Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Welcome back to the House Committee on the Environment. We are welcoming George Springston to comment on the Executive Order six twenty five as it relates to wetlands.

[George Springston]: Well, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to listen to me today. Is the audio working well on this? Is this okay?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah, we're all

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: set.

[George Springston]: Okay. So, I am a resident of Plainfield and a geologist working at Norwich University. And this is just a little bit of background to start with. I've been studying Vermont's wetlands for over thirty years. I started out working for the Department of Environmental Conservation in the wetlands office as an assistant wetlands coordinator. Worked there for something over four years. And after that, I did wetland consulting work that primarily involved wetland mapping projects. We did a map of Dorset Marsh, which is one of Vermont's premier class one wetlands. I made a complete map of the wetlands of the town of Middlebury, did some other projects for natural resource conservation service and other places. And then I primarily shifted over to geologic projects with the state geological survey. But throughout that, that work has involved field visits and remote sensing work on wetlands. So I have kept my hand in the game on that, so to speak. And today, I think my emphasis, it's apparent in the written testimony I put together, but I really do wanna focus on it, is on the mapping aspects of wetlands, on how we identify wetlands to the extent that we do field visits and that we do remote sensing work to identify wetlands. So this work on remote sensing has been a focus throughout my career. When I started doing this work back in the 1980s, down in Massachusetts working on the National Wetlands Inventory, and this work took place in Massachusetts, New York State, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio. We primarily used aerial photos. We examined them very carefully with high magnification stereoscopes, and we could pick out wetlands pretty accurately, quite accurately, and produced the standard maps that are used throughout the country. The National Wetlands Inventory maps for Vermont are what ended up being the basis for the Vermont Significant Wetland Inventory maps. I think it's actually good to point out here, when the legislature originally passed the Wetland Act back in 1986, they a way, they wanted a way to identify accurately and consistently where the wetlands were. And as in the draft wetland rules that were put together after the act passed, the NWI maps were proposed as being the basis for that. So a study was done in 1988 by the Agency of Natural Resources to look into the feasibility of doing that. And it turned out that they worked quite well. But I'm gonna come back to this again, but in that study, they said that the National Weapons Inventory Maps could be a good basis for identifying the general locations of significant wetlands, wetlands that met the criteria that the legislature had chosen to protect, but that field field verification of the actual boundaries was was going to be necessary. So and and that's still true today. So the changes to the wetland rules that are currently being proposed by the Department of Environmental Conservation based on the recent executive order should be rejected. These changes would dramatically reduce the protection given the wetlands in the designated growth areas and the areas exempt from Act two fifty regulation. The rules, as originally written in 1990, the final rules, were carefully crafted to provide critical protection of wetland functions and values, and they were improved further by a series of amendments up through 2023. The proposed changes would dramatically reduce the protection of those wetland functions and values that, I will point out, are mandated in statute. They would also appear to make it very difficult to achieve the stated policy goals in the statute as amended recently to include a net gain of wetland acreage and a net environmental benefit to the state. Those changes would work contrary to that. On the issue of mapped versus unmapped wetlands, as currently written, the Vermont Wetland Rules specify that the Vermont Significant Wetland Inventory maps denote the approximate location and configuration of significant wetlands, and that word approximate is very important. The rules depend heavily on field delineation to identify the actual wetland boundaries on the ground. And that involves a field visit by a trained wetland scientist who looks at the plant species that are present, which vary in their wetland characteristics, the detailed soil characteristics, and the hydrologic signs of flooding, saturation, inundation. And under the current rules, areas that are known as contiguous wetlands, that is wetlands that are separated by a causeway or a roadway or a railroad, but have a hydrologic connection with a mapped wetland, would also be considered protected. When I worked for the wetlands office, the classic case was a large mapped wetland that was shown on the National Wetlands Inventory maps, might be many acres in extent, and that wetland would have a road cutting through it, and a small piece of it off to the side had not been caught in the aerial photo interpretation, but when you would visit it on the ground, it was obvious that it was part of the original and that it's simply been been missed in the aerial photo interpretation. Functionally, it was part of the wetland. Originally, it had been part of the wetland. It's simply been divided off. So those contiguous wetland areas are just as important in terms of the wetland functions, such as flood storage or wildlife habitat or slowing down of stormwater runoff. They're just as important as the mapped portion. And as part of the proposed changes, those areas would not, in my understanding, be protected. And the current wetland rules provide that previously unmapped wetlands, but wetlands that are functionally significant, that is they fulfill one or more of these functions that are included in the wetland rules that were specified in statute can be added to the list of class two wetlands that would merit protection. And again, under the executive order, those areas would removed. So, I mentioned earlier that the maps, the National Wetlands Inventory maps, that were adopted with changes as Vermont's significant wetland inventory maps were based on remote sensing techniques. And the mapping has been improved in recent years. I really want to applaud the Agency of Natural Resources for undertaking the revisions to the Vermont Significant Wetland Inventory Maps using modern techniques. These maps are considerably improved. They're more accurate. They give the public a better prediction of where they're going to find a wetland when they go out on the ground than the old National Wetlands Inventory maps. However, they are not a substitute for on the ground wetland delineations. That's just hard to achieve. The things that you can look at doing remote sensing are the color and texture on an orthophoto, even the wonderful LiDAR topographic data, that's the detailed laser topographic data that we now have available to us, that shows the shape of the land. And that tells us a lot about where water is likely to flow, where water is likely to stand, but it's still not the same as being there, seeing what is in the subsurface of the soil, seeing species of plants that are growing in one spot versus another. So that dependence on remote sensing is a fundamental limitation of even the new much improved VSWI maps. And I do want to point out that the Vermont wetland rules specifically state that the VSWI maps should not be relied upon to provide precise location or configuration of wetlands. So, the resulting boundaries, if you did depend entirely on those maps, would miss parts of the actual wetlands, and they would definitely include parts of non wetlands. And I would argue that that is not going to help the situation. That's going to result in less protection of wetland functions and values, and it has mandated by statute, and it's really going to result in greater confusion for developers and regulators, not less.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Pritchard.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: So are you saying that the Vermont significant wet land inventory maps are incorrect or incomplete or not accurate?

[George Springston]: They are imperfect. The original 1988 study showed that I don't remember the exact number, but over 90% of the wetlands that they tested, that they looked at in the study, as shown on the maps, were actually there and in that approximate position. And that some percentage over 90% of those were significant for the functions that the legislature had chosen to protect. So, that's the good news. However, the exact wetland boundaries, to take a map that was made from aerial photos that were taken by a plane flying from six to 12,000 feet up in the air. And those photos on the original maps were small scale. They were scales of something like one to 40,000. That means things are quite small. An acre is very small on such maps. To get a boundary accurate within a few feet was simply impossible. The width of the pen lines on those maps, these were paper maps in the old days. I forget the exact numbers you're talking. A 100 feet plus just for the width of the pen line. Now, the situation today is better. If you've zoomed in on the ortho photos available on the Natural Resource Atlas, many other sources, you've all seen Google Earth, you can see a lot of detail, but you can't see what species of plant you have on the ground. You can say, I think there's a tree there. You can say, It looks grassy to me. But which grass? So, the maps are imperfect. And the remedy that we have been using for decades, and as far as I know, the best remedy is to go in the field and actually look at it. And there are wetland consultants around the state who can go out and efficiently map those wetland boundaries. And in the past, I have been on many joint visits between the Corps of Engineers and staff of the Wetlands Office and Wetland Consultants, and we could usually agree within an extremely small distance, very small distance, of where the jurisdictional wetland boundary should lie on the ground. Does that answer your question?

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: It does.

[George Springston]: So, what I'd like to do now is just show you one example. The map up on the screen is from the town of Plainfield. And in the handout that I gave to you all, I had not had time to draw in the wetland boundary, which is shown in red up there. So, I just put the label wetland in several places on there. So my wife and I live on the East Edge of Plainfield Village, and let's see, does my cursor show up there fairly well here?

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: Yeah, it's right.

[George Springston]: Okay. So, let's see, just for orientation, here's a scale of 500 feet at the bottom. Plainfield Village is just to the west. We live right here. We live right here. So, I know this land well. It's owned by It's directly across the street. The green polygons down in the south here are wetlands that were picked up on the recent improvement of the Vermont Significant Inventory Maps. Those are actual wetland areas. That's the good news. And the southern boundary of that's probably pretty good. If you went out on the ground, I think you would see some differences of some feet as to where the southern boundary of that is. However, based on my observations over many years walking these fields and based on the red line, which is a wetland delineation by wetland professional done last year. The wetland actually extends well north of the green wetlands up into here. These areas in white beyond here are non wetland. It extends through here, all through here. Here's a piece of the wetland boundary here, and they didn't bother to do it, it wasn't necessary, but the wetland boundary would have come around something like that. So, my point in showing this is there are several acres of wetland that actually is definite. It has the soil characteristics. It has the vegetation characteristics. The It wetness. Wife and I walk out there, but we have to wear high boots unless it's the middle of the winter. And it's true in the drought this summer, we could walk across their dry shot, but that was exceptional. And the reason why I bring this up is not because it's just some curiosity. This wetland, I would judge, has functional importance in terms of slowing down stormwater runoff. The slopes are low, the vegetation is dense, places like that slow down the runoff of stormwater considerably. When we get a large rain through there, I can see the water moving out through, there's an outlet in the northeast corner of it, and it takes days for that water from one big rainstorm to really make its way out. I can see it get wet quickly, but then it takes days and days to dry out. That is significant. That's what the legislature was trying, one of the functions the legislature was trying to protect. So, development of wetlands like this, which are not shown on the VSWI map and would not be and it's in a growth area or these village areas Development of wetlands like this would mean that instead of slowing or storm water, more water would move downhill more quickly towards Plainfield Village. And we already have enough problems with flooding in our village. The unintended consequence of relaxing the wetland rules to favor this sort of development would be repeated over and over again in growth centers around the state. If areas like this do not receive protection as wetlands. This isn't just a little increase of a little fraction of a wetland. It's several acres. It's over six acres of wetland in this particular area. I would suggest that in many senses, our wetlands shouldn't be thought of completely as obstacles to overcome. They are, among other things, protective natural storm water features. So, again, the VSWI maps are much improved, and they're a great basis. But they need field verification, and so the rules should not be amended to take that away. I have two more points I'd like to make, if I can. The 50 foot buffer rule, the standard 50 foot buffer for class two wetlands should not be reduced to 25 feet. 50 feet is barely sufficient in some situations. In particular, in residential areas, it's risky to reduce it further. I think again and again we see that intrusions into buffer zones are pretty likely in residential areas anyway, and to cut it down to 25 feet means it's more likely you're actually going to be intruding into the wetlands themselves. So, in conclusion, I'd like to just reiterate that many of our village centers are in and adjacent to the mid sized and larger river corridors. And if we want to reduce the impacts of heavy rains and floods in our downtowns and villages and protect water quality, then we need to protect these wetlands. So, I really think I can wrap up there, except I will say, in conclusion, as currently written, the Vermont wetland rules go a long way to protecting critical functions and values of wetlands that the statute is asking them to protect. So, that should be maintained. Thank you for listening.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you for your testimony.

[George Springston]: Thank you. I have a

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: couple of questions for you. You know, we hear a number that an estimate of 35% of the wetlands in Vermont have already been lost, and I've heard that's a conservative estimate. Do you know anything about that estimate and how we've lost them?

[George Springston]: I know that's the number that we used years ago. I'm pretty sure that it comes from the status and trends studies that the National Wetlands Inventory did, but I was actually wondering about that myself and realizing I don't know the source of it. It probably is higher. And the way that our wetlands have been lost, many of them were very reasonable sounding ways. They were drained to improve agriculture. They were filled for roads and houses. You know, all of the development that we've done since the founding of the state, living on the land, some of that has involved draining and filling of wetlands. And when you do a small amount of that on a landscape, it probably has a minimal impact. But as the acreage impacted gets larger, the functional impact gets larger. One thing that I do have experience with that helps me feel confident that protecting our wetland acreage is important is when you do watershed modeling using the technical models that predict what the peak flow is gonna be from a watershed, all of the models that I'm aware of that the USGS and the Natural Resource Conservation Service and the engineers use have a factor for the percentage of wetland in that watershed, and you can just see as you change that factor, they found from doing the studies behind those models again and again, that if you want to increase peak runoff in a watershed, lower the percentage of wetlands. You can kind of play with the tools and see what happens. And it's because that many wetlands, not everyone, but many wetlands in many watersheds, they slow down the movement of water or actually store it. And that's been pointed out in some testimony before, it's part of the base flow of our streams as well. When we saw streams still flowing near the end or the late stages of the drought that perhaps, in some sense, of course, we're still in, but when we saw streams flowing in August, part of that water was making its way slowly out of wetland areas.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Or at least the groundwater that they recharge.

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Complicated.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. Another thing we hear a fair amount about or we've heard with this CEO is the seasonality of the wetlands delineation process, kind of being an impediment to development. Can you walk us through someone getting how it works when someone needs a delineation and they need to hire someone to do it?

[George Springston]: I will I will take it as far as I know it.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, our next guest can do this, I I really feel like maybe we can guest can do it. We will let them do that.

[George Springston]: We'll we'll leave it to her. Alright. She's totally up to date on that.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much for your testimony. And George, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge, you and your life's commitment to Vermont's environment and how you've been quietly working behind the scenes on so many things that we consider in this committee, and that I've touched your career along my path. I was, a new college graduate when you were doing the wetland inventory at Middlebury, And so I remember that very I remember it. Doesn't surprise But you would remember then more recently in the river management program, and I'm sure lots of things in between that I'm not aware of. But thank you for all your work.

[George Springston]: You're welcome, Amy.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: With that, we would like to welcome DC Watershed Management Division, wetlands. If you'd like to sit there together, you're welcome to. I think you can swing this chair around if you'd like to have two. Red chair here would be fine.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Morning, everyone. I'm Laura LaPierre. I'm a Wetlands Program Manager at DDC, And I've been in that role since 2013. So I've been involved with a lot of the newest upgrades to the Vermont Significant Wetlands Inventory. I led a six year stakeholder group reviewing changes to the Vermont wetland rules. I've been involved in a lot of class one designations and such. So happy to be here today.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: And I know a lot of you. My name is Kevin Burke. I am now the director of the Watershed Management Division at DEC. Remember that I was the program manager for the stormwater program in recent years. But I am very privileged to take on this role after Pete LeFlam's retirement. But I'm happy to be here as well to support your questions. Great. Thanks for coming.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: So I do have some slides which I provided earlier to you guys, so hopefully you guys have them. I'll just jump onto the Zoom meeting so I can share.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: We had so much fun with you on stormwater. We still

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: continue that.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Who's the new stormwater person then?

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: It's under recruitment currently. We may have you in

[George Springston]: anyway to talk about. Yeah. Well, we've

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: got some really good staff in the stormwater very well. Sure.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: You can come in, Jared.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You to join us,

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: you're welcome

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: to. Thank you, ma'am.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: If have capacity, wanna take a chair?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Sorry. It's okay.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: Oops. Sorry.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I can't pop over my bag. That's okay. Worries. Hello. Am I on Zoom yet? Open.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Yeah. I'm married like a summer shizzer.

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: Deep one, two. Wish that dark open tonight.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: I just Oh,

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: don't do it.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: We'll sorry, share screen. Here we go. So, I have a shortened version of some of the presentations I've been giving for the public comment period on the proposed rule changes. I have a list of questions I've been hearing on testimony, so I hope to cover that as well. And of course, feel free to interject with questions as we go. So the public comment period for the Wetland Rule change closed last night. So that has been finished, there's over 200 comments that we've received. So, we'll be going through that in the next stage. So, real quick overview of the wetland rules, which I we were hearing about earlier, is wetlands are the spaces between deep water and upland areas. And so we need to use soil science, plant science, and hydrology review in order to know where that wetland is. The wetland rules were adopted in 1990 with a three tier classification system. Class II and Class I wetlands are protected under the Vermont Wetland Rules. They have buffer zones, automatic 50 foot, automatic 100 foot for Class I, if they are given as the default, they can have wider buffer zones going through rulemaking for that. Since 1990, Vermont Significant Wetlands Inventory was used to determine jurisdiction. It was both those areas on the maps as well as wetland areas that were contiguous to that mapping. In 2010, after the West Wetland Investigative Group went forward, it was decided that there should be a more nimble way to identify newly found significant wetlands. And so that rule change allowed for the program to be able to designate Class II wetlands that were not mapped. So, our work, we regulate any activity within protected wetlands or their buffer zone unless they're considered an allowed use or specifically exempt. We issue permits within those wetlands and buffer zones when there is no other place for the project to locate that component of their project, and where you still have protections of functions and values, and that there's no undue adverse impact to those wetlands, and where there are some impacts, they might be mitigated with compensation. So, in September, we received an executive order for promoting housing construction and rehabilitation. And there was a specific section outlining very detailed changes asked for under the Wetland Program regulations. That was having modifications to the way we regulate wetlands within established designated areas and require no permit for activities within unmapped Class II wetlands, including those areas that are contiguous to mapped Class II wetlands, and to have a smaller 25 foot buffer zone for those mapped areas. Since we received that directive and reviewed it, the department decided to go forward with rule change before implementing this directive. So that's where we're at the stage of collected comments before going to ICAR. So the specific edits are in three sections of the wetland rules. The big one is the allowed use for residential housing, which is what I'll spend my time talking about mostly. There's also removal of a reconsideration process. Once a permit is issued, someone can ask for reconsideration before appealing. And we find that duplicative, so that was being removed. And the person can still appeal a permit if they wish to. And section 8.5 is actually something we were contemplating for Act 121 is streamlining how we notice and update the wetland maps. So the allowed use is a new one, and it allows for construction of residential housing projects and related required utilities in these designated areas outside of 25 feet of a mapped wetland area. And that is there is an additional allowance, though, for necessary utilities to impact the mapped wetland and 25 foot buffer if they're following best management practices. So, this means that the projects that are avoiding mapped areas and the 20 foot, five foot buffer, if they're not in those areas at all, they can go forward with their project. There is no wetland program review required of them. It's only within designated areas for residential housing projects. Here are the designated areas as we know them. This is around 6% of the state. It doesn't include all of the sewer service lines or municipal water lines. We just don't have mapping on that. Our website has an interactive map that you can look around in if you have specific questions or areas you want to look at. The really large areas are opportunity zones. Those are sometimes town wide. Those are in the allowed use if those areas or those projects can hook up to sewer lines or if they can basically get a wastewater mound for their projects. Here is a close-up of where we are and the areas that would be considered designated areas. And here is our interactive map showing around Essex Junction to give you an idea. So, we have this the pink is the downtown development district. The teal is the VSWI Wetlands. The blue lines are streams. And within those downtown development districts, that's Act two fifty interim exempt. So that would qualify under the allowed use for residential housing projects of any size, any number of units. Then there's under the Act two fifty exemptions, this light pink area is priority housing projects only, where residential projects that are designated as priority housing would be considered under the allowed use. These dark blue areas are transit corridors. They're part of the interim exemptions for Act two fifty, and those projects are capped at 50 units. So those types of projects would qualify for the allowed use. And then overlaying on that is the sewer service area that extends from the designated areas out. So if a residential housing project could hook up to a municipal wastewater line, those would also qualify for the allowed use. So, in effect, these areas where none of those overlays are, you would still need to have a delineation. You would still need to hire a wetland consultant to delineate the boundary and then design your project. Those areas circled here overlaid, those a developer would use the wetland maps only to design their project and construct if they're avoiding those areas as an allowed use. George had a good example earlier out on East Hill Road in Plainfield. This is another site in Barrie. So you'll see here the teal area is the updated Vermont Significant Wetlands Inventory. The orange is the delineation that was provided. So I think it's around 60% of the actual wetland area within the blacked outlined area is only on the delineation, not on the mapped VSWI.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I was going to try to get through the presentation before we had questions. What's your preference?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Either way, I can come back to the slide, too.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Let's get through it.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Okay. So we had questions earlier this week about the statewide update. So here's an overview. We have added the Missisquoi River Basin. That's the starred area in 2023 as part of a wetland rule update, which also included a way for us to be able to do bulk updates of our mapping. We've completed national wetlands inventory level mapping for the entire state. We finished that this fall. It was a huge milestone for us.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Help us understand the difference.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah, the national wetlands inventory is run by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. They have nationwide protocols for mapping wetlands. And all of the mapping that we produce with our contractor who does mapping throughout the entire country has been adopted to the National Wetlands Inventory. So you can use that today. The original VSWI was actually just the National Wetlands Inventory. And since then, we've been adding delineations and work from the program since then, as well as some updates from the National Wetlands Inventory. And I'll get more into the scale and some of the details of how they do it, too. But that's a good question. So that was completed just this fall. Or the summer, we added this area outlined in red. So, the National Wetlands Inventory plus retaining all of the delineations that we've added to the wetlands map are now on this map. This green area is what I'm anxiously awaiting. Big chunk of the state, we're hoping to get that up for public notice very, very soon. We have to have a thirty day public comment period. We'll have an interactive map so people can look at their sites and see what the mapping is changed to. So, we should be seeing that soon. The rest of the state, we're hoping to notice and get up onto the VSWI by the 2026. Along with that national wetlands inventory mapping, we have quite a backlog of delineations from permits and site visits that we're working to get onto the maps. We've had the ability to edit the maps since 2012, And we're just finally getting momentum and more capacity to be able to be adding those more in time as we get them. So George was talking about scale. I wanted to show you some maps showing the scale. So the original national wetlands inventory was a one to 40,000 scale. So basically people were looking at maps like this and drawing where they could see wetlands. If it was a paper map, that would be one square inch would be equal to two fifty acres. Oh, sorry, this is in Milton. And just for reference, that blue blob is the designated area. So, zooming in to current National Wetlands Inventory Scale, which is one to 12,000, that would be one inch on your paper map would be 25 acres. You can see a bit better where the wetlands might be actually. Up in this corner, that's really nice. You can see it's a conifer forest and then there's open wetland there. Whoever was drawing the map saw that and drew it. Going even closer though, they have to do it at a one to 12,000 level because they're doing the entire state sorry, the entire country. So they can't zoom in as close as our program staff can. And this blue area is some draft mapping that the wetlands program has drawn at a one to 3,000 scale, which we can do using the latest aerials. We can use elevational data, LiDAR, as well as field information and boots on the ground. Like, for example, if you were to look from this street looking east, you would see all this red osier dogwood, alders, wetland plants, which you can't see from those higher scales. So, we had a question earlier about how we go about reviewing projects. So I have a project. This is my last slide. This is something that we permitted just a week or so ago. So I figured I'd pull it up for us to look at. This is a top notch resort. They came in for a wetlands permit to add some condos. This is in a designated area as well. So this would be in an exempt or allowed use area. So what we did here was we reviewed the delineation top notch, hired a consultant. They delineated it in May. They contacted us and we did a site visit in June to review the delineation. So, the teal area is the wetland, the orange area is the 50 foot buffer zone, and the dark gray areas were the proposed project components, which are primarily outside of the wetland and buffer zones. The pink areas are the areas that we had permitted within the buffer zone. So you see this is a completely forested wetland with some pond area. And they were able to design a project. We were able to review based off of the functions and values that the wetland had, which include water storage, surface and groundwater protection, erosion control, aesthetics, wildlife habitat, we were able to say that this project in these wetlands could be in the same area. And we issued a permit for it just January 6. So that's generally what our process is for reviewing sites. Sometimes, especially in disturbed areas, it can be difficult to find the edge of the wetland a bit, because vegetation is mowed, for example. And we might have to talk it through with the wetland consultant to either understand their perspective or to change the boundary. So that sometimes happens.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Was this wetland on the SWI inventory? Do we know?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: It was not. So it is contiguous. Across the road, there is a mapped area. We had permitted some earlier work here in 2023. We did not add the wetlands to the maps. We haven't gotten to adding them to the maps yet. But because the delineation was over five years old, they redelineated, we re reviewed it, and That's what was put into the application.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Does this help the developer also meet their

[George Springston]: stormwater permitting requirements?

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: The stormwater permitting requirements, I'm not specifically familiar with what permits were required. Top notch does have stormwater permits, and this being new development would have triggered new require new requirements, new design to capture those impervious surfaces. The wetlands permit would have considered any of the impacts. So say you know, let's say they had to cite some stormwater infrastructure or other infrastructure that would have been collectively considered in the wetlands permit. So, ideally, if there is stormwater infrastructure that was required, it would be wherever the wetlands permit allowed them the impacts, whether to buffer or wetlands.

[George Springston]: Mhmm.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah. For this this project, none of the stormwater infrastructure impacted the wetland. It looks like it's all parking and access roads.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So this wetland would have been not considered under the proposed new rules because it wasn't mapped. It could have just been developed.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Correct. Under the allowed use, would qualify under the allowed use.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I probably have a lot of questions. Thanks for your presentation. First one I saw was representative Tagliavia.

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: First to this slide that you have up with respect to the permitting, is Rainier storm taken into consideration with when you look at this map in regard to the permit become an ease?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: For wetland permitting, we're reviewing what the impacts are to the wetland and buffer zone. So we don't look at storm events specifically. We're looking at what the specific activities will be doing to the functions and values. Okay.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Stormwater permit would typically look at the storm events. Stormwater. Okay. Yep. And it it really depends on the size of the expansion and the drainage area of the receiving water. Generally speaking, the predominantly most stormwater permits don't have to address the hundred year storm. It usually caps out at the ten year storm. The existing standards would take, say, 10 acres of new impervious to trigger the hundred year.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Let's

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: see if I may. On slide six, the allowed use housing. That's with current land use maps. We're right in now with the regional planning commissions and the future land use maps, this new designations and stuff like that, how will those new maps potentially, when they're finished, affect this percentage? You said with respect to this slide, it was 6%. Is it going to increase or decrease that number?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I'm not sure of that. I can ask and get back to you. But the executive order lists the Interim Act two fifty as well as the tier one a, tier one b zones that will be designated this year. So, my understanding is that a lot of these designated downtowns, village centers, they're going to be mostly looped into those Tier 1A, Tier 1B. But in addition to those Act two fifty exempt areas, there's the Opportunity Zones, the areas of municipal septic and waterline that extend beyond those areas, which could foreseeably be extended further by a municipality and likely qualify. So it it could expand. Representative Pritchard.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: Thanks for your presentation. So I'm sure this is just a small snapshot of stuff that you do. My question is how much wetlands have been added either by acres or percentage just in the updated delineations? Because there was a lot of teal on a few slides.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah, yeah. So I have a percentage that we had when we were doing the updates for the Winooski and the Otter Creek. We're in the Winooski Watershed here in Montpelier. And the net change, some of the VSWI being so zoomed out didn't have details. So some areas of wetland were removed, some were added. For the Winooski Watershed, it was 145% increase in identified wetland area, and in the Otter Creek, it was 20%.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: 145%. Can you just I

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: can send you the handouts that we have from when we did that public notice. You can have that information, the exact acreage and such. It's important to note that currently, if a wetland is significant, it's Class II. It doesn't need to be on the maps. So that addition to the VSWI, the Winooski, a lot of that mapping was from the '70s. So the technology really, really improved. So we're able to provide landowners much better notice of what's on their property than than that.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: And that was the reason for my question, because perhaps we haven't lost as much wetlands as we think we've lost. I mean, right in that example, you've identified a 145% increase. Maybe we just haven't updated in

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Well, the 35%, going back to Sheldon's question before, was a report to Congress, I believe in 1990, 1991, around the time when nationally we were working on a no net loss goal for wetlands. And that was from the 1700s up until the '80s. They had just completed a lot of the mapping for the country at that point, but there were still areas that hadn't been mapped. So they weren't using the mapping to determine that. A lot of what Vermont was, was actually NRCS data, the soil conservationists who were working on draining wetlands for farmland. So there was that, as well as notes from the colonial era. They used a lot of interesting information in order to get to that 35% in Vermont. And they weren't using the National Wetlands Inventory. And I can provide that for the committee to see that report. Just one more question. How long have the classifications, trying to word this right, been in place? I mean, is this something that we've always had these same classifications, or if there's been added classifications, or? So the wetland rules came into place in 1990 with the three tier classification system.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: 100% of Chapin.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: Going back to that slide on page six, where you are estimating 6% of Vermont is in those areas covered under the EO. Have you overlaid that with wetlands areas? Do have a sense of how much of our wetlands are in those areas?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: That's the difficulty of unmapped wetlands. Even just We know that for I anticipated this question. I have an answer. For mapping, we have 14,000 acres of mapped wetland within these red spots on the state. Do you know of the mapped wetlands currently what percentage that is? Of my

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: questions is even a higher percentage of our wetlands than our area. I'm presuming it's the case.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Okay, well, stumped me there.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: Have to get 14,000

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah, 14,000 acres of mapped wetlands within designated areas. The percentage of the total mapped wetlands don't have that.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: Go ahead. I have a different question. Did you want Yeah, no, go ahead. Coming back to sort of how these rules would impact adjacent properties or in your case of top notch, the current properties, existing stormwater systems where there's been development and they've created stormwater management plans for those properties. And this obviously might be more of a question on the stormwater team, but I guess we were asking this question the other day and just trying to understand where you have development and then you're looking at adjacent development would be basically altering wetlands areas because of the EO and these rules, those existing properties with development, is there a stormwater management plan for the property sort of dependent on adjacent wetlands? And will it impact those other existing properties that have already done the work to sort of engineer their sites and plan and maybe do some constructed facilities to manage stormwater.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Sounds like your question, and

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: correct me if I'm wrong, is when you have a project, we'll just as an example, that obtained a permit and did have some impacts but predominantly avoided. There's an adjacent property. Are you looking to understand how the wetlands permit those those permitted impacts impact the adjoining property?

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: I'm I'm asking that in the future. So if top notch had if this the rules went into place, and top notch did the same project but didn't need a wetlands permit because it was an unmapped class two wetland. And so they just decided to leave that wetland over. But just downhill, there's a property, theirs or another person's property that already went through development and got a stormwater management plan and engineered the site for that to manage stormwater. And I'm presuming that the ability of top notch uphill, if they didn't need a permit in the future and engineered the site really differently reduce the impact of that wetland might be affecting particularly a downhill developed site. And so I'm trying to understand because we have this entire system for stormwater management that's affecting lots and lots of homeowners and property owners, and it's sometimes fully expensive and challenging that allowing an uphill site to no longer need to get a wetlands permit and avoid building over a wetland might dramatically impact neighboring properties.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Stormwater permits are they're they're taking into account the change in runoff from pre developed. In most cases, they're collecting their development runoff and providing some water quality component, but also maybe providing some channel protection or peak flow control. So the the stream would see that the peak, say, for the ten year storm is no greater than what it was predevelopment at the discharge point to the surface water. If there's uphill development and wetlands were impacted, there certainly could be more water because there's less flood storage. Ideally, it wouldn't be routed to that that development, but it potentially affects what the stream sees. The EO wouldn't affect, you know, project needing a stormwater permit. So it's possible that they would still be controlling their runoff from their developed lands. But if there were wetlands impacted, that might be a separate

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: piece. Because wetlands store water, they don't just it doesn't just flow over the wetland. Impact on that isn't really necessarily taken into account in the stormwater permitting process and how it might affect an adjacent property.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Only in the sense from, you know, if the wetland disturbance or filling was part of the comparison from predevelopment to post development conditions, it might be considered that, you know, it's now a parking lot versus an undeveloped area?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm going to ask a few of my questions. I have a high level question, and then I have nuts and bolts. I'm trying to figure out which task first. But I would say, I have real concerns with creating I have concerns about your staff capacity and the illusion that this is going to somehow expedite development, when we've, I think, just now created, if this comes into being, a somewhat arbitrary land use designation division between how we regulate our wetlands and that your division will end up spending an awful lot of time with jurisdictional opinions related to land use, not ecological function of our wetlands. So I guess I'll start with how many inquiries do you respond to annually? How many permits do you issue? And how many staff do you have today to do that work? Alright.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: So, I have my report from last year, where we had over 1,800 technical assistance calls that we reviewed. Sorry, I should start with we have Give me approximate. Doesn't have to be around eight.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Around eight. Or 1,800 technical assistance calls.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah. And we did seven sixty six site visits in 2024, the field season, with some special winter calls with that. I'm sorry, how many site visits? Seven sixty six. We had two forty permit decisions in 2020.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: I do think one point I would like to make, too, is that permit decisions might not necessarily be reflective of the work that might not result in a permit. So a lot of their work is ideally working to a solution that doesn't require a permit.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Because you issue a permit when there's an impact. Yes. And otherwise, if they don't impact the wetland, they don't need the permit, to be clear. More buffer. Right. So if they do their homework upfront, provide the delineation, demonstrate they're not affecting the wetland, they're good to go. So those site visits are affirming some of that work, I assume.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: I think there's planning development is is you know, it's a it's a delicate balance. We're talking about stormwater infrastructure. There's wastewater infrastructure, water infrastructure, and, you know, the mapped wetlands and additional data layers really provide can provide a developer or a single property owner with some information to begin planning for avoidance. But it is it's very complicated because, you know, I think whether it's a single family home or a larger development, in the end, the project needs to be viable for its intended purpose, whether it's x number of units or house with ability to access. Some parcels are very constrained, and they might still have to impact the wetland in order to develop their parcel. So it's a it's a difficult balance.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Can you speak to how this could change your process if this is implemented?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I was looking at our database recently, and close to half of our permits are associated with housing. I don't have that broken out based on designated area versus non designated areas. But the majority of the work that we do in the program is reviewing housing development. So it would be a big difference. And there would be certain areas of the state that the program would not review for wetland presence.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: How do you imagine this would interact with, or how often do you interact with Army Corps with Class III wetlands, and how will this change that process for property owners?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: One more thing to your last question. We're spending a lot of time right now taking former delineations and putting them on the maps within those designated areas. So that's another shift that our program is having. For the Army Corps of Engineers, I'd like to say that we're different layers of Swiss cheese. They have holes of different protections, we do too. And together, we work well together. In a lot of cases, we do things exactly the same. They don't have classifications. We're not looking at specifically waters of The US. We're separate regulations. When a project has enough impact for the Army Corps to come in, so they have some self reporting permits for lower levels of impacts. This top notch project did not involve Army Corps at all because they did not impact wetlands directly. It was all buffer zone work. So that's within our shop, not in their shop. We will work together if there's impacts

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: to If weren't having any jurisdiction because this was in place, what would the court do? Would they evaluate the project at all?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: If there were impacts to waters of The US, if there was draining or filling. Drilling, dredging, filling. Yeah, a dredging and fill permit is their stuff. So if you just cut the trees, that's the only thing for your project that's not jurisdictional. But if they're placing fill in the wetland, that would trigger the Army Corps, and they would review general permits and individual permits, but not the self reporting permits that are smaller impacts.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So this wetlands gets filled because of the development that's now allowed in an unmapped significant wetland. They need a COR permit.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yes. Now, there's a lot going on at the federal level right now. There's just rule change for waters of The US, which is proposing that only wetlands with surface water during the wet season would be considered jurisdictional for the Army Corps. So think about your wetlands that have hummocks and hollows, and there are some areas that do pond and other areas that are just saturated soil. They would use the same delineation methodology, which us and the Corps align with. But if that rule goes forward, then they would only be regulating dredge infill within areas of wetlands that had inundation of water puddling areas. So, Top Notch did have a pond. So if those rules change, and they impacted the ponded area, yeah, they would be involved. It's a little uncertain where that's going, and Waters of the US has been sifting sands for quite a while.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Although we tied our regulations to existing last year. And so that would I don't know what wouldn't change the federal involvement, but we tried to hold on to what was working. My last question for now is we, in the Flood Safety Act have asked for rulemaking to proceed, on a two to one mitigation ratio. We've been told that there was lack of capacity at ANR, and I guess I'd like to know where you are with the rulemaking process that was requested prior to the EO on statutory changes we made to support wellings?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yep. So we have been working on a draft. We were getting really close this September. Originally, the goal was to have something reviewed and out for stakeholders to review before the legislative session. The executive order in September changed priorities.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Do have a question? Representative Satcowitz.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: So we have these areas which are unmapped, but the mapping is like a constant work in progress. Right? Yes. And areas are being mapped and added to the database over time. So areas that are unmapped right now at the or at the time that the executive order would go into effect and rulemaking is done and everything's approved, we wouldn't freeze the areas that would be allowed to be developed under those rules. As unmapped areas become mapped over a period of time, those would then become areas where you would now need a permit. Is that right?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yes.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Do we have a sense of I think we probably touched upon this already, but of what the magnitude is of the unmapped areas compared to the mapped areas and how that might change in the relatively near future, given the updating of the maps, the current maps.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: There will always be unmapped areas. As good as we get with technology, wetlands change. Even delineations are only valid for five years. So it's simply just not possible to have a map that accurately depicts precisely where the boundary is of a significant wetland throughout the entire state. We're certainly getting a lot better at it, And that is extremely helpful for landowners and people planning either for conservation projects or for development projects. It's helpful for everybody. But it's not a it could never replace a field delineation.

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: When executive order first came out and I first became aware of it, and before we've had a lot of education in terms of how this all works, the initial sense, and I suspect this is probably shared by a lot of people, is that unmapped in some sense correlates to not as important. And I'm wondering if that is part of the reason why the executive order was structured the way it was. But what we're hearing, and I think we heard very clearly from the earlier presenter, is that that's very much not the case, that there are really important wetlands that are en masse. And so I guess my question is, is it possible that we will see, assuming the executive order goes into effect, that there will be construction in wetlands that has significant effects for water quality, flood control, things of that nature that we automatically assume would sort of be the case in the mapped areas, but would now be possible in these unmapped areas.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yes, we know that unmapped wetlands provide significant functions and values, and that's been one the biggest drivers for changes to the wetland rules, the past two larger rule changes since 2010. The aerial interpretation, you can see where there's ponded areas really well, and you can draw a circle around them. But your important seepage forested wetlands that are recharging water into streams and providing cool water for fish, those are harder to see. Vernal pools, which are essential for specific amphibian species, are often forested and very small and hard to pick up with aerial mapping. We can't assume that staying out of mapped areas will cause no net loss to wetland function? The

[Rep. Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: short answer thank you for that response the short answer is then, yes, it's possible that we could have significant effects from development in wetlands under these new rules.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yes.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I I just actually need to also follow through on my question. When will you get to the mitigation two to one rules? So if they were put on hold, when can we expect to see those?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I don't have an answer for that.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Yeah. That's a tough question. I think it I mean, it's certainly on our radar. It's really important, not only statewide. It's really important outside of the executive order. Gonna be key to ensuring that we don't have a net loss, but have a net gain. The opportunity for restoring impacted wetlands, I think, is part of that. It's it's, yeah, it's a challenge, I think, in terms of staffing. I think there's a lot of directive to implement what I think is, you know, our leadership certainly wants to support the effort for new housing and development. We're just trying to strike the right balance.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I I appreciate the position you're in. I have one more, and then I'll go to others. Are you currently reviewing housing developments in designated areas that have been affected by unmapped wetlands?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: That have been affected by unmapped wetlands? Typically, multi family housing projects that come to us, we get contacted by the wetland consultant asking us to review a delineation. So, new projects, savvy developers know that's the first step before you design your project. There are some housing projects that were placed on hold when the housing bubble burst in 2008. Those are actually still coming back online in some cases where they received their Act two fifty permits and may or may not have needed a wetland permit. But in 2010, when the rule changed to include unmapped wetlands, we've had to revisit those projects since our delineations and permits are good for five years, five years had passed, they need to come back to us. And in some cases, they've had to redesign those projects for avoidance and minimization and come in for wetland permits. So, those have been the more difficult projects that we've worked through. There aren't any that were saying, No, you can't do anything now. We just have to work with redesigns. And most of those have now been re permitted.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Want to get to folks who haven't asked. I think you're one of the representative Nora.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Thank you, Madam Chair and Laura, Gavin. Thank you for your presentation. Very helpful. I just wanted to follow on with Representative Chittenden's question in terms of percentage.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: And thank you very much for having

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: that 14,000 number. That was that was exactly the the number that I was looking for as well. And I know you didn't have the total, but a quick Google search, which I just did, shows that Vermont has about north of 300,000 acres of of wetland. Probably at a peak to construction, but

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: that's what we will concern.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: And so the percentage is about 4.6% of our wetlands are in the Red Desert Bay area. So if we paved over 100% of those 14,000, all 14,000 acres, we would be at worst case impacting the 4.6% of our wetlands. But I would submit that given the example project you put up, the Top Notch Project, where you really try to avoid the wetlands as much as possible, that

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: likely people are going to do

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: that just because it doesn't make sense to build them with a pond or a wetland. Yeah, worst case, 4.6%, but probably significant, less than that in terms of our impact by the wet areas.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, except those are the mapped wetlands. We're talking about unmapped wetlands.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Yeah, which of the 14,000 include, right?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: No, 14,000 is the mapped area.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: We have no idea what the unmapped ones are. They're not mapped.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yeah. And for a little more context, our permitting program throughout the entire state in any given year permits to the square footage of wetland loss. So we might see two acres of wetland impact in a year, based off of our efforts to avoid, minimize, and mitigate wetlands impacts.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Kristi, I'm going

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: to go back in order Tagliavia.

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: Going back to the slide you have up in the allowed use housing area, and that's 6%, And following on with representative Pritchard's question about I think you said there was a 145% heating, and the other was a 20% gain. How are those gains going to impact, or could they impact 6% regarding allowable housing or allowed

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: It means in those parts of the state, which I had a later slide showing that red circled area, that's an increase in wetland detection in those areas. So the designated areas in those part of the state have better identification of where the wetlands are. It doesn't mean that there's 145 more class two wetlands in the Winooski. It means that that's how much more we've been able to identify.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: So I just wanted to make sure I understood this correctly. It sounds like you have eight folks on your team. Are the are those eight folks the same eight folks that field the 1,800 calls, do the 766 site visits, and issue the two forty permits?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Yes.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard (Member)]: Okay. So those eight folks do all that stuff.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: And we also assess the condition of wetlands. Those staff do that work. They also do compliance enforcement work. They also do outreach. I'm very proud of them. They're a really awesome team.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So the maximum number of staff you've had in the wetlands, historically, in the wetlands office? This year. Eight ever is the max.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Well, we also have two temporary staff who've been helping. We have one full time bioassessment in MAPR staff.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Her program is staffed with wetland ecologists that do a lot of the regulatory work, and then there is some other staff that do some of the support work.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You're talking about total, there's eight plus two temps right now. Ecologists to office folks. Austin.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the balance that you had mentioned before, that it's a balancing act. Do you believe it's possible to preserve and protect the wetlands and meet our housing goals? And I know it probably depends where we're talking about.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Yeah. It's a tough question. I I think mapping provides really, you know, the advance advancements and getting new maps out there provides a lot of a lot more predictability for, you know, project owners. No. You know, wetlands, as Laura spoke to, have a lot of different functions and values, and one of which which George spoke to was, you know, managing runoff and precipitation. So I think it really is going to depend on the functions and values of a particular in a particular area of watershed as to what, you know, what the impact would overall be, which I think is really, you know, where minimization comes into play. There are you know, I from my work in stormwater, certainly overlapping with wetlands, there are really qualified engineers and designers that recognize the challenges but have a sense as to how to avoid and strike that balance. I think, you know, an effort to really improve our maps even though even though it is not on the ground delineation. I think it you know, advancing our map updates can really help identify what areas are best for development, understanding there will be impacts.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: a lot of us are trying to figure out, and I just want to summarize again and maybe get a little more detail here, the pros and cons and sort of housing, the benefits towards housing versus the impacts on wetlands and all of the functions that wetlands provides. So I guess I am hearing yesterday and today a lot of clear evidence based information about the impact on wetlands and the wetlands functions of the EO and these proposed rules. Have, and I hear some hypothetical benefits to increasing the number of housing projects that would happen on the ground, but I haven't heard any evidence that there are projects that don't go forward or people who don't come forward with projects. Partly because, and we've heard some direct testimony saying, why would a developer want to develop in that wetland anyway when that causes all these problems for development? So I guess what I'm asking you and what I just heard you guys say, so correct me if I'm wrong, is that generally when people are trying to develop housing, whether it's a homeowner or a larger scale developer, that they're working to delineate wetlands and then figure out where on the site to put the infrastructure. And you're not like turning people away and saying, sorry, that parcel isn't buildable. So I guess I'm curious if you have any evidence that these rule changes, lots of evidence that the new mapping, will make streamlining development make the process better for developers. That seemed really clear. Everybody agrees that updating the wetlands maps helps at least initially guide folks who are thinking about developing, that's what I'm hearing. We want those updated maps, it's great for everybody, but are these rule changes going to really do much to increase the number of housing units that come online? Your perspective in the Orleans division, do you have any evidence that that will happen?

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: I'm not quite sure of your question. If there is less areas that are regulated, someone might be putting in more units. So I understand

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: that conceptually, the concept is there that that might happen. And I'm asking about evidence. You turned five people away from being able to develop on their property period last year because of It's

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: more the size of the project. So once you know where your resources are, then you know the max build out of a site. Sometimes a lot has more wetland areas than what they desire to be able to build. And so there are some cases where they might be removing a unit or two. There are some postage stamp lots out there that are almost entirely wetland. And an individual land purchaser should be steered away from those sites for building housing. They might be able to do something smaller, like a hunting camp or sell it to a conservation group or something like that. We work really hard to provide that sort of information. We have an online screening tool, so people can type in their address and get all sorts of information on whether there's hydric soils, there's wetland mapping, there's rare species in that area. So, when people go to purchase property, they know that there's Sorry, I'm going kind of beyond what your question was.

[Rep. Ela Chapin (Member)]: What I'm hearing is you see on occasion some scaling down with a few projects here and there.

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: I think it's important too to note that, you know, it's often the applicant that really is going back to the drawing board and understanding sort of what they can do to make to to maintain viability. Program is often put in a position where, you know, they'll see the initial proposal. The impacts are great, and there's, you know, some back and forth to get to a compromise where it still remains a viable project for the developer. And we often don't get into the details on their end as to why that is, but I think they work closely with trying to find a reasonable path forward. Just

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: a a comment and maybe something to add to the question that Echela has. These are not the only constraints that could be on a particular development property that we're talking about. We're talking about depth of soil to ledge because of your need for septic, talking about topography, and slope also. So my concern is this like you mentioned earlier, it's critical to find a balance. Just all I wanted to add.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you for your work on behalf of Vermont's Wetlands. I know that we value them very highly, and I appreciate it. Think we should talk about staffing at the Wetlands Division in more depth at some point soon. But thank you for coming in today.

[Laura LaPierre (Wetlands Program Manager, DEC)]: Thanks for having

[Rep. Mike Tagliavia (Member)]: us. Thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Members, that completes our testimony for this morning. Back on at 01:15 this

[Kevin Burke (Director, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: afternoon. So that