Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Alright. Good morning, welcome to the House Environments Committee. This morning, we are going to hear the changes we made to the KFO program, created it last year, I guess, how that's going. And we welcome two guests who I will let introduce themselves.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Good morning. Thank you for having us. I'm Catherine Gessing, general counsel for the Agency of Natural Resources. Good morning, Abby Pageak.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Thank you for having us, The concentrated animal feeding operation program manager.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: So what we thought we'd do first is just walk through some of the changes that are related to CAFOs in h six thirty two. Most of those changes were requested by EPA. Unfortunately, they didn't get those changes to us until the May, so we weren't able to kind of get them into the previous bill, which was act 67. The the changes start on page 17, line 19

[Speaker 0]: Sorry, are you in last year's bill? You're in this year's bill?

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I'm in this year's bill.

[Speaker 0]: We're gonna

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Did you wanna go to

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: I thought you were gonna change. Just remind us what we did last

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: year. Okay. Sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Uh-huh. Just maybe high level.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Remind us what we did and why we did it. Yeah.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: You wouldn't mind, that would be

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: great. Well, the background is that there was a de delegation petition, and that was filed by CLF, the NRC, and the Lake Champlain committee. And as a result of that that petition, EPA embarked on kind of an investigation. They did a series of inspections. They they they convened a group of us, including the petitioners and including ANR to

[Speaker 0]: discuss wasn't that? I'd like it if

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: you could I'm trying to get on to all the committee pages.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: I'm trying to say it's

[Speaker 0]: over. Yeah. Okay.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I am so sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Folks are distracted. I'd rather wait for a minute

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: and Let

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: me just get the bill up.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: So the other way to get there is all the Householders. Do you remember the other way to get to our agenda? You

[Speaker 0]: can just also enter the if you get to the main page, just enter H 632.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. That's going to because there's nothing going on.

[Speaker 0]: But we're getting background right now. She's not in age six thirty two. Everyone seemed to be having the same talent. Is everyone ready?

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yep.

[Speaker 0]: Great. Start again.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: So as as a part of that petition process, EPA and the petitioners and ANR agreed to have ANR submit a corrective action plan to EPA. The first corrective action plan EPA responded to, they kind of said you're headed in the right direction, but we want some more detail around how you're going to stand up a KFO program in Vermont. And one of the directives of that corrective action plan is that we would go forth

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: with a go forward with a

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: legislative initiative that would incorporate more of the sort of CAFO related definitions into title ten forty seven chapter 47, which is sort of the water quality section. And there were some tweaks that were also made to title six to kind of align those some provisions with with with the KFO program. The legislation that resulted was act 67. It included a number of definitions related to KFOs. So it included, you know, definitions of concentrated animal feeding operations, large farm operations, medium farm operations. It also provided the secretary of the agency of natural resources with explicit authority to, embark on rulemaking, to, conduct inspections, to, to to, establish technical standards related to farm operations, and that comply with the federal Clean Water Act. And one of the things that EPA was interested in is making sure that we had you know, that we were we were sort of proceeding with the program and that if we had additional tweaks that we could bring those to the legislature. They we've been meeting with EPA on a regular basis. We've also meet met with the petitioners this past month to talk about, you know, what our status is, and we're gonna have continue to have some of those meetings with them. We have regular check ins with EPA staff, and they're mostly, they're technical and legal staff from Region 1. And I don't know. Do you want any more detail around x 60 '7?

[Speaker 0]: Let's just see. Do folks have more have questions right now? Or

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: No. I'm good. Okay. Thanks for the refresher.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. That's great. Does everyone have h six thirty two up? It's not can you check your link? Because what I'm getting is an active web page, but your link isn't going through. Today's from today's So

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: I get, here, Michael O'Grady is introduced for today, but then it goes to a dead end.

[Speaker 0]: I'll email it you. Or just try reposting it.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: Looking at it as interesting.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. Yeah.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: If you

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: don't have the ACT UP, do you want Abby to sort of start her sort of overview of what what we're doing in terms of the KFOG program?

[Speaker 0]: No. I think we're good.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I think You think you're good? Okay. I think just Yeah.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: We've talked about it there.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Good. And if you go to as introduced, you can get to it.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: So high level, some of these sort of tweaks are really around clarification, you know, corrections to misspellings, those kinds of things. There and then so the first one was on page 17, line 19, and it's in conjunction with a an edit that's on page 18, line 19, which just clarifies which permits we're talking about in the ag statutes. There's a you know, the the text of that section talks about permits that are issued by both the secretary of ag and the secretary of a and r. So it's just a clarification to make sure that your the reader knows that it's an LFO or it's a NIPTY's program, which is the key program. The second one is a request to extend a timeline associated with the

[Speaker 0]: I think we have a question on the previous one from representative So

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: we were just a little concerned on that page 17, right after the LFO clarification. It also crosses out cowscalf and replaces it with cow or calf pairs, which was concerning to us that it might indicate that that means like a pair of cows or a pair of calves. We thought that might that maybe that should be an and.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Okay. I I actually don't think that EPA requested that one. That might be a legislative

[Speaker 0]: It would.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Council fix. So right with it. Just yeah.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: I think we're looking for clarification from the agency. You mean cow and calf? Like, a pair has to be a cow and a calf.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I think I think it's the total number of animals. So calves and cows counting both of them.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: I don't.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: No? Oh, it's cat. Okay.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: We can check. In the best position to clarify that. That would be helpful. Because it's counting a pair as if it was one.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yep. And I certainly will check with a

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: with that.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yeah. Thanks. I think that that might be an error somewhere in Yep. The

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: So the next change was a request for an extension to general the CAFO general permit, and I think Abby will get into this a little bit. But one of the things that's happening right now is that we're engaged in a stakeholder process, and it's been really productive. But it also was not something that was contemplated as part of the the original, corrective action plan with EPA. They have been really supportive of that process because I think they view it as a an opportunity for us to engage the public, both the NGOs and the environmental groups and the farmers. And I will let Abby talk about that more, but we

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I'll her

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: We have a medium general permit right now. And one of the things that we would like to do is to convert that permit to a not just a medium general permit, but a permit that covers all farms, and that's going to require some technical sort of some technical knowledge, some technical, you know, sort of investigation related to compliance schedules and things like that. And so we feel like we need some time to do it right. I don't think that that will prevent us from issuing individual permits, but it's the general permit piece. The

[Speaker 0]: the general permit specific to Emma made of medium farms?

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Right now, it's specific to medium farms.

[Speaker 0]: But you wanted to cover

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: We'd like it to cover both medium and large farms. So, and it would essentially be farms mostly that are, you know, sort of in compliance but want the coverage to, protect against, civil suits, for example.

[Speaker 0]: What would you need for the individual permit?

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Right now, it would be you would have to have a compliance schedule. It would be, you know, a farm that's more sort of their operations are maybe a little bit more complicated. There needs to be more detail in the in the in the, you know, sort of condition terms and conditions related to that farm. You know, maybe they need an upgrade for their manure pit, that kind of thing.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Say right now in the future.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yeah. In the future, we are sort of thinking about whether we can incorporate some compliance schedules into a medium, I mean, into a general permit, but that's that's sort of in process, something that we're sort of thinking about. And, you know, as part of the stakeholder process, Abby's been, you know, inviting other states, you know, other and EPA to kinda come to these meetings and talk about their programs and how they're implementing the programs because there are some differences in some states. And we're trying to we're trying to fashion a program that is a good fit for Vermont and Vermont farms and, you know, the Vermont landscape. So

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Let's see.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: The next change there's a couple of there's there's a the next change is on page 20. It's at line eight, and it really is just a an edit, I think, from Ledge Council. At the bottom of the page, there's a eighteen and nineteen and twenty one. There are a number of changes that were requested by EPA. They wanted this it to be real very clear that the secretary would have, the authority and the discretion to require a CAFO permit under that section regarding large CAFO permits. And then they also indicated that when nutrient management plans are that are part of a permit are noticed for public review and and comment that it has to be a plan that's approved by the secretary. So it can't just be a draft plan. It's something that we will have we would have had to look at, and that's that's in the federal regs. So they wanted that clarification. They also require asked for a clarification regarding the renewal of permits on page 21, and I think it's really just you know, they they wanted the it to be clear that a permit would be reviewed in accordance to its terms. And then on page 22, stop me if I'm going too fast, but I don't want to use up Abby's time because she has a lot to say. So on page 22 at the top one through 10, there were some additional, there were some changes to the language around two or more CAFOs under common ownership. That language comes from the federal regulations and that was requested by EPA. EPA also requested additions to on page 22 and page 23 additions to the definitions of large farm operations and large CAFO operations. In our original definition, we didn't have the phrase whether milked or dry. And so they wanted that inserted because it's consistent with the federal regulations and definition. And the same on page 24 for medium farm operations. Originally, we had just referenced the title six, but that language is not in title six, so they wanted us to put the into the the statute. So that brings us to page 26. There's a correction to stormwater. I think that's ledge counsel. And there's also, on page 27, a tweak to the definition of waters of The United States. I think that's also led to counsel. Just, you know, sort of streamlines the language. And then on page 28 at the top one through six or one through five, EPA wanted us to include some references to the federal regs around technical standards and requiring CAFOs to to comply with the federal technical standards. So that was a request that we, you know, put into the our initiative. And then further down on that page on line 15, there's a wastewater correction, which is also, I think, let's cancel. On page 30, under the section of CAFO requirements and exemptions, there's a section that talks about, you know, unpermitted large CAFOs and areas that would be considered exempt under the federal regs. And then there's just a clarification that the appropriate utilization of nutrients under a nutrient managed plant has to comply with the federal CAFO regulations. And then on page 31. This was something that was just missed last year. Title 10 BSA eight zero zero three is the section of the statute that deals with the environmental court and enforcement. And so we had some language in last year's bill in act 67 that directed us to renegotiate and reissue a memorandum of understanding, which we were calling a document that sort of outlined how we do business with the agency of ag, how we coordinate inspections and referrals for enforcement and how we share data, all of those kinds of things. And there's an existing document that has been in place for a while. We also have a draft document that is a little bit more it's a it's it's a little more streamlined. We've shared it with EPA and with the with AG, but we really wanted to wait until the stakeholder process was completed because there are likely to be some suggestions that come out of that process, and we wanna incorporate those kinds of things presented to the to the legislature and get some feedback from folks before we kind of finalize that document. Right now, things are going pretty well. We've got regular meetings with ag. We're sharing data that we didn't necessarily share before. We have access to their SharePoint. We're trying to figure out how to get them access to our enforcement section database, so we've we're working on that right now. So what this section does is just incorporate this the same language that was in act 67 into the environmental court sections. And then I think that might be Zion. Might be.

[Speaker 0]: That's all on the KFA, but it and then so I'd like members do members have questions for general counsel? So thank you for that. It also strikes me that since you're general counsel for ANR, we may have other questions for you on this bill, but I would like to get through the CAFO part of it right now. Thank you.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: So Thanks. I think I was asked to speak specifically to the MOU and the medium K-four general permit and the missed deadlines. And Catherine did touch on some of the reasoning, mainly the stakeholder group, which was formed as, you know, as per x '67, wasn't in our timeline when we proposed the CAP, the corrective action plan to EPA. And the corrective action plan was our best guess of a timeline. Again, we we put in dates, you know, ahead of having resources and really knowing where this was gonna go. And then the legislature did get involved, and we formed the stakeholder group, which has been ongoing. It's been a really, I think, meaningful process. Some of the items that the stakeholder group is touching upon that do affect the MOU and or the Canadian CAFO general permit, I can outline for you. With the CAFO general permit, EPA asked us kind of, I feel like, late in the communications to reissue it. It had been issued. It's issued every five years, and it had been issued a few years before that to expand it for all size farms. And ANR does have some. We support that in some ways, but we also had a lot of conversation we were hoping to have with EPA on what that means and, you know, general permit versus an individual permit. The way that the general permit is written, it's very, it's like you need to have all of your production area in standard and meet the highest sort of standard, meet that twenty five year, twenty four hour storm event before you apply for it. So it's sort of and it's a voluntary permit, and we haven't had any volunteers to date to apply for that. So the other item that EPA asked us to reopen it for was buffers. They said that Vermont's buffer standards don't meet the federal standards, which, again, we've we've asked them to clarify and have more conversation with us, and we haven't had that. I we did meet with EPA yesterday, and we said, you know, they are meeting with the stakeholder group on the twenty ninth. And we said, be prepared to answer buffer questions. That's gonna be a big conversation to state. So to open a voluntary permit that no one has applied for while we're trying to grow this program and engage in a stakeholder group, when we're talking about limited resources, we don't have the answers that we need from EPA who asked us to open it, it's a complicated process. So that's why we asked for a correction in the date for that. And one other thing that's coming up with general versus individual permits in the stakeholder group is farmers are worried about this public notice requirement for a discharge of EPDS permit. And with a general permit, the understanding is that that notice is of the general permit, not potentially an individual farm. So stakeholders are really engaged in what the differences are. We're calling at different states, asking them for that information, and we're really engaged with them. And we think that we'll get at least a suggestion on what stakeholder support and then maybe the legislature supports for our structure. So again, fully committed to expanding the general permit. We're just kind of waiting to see to what extent are we going to extend it and expand it.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Do you

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: wanna talk a little bit about staffing? Yeah. Because there have been some significant changes. Yeah.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Sure. Let me go over the MOU real quick, and then I'll I'll switch to staffing. And then I think we should talk about stakeholder group too. So the MOU, again, is a very heavy process document. And I think, for us, we did update our authority. It went to the agency of Ag. We had our back and forth, and we sent it to EPA, we're still awaiting comments. So it did sort of the 2017 MOU process was referenced to, but without knowing, again, how the agencies are potentially going to interact or what permits we're gonna have or how we're gonna interact with each other, it didn't it it was hard to update a process document at this point. So, again, we've proposed that we do that after this stakeholder group, ends, and we sort of have a a better idea of which permits, which agency will be, responsible for administering. Yeah.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: That's

[Speaker 0]: a question along those lines. It struck me going through that you're asking for a date change for that process, but do you have a date certain for the CAFO rules?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: No. We have a proposal in the corrective action plan that we submitted to EPA, and we are preparing to begin work on that rule after the stakeholder group commences. That is, first and foremost, in in my opinion as program manager, imperative to the success of this program. There are some federal gray areas that we really need to outline in a capable rule. And so we're you know, I think that that's, in my opinion, one of the most important things that we need to do for the program is develop that rule, and we will engage stakeholders as necessary. But I think in the cap, it's in year two.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I'm just looking at it. I actually think it's in

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: There was no set date. And again, the stakeholder process and sort of figuring out what the you know, what's gonna happen between the

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: two agencies, what kind of permit we're gonna write. Yeah. It's we would start to conduct the outreach on the CAFO rule in this year. So but the idea is that and we would commence the rulemaking this year, but it probably will be towards the end of the year.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: That you start.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Adoption date in 2027. Yeah. Well So that's the that's the

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: I would like to know a realistic adoption date that we can adopt.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Well, I would think it usually takes anywhere from four to eight months to adopt a rule.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Maybe a nine.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Yeah. So

[Speaker 0]: I appreciate your optimism. But I guess I'd I'd like to know what y'all

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: So in terms of how it fits in with your stakeholder process.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yeah. I think we wanna part of what we wanna do is, do a a pre rulemaking outreach process before we do the rulemaking because it is, a new program. And so I would think that would start in the fall, and then we would try to commence the rulemaking, you know, file the ICAR paperwork towards the 2026. So I think what that means is probably end of summer, early fall for the final rule to be adopted by the secretary of state.

[Speaker 0]: Of '27? Yeah. '27. Okay.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: Representative Chapin? Can you just describe what the difference would be between a stakeholder process that you're doing now and a pre rulemaking outreach? So the stakeholder process is a little bit broader. It was, directed by the legislature, and there's a number of criteria that are or questions that they want the stakeholders to answer. So they could be things like, you know, are we gonna have one LFO permit that is sort of, you know, implemented by ANR? How are we going to, you know, what what are the different roles of ag versus ANR? That kind of thing. And that's just one example. We're not predetermining what's going to come out of that stakeholder process. We're asking the stakeholders to give us their input, and and then we have a report that we have to, provide to the legislature. So it's it's a much broader process. When we do pre rulemaking, it will be we'll have a draft of the of the individual permit that people can react to. So it's like here or the rule. So here is what we're proposing. You know, it's much more specific. It's not it's not before you make a draft. Actually, you

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: go through the draft and then

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: you write an input and then you do another draft. Yeah. And then we start the rulemaking process having at least gotten some input from folks. And it may, you know, it's not something that we do all the time, but we certainly do it when we either have a new program or we have something that's particularly complicated or a little bit controversial, those kinds of things where we really need people to weigh in and let us know what they think. So

[Speaker 0]: So just to rewind a minute to see if I understand. I I understand that you've sort of started a pre stakeholder process by meeting sort of separately with farmers and and

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: The stakeholder process that we're going through right now was directed by

[Speaker 0]: I understand. Can I just Oh, go? Sorry. Is that true that you you sort of started out meeting separately, and then are you coming together? That's Yes. You're counting the stakeholder process to begin. And where are we at in that process? Do I have that right?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: I think I can speak to that. So we did include stakeholders, a smaller group of stakeholders, the farming community partners, NRCS technical service providers, agencies. And we did that for the farming community outside of the environmental groups and EPA coming in so that they could get a real understanding of what being asked of them. Because it's a lift and there's a lot of technical standards and conversations that we wanted the farmers to have ahead of getting the environmental groups in the room with them so that they have that background information. So they are everyone the the environmental groups were we have a facilitator that was hired, and so they have been communicating with all stakeholders mostly throughout the process. So it wasn't the pre stakeholder group. It's just sort of the way we decided to structure it with meetings, including some or all of the stakeholders. But now on the twenty second, the environmental groups are gonna come in and talk to the farmers. On the twenty ninth, we have a meeting and EPA is gonna come in and talk to the rest of the stakeholders. They're gonna answer questions, hopefully, on buffers, among other things. And then we have two public hearings scheduled for the ninth and the eleventh, and those are hybrid. So we are moving forward, and I don't think it was a pre stakeholder. That's how we structured it for everyone's comfort. Because, again, we're asking really technical and potentially hard to answer questions such as how should the two agencies interact? ANR is now going to be it has expanded their program. We're gonna be out there inspecting. We have to propose an inspection schedule as part of this. And so what do stakeholders think about both agencies out there doing that? How should we interact? Which permits are you you know, which agency would hold which permit? These are the conversations that we're having in the stakeholder group. So

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Representative North? Yeah. Just a specific question on the the discussions around buffering that are currently occurring happening. Do does that do any of those discussions include the concept of how to buffer the output of tile drains or if that's

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: included in the buffering discussions?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: We the group is not proposing, at this point, changes to tile drain buffers. The EPA brought up specifically buffers in on fields for surface water and ditches. They said that doesn't meet the federal standard. So that is the scope. Tile drench has come up. I'm sure it comes up often in Vermont right now, but that is the extent of the discussion is what would be acceptable for our permits. Yeah.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: It's not upturn of tile drain, which currently we've discussed.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: There are requirements in the RIPs right now for tile drainage, and both agencies worked on, you know, that together. So that, as far as I understand, is holding and, you know

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: In place in that. Okay. Alright. Thank you. Sure. And not to put you on the spot,

[Speaker 0]: but since you're new, we'd love to hear just a little bit about your background and how you got here. Sure. Sorry.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: So yeah. So I am new to ANR. I came over in 2023. I came from the Agency of Ag. I was a water quality inspector there for nineteen years, so I'm not entirely new to ag regulation. I've been in the state working in this area for twenty three years. So that's my background.

[Speaker 0]: So you worked with the Agency of Agriculture? Agency of Agriculture. All those other years. And '23, you came over to ANR. Thank you for that.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: She was a party one for quite a while. Well, I had Oh, you have a question. Sorry.

[Speaker 0]: Didn't No. No.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Go ahead. Especially when I came over, and then the program manager did gladly assumed that role. Now we're up to Well, I'll share with you a bit.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, representative Austin.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Yep. Just wondering, how often does stakeholder input align with best practices, evidence based practice, and what happens if they don't align? Sorry, could you, I

[Speaker 0]: couldn't hear this. I'm sorry,

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I was asking about how often does public input, the stakeholder input, align with evidence based best practices? And if they don't align, what happens?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: So I can only speak to the current stakeholder process that we're going through, but we are, you know, realigning. We have a facilitator. We're realigning with scope. So it's like we're not proposing any you know, the proposal wouldn't be anything less than what a federally or state required. So we're operating within the boundaries of what is appropriate, but it sort of it does allow some conversations to happen on on what type of permit might allow the most flexibility. And we're also talking about if we're bringing in specific production area standards. Similar to New York has a set of production area standards that all farms have to meet, what does that look like? And then we're talking about the resources and the regulatory structure and the tech assistance that farms would need to uphold or bring their production areas to that standard. So we're not talking about changing federal or, you know, state standards. We're just talking about there will be VPDS permits for farms that discharge. How does that look? And then how did the two agencies track? So this we haven't seen the report, but we would follow the rule regardless. I'm just curious.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. Yep.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: There are a lot of technical folks on the stakeholder group.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Much helpful. Who's on it? How many?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Sure. There's about I have a list on it. There's about 30 people that engage in it regularly to date. The environmental groups are in addition to that. We have about We kept it half farmers. So there's a number of large farms, medium farms, then small farms. Some of them, we tried to find people who wear multiple hats, who are part of the farmers' watershed groups, who work for other entities. We also have NRCS. We have technical service providers. The Agency of Ag, ANR is there. I am missing FSA. So we have a really broad UVM extension is there. I'm sure I'm missing someone. So it's a really broad group. That'd be helpful to know. Yeah, sure. I could provide a list.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: No, that's fine. I

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: actually think we should have a list.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: I'm happy to provide that.

[Speaker 0]: And I guess, including

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: the whole environmental groups.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: There's actually a pretty good website that shows what the process has been, what the liquidity, That that kind of

[Speaker 0]: would be great.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: So we can send that along as well.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: For sure. And we have meeting summaries for every stakeholder group, and we have our presentation PDF ed up there and any reference documents that we find important. So when we get to the public hearings, we hope that everyone is as informed as they can be on

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: the process. Yeah. Trying to understand the process from Sure. You wanna talk about stuff? Sure, I can get to So program

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: we've been When I came on, there were two, and then it went down to one. And about a year and a half ago, we replaced the second member of the CAFO program. That was kind of the time that the cap in all

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: this was being proposed. We were in

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: conversations with EPA. We were given the funding to hire three other PFO program staff. And as of December 15, we welcomed our fifth member of the program. We're working right now on onboarding their training right now. They're in a training. So we're working on onboarding them, getting them up to speed on doing inspections, figuring out the lay of the land, and then working on getting that capacity up for the five people on the program. The you know, in the meantime, even with the other staff member and myself, we did work on meeting the requirements that we had proposed in the corrective action plan year one with EPA. We did conduct 10 inspections as lead agency. They were done with the Agency of out there. So we did do that. We met that requirement. And we also did multiple visits that were not full inspections. So we did some complaints and then joint visits with agency of Ag. We've been moving forward as far as enforcement, and all of this is sort of touched upon in the corrective action plan, and I'm sort of touching that as we worked on it. We've continued to advance new enforcement cases for direct discharges and tracking corrective actions required of farms that we've settled with. So continuing on how we've been moving forward. As far as program development, we're beginning to set up support services for technology and database support. As Catherine mentioned, we're sharing, Agency of Ag is sharing their SharePoint file system with us, and we're working on sharing that back with them. We were given the ability to develop our own dashboards with the Ag water quality database, and so we were waiting till we had a little bit more staff capacity so that we could assign to people to do that. But we are really committed to sharing that data. And then we're all calling the same structures on farms the same things, there's less confusion. So we're really working as we move forward, to work more seamlessly with the agency of ag. Yeah, that's what we've been up to. So I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Speaker 0]: President Amore?

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: Yeah. You mentioned you've done at least 10 formal inspections thus far. I know you can't give us any specific results from the specific inspectors. But just in general, has the early inspections that Ag and I have done together, any of, just in general, kind of colored or shaped to the way you're thinking about going forward with the KFO permitting?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: I don't think that we found anything that was surprising. I think, again, the, you know, the general idea is that there are discharges from production areas in some cases, and that will that's the reason why we're gonna need to develop the SweetPDS pro program. It was a drought, so I would say it was a drier than normal year, and inspections are based on day of observations. There was a lot of risk areas. I think part of the cap that we were asked to focus on was even in scenarios where we don't see a discharge happening, are these areas that would be required, that would pull a farm into the requirement to obtain a VPDS permit. And that's what we're working on is compiling that data and really focusing on what does that mean, how do we design a program that could pull in some of these, discharges that are happening intermittently and writing a rule to address that too? So I don't think that we found anything that was surprising. It was an especially dry year, so a lot of risks that we saw.

[Speaker 0]: So risk is a placeholder where you might expect if it was a bigger rain year, you could come back and look? Sure.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Yes. So the risks run a range from a management area where there's always potentially a risk because the farm needs to maintain it and clean it up. So, say, manure doesn't go overcurb with a stream or a ditch on the other side of it. And then it can also be something larger, such as there isn't storage or treatment for a silage leaf japunk, which drains into an adjacent field. Those are the areas where we're being asked, I think, in the petition through this process to design that program to meet those risk areas. And the federal standard says treat or or store, you know, and so we're trying to figure out what that looks like for Vermont. So Representative North.

[Representative Kristi Morris (Member)]: So it it sounds like if my interpretation of what you said is it sounds like it's con your initial assessment is confirming the path that we put you on. Not that there's alarm bells like, woah, we need to go much faster, but just like, yeah, there's some things that it's good that we're doing this.

[Speaker 0]: I would agree. Okay. Other questions? Representative Chapin.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: You gave some stats about how many inspections you're doing. How about enforcement actions? How has that changed in your three or five year tenure? And does a drought year result in just way fewer enforcement actions?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Sure. Well, we just finished our legislative report for this year, and we had about half as many complaint referrals as we do on a normal year. And I assume that's partially because of the drought. I would say, it's hard to compare. I haven't had that many years under my belt here. It does seem like enforcement is fairly regular throughout the years. Yeah. I wouldn't just other than the complaints that we received going down, it seemed like a fairly regular year, and I think that was climate specific. So

[Speaker 0]: Do we have your report yet?

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: I'm not sure where it went after. I I can check on that. It's

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I

[Speaker 0]: don't see I don't see it on our list here yet.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: See. So

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: I think it's due it's today the fifteenth? Yeah.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: It's due today. Today. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Can't wait. Alright, further questions? Thank you for joining us as well.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Before we let Katherine off the hook, do members have any questions more broadly on on the DEC miscellaneous bill that you could think of right now? Otherwise, I'm sure we can send them to you if we do. Thank you both for coming in this morning.

[Abby Pageak (CAFO Program Manager, ANR)]: Thank you for having us.

[Catherine Gjessing (General Counsel, Vermont Agency of Natural Resources)]: I do appreciate

[Speaker 0]: it. Members, we'll take a ten minute break, and then we'll shift gears.