Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Restoration director for Vermont Natural Resources Council, and I'm here today to talk to you a bit more about dam removal and dam safety and also speak to H-seven 78 legislation. So thank you for having me. Thank you, Vice Chair of Labor and all representatives of the committee. I know I testified I gave you a little bit of a primer on the work that I do a few weeks ago, so this is an expansion on that and really thinking about it at scale. So I will just say that I was not involved with the study group that came out of the Act 121, the Flood Safety Act, which looked at emergency operations procedures for dams, which is what H-seven 78 introduces. So I can't say that I was part of that, but certainly there is a lot of overlap with the work that I do at a different scale, because I'm working on smaller dams and the high hazard dams that that group was looking at are definitely dams that were not necessarily in the same space, but similar issues for sure. So speaking a little bit about that as well. And I know you've heard this before, but I'm going to continue to say it that the safest dam is no dam at all. When we remove the dam, we remove the problem. And that's the reality, is that there are just so many aging dams on the landscape. There's over 1,000 dams in Vermont, and there's more that we're identifying all the time, both through my work at the Vermont Dam Task Force and with Vermont Natural Resources Council and a lot of other watershed organizations who are out there on the landscape walking rivers. So it's really thinking about all of these dams and the age of them, the obstruction of that waterway. They're basically a door, a barrier that's blocking that river, and the risk of their potential failure, and how that impacts public safety downstream, as well as how it impacts future flood events. Because when we have a dam, we're taking storage that we could use for flooding away because we're holding that water in that space and creating a reservoir where the river then can't access its floodplain because it's already holding that storage. So we're putting pressure on an old system and then taking away potential natural storage to reduce flooding impacts downstream. And with a changing climate, these issues are becoming more real and more urgent every day. So the goal is to make us safer and improve both public safety and, I would argue, public health by managing rivers and treating natural infrastructure as our best defense in a changing climate. So when we remove a dam, we reconnect a river, and that reconnection improves water quality benefits, biodiversity decline, drought and flood resilience, like I spoke to accessing the river's floodplain. And it saves taxpayer dollars by spending less on the recovery post having these failure incidents that we have. So it's really acting with a plan to remove a dam in a planned way so that we don't have to respond after the fact with dam failure. I showed this slide last time that I testified, and I want to show it again because I think the 2025 National Infrastructure Report Card says a lot. And it specifically calls out Vermont. It states that the age of a Vermont dam is 89 years old. That's not young. And with these storms, I'll just read this part, but unfortunately in July 2023, prolonged heavy rainfall over forty eight hours produced between three and nine inches of rain in some parts of the state, which resulted in historic flooding and placed significant strain on Vermont's aging dams. Following the flooding, state dam inspectors assessed 400 dams across the state and found that 57 were overtopped by flooding. And 50 dams sustained notable damage and five dams failed. Vermont Department of Dam Safety has the jurisdiction of over 900 dams, and those are the non powered, non federal dams. Of those dams, 44 are high hazard, 133 are significant, two fifty two are low hazard, and over 500 are either not rated or of minimal hazard. That's like a big amount that either don't have a rating or minimal hazard. 80% of the dams that ANR owns are more than 50 years old. And I'll also say that the American Society of Civil Engineers in their 2023 report on Vermont's infrastructure gave a grade C to the state for our dams, and their recommendations were to staff up the dam safety program, remove the split jurisdiction, the PUC dams and the DEC dams, and staff up the rivers programs. All of those recommendations were addressed in the Flood Safety Act, but not all of them have yet to be implemented. Following the 'twenty three and 2024 flood events, there was a lot of work to be done, and the Dam Safety Program completed over 400 rapid inspections. Said before that five dams failed with 53 with major damage and 57 overtopped. I think that the timing of that event, folks started to recognize the importance of thinking about the infrastructure in their backyard and the liability of it and the responsibility, and thinking that maybe they didn't want that responsibility anymore, and that it made sense to reconnect the river and the benefit of nature based solutions. So there was lots of dams that needed to be repaired following the storm. And this picture is of Clark's Sawmill, which is up in Cabot. This is a dam that was a hazardous dam that we were working towards removal of, but did not have all of the pieces lined up to do that work for multiple different reasons. But this dam actually failed in the twenty twenty three flood. So it's an example of a dam failure. And this is the dam task force visiting that site post dam failure. And a lot of this sediment went on to the farm field downstream across the road of this dam. So in 2018, the Act 161 was passed, which was the Dam Safety Act. And phase one of that, the administrative work has been completed, and that's where we refined the definition of the dam. We worked on dam owner responsibility. We worked on public records, making sure the dam is recorded in land records. We worked on the hazard potential definitions and made sure those matched with an inventory. We worked on inspection schedule and compliance. Phase two has yet to happen, and it's been delayed because of the flooding because dam safety has had to respond immediately to the flooding. And this part of the standards for Act 161 is critical for the next flood. So it's this it's trying to keep up on both sides here. And part of that is emergency action plans, exam order application requirements, construction requirements, design and planning, operation and maintenance, emergency action plans. And I know Ben Green is testifying and has testified in front of you, he is the expert here. I'm just sharing some of this background context so that you can understand that. This picture in this slide is of Hands Mill Dam in Washington, and that dam failed also in the twenty twenty three storm event. This was one that also was in the removal process. This was a significant hazard dam and completely wiped out in that storm event. So the both with Clark sawmill, the photo I showed earlier, and this dam, there's work to be done with cleanup after it fails that can be more expensive than just planning the removal and making that happen on the front end. So this caused a tremendous amount of erosion upstream for almost like at least half a mile. And so there a tremendous amount of work still to be done for cleanup and not to mention the impact that occurred downstream. Flood Safety Act, as I said before, we address the recommendations in the engineering report card in the Flood Safety Act. And some of those, the staffing, some of the staffing has been implemented. And the study group that met this summer that looked at emergency operations planning for dam safety was a result of the Flood Safety Act. But there is still work related to Act 161, the rulemaking for phase two, and implementation of the remainder of the Flood Safety Act that needs to happen. And hopefully that can happen before the next flood. H-seven 78, we support this, what's proposed here. There's 74 high hazard dams that came out of that study committee, putting 35,000 Vermonters at risk. This graph, I think, pretty interesting. I hadn't seen this until I saw the study report. But it shows that over a thousand high hazard dams There's 11 high hazard dams that could impact over 1,000 people. That's that red bar. And then it goes down. So 22 dams between 199 impacting that amount of the population, and then 17 dams impacting less than 100. And in this proposal, the legislation proposes an emergency operations plan for each dam with the population at risk. So this is the bucket or the three buckets of populations at risk that this proposal addresses. And the governor or director of Vermont Emergency Management may require the evacuation for an area at risk of dam failure or subject to dam failure so that they could evacuate either before the dam fails or during so. And then a pilot project to develop emergency action plans for two state owned high hazard dams. And I think the timeline for this is reasonable and makes sense. So these are important things that certainly the environmental community supports and the work that I do supports. Connecting that to my work, I just wanna show some of the dams that were impacted in the flooding of 'twenty three and 'twenty four that we're still working to remove. So these aren't high hazard dams, but they're significant hazard dams. So they're the next hazard rating below. High hazard is potential loss of life and infrastructure impact. Significant hazard, I think, is infrastructure downstream infrastructure impact should this dam fail. There's the hazard rating of each dam, and then there's the condition of each dam, and they're not the same. So you can have a poor or unsatisfactory conditioned dam and it be low hazard. The dam could be failing and ready to fail, but its failure may not threaten life or property downstream. So I think that's an important nuance. This dam in Starksboro is a significant hazard dam on Big Hollow Road. It's called Baldwin Pond, but it's above 116, which is a state highway. And if this dam were to fail, which it was damaged and overtopped in the 'twenty three storm event, it could wipe out houses and Road 116 downstream. This is a privately owned dam. It's a nine acre pond. The dam owner is supportive of removal, but we have yet to raise the funds for the removal nor is necessarily the community that surrounds the pond supportive of removal. So there's a lot of pieces still in play and lots of conversations that need to be had. So these projects take a long time and they move slowly, but the hazard rating persists.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Austin.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Who, at the end of the day, has

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: jurisdiction over whether a dam can be removed? Like, e even if the public is opposed to it, do they have any legal I think that's a good question. And I I can only speak from my experience, but the landowner has the ultimate say. And we can't remove a dam unless we have the landowner's support. But what does become more difficult with these larger impoundments, nine acres, for example, is there are different property lines abut that impoundment. So there's more work that needs to be done to identify how those property lines change with the dam being removed and the river flowing. So what happens to those and how much buy in? But we don't and I'll just say that as an organization, NRC does not remove dams where the community is not supportive. Like, we can have a landowner who wants it, but we need to know that more than just the landowner It needs to be a community effort, or it's not gonna be successful in many ways. That doesn't mean that I don't want it removed, but it really isn't successful unless the community's behind it. And I will just say, with that dam and Baldwin Pond Dam, so separate from an emergency operations procedure, which is sort of something that happens at the municipal regional level of, if this dam fails, the safe way to react, there's something called an emergency action plan, which is what the landowner is on the hook for if they have a dam that's in poor condition and of high hazard. And that emergency action plan is something that we tried to move forward for this dam here before we go to design. Because maybe if we get the community around and we have an understanding of what that emergency action plan would look like, then that can help carry the conversation of how to move forward. But an emergency action plan costs $20,000 and requires a lot of studies, so it's not a simple process. And it's another barrier that just really we need the ability to move those planning processes forward in a more efficient manner. This is one in Williamstown, Rillow Pond Dam, and this also failed in 2023. And this is right above the town of Williamstown. And the town of Williamstown actually was impacted Infrastructure downstream was impacted as a result of this dam failure, or this dam failure contributed to that flooding impact downstream. So this dam had Dam safety actually helped move this process along, but an emergency breach had to happen after the dam failure. So the dam overtopped and eroded around the side, that left side, river left. And then what was done was the dam was lowered, the water elevation was lowered by four feet. So we were basically draining the dam, the pond behind the dam, so that there wasn't as much pressure on the instability of the dam face. This is like a big granite dam. And then until permanent removal can happen. So we are still trying to remove this dam that was impacted in 2023, and we don't have all the funding for this project, but we hope to, and and our plan is to remove it in 2026. But that's how long. It takes time.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Chapin.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: In in a case like that when so this is also a private landowner?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yes.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Also private. It's probably true for anybody, but in this case where you have private landowners, this sort of scaled down, where there's failure, what are they required to do after a dam failure? How I imagine that might be a liability and challenge for the landowner. And how do how do they make other than other than draining down four feet, you know, is there other things to do to stabilize the in some circumstances, do you have to be doing some stabilization of the existing Yeah.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: I think that it was and I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it was thousands of dollars, potentially in the realm of $50,000 to to do the repairs that they did to stabilize that dam, which was to lower the elevation of drain the impoundment, lower the elevation of the impoundment. They actually took the top layer of rock off the dam, and then they brought in material to stabilize where it had eroded on that river left side. So they actually brought in crushed stone to stabilize that area. And then the sediment that was removed as they lowered in elevation had to be stockpiled. So there was some sediment that was taken out. So excavators, it was almost like a small dam removal, but it was just a phase to it was called a breach to stabilize it short term until it could fully be removed and a more thought out process. And all

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: of that liability is on the

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: land all of that liability is on the land of the state. And dam safety did an amazing job helping in this process for all of these different sites. Certainly, I think there's the phase two of Act 161 that still has to happen from dam safety will help quantify some of the burden that should be put on the landowner work to be done, operations and maintenance. So this is East Callis Mill Dam in East Callis, Vermont, another dam that failed in 2023. It was repaired a bunch since its history, and it was built in 1900. It overtopped similar scenario, really. Left side overtopped and eroded around the dam. So this is us coming up to look at the site post failure. And this dam actually was not originally in 2023. It was, I think, a low hazard dam, and the hazard rating was reclassified to significant hazard after they visited it in this after this flood event. And it went from like okay condition to unsatisfactory condition. So, obviously, like, a storm event can change the condition of a dam dramatically in that time period. And this dam also is one that we have yet to remove, but plans Friends of the Winooski River is working on this dam removal and plans are underway to move it forward. I'm not sure if all the funding has been obtained. And then I shared with you earlier Hands Mill Dam in Washington, but this was a significant hazard dam. And this is a picture of me visiting the site in 2022, looking at the dam, and then going back to the site in 2023, post flood event, and there was no dam. And you can see some of the erosion that's happened upstream. It's literally a small canyon has formed because of the amount of sediment that had accumulated behind that dam and ripped out with the dam. When we do a planned removal, all of that sediment, we have a space, We plan for its removal. We grade the banks so that it's not going to rip out like that. So this is really a great example of just when we wait and when we can't do these things efficiently, the outcome is not what it could be as far as from benefits to public safety and the natural system.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative. Just a question on this one, as you say, it's a pretty good example, but if another flood were to happen now, the state that that's in, with that all rounded, altered bank there, and if this river, without a dam now, rose to the levels anywhere near the grass there now, wouldn't that just really erode the rest of it? Mean, it's like crediting all that whole deal now.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yeah. So what I didn't include is a picture of what it looks like today. So there was actually work done. More money was put in to regrade the bank so that now the river has access to its floodplain and the material, all of that sediment that was not those fine sediments that were potentially liable to transport were removed. There's a third Armouring is when you put heavy material, fresh stone, against the bank. No. Instead, it was graded out so that the river then could access its floodplain. Interesting. Slowly. Exactly. Because this is not historically I mean, all of that sediment accumulated there because the dam was there.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So what we're looking at there, that sidewall is remnant sediment. Exactly. Remnant dam sediment from two hundred years. Isn't that what typically happens? A river corridor will kind of dig its way down further and further over time if it's through soft soils like that. Then when you have a flood event, it really digs away.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yeah, certainly. And rivers are trying to find their least erosive force. They meander. There's a natural process of moving sediment downstream that rivers do, and there's erosion that happens with that. And with greater storm events in frequency and intensity, that can happen much faster. Rivers can shift, they can jump banks. So it can be much more dramatic. The goal with planned dam removals is really to recreate the stream channel that was there before the dam was, to the extent that we can, and get the river access to its bottom.

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: Representative Tagliavia. With respect to the slide you're seeing up there, that's in my district. That's in the town that I work for, the private department. It doesn't look like the right anymore. It looks more like slide three in this presentation. It's a little bit wider. I think, you and I spoke, and I spoke with Daniel Keeneman.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yeah,

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: Keeneman. And I still think there wasn't enough room, that that's discussion for another day. I think more of the silt to allow for a larger retention pond because of what's downstream. I think, hopefully, one day, that can be revisited, and more excavation can be done. But it is much more wide open now. A lot of that silk was removed.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: And there was a house Right next to it. Right next right below the dam, right here, basically, that was it was removed before the dam failed. Correct? No. It wasn't. It didn't get removed in The

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: house was actually removed only months before they did the excavation work there. That was one of the things that had to happen first.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Right. That's Representative Zachar. You brought up a a slide earlier, but this is reminding me of the question I had, which was you talked about how it can be actually a lot more expensive to remediate the site after dam has failed rather than moving the dam properly to begin with.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Could you tell us a little bit more

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: about what's really involved in restoring a spot like this and why it can be so much more expensive?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Yeah. Well, so basically, there was a lot of more expenses here, but we had a design. To remove a dam, it's more complicated than you might think in that you hire an engineer to do a design of how that dam is going be removed. And we fully had that final design in place, and funds were close to ready, if not in hand. The funding piece can also slow things down to remove that dam. And then the storm came and totally blew out the design. Basically, design needed because we now no longer have a dam where we did, and we have eroded banks. We basically have to rehire an engineer to do a new design for that site. Granted, they took into account some They've already done their survey work, so they have a lot of the ground truthing information, and they can change. New design. And the second piece of this design, and I will say I was not the project manager on this, Dan from Malinuski Natural Resources Conservation District was. So I'm not an expert on this one particular, but I do know that the new design shifted a lot because of damage and impact that happened with just the dam blowing out. And I think because dam was not there wasn't a planned dam removal, the erosion that happened was much more exaggerated than it would have been. So the work that the excavator had to do was more extensive than what was proposed in the original design.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: At that point. So that's the essence of it, typically a lot more excavation, a lot more moving dirt around if you are doing it in an unplanned manner.

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: And if you have

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: or

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: with When you're taking out the dam purposefully. And

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: I think what's not calculated and we don't know is how directly the impacts of this dam release impacted downstreams the Stevens Branch, how the jail branch

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: impacted Barry. So all those additional costs as well. Yeah. And

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: I said Stevens Branch and I meant jail branch. This is jail branch. Clark's Sawmill in Cabot, similar story. This is a picture of the dam in 2016. And you can see that White House in both images with dam and without dam. And again, the twenty twenty three storm event took this dam out. We did not have a design yet for removal of this one, but there was certainly impact downstream to land and infrastructure as a result of this dam failure. And then I shared this slide with you last time, but this is the dam removal that I worked on in West Rutland this past summer that was removed. And this was a water supply dam that was 50 feet high and 200 feet long. And it had it was abandoned in 1985, but it did suffer a breach after that abandonment. And so the dam actually had an opening, and it opened again river left. I don't know why all the slides I'm showing you show the failure happening on river left. But so it breached an opening into the dam, which caused major flooding downstream to Dewey Avenue in West in Downtown West Rutland. And then the dam remained a hazard and a concern. There were still flooding issues on Dewey Avenue for Hurricane Irene in 2011 and then again in 2023. So we were able to remove this dam this past summer and restored half an acre of floodplain so that now that river can access the floodplain where before it was impounded. And then this is Cross Brothers Dam in Northfield, Vermont, which we do not have out yet, but we've been working on since 2018. And this is a rendering. So often when we're working with a community to help them think about what it could look like without a dam in their backyard. Renderings are a really good way to visualize that. So this shows the dam here. You can see it at low water and then what it would look like or what it could look like without the dam there. Preliminary studies for this dam removal show that taking out this dam will lower the flood elevation for 10 homes upstream of the dam. And immediately at the dam, we're lowering the flood elevation of the one hundred year flood by seven feet, which is substantial. And this project is funded by FEMA, and we are unsure when we can proceed with that. It's on the desk of the Director of Homeland Security waiting for signature. And hopefully, once that happens, we can get substantial flood reduction benefits from this dam. And I will also say this dam was purposely dynamited in, I believe, the 70s, and they lowered the dam by 25 feet because the community recognized the flood hazard at that time. And this was, I believe, a granite manufacturing mill. After it was abandoned, then the dam was also breached. So you could actually see the original height of the abutments and then where it was breached. And you can see in this picture the amount of accumulated sediment behind it is really substantial. And I shared these highlights with you last time, but I will share them again. But Vermont removed nine dams this year, which is the most planned dam removals that we've ever done in one year. With that, we reconnected over 125 miles of river. Over 6,000 linear feet of stream channel was restored. So restoring a river to find its own meander path versus channelizing it. 10 acres of bloodplain was restored. One of the dams was a significant hazard dam. All nine of the dams were in poor condition. And over $4,000,000 was spent in the local economy. And that was just for excavation contractors. Engineering was separate cost that was probably close to 1,000,000 for all of those. So I actually need to update that number. And all of these dams improve recreational opportunities, ability to walk along the river and fish or bird watch, and improves water quality and wildlife habitat. So there are so many other co benefits beyond the flood resilience and public safety piece of this that are really important. And I did not do this work alone. There are so many watershed organizations doing this great work. And a Franklin County Conservation District, Mrs. Floyd Basin Association, Connecticut River Conservancy, White River Partnership, Mount Escutney Regional Planning, Town of West Rutland, Friends of the Winooski River, and the NRC. And with that, that's the end of my testimony, and I'm happy to take any more questions.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Boston. So

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: can you substantiate that these weather conditions are due to climate change? I mean, is there any way to link climate change and these events? You know? Not not just dams,

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: but Yeah.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: You know, other events too. Because I'm just trying to figure out how much this is costing us, you know, to do these repairs or, know, take down these dams or if there wasn't any climate change, would we still be dealing with this amount of rain and kind of these issues? Because it seems expensive, and it just for me, it just makes sense just to take down all the damps. You know? Mhmm. And then we don't have to worry about loss of life and paying this much money.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: And, I mean, as much as I will say that as much as the safest dam is no dam, some of our dams I, you know, I only work on the derelict dam removal, so those are the ones that I prioritize. And there are dams in the state that are serving a purpose. And those ones we need to continue to maintain infrastructure. Certainly, the storm events that we're having, the increased frequency and duration of storm events, is a result of a changing climate.

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

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: know how that is not That's very obvious to me. But whether that I don't know if that's answering your question. Yeah, I mean, as long as it

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: can be verified, because I think that's important that we have data and evidence to say this is due to you know, changing weather patterns that is caused by temperatures rising. So what about the idea of just taking out all the dams? I mean, even if they're not derelict, I mean, it it just doesn't seem to make sense to take this chance. I mean, when I'm looking I never you know, just before this testimony or testimony that we've been hearing, I had no clue that this was kind of an issue in terms of safety and cost and time and energy and money. And it just seems like it might not be popular, but it seems to make seems to be more economical and it seems to be more safe.

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Am I off, like, here? Or No. I mean, it's Well, would be a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous cost. And so I think it's balancing all of those things and balancing the benefit, the environmental benefit, the public safety benefit, the health benefit, and doing that in a way that we can over time. But

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: supportive, but whether that's realistic, I don't know.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Yeah. And I guess if you look at the cost of repair, you know, I'm always looking at which costs more. I mean, both are very expensive, Like, which is the most expensive? And the human life issue is a a real concern to me. It is a real concern.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. It is a real concern. Representative Chittenden, then tagliavia, then Pritchard. So

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: just to come back to the bill. Yeah. Yeah. Just wanna sort of figure about the connections with derelict dams and and all that. But how do you think this bill will impact, I guess, particularly communities that maybe are on the fence or trying to figure out tricky situation. I think we sort of know what will happen with this bill with sort of larger dams that are owned by the state or power companies. But I think in your wheelhouse on these more community scale or private scale dams, what do you think the impact of the pool is?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: I think it's tremendously beneficial because I think a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking about that concrete wall that's above their town. Every day you don't think about the river in your backyard or the dam that's above you in that context. So what this emergency operations planning will do is provide forecasting for the community for the future. So how will we respond in an emergency if this dam were to fail? What does the inundation mapping look like for where the dam will impact the community? I think being able to visualize that, understand that, and think about that is powerful for communities because it's a reality.

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: Representative Tagliavia. You mentioned that you only deal with derelict dams. How many have you dealt with that were hydroelectric, that were derelict that needed to be removed, not repaired?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: What so all of these dams were are the derelict dams that I removed, have been abandoned in the water body for some time, some longer than others. They once provided hydropower to a sawmill or a tannery or provided a reservoir for water storage for public water supply. But they've been abandoned from those uses because there was alternative forms of power or water supply that were more efficient. And that's why they were prioritized for removal. Does that answer

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: your question?

[Michael "Mike" Tagliavia (Member)]: Yeah, at the time that you were looking to get them removed, they were no longer providing electricity. Yes,

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: we aren't actively working on removing hydropower dams.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Represented my question that was answered. We're approaching 02:00. I wanna thank you very much, Camilla. Thank you. Testimony. Thank you.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Hello, everyone. Is it time for me to start?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: It's fine. But I wanna tell you we moved the agenda so that if you could complete by 02:45, that would be great.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: K. Will do. Thank you. Hello, everyone in the committee. Thank you to representative Chapin for inviting me and for all of you to take the time to listen to the story from Plainfield. And that's basically the perspective that I have.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Michael, we need you to introduce yourself and get on Zoom. Absolutely. When before you're ready to show slides, I just need to connect you.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Okay, sure. My name is Michael Billingsley. I am the emergency management director for the town of Plainfield, Vermont as well as the vice chair and formerly the longtime secretary for the hazard mitigation committee. Plainfield's one of about a dozen towns that has such a committee and has since 2011. I'm accompanied by Sue Roland, who is my assistant and also has been our GIS mapper so that we can make evocative maps that will help the public understand some of the risks that we face and how we intend to encounter them should they happen in real life. I should also add that I started emergency management in 2015, and my first training was actually federal dam safety training that I took sponsored by FEMA and subsequently have had other dam safety trainings, including by the National Association of Dam Safety Engineers. One of the reasons I'm sensitive to dams and why I have been thinking about it a great deal of my life is because as the Northfield Dam was just shown, I used to live just upstream of there in the floodplain. And the house I was living in had actually been inundated up to 10 feet in 1973. And, also, I had a shop right next to the dam that I helped run a public facility there. Very familiar with its ups and downs in terms of the flooding. And lastly, suppose it's a family thing. My sister, for a long time, lived in the town next to Haydenville, Massachusetts, which is very famous when a industry containment pond failed and destroyed the downstream village of Haydenville. And this is part of the local history and part of the local sense of heightened awareness. So looking at the heightened awareness as it came to my attention, it since my been driving by the dam in Mollies Falls, called Mollies Falls Number 6, which is in Marshfield, Vermont. I've been driving by that since I was a kid. I grew up in Northfield also, and we Paul's had a vacation at Joe's Pond in Danville. So went by that dam frequently. I know it was there. It's a really big containment. Its pond is about 375 acres, and at its deepest point, it's about 60 feet deep. And underneath of that is a former village that was inundated when the dam was built in 1927. The history of the dam is almost always been a hydroelectric dam. So in that sense, it's been more recently regulated by the Public Utility Commission. The proposed legislation moves that and ongoing regulatory change moves the supervision of that dam and the safety of the dam to the agency of natural resources, which we do think is appropriate. Public utility commission did not have on staff a dam safety engineer and relied on our the sole safety engineer, Ben Green, for many years if there were hazard issues. But when Plainfield brought a case against Green Mountain Power for to to repair the dam that was having issues of being near failure according to their own engineers. When we finally brought that to the attention of the pope the q utility commission, they actually hired their own dam safety engineer and at the cost of the taxpayers. Therefore, it was born to have a better understanding of what was good and bad and what was failing with the dam outside of people that were hired directly by Green Mountain Power. In 2014, I took my first tour of that dam, and I noticed that the spillways were falling apart. The concrete was poured in 1927, so it's pretty old concrete. And the concrete had powdered and broken away enough so that the rebar inside the the steel reinforcing rebar inside the dam was exposed and rusting. And and for ten years prior to that, going back to 2006, I believe, when I looked at the dam safety reports that were filed by Green Mountain Power Public Utility Commission, At that time, I saw that their own engineers were replay were recommending immediate repair. And a decade had gone by at the time that I was looking at it, such a repair had still not occurred. And so with the support of the town of Plainfield and with the support of town of Marshfield, we asked for a further reassessment of the dam. An investigation was started, and it was brought before the Public Utility Commission. And we there were hearings in December 2017. I should say about this dam, it does hold back a great deal of water. It had, until 1998, only one release spillway, which was close to overtopping in both 1935 and 1973. And in 1998, their engineers recommended a second spillway, which was designated the emergency release spillway, and that was built in 1998. Just to give an idea of the scale of rainfall that can fall in that area, in 1927, the dam had just been completed, and the reservoir was at that point not full when the 1927 flood hit. And records show that the level of water inside the dam rose nine feet in that one event, nine feet higher. It did not reach the spillway because it was still only partially filled. But if the dam were exposed to the same amount of rainfall today and rose nine feet, it would have a tremendous impact on the water management plan of the dam, which is contained in, to some detail, in the emergency action plan that has been developed for the plan of Marshfield. So as was referred by the prior speaker, every dam owner, even those with hydroelectric dams, are required to prepare an emergency action plan. The Public Utility Commission had been asking Green Mountain Power to prepare an emergency action plan every five years and also to do a self inspection. So during all those times, the Klein Schmidt, which is the engineering firm that works for Green Mountain Power to manage and design changes to the dam, presented as an updated emergency action plan that was generally given to the town clerk in Marshfield because it is the immediate downstream village. And I think by way of history, I could also say that the most extreme dam event, even if you don't count 9027, which is difficult to measure because the dam wasn't, as I said, filled, was actually off the radar for most people. It was in the year of 2011. Everyone will remember as the year of hurricane Irene. However, this damn incident did not occur in the context of hurricane Irene, but actually, I think, four months earlier in April. 04/26/2011, there was a very robust heavy rainfall hitting only the towns of Marshfield and Cabot. It was very localized downpour. In this relatively brief event in the sense that a lot of water fell in a short period of time, about five and a half inches initially the first day, and then I'll also, I think it went up another inch the second day. And the dam was, at that time, tended by a hired person who was on-site monitoring the dam. And at the site of that rainstorm, the electricity failed. So the town would no longer had power. The dam did not have good cell phone service, and the lights went out. And the monitoring of the dam, which was done by remote via electricity from Colchester where Green Mountain Power manages the dam by monitoring the height of the elevation the elevation of the reservoir. That was cut off, so they could not see what was happening. So the dam tender tried to go to a house about four miles away where he he knew it was a landline so he can make a phone call, called for supervision and assistance. And the water management plan suggested that when the dam elevation and this is still the case, by the way. When the dam elevation rises 6.5 feet higher well, I should back up a little bit. When it rises six feet higher than the base of the spillways, the service spillway should be wide open, and that's the older spillway that's in the middle of the dam. And he had already done that, and the dam continued to rise. And it continued to rise substantially despite the service spillway being fully open. So he was trying to reach his supervisors to ask permission to open the emergency spillway, which was the new one built in 1998. He was not given permission to do that even as the reservoir was coming up. And because the telemetry was broken between the dam and Colchester, Marshfield fire parked a truck on the dam with this floodlight on a mechanical elevation gauge that showed how high the reservoir was going up and down and radioed the Plainfield station, which had a small generator, the plain the Plainfield fire station, and and let them know what observation they were seeing. And Plainfield fire station had a landline phone and could call Colchester, so it basically passed along as the dam elevation kept up higher. And the supervisor had to drive from Waterbury Center to the dam in order to make the final decision as to whether to open the emergency spillway. And at that point, the fire chief in Plain in Plainfield was alerted the dam was high enough that we may have to evacuate both towns. And this, again, is not on the radar. This is something that's very, you know, sort of like a local event. All of the houses in the center of Marshfield and in the center of Plainfield were alerted. House to house, all the fire crews went house to house. Meanwhile, Greenmount Power had brought some trucks up and brought crews up, we're going to all the houses along Route 2 between the two villages of Plainfield and Marshfield to try and let people know that it the dam was possibly going to fail, and they'd have to be ready to leave within fifteen minutes. The guy from Green Mountain Power arrived at the dam, noticed that the rainfall was lessening. This is about 02:00 in the morning at this point. Just noticed that the dam rising was possibly going to stop and made a calculated bet not to open the emergency spillway, and it was not open. It turned out they would not have been able to open it. The way that it is done is with a hydraulic jack that raises an iron retaining wall. And if the it's raised a certain amount, there are logs stacked on top of one another, and the logs would fall down and get swept downstream and open the gate complete. So it's a pile of logs held in place by an iron bracket. They couldn't raise the iron bracket because of the hydraulic jacket had rusted shut. So they wouldn't have been able to open it. Maybe they could have dynamited it or or something, but they could not have opened it according to the way they wish to. So a lot of people were already meaning in the sense of 15 people were already evacuated in Plainfield because also our Great Brook was rising. A lot of that rainfall came into the Great Brook, which is our flash flooding book. And so I was able to piece together from witnesses who overheard the radio communications what sort of things had gone on then. And they called off the evacuation, and we breathed a sigh of relief and basically hoped that things would never happen that badly again. And just let me give you the absolute numbers. We have that first page of my slide up, please?

[Committee staff/IT support]: So you'll you'll have to join the Zoom meeting?

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: I have to do it from my computer? Yep. I couldn't get on Zoom. I'm sorry.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: No. I'll I'll admit you now.

[Committee staff/IT support]: When before when you were Oh.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Alright. Well, I think I'll just do it verbally.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: I'll just do it verbally. I thought you had the slide in your computer.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Oh, you'll join you would

[Committee staff/IT support]: join Zoom and then share it. But

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Oh, I see. Okay. I thought there was a there was two possibilities. Alright. Alright. Well, and I'll just go with what I've got. I have the maps on paper, so I'm gonna end up folding up some paper for you. The the dam is upstream from Marshfield Village. I've lived in Marshfield Village as well as Plainfield Village. So and I've been involved with emergency management since 2015, as I said. Plainfield is downstream far enough that we have a little bit of warning time, An hour and ten minutes. If we were told that the dam had failed, we would have an hour and ten minutes to move everyone out of the floodplain. Marshfield is not so lucky. So I'm speaking also for Marshfield, and I'm very deeply concerned. The town sort of have a unified emergency management approach. And so what I was able to do is that and having Sil join our staff Sil Roland join our staff, we could make maps that showed not only what we learned was the endation that would be caused by a dam failure or a dam release. We also learned for the first time what houses were in that zone. Let me tell you why that's important. The emergency action plan, as it's in the bill also, it's it's it's hopefully going to be beefed up. But the and by the way, I forgot to say I was invited by senator Mark McAuley. Is it representative Mark or senator? Representative Mark McHawley to be along with the emergency management director from Chittenden to be representing the emergency management perspective in the study committee that began last spring. So I partook in most of those discussions. So what happens when you have an inundation map? See which one I can use here for reference. Okay. So I'm gonna hold that up for you. And what this shows is a dark blue area and a light blue area that are relating to different types of inundations that can occur depending on how the dam fails. This dam has yellow blocks in it, which you can see quite clearly. Each one of those represents a building, either a private house or a, commercial or, municipal, infrastructure. And those buildings can be clearly seen. And the way that SIL set up the map at my request is that when you click on any one of these houses, you will see its address. In other words, you can actually see who lives there. What what this is a planning map to assist our fire chief in Plainfield and the fire chief in Marshfield to figure out how to evacuate people out of the village and away from where their houses are. Until SIL finished this map, we did not have a map. Even though there are inundation maps in the emergency action plan, they do not there's they're very blurry. They have no background image that shows you which houses are where, and we've been pleading with Green Mountain Power to give us better maps that we could actually do evacuation planning with. And it's within the context of this bill that the dam owner will collaborate with any at risk populations and the municipalities and help them plan evacuation. We do not yet have that help. We are doing it entirely on our own, and we are doing it at entirely at our own cost. We do not receive any income. Plainfield does not receive any income from Green Mountain Power. It is not in our tax base. The power plant is in the town of Marshfield. The dam itself is in the town of Cabot. So each of those towns acquire tax revenue from the placement of facilities in their town boundaries. Plainfield has no such income, But we are forced to bear significant costs to prepare for a dam incident, and we also have, I guess you would call it, ongoing costs of staying ahead of the both the weather events as they should occur. And also as this mapping project has gone forward, it's taken quite a bit of time. I don't know. So can you remember about how many hours it took to develop the whole map? You roughly guess?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Probably a

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: solid four weeks of work.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Four four weeks of of work. So ninety six hours, roughly. Normally, our GIS mapping is done for us by the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission, but their funding has been diminished. And it's we're be getting signals from FEMA even as we were developing our local hazard mitigation plan, which is to look from our side of how do we prepare for a dam emergency and what would we do. They've specifically made it clear through the Central Vermont Regional Planning Commission that they're not interested in planning for anything but, quote, natural hazards. So storm related flooding, yes. But dam related flooding, no. And it signals to me that the current FEMA as a way of offloading costs is looking to the dam owner having full liability to cover the cost of any either planning, evacuation, or post disaster, post incident destruction. They don't wanna talk about it. They don't wanna be informed, and they don't wanna be part of the process. So it throws it back on the state to leave it in some form of legislative or regulated form to create that future partnership between dam owners and downstream residents and the downstream resident municipalities. We do I mean, there's significant cost. And, normally, we would hire Central Vermont Regional Planning to do this kind of mapping for us, But the but the specificity of it required us to have a lot of oversight and green and they had to withdraw from a larger part of the labor involved there. So we had to basically hire our own internal help to do this work. Let me say something about the numbers. First of all, in terms of proximity, as I said, Marshfield is downstream from the dam. It's three miles from the dam. If there was a breach, it would take, according to them, one point excuse me, fifty seconds for the water to reach the village. Fifty seconds. That's not much evacuation time. The wall of water from certain kinds of incidents would be 18 feet high according to their calculations. 18 feet high reaching the center of the village of Marshfield. That's at the Route 2 Bridge just above where the Marshfield general store is. That 18 foot high wall of water would still would grow. In other words, its its initial impact would be 18 feet, Probably taking most of the buildings right off their foundations with the people in them if they weren't out. And, also, there's a gas station, so it would tear up and pull out the pumps and expose the gasoline and add that to the mix and go down and surround and what would be the what had been designated as the shelter for Marshville, the public shelter flood shelter had been the old school house common, which is where the town clerk is. That building would be surrounded by water and perhaps badly damaged, so it's not an evacuation destination. And the water will continue going downhill, ultimately reaching perhaps a 105,000 cubic feet per second at its peak, which is enormous amount of water. And it would go down, reaching Plainfield in an hour and fifteen minutes. It would be 11 feet high at the point it reached our bridge. You can't imagine this very well, but it is really catastrophic. And with these maps that we have, we're in a position now for the first time because Green Mountain Power did not give us maps that allowed us to see where the houses were that were in the inundations on. Now we can actually work and do public pre evacuation planning. We can talk to the people who live in these houses and say, get yourself out. Do it as quickly as possible. Know what your route is to the highest ground. We'll never be able to get an emergency crew to you. We have, I think, 11 members of our fire department right now, our volunteer fire department. Marshfield has a slightly smaller number. There are 268 buildings in the inundation zone. Those which are residences are about 550 people. Those that are workplaces have another equal number. In other words, folks who are working in or frankly, our fire station, the Marshfield fire station are both going to be swept away. Well, actually, the Marshfield one will be swept away. Ours will be inundated. Town buildings, inundated. All maps excuse me. All routes for leaving town will be cut off within five minutes in Marshfield and within an hour in Plainfield. If you don't go immediately, you don't go. And so we are although I'd say that there are other dams that are bigger, like the one in Whitingham that would potentially impact Reedsboro, that there are by most estimations, we are the most vulnerable community in relationship with the dam. And it isn't just Marshfield and Plainfield. East Montpelier does not have very many buildings in the dam flood zone. But when that same inundation reaches Montpelier, which it will in four hours, that same inundation will be at the traffic circle of Route 2 on the East side of town, 10 feet deep. 10 feet deep. And that inundation will rise for another two hours, get deeper and deeper. That's the initial impact is at four hours. And then it would subside finally in eleven hours. So this is a significant flood for Montpelier. I've taken Anne Watson through the inundation zone there and helped her understand how every place in the flood plain from the Hunger Mountain flow up to all those residents along River Street. They're all equally vulnerable. They just have a little bit more time to get out.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Austin.

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Yeah. Boston.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I'm just wondering where the schools are.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Excuse me?

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: The schools. Where are the schools on that?

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Montpelier High School is in the flood zone. Greenfield School, which is this the union school for Plainfield and Marshfield, is not in the flood zone, but its evacuation is in the flood zone. So working with their principals just last year, because their flood evacuation was to go drive from Route 2 to the old schoolhouse common. That was their flood plan. And 450 combined staff and students to get out of there. They and we've found a new evacuation destination for them at the former Valley College, and we've found a route that keeps them off route too except very briefly. Gets their buses up and out and on higher ground. And, hopefully, that will work. They they will have the arrival time as thirty five minutes at the school, you know, after a dam warning comes out from Green Mountain power. So look looking back at my notes, make sure I don't jump all, Kristi.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: What is the location of that body of

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: water you're talking about with the beam? Is that right next to Route 2? It's right next to Route 2. East Of Marshfield. It's called the Marshfield Reservoir, sometimes called the Marshfield Dam. Was looking at a map. Yeah. Trying to get a 100 Yeah. It's just it's just East Of Marsh Field in the direction of St. Johnsburg. Yeah. And as I said, it has about 375 acres of impounded water.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: So all the elementary schools and it they're okay? They're high?

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Elementary school is Twinfield. Twinfield, they do no no longer have smaller separate elementary schools. And Montpelier Elementary is out of the floodplain, and East Montpelier Elementary is out of the floodplain. So my guess is that the most vulnerable populations are Twinfield and Montpelier High for for school children. There are other vulnerable problems populations, just including elderly people and folks who have health impairment. And we talk constantly about how to prepare people for that. Emergency management in Plainfield has been deeply focused on that, I'd say, probably for ten years. So we do mailings to townspeople. We talk with them about that. We're about to do another one. It's costly for us. I mean, in a sense, I'm a volunteer. I've been doing this for seven years. I took a break starting in 2015. I took a break four years, Sometimes working full time and trying to stay ahead of what would be all the communications with Vermont and Emergency Management, with Central Mountain Regional Planning, which definitely made our partner down at Marshfield itself and on good relations with their emergency management director. We basically share a population. But what we are facing is an almost unmanageable situation. If there was an actual damn emergency and we didn't have much warning, I anticipate people will die. I anticipate that large portions of the town of Plainfield and Marshfield would be devastated beyond recognition. Greenland Power is aware of this. I'm not saying that they've been a bad partner. They're they're sympathetic. They've come and spoken with us. However, they are not providing us with any financial assistance where if the power were going out, they wouldn't they I mean, we'd love to have them contribute to an emergency radio system, a satellite radio system, or something like that that we could depend on so that we could communicate with each other. We don't have any income for that. We're one of, as you know, one of the most heavily damaged communities after the 2024 and twenty twenty three floods. 27 houses taken away from our livable homes. And, I mean, not to say people aren't living in some of them, but they're we are not seeing any female reimbursements yet for 2024. So And in effect, we are in a deficit state, and we have to plead with both the legislature and with Green Mountain Power to provide us the kind of backup that we need to repair the financial costs. She'll is wouldn't be working for us if we did not get a grant from the Vermont Community Foundation to pay her salary for a year, but then she leaves on the May 1. We would love to have Green Mountain Power Pitch in and help us continue to have a GLS mapper so we could do our emergency planning. It's essential to have mapping onboard in each community that's impacted. We don't know how to ask for that. We know that in 2024, almost all of our renters, we have a lot of renters in housing, found out that their rent insurance does not cover their losses if they're in a floodplain. So people who had their entire belongings taken away in buildings that went downstream, Absolutely no financial compensation whatever from their insurance that they've been paying for for years. And we don't know what the insurance liability is with the dam itself, but FEMA is saying it's withdrawing its interest at least and perhaps its money from compensating communities for dam related disasters. If a dam is a basically a manufactured entity, it's a piece of industrial infrastructure or impoundment infrastructure that they want the dam owners to be financially responsible for the recovery, not the federal government. So we're facing these obstacles. We definitely are collaborating better with Green Mountain Power than we have in the past. They are giving us more of their time and and giving us more access to their data. That's how we were able to do this map for the first time. They've shared their inundation mapping data with us so we construct construct our own map. They had finally, after I I think I've been asking for five years, they they base their inundation maps on contemporary lidar mapping provided by the state as opposed to nineteen thirties USGS mapping, which is up to 15 feet inaccurate that they were basing their inundation stones on, which would say that some places would get inundated that actually would not get inundated in the reverse. So now we have at least accurate maps of where the water will go, and we're trying to find out where the people will go next. That's evacuation planning is our highest priority right now. I think I'll stop there. Are there any questions?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'll send one quick one.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Go ahead, Sarah.

[Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: If the dams were all taken out, would flooding still be an issue? I mean, how big is your floodplain?

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Well, we have a very narrow floodplain at the villages because that's where the mills were built. That's the history of Vermont is that if you look at Johnson or any of the other river bottom towns, they built in the narrowest place because that's the most effective mill. And it wasn't and still is a dam in the center of Marshfield that is coming out I mean, in the center of Plainfield that is hopefully coming out. But the the villages weren't built in good places if you were to look at survivability and flooding. And then add to that what Scott Whitaker of the National Weather Service tells us. We're going to be looking at more local downpour events. He started telling us about three years ago at the what there's a spring flood seminar that is done by with emergency management every year, and he has been emphasizing more and more that unthinkable amounts of rain could fall in short periods of time in small areas geographically. So in 2024, we had potentially as much as eight inches of rainfall in a relatively small area of the Great Brook Watershed, part of which is in the town of Orange, and that caused our river to exceed the 500 deer flood level. So it's never flooded like that before. And yet Scott is saying, that won't be the last time. And similarly, that heavy rainfall of event that occurred at the dam itself in 2011 could easily repeat itself. And there are some design issues with the dam in Marshfield as well that we will actually be asking to be corrected and have been asking, which is the log log date I described is a stack of logs inside a channel that fall out, and they don't come back in. They don't replace themselves. They've been washed downstream. So once you open that gate, you cannot control the water flow. It's it's wide open, and it stays wide open until the reservoirs drain down to that level. We want that to be replaced with an incremental date gate because that would be allow when the when the water level dropped, say, half its height from six and a half feet down to three feet, then it could close the gate and reduce the amount of water entering the Winooski River Valley. But we are to deal with that as our private issue between us and Green Mountain Power, but I'm hoping that we would persuade them to modernize that gate. It's very risky kind of gate for a downstream population of of and work population of up to a thousand people. And that's not including Montpelier, by the way. That's just Plainfield and Marshall. So any other questions? Representative Chapin.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Thanks, Michael. It's really I mean, it's a very illustrative story, so thank you for going through it with us. I you mentioned a couple of things that I think you've sort of attached to this bill that aren't quite attached to this bill. You mentioned that there are changing regulations related to

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: And where they as they took ownership, it's a Canadian company, and they took ownership of those dams, they met with local municipal authorities, townspeople, and emergency planners, emergency management people immediately. Sat down and said, here are the risks to your community. Here are the largest and smallest ways that this could potentially impact you. How can we help you plan for each one? This is exactly what I would like to see happen here in Vermont as a general rule. In other words, not to give any wiggle room about whether or not those collaborations would take place, But to encourage those who would not do so willingly to be available to the towns, I have to say that Green Mountain Power's primary relationship has been with Marshfield because that's the immediate town. Marshfield, in turn, has relied on its first responders to be the first point of contact. So their town clerk tears out her hair because she doesn't have the kind of communication with Green Mountain Power that the fire department does. Fire department's prepared to race off and try to evacuate people. She doesn't actually know from them what their what their actual plans are to help with evacuation, if at all. And so all of the townspeople and the way that the I believe I believe the way the bill is worded, it makes it a little bit more generic and less specific that it'd the fire departments. It's not specifically that. The towns and the municipalities, whatever wording ends up being in the final bill, it should be very explicit that the town, the municipality, the first responders, and the townspeople be participatory. I have to say we're kinda going out on a limb here with this map that I showed you, and that Green Mountain Power has insisted for two decades to me and to my predecessor that the maps are secret. The emergency management planners weren't given these maps. They were given to the as a single block to the town clerk and left in the town office without explanation, generally. And I've called Green Island Power to hold meetings with Marshfield and with Plainfield. And as a consequence, they did come and explain, but they had not offered to do that. And the impact of the maps is that how does a member of the public know their house is in a flood zone, and how do they know that they need to be perhaps the first person who can get themselves out before the fire department ever gets to them? I mean, we as I said, we have 11 people in our fire department. If they are tasked to remove 250 people in playing field and have a certain number of minutes to do it, it'd be a whole lot easier if we knew some people knew where to get themselves out and weren't even home when we got there. And I in our mailing with I know I'm not specifically answering your question, but I in our mailing, because we're trying to be proactive here, we included a tear off section on this mailing. It was on sort of heavyweight mailing paper where one side says, we've left. The other side, we're we're still here. So that when people find that they're in danger and they can't get out or maybe they have a member of the household who needs a wheelchair to to to be removed with the help from the ambulance crew, they can say we're still here. Whereas if they had left, they can just put the sign off, we've left. And as a consequence, the fire department can drive by and very quickly move to the next house. These kinds of preemptive actions, which emergency management directors have to think of, really should be built in to a protocol. And Jan, who is the emergency management director at Chittenden, had recommended that a template be put together for those emergency operation plans that would help many of the towns who are in dam flood areas to know how to look ahead. We're very trained in Plainfield because of the number of disasters. We have a lot of experience and and have been at this for a while. There are many downstream can plans excuse me. There are many downstream towns that haven't even read their emergency action plans. We know this. And if they think about doing the minimum, they may not even be talking with whoever their damn owner is. And so this bill opens up the possibility that people will be given the tools to plan for evacuations, and it will create the partnership to provide those tools to them. So that's why I'm glad this legislation is going through. Thank

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: you. Are there any other questions to Chris?

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: Anything else?

[Camilla (Restoration Director, Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: Thank you so much.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You're welcome. My

[Michael Billingsley (Emergency Management Director, Town of Plainfield)]: pleasure.