Dam Safety Program has grown a lot. I think it's grown from like three staff to nine in the last couple of years because of some of the legislative work we've done to raise awareness, raise resources, and say, we cannot have the oldest infrastructure in that country anymore, with so many downstream Vermonters at risk. And so what are we doing around actual physical improvements and updates to some of our dams, private and publicly owned? I'm just trying to give a very quick snapshot. And I wasn't even a huge part, my name was on the bill, I didn't get into the nitty gritty, I wasn't on this committee at the time. So, sort of a high level feel free to correct me if I'm wrong we've done a bunch of work to build the capacity in that department with engineers. I think they're all engineer hires to build that capacity. And then a big part of the 2024 bill that passed was to move a lot of the dams that are under PUC jurisdiction for regulation, regulatory jurisdiction out of the PUC and eventually over to ANR, because PUC has no engineers on staff and ANR does. And for a variety of reasons, Vermont's in a pretty risky place with our dam infrastructure. And I'm more thinking of large dams like Waterbury Reservoir and Wrightsville, which is right here. I know them personally, but then we also have all this small dam infrastructure and a lot of dam removals that I think would be really fascinating for this group to learn a little bit about, because there's also some, I don't know if there's a bill related to dam removals. Is.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: There's something coming to us this session, maybe? We may be working on it. There's language that's been proposed. I asked for the drafting request, but I think we will look at that request. Which is related to It's related to creating a new permitting procedure for restoration, because our permits are really designed for development rather than restoration, and more and

[Rep. Kate Logan]: more restoration is happening. So some of these projects to remove dams or do this floodplain restoration work is getting complicated with things that are designed for commercial building that just don't apply very well. There's also been a lot of dam removals and some issues with some of those projects that I think we'll hear about. So a piece that I'm working on right now came out of a report to us that we received this summer around emergency operations planning right now. And you heard a little bit about this earlier this week. Right now, the dam safety team at ANR is working on writing rules related to emergency action planning that is the responsibility of dam owners. And again, many of our dams are owned by the state. So then ANR is to those emergency action plans, but many are privately held by tiny entities and private ownership to agreement on power. So wide variety of capacity in terms of dam owners. The ones that have people, there are very clear lists of how many people could lose their lives if a dam was breached or broken. Sorry, I'm not always the right language. And so there's sort of a very clear tier of who we should be most concerned about that we're working with. And so there's group of something like 12 dams that would be over a thousand people at risk, think. And then a larger, longer list for those that are over a 100 people at risk of loss of life, then the rest of the dam. So going on too long. So I'm working on a bill that relates to the emergency action planning and the emergency operations planning at the same time as the dam safety team is several years late in working on these updated rules and regulations for dam owners related to the maps they have to create to show the potential damage that would happen. So anyway, I'm working on that because it's emergency operations planning, has a lot to do while it has everything to do with dam safety, has a lot to do with emergency management. So literally, this bill may land somewhere between us

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: and the top.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: So I just wanted to give everybody a heads up that it's what.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. Sorry for the long and gentle. You ready?

[Rep. Rob North]: Yeah. We're down the line. Thinking a lot about that relationship that we sort of alluded to, we've spoken specifically about in terms of the needs of the very sort of present and immediate needs of humans in our environment compared to the housing and the economy, and comparing that to the needs of humans with keeping our environment healthy also, which isn't as always present in our minds as a society when these other things are so pressing, and how we balance those things out, I think is so very important. And one of my real big takeaways from the presentation we heard from Zach and John Davis the other day was that we can do these things together in ways which are really meaningful. I think we heard a lot of information a lot of us had heard before, but one of the things which really impressed me the most, the big number that I came away with, was when Mr. Davis was talking about Adirondack Park, which has these incredible protections for natural areas in that space, which is huge space, I think. Same size as Vermont. Same size as Vermont. But he said that even though it has these amazing protections and these amazing wild lands, there's also space for an additional 600,000 units of housing And in that so I thought, boy, if if they can do that there, they still have that much space left for housing, then we and I know it's a lot more complicated than this, but it just it gives us a sense of scale of, like, we we do have space in Vermont to protect our environment, to put aside land for wild spaces, and also have lots of space to adequately house people who live here.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. We can do both.

[Rep. Rob North]: We can do both.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. I'm gonna pass for now and send it over to

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Vice Yeah. You're gonna miss that opportunity.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm I'm here to listen right now.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Right.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: I guess I'm looking forward to how much power AI is going to demand on the grid that subtracts power from. And I didn't expect Chris to bring it up, but H-two 36 residential hydropower, I think, we looked at. We don't have too much flat in Vermont. We have a lot of ridgelines and mountains and streams that run year round. With proper development and the use of turbines, driven by Pelton Peel technology.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Driven by?

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Pelton, P E L T O N, Pelton wheel technology. Many foreign countries are already doing this. They're generating power per community. You need to have head pressure, and it's gotta be scaled to the amount of wattage that's required so that you know what kind of size of penstock and how many housing wheels you need to get the head brushed. But more importantly, it would be under local control. And if you create, take an old dam, refurbish it, which would probably mean excavating all the silt out of the present one, but let the hydrology engineers work on that. You could create sustainable wetlands that would be flood control structures for the community from which you are now creating power. That's food for thought. I did look into pelted wheels, and they are very affordable. Wild turkeys. Glad you brought that up, because I've never had so many wild turkeys. Here and here. Minimum of 15 on my lawn. One day there was nineteen, eighteen left. The others in the fridge are in. I think Ela is spot on with dam control. Think we need to invest in that, but preservation of some in addition to, I don't think we should be building new ones. But I think preservations of old ones that are properly sited and have that sited, inspected, as a form of flood control, and the smallest amount of disturbance to surrounding landlords, meaning a town. The other one just came up this morning. I sent an email to Jason Bradford. I don't know if a representative would realize that land boundaries, customarily and culturally, have always been done by foresters and surveyors with fluorescent yellow or fluorescent orange. Establishing a law, and I think the genesis of this is probably disrespectful founders who have violated land of property owners and got into verbal altercations that aren't healthy. I hate to see a law created statewide for a couple of miscreant individuals. Fine. Okay. It'll stop. Don't blame a dog. Blind the owner. And secure permission in the acreage that you would like to go hunting on beforehand.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You're referring to the purple pink bill that we had today?

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Yeah. Prior Yeah. To the purple pink, think Michael Stitchard just it's the most forested part of the state. Mhmm. He started Beecher Falls, Buchanan, the Death Of Connecticut, Brooks Valley. He got thousands and thousands and thousands of acres. To pick a block of land owned by the landowners, you probably got 500 acres. That's a popular number up there. And say, you don't want this to happen on your land. You've got to get somebody to go out there and paint the trees. Oh, you mean they're already painted? Yeah, that's my boundaries. Now I've got to put purple on them. That's a needless waste of cost. Post it. You have legal posting now. Every 300 feet. Every corner. All the witness trees. I mean, that needs a little further development.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Mhmm. Yeah.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: That's it for me.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: I mean, I'm interested in having a check-in on a lot of the work that we started in the prior legislative session. There are a lot of new members in the committee, and so it's hard to can't just assume that you understand the work that happened in 'twenty three and 'twenty four. So it's probably good to get a check-in on everything. Blood safety is an important one. We spent so much time learning about all of that and putting really good legislation in place, and it would be good to hear checkup on that. For sure. And I'm interested in this idea of considering hydropower. That's new. But that would be a joint, I would imagine, inquiry with the energy committee. And then I'm particularly interested in hearing from the RPCs on how they feel like the land use mapping process is going. I think I'm hearing reports that there are some concerns that the future land use maps aren't going to provide enough space for growth. So I'd love to hear evidence for and against that claim in our committee because I just because somebody seems really upset about us not providing enough space for housing doesn't mean it's true. So I'd like to know. I'd like to hear some testimony on it. Yeah. So, again, that's another update on work that we've already started in past years. And then all the conservation, mapping work that's been going on. It would be nice to get another update on that. So lots of updates in terms of new work that I know that the report on regional water U storm water utilities isn't due until next year, but I it we keep hearing these issues with the three acre program that people want us to, address immediately. And it seems to me like the regional water utility is where we're going to be able to address those issues most effectively. So I don't know if there's any way we can talk about that this year in the context of clarify the goals of that study group to make sure that they're addressing these issues that are being brought up. But, like, I hesitate to take any action on the three acre rule until we have something to replace it, which would Thank you. Be rules related to the regional stormwater utility, I hope. So I don't know to what extent we could learn about or advance the work of that this year. I would love to be

[Rep. Kate Logan]: able to work on that.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: And then whatever CAPO updates I heard the talk about needing to work on. Right.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Can I add on that regional work around the potential for a whole new set of regional storm water? I just wondered, I know that gov ops has resurrected the work on county level regional governance. I guess I'm just personally, it's been a big curiosity of mine as a legislator around how many regional types of entities, including our regional planning commissions and our regional watershed groups. I guess I just wonder School boards. Yeah. It touches all areas of policy. But in terms of our area of policy, might do a little learning before next year around sort of how all these different regional entities

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Line up.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Line up or obviously don't line up.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: My dream is to make them all watershed based as we do this.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Yeah. And then the conservation districts, which is a certain way, which is on a lot of our work, is also struggling with engineering capacity. Anyway, yeah, this might be interesting. But I would love also to hear about these conservation districts. Yeah.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Are

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: you set, Kate? Yeah.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Thank you. Well, I'm I'm

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: just gonna start out celebrating the fact that the Progressive and Republicans can't agree if that's something I

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: love that.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Great. And I also would really like to, I think, just hear from that study committee, the regional storm water study committee, have them come in to get Neil suggesting. Think that's a great idea. Also, things that we've already heard. I I would like to hear from some we heard from from the the old growth forest advocates and people with experience. Would like to kind of hear from the the actual agency working for Forest Parks and Rec. I'd to hear from them on that same topic and and some maybe some more logging or forest products folks on that same topic, just so we get a nice well rounded view of that. Because I agree that there's going to be things that we can do to not have certain products. Other things, I actually have spent quite a bit of time in the off ocean myself, in my particular area, Northwest Corner Of Saskatchewan, working with agriculturalists and lakefront property owners to see what we can do to bring some sanity to the discussion there over water quality. And

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: I have to share with

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: you all, I have constructed what I'm calling you've got to have a cool acronym for every group that you create. This group I'm calling ACWA. It's H C C W A. It's the Advisory Committee for Clean Water and Agriculture. And I am purposefully avoiding involving all advocacy groups on either side of the issue and just specifically involving people who are invested on boots on the ground, like from property owners themselves and farmers themselves. Nobody else is allowed in. Yeah. Because I wanna hear from the real people. And so I've got three

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: on each side. So I hate to

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: even call it sides. Three invested part of the invested part of three members, which is two invested parties. And I've met with the agriculturalists separately, and I've met with the late Trump property owners separately. They've all agreed to join, and just back tomorrow at 08:00 is the first time I'm gonna meet those two groups together locally, at a local establishment, and nobody's allowed to bring boxing gloves or I was gonna ask if you may

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: gonna acquire a class, I believe.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: And just based

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: on what I've learned from

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: them thus far, I actually already have, and this is what I'm gonna talk about tomorrow, already have a bill addressing water quality and tile drains. Tile drainage seems to be one of the prime issues that people are concerned about because I have been the epicenter of the current lawsuit of the Boston Bell sign in my district as well. Neither of the two parties involved in that lawsuit are involved in fighting to fight over the course of

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: the year.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: It's a good call. So one of the things that I have already kind of absorbed from from the from the groups and has codified here, work with Brady, is a requirement for for buffering, either vegetative buffering or engineered solution between the outputs of tile drains and the water. The state can't just dump tile drain right into a conveyance that goes out to the lake. In addition to that, I'm asking the agency to develop a testing regime for tiled rain output.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: And

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: to balance that within the same bill, I'm also asking the agency to develop that's not a wolf, that's a dog.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: No, I know. Funny. That

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: develop a testing regime for the outputs from municipal wastewater systems for pharmaceuticals and pesticides.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So a testing regime would cover both child rains output and One direct

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: set of testing regimes for tile drain output and another testing regime for municipal water. For things that they're not currently testing, bothersome to me. That was one of the things that the farmers when I talk to farmers about this, they're like, okay, we get rid of that, but it's not all of us, you know, so let's make sure we're properly testing those. Definitely, this bill, it's about like, I'm still getting signatures, so I don't have an offer for that

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: yet. Another

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: bill that I have that I don't have print to get, but I'm working with Michael. Thank you, Michael, your help on that is one that captures a whole bunch of stuff relative to streamlining the permitting processes.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: I'm not going go into whole

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: lot of detail. We'll just talk about it

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: when it comes up.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: I'm hoping that this group will

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: be willing to take a look at that.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Lastly, some other bills that I am very interested in seeing. I'm not the author of them, but related to some stuff that's on this piece of paper that was, I don't know if you all got this, but specific to solar project siting and telecom tower siting. There's some real concerns with stuff that's already been approved by PUC for solar siting. Like, my goodness, that's not what we envisioned,

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: I don't think. We were talking

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: about putting up big solar farms, decimating a bunch of nice mature forests and covering a whole bunch of prime agriculture, and it's not what we had in mind. But that's what's happening. And the disturbing thing about those is there's a lot of benefits for for those. The electrical, their renewable energy credits, all going out of state. All the profits are going out of state, and all the tax credits are going out of state. In other words, people that own that are doing that are all out of staters. So, yeah, some corrections need

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: to be

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: made there. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I know there's a couple of bills coming. Greg Burt, Representative Burt.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: So, I'll bring those two. I'm very

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: glad you guys take those out.

[Rep. Rob North]: Thank you. Kristi?

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: Sure. Some of mine are going to sound antiquated. I agree with the housing permitting process and perhaps the tier one, which I think Springfield will become. And I don't know if there's deadlines or sunsets on on some of the permitting laws or rules, but I wanna make sure that we this stuff is gonna be it's gonna take several years for it to develop. We're working with the developers now, the target areas, and rehab some of our vacant homes, that type of thing. I just want to keep tabs on that. Waste water upgrades. We're going have to upgrade our waste water facility. We have the pelletizing of the sludge, drying of the sludge in many colors that can be used. I don't wanna lose sight of that. There's been some good effort. ANR is working on that currently. I'd like to get an update. If I've asked for that. Or they've updated us over the last couple of weeks. I want to stay on top of that. Because we are, poised to become a regional collection site, perhaps,

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: in our

[Rep. Kristi Morris]: area for processing wastewater. Brownfield remediation, we haven't talked about brownfield remediation yet. Springfield is inundated with a number of post industrial sites that are contaminated. I know that boils down to funding. There's not a lot of money, but if I don't advocate for it, I won't get it. So I don't want to lose sight of brownfield remediation.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: Those are probably big enough.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Hui, been here a couple of days.

[Rep. Larry Labor (Vice Chair)]: Set by a lengthy list. Okay, nothing on that. I just hope to keep learning the issues, the acronyms, you know, all the applicable laws, things like that. So I'm just here listening at this point.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Great. Feel free to grab any of us to dive deeper into any issues and ask questions.

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: And legislative council

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: is very helpful, as you know.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Can I just add one?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, don't worry.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Just the landfill.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Yeah. Landfill's exciting. Yeah. Start up. That has always been in the back of my mind. What? A week. Is that our jurisdiction? We are. Okay.

[Rep. Kate Logan]: Sorry. The bottle bill.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: The bottle bill. I mean, I Yeah. Yeah. And solid way. Take

[Rep. Michael "Mike" Tagliavia]: one bottle.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: How do we stop? Thank you for bringing this. Well, so you all have brought up thank you for your thoughtfulness and and and doing this. You touched on, I think, almost every topic that is on my mind, and it's obviously we now have seventeen weeks left to work together, and only some of those are before crossover. So I am working closely with Senator Watson to try and coordinate on these topics. I won't get to all of them, but it's great to hear. Some that weren't on my radar, micro hydro, just stands out. But I did take notes, and I do appreciate it. As always, you can talk to me about our priorities and how we're moving forward. And with that, I actually have a question. Do folks need a five minute bio break? Or Michael's here and ready. It looks like we do. So let's take a let's take a break till twenty minutes past the hour and then reconvene to walk through

[Rep. Kate Logan]: the