Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Alright, we are reconvening our afternoon hearing and continuing to take testimony on the bottle redemption PRO bill, and we have Jared Carpenter with us.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: So good afternoon, Madam Chair. Thank you so much. Members of the committee, good to see you all again. For the record, my name is Jared Carpenter of the Lake Champlain Committee. I have followed this issue sort of peripherally as it's come up over the years, not necessarily from the bottle and redemption aspect, but more from the Clean Water Fund impacts, aspects of it potentially, because it's always been a discussion of changing, what can be redeemed, how much for, you know, what what the what the is it a dime? Is it a nickel? And all of those would have impacts on the Essex and therefore impacts on the Clean Water Fund. But I was asked to come in. This is the first time that this has been directly, proposed that some of the escheats be used, you know, for redemption centers. And so if I get if I get language in the redemption realm, confused, it's a little new to this, so I apologize. So a couple of hours ago, the organizations, the environmental organizations that have been working on clean water issues, for a number of years, really much since the start of act 64, the Vermont Clean Water Act. We have a standing meeting at noon, on Tuesdays, and we did discuss this, amongst the groups that attend. So it's Lake Champlain Committee, VNRC, Conservation Law Foundation, Connecticut River Conservancy, others who've been working on these issues. And we discussed this. I would say, I mean, nobody is thrilled with the idea, of diverting some of the escheats over to redemption centers and out of the clean water fund. But they understand that this, we understand that this is a good program. There's good potential here. Someone did mention that, you know, if the program is successful, we're going to find less bottles and cans in Lake Champlain and everywhere else. They will wind up back with the manufacturers and not in not in our rivers, lakes and Lake Champlain. So there are two concerns, but all in all, it's, you know, this is there's this is not a lot of money out of the clean water fund. So it's, it seems like a, seems like a good idea. The two concerns are, and I can get into it a little bit, and I'll talk a little bit background about the Clean Water Fund as well. One is, the precedent. You know, we've always been concerned about the clean water fund being used for other purposes. Now between the Essex and recycling, you can't have as much of a close nexus, as anywhere else. These are directly connected. So we're talking a fairly narrow precedent here. We're not asking to divert bills and asking to to divert clean water funds to something completely unrelated. And the second one is actually, if the program is successful, yes, we'll have less bottles and cans in our waters, but also we'll have less a cheat less cheats, one would think. If there more people are redeeming and if the program is a success, the amount of money that's going into the clean water fund will get will get smaller and smaller over time. You know, an interesting problem to have, but I have a I have a proposal for that as well. Always thinking. Always pitching is probably a better way of phrasing it. So I'll get in generally. It's starting in f y thirty, it's a million dollars. F y thirty one, it's another million. And '32 and '33 is $750,000. So over four years, it's $3,500,000 that's being proposed. Annually, the estates are about 3.7 ish million, going into the Clean Water Fund. And for FY '27, the Clean Water Fund is $31,700,000. So I don't have numbers going all the way out to f y '30, but as you can see, it's it's not a lot of money that's coming out of the Clean Water Fund. It's still something, but it's not a lot. And so I wanted to get into the Clean Water Fund a little bit and then some of the concerns. And please, obviously, interrupt me with, with questions as we as we go along. So as background, act 64, I've talked about this with you all before. It was, 2015, established the Clean Water fund for these purposes, to assist the state in in in compliance, to fund staff positions, and to provide funding for some organizations. It is still act 64 is still very much a polluter pays. You know, the regulated community does pay for a lot of this, but the Clean Water Fund was designed to assist with this. But there was very little revenue. Initially, it was just the property transfer tax clean water surcharge, which this committee, extended the sunset on last year. So you have discussed it before. But the bill tasked the treasurer at the time, Beth Pierce, to come up with some funding ideas. These were Beth's ideas, and she did not provide a recommendation to the legislature, but, did a whole bunch of different ideas. So, so you can see number one is the PTT at about 4.7 to $5,000,000. 13 is the Essex. Number 31 is the meals and rooms tax. And I think representative North, you and I last year a little bit talked about some of these that were kicked around, but we never really went anywhere with the per parcel fees on it, either a per parcel or per acre basis. So depending on how much impervious surface you'd have, you pay a fee that would go into the fund. So more of a direct nexus between funding and going into the fees. After this came out, one of this committee's predecessors, I think it was maybe on water quality, fish and wildlife. What's that? Fish, wildlife and water. Fish, wildlife, water. It's gone through a few variations over the years, came up with, madam Farr, I can't remember if you were on the committee then. Was the marina tax and it was diesel and it was all sorts of things lumped together. But where it landed is over time was first was the property transfer tax, clean water surcharge. Number three was the Essex. That was that came next. And I will give a I will give a little nod to Paul for suggesting that as well behind the scenes. And and finally, it was the meals and rooms tax, 6%. To date, number a two, I don't think anybody has ever gifted donated or or or some other given money to, the Clean Water Fund. So it's really one, three, and four. And that's and that's sort of where where all this, landed over the years. These are the funding goals with the Clean Water Fund. In act 76, wanted the clean water budgets and our predicted or projected it should be about 50 to $60,000,000 a year to hit, to hit our targets in the TMDL. Some of the money that's currently going into the fund could be, I think, spend in different ways to be a little more effective. That's not a conversation for now, but at other times. But, initially, there was a lot of capital bill money as treasurer Pierce suggested this as a bridge, before the clean water fund could sort of catch up. But lately, a lot of it has been has gotten us up towards the 50,000,000 is because of the ARPA money. And then one time money, which is interest. They don't necessarily spend all the revenue every year. There's a little small c conservative about, you know, just because all the money comes in, you don't spend it all out. So there's usually 2 ish million dollars left that gets kicked in later. But as you can see, we're I don't have the December 25 numbers. But as you can see, now that the ARPA money is off, we've dropped fairly well below the 50 to 60,000,000,000 to $39.46 ish area. So we're short. There needs to be more revenue in order to help hit our goals, but this is just sort of provides us perspective on the on the different input levels. This is a breakdown of the clean water fund revenue sources. So if you look up top to last couple of years, FY '25 actual for property transfer taxes up top at 8.9, interest 2.7, the seats was 4.3 this year, and meals and rooms was 5.2. And then this is FY '26, FY '27, and FY '28, on the different revenue projections. So the January 25 projections, July 25 projections, and the most recent January. And we are right now in FY '27, this budget. So these numbers here where the PTT is about 9.2, 3.8, you can see down. You had some capital money. It's a one time and it's $47,000,000 in revenue roughly and the budget recommend is 45.1. So the other column, you can see where the sheets are from FY '21 to FY '28. It's always sort of in the $3,700,000. So $1,000,000 in FY 3031. Now granted these are '27 28 numbers. We don't have the projections out to 3031 quite yet. But at a million dollars, a million dollars and $750,000, we're looking at about, you know, a third ish of the Essex going towards redemption centers. Potentially, my understanding is, someone has to come and ask for reimbursement for grants. You might not even go through the entire million dollars. You might go through it rather quickly. But it's not gonna have a huge I don't think it's gonna have a huge impact on these sheets, and on the clean water fund generally. The concern oh, no. This is we've already been through this. This is the this is the language of a million in the in the $750,000 that's in the current redemption draft in front of you. But these are if I'm reading this correctly, this is the redemption targets over the course until 2042. If any of us are still doing this in 2042, god help us. But

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Can I just ask what version of the draft request you're looking at? Because the one I have didn't have those numbers. It has different

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I pulled these off of the ANR proposal. Have these, is this slide, madam chair?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Is this what? This is

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: the slide you're referring to, madam chair?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah. Well, you've twice sort of said numbers that I don't think are in the draft that I'm looking at. Have you So I need to

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: are these Those are the. I think the new draft is on the That's on I believe I pulled up the new draft. It's on your website. If not, where I took these from was from the, when Matt testified Thursday or Friday of last week. This is from the A and R proposal.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: They're slightly lower now. But

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Okay. Even better.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Read on that.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: At any rate, these are the numbers that, the last numbers that I was, you know, referred to. So $3,500,000 between f y thirty and f y thirty three, so four years. But these are the the goals of the redemption rates. So if we get up to a redemption if we increase the redemption rate, we decrease the Essex, which would mean less money going into, the Clean Water Fund. So if there's a possible decline in the Essex revenue over time, should one offset this by an increase in the meals and room tax revenue to the clean water front? This is something that I've advocated for off and on for years and, never miss an opportunity. Currently, 6% in the middle of the bowl is how much money in 26, 27, and $28, goes into the clean water fund from the meals and rooms tax. So if one was to increase it by 2% to 8%, that's not saying we increase the meals and rooms tax per se as we divert an extra 2% from the pie over to the clean water fund. It would be about five and a half million dollars, which would amply make up for, any loss of the Essex over time and get us closer to that $50,000,000.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And are we spending that $50,000,000 every year?

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: There have been some slowdowns in some of the programs of not getting all the money out the door, promptly. My understanding is it's getting better. It's some programs, are better at, you know, encumbering and distributing the money. Some for some, it's encumbered, but it's not yet out the door. Clean water projects take time. You know? You have to identify a project, and then you have to fund and then you have to get the financing, and then, you know, the the the design has to go through and everything. So it's not obviously, immediate, but I think some money could probably go to other programs as well. But there is a slowdown in some of the money going through, but I think it's getting better and better, madam chair.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Members have questions?

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: I'm sorry for talking so quickly. Still

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Austin. Yeah.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I assume there's a lot of streams of funding that goes into the clean water fund. I'm just wondering if the what's going on at the federal level? What percent of the funds are federal?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: That?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: I'm just concerned about that stream occurring.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Right. I mean, there's always been going through the, with the water investment division, there's always been a lot of federal federal money in different sources. There's also Lake Champlain Basin money. Yeah. Other sources as well. I don't have exact numbers and percentages. There's always has been some, that goes through. The Clean Water Fund is all state revenue. The capital bill is, of course, bonded money. ARPA money, red over my shoulders, of course, that big chunk of fund or $92,000,000 I think was spent over three years on clean water projects and programs. Mean, stuff that we you know, big infrastructure projects that cost a lot of dollars, you know, wastewater systems, things that we just we we couldn't fund ourselves. So that was a real boon, but, it has fluctuated. I think it has gone down. Senator Leahy was always also very good about directing money into Lake Champlain programs. And that's obviously the other two senators current senators aren't as well, but it does fluctuate every year. But I could reach out to the agency and see if there's more direct numbers or somebody's probably listening.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Senator North. Thank you,

[Rep. Rob North]: madam chair.

[Rep. Rob North]: So Carrie, forty five to fifty million dollars per year, that's a lot of money. Where would I get detailed information on exactly through which people and organizations that money gets spent? Where? So so

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: if you want if breaking down the clean water fund into the clean water budget, it's in it's in different the first first place to start is different tiers. There's, you know, for example, last year, there was $13,000,000 went to the agency of agriculture. This year for f y twenty seven, it's 11.

[Rep. Rob North]: I understand the the projects by agency, I mean, specifically, when it goes down to the NGOs and who is actually getting

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: paid to. Who is that to getting paid? Is that is definitely a water investment division question. I'm I'm not sure of of of of the breakdowns of exactly who gets what dollars. There's various grant programs. You know, over at AFM, they use it for leverage with a lot of federal money. In DEC, there's there's like, the enhancement grants is $5,000,000 a year, and that goes to NGOs who do different water quality projects. Formula grant money goes to the clean water service providers, who are the RPCs mostly to do projects. There's $4,000,000 a year for municipal pollution control grants that goes to the munis. So that money goes out the door. And I think it's every year, it's a different it's a different variation. But I would reach out to, I'd probably start with Neil.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: We had the report from the FEMA water program. Yeah, I recognize that

[Rep. Rob North]: it doesn't get down to the detail that I'm looking for.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: But that's who you clarifying. Yeah, that's the

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: I don't have the

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: numbers that go all the way down to the brass tax and that's never really proposed in the budget that goes through this building. That's a that's a that's a different level.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Wednesday afternoon, Clean Water Initiative Report. It was on your agenda. Last week.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Other questions for Jared? Of course. I'm easy to find if you have other questions.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So it's fair to say that the Water Caucus will well, perhaps, with a heavy heart, would not oppose our request to

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: you No, madam chair. We don't

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: short term.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: We don't oppose we don't oppose the funding mechanism.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Very welcome. Thank you for your work and for your testimony. Thank you for the opportunity. All right. With that, we will welcome Drew Hazleton. Shifting gears H seven seventy eight, the act relating to dam safety. Welcome.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Thank you. So, Peter Hazleton, chief operations down at Rescue Inc, and thanks for inviting me. I would assume that, you know, most of the the comments I would have to offer are more around the response than some of the assessment. A little background into the work that I've done. I manage an ambulance service in Southern Vermont. We serve 15 communities that is impacted a lot by flooding down in the West River Valley. We do have two federal flood control dams. I've been working in the areas of water rescue and EMS EMS for thirty years, water rescue for about twenty years. Did a lot of evacuations and rescues during Irene and then worked as part of the state's kind of collective water rescue program that responded the last couple of years to the flooding. So bringing some EMS experience along with some water rescue experience to the the conversation. So I've read through the the bill and, certainly always support planning and preparation of, you know, ahead of these incidents. It makes our lives as as emergency responders, far easier. In my experience, in our area, we've had a wonderful relationship with the Army Corps of Engineers, and we've been able to do a lot of that pre planning work with them as, you know, the years have gone on. And again, we're pretty fortunate to have those flood control dams because of the for the most part, they give us a little sense of security. Though in in the twenty twenty three flood, we did receive notice that the flood control dams were were looking to have an uncontrolled release and that we needed to evacuate a significant portion of the downstream residents. So we have had, you know, concern from some of the the large federal flood control dams. So from an EMS perspective, typically when we start thinking about events, for the most part, we have a little bit of warning that we have rain events coming in and we start working with local EOCs and looking at those hazards. Most areas don't have really good plans, but we start thinking about how do we move the medically vulnerable population. So Vermont does not have a great system for moving, relocating, and sheltering medically vulnerable people. We have a lot of senior citizens that require oxygen concentrators, electronic home medical devices that in the event of a disaster, whether it's a flood or a hurricane or something that may interrupt power supply or their access need to be relocated. So that's our first component when we start looking at risks. And again, every area addresses that a little bit different is how do we kind of get ahead of that? How do we relocate? A

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: lot

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: of times that involves ambulance transport of patients simply because that's the asset that we have the most control over, though it may not be the most appropriate asset. But early in those emergency response, we tie up a lot of EMS assets in order to help move medically vulnerable people out of harm's way. Just a little background. Vermont has 76 separate ambulance services that provide services to different communities. We do not have a statewide mass casualty response plan or a surge response plan in Vermont. So for example, Massachusetts had her to evacuate an entire hospital two nights ago. State of Massachusetts has, ambulance task forces they can call in and successfully move ninety, ninety day with 96 patients. Vermont doesn't have that. So right now, either local municipalities or regional service providers that are responsible for their EMS, have to coordinate on their own, how to bring in those additional resources, how to kind of bolster that local EMS response in order to get those pre evacuation components complete.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Can you say one more time the title of what you we don't have? The EMS.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So we do not have a statewide mass casualty response plan. It's something that the EMS advisory committee is working on as part of a a large project, a five year EMS plan.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So it's underway.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: It is, yes. So I chair the EMS advisory committee and we were tasked with that work not last year, the year before, and we've been we've done an assessment of the EMS system, which was presented to, government operations and health care committees, and we will be coming back, in December with a comprehensive statewide EMS plan. And in some of that, we'll one of those components is addressing that mass casualty response component of of what we need to have in Vermont.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Sure. We have lots of questions. Are you finished? Are you I can

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: take questions and

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: then the nine eleven coordinators of talents involved in

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: that also? So there's varying degrees of involvement depending on where you go. So the most consistent thing about EMS in Vermont is how inconsistent it is. So as we've done the assessment in across Vermont, we have ambulance services that are small serve, you know, one or 200 calls a year, you know, relatively small population, and some of our larger services are running, you know, around eight or 10,000 calls a year. And it's varied depending on community, whether there's direct involvement with their, EMDs or their nine zero one coordinators. In a lot of places, there is a there is a disconnect. So it's something that we are working on trying to come up with a a more standardized way to kinda work through EMS planning.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Austin. Yep. Hi. As a

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: former EMT, I'm always thinking about evacuation, I'm thinking of the flooding, if the roads are impassable, then how do you evacuate? I mean, I'm hoping that there's an alarm where people the day before, because the river's rising and the rain, people can get out before the flooding occurs.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So that's very challenging. So, as I said, I had, I I did water rescue during Irene. We had to evacuate a lot of low lying trailer parks prior to the storm. Not everybody chooses to evacuate, so our goal is to hopefully, you know, bring those those lives to a safe place before the event happens. And then after that, we rely on the response phase, which in Vermont is also a little bit challenging. So our flood response in Vermont is tiered. There are very few localities that have robust swift water and floodwater capabilities. There's 10 or 12, partner teams around the state that partner up with the state's urban urban search and rescue team to provide those services. But when you start looking at Vermont's geography and how quickly we become kind of a landlocked, it's not uncommon for us to have a region and really nobody else can get there to help us because there's no roads.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Right.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: In order to kind of travel. So, in our area, we have identified the likely places where we will have geographic isolation and we've set up basically like first aid locations. So because the ambulances can't even transport to hospitals, we use, you know, Grange halls and fire departments and schools as locations that we move patients to. Our area, so I'm out of Wyndham County, and we have had some advantages over the last, you know, several decades over a lot of other areas because we had Vermont Yankee for years. So we had a fair amount of money into planning, for many years. Now we don't have that anymore, but we were used to the process because we had done it so long for evacuations with, Vermont Yankee that I think we're probably ahead of a lot of areas. So when we we talk about, like, how do we move those people? I thought we want to do it early. Right. We want to get them out before. And then once the event happens, we have to start making decisions. So in 2023, we had, as we all know, mass flooding around early on in the flooding, our area, Londonderry, Westin, I don't know if you're familiar with what happened down there, The Ludlow, there was massive flooding, many people trapped, and we have to start making decisions about whether they are better off to stay put or better off to travel with us because a lot of times the evacuation route that we have to take them out is dangerous, like putting them in a boat into fast moving water in order to evacuate somebody. Also has risks. So, we had a a senior housing complex that the decision was made to actually leave them there because it was the safest possible option. They were geographically isolated. The water had come up. There was no way we could get in there if there was real issues moving forward, but we had to make the decision as to what was best. And and that's the challenge of of, you know, rapid rising floodwater. We also, again, have very limited response resources in Vermont. We rely on this kind of tiered approach of local. Most of the time goes to your local fire department or your local EMS service. Many times these people all wear, you know, multiple hats. So I happen to be the chief of an ambulance service. I also run a swift water rescue team, and I serve as part of the state's urban search and rescue team. So when one of these events happens, I can only put one hat on, and I'm not alone. We have most everybody doing that. So even though we seem sometimes the numbers seem like we have a fair amount of resources, in reality, we're all playing multiple roles. So when that incident happens, we, you know, like I said, we we do the best we can to put together response teams. So we have different types of water rescue response, and then we start bringing in outside assets through EMAC requests. And if that's not done in a done early and not done efficiently, then those resources won't be on the ground when we need them. And I've got to give, you know, kudos to emergency management in the last couple of years where we've had these floods in '23 and '24. They have been Johnny on the spot when it comes to bringing in outside resources to support us. So they have, you know, those resources have been on the ground as quick as they reasonably could have been on the ground. So for some of us that we travel out of state as well to support those areas. So I had the opportunity to go to Florida and go to North Carolina to support those areas that were flooded during Helene. Those are the same teams, by the way, that came here and supported us in in 2023. So we do have those relationships. But as you can imagine, moving teams from North Carolina to Vermont and having them on the ground ready to work, takes planning, takes effort, and certainly leadership from EM, and they've done a really, really good job at at doing that recently.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Does Vermont and in your new plan define a mass casualty?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So any resource or any incident that, overwhelms the, resources available locally. So a mass casualty in my area may be a very different than a mass casualty in, say, the Northeast Kingdom, where they may have one ambulance and and you know us three or four people. We have 12 ambulances and a staff of 80. So if we had a car accident or an incident with six or eight patients, that would be kind of normal business for us where it would be a mass casualty in another area.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And are you a nonprofit, or what's your order?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Nonprofit. Yeah.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And how does the plan you're working on, this mass casualty plan, kinda interact or support or complement the state hazard management plan?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So we are just getting started. So Vermont EMS is broken into, into 13 districts. That's something else that we are evaluating as part of the five year plan, whether 13 is the right number, if the districts are broken at the right places. So that's part of the first part of the conversation that we're having. Once we're done with that, we're going to be working on kind of the next step, which would be what do those statewide plans look like. So, we haven't gotten down that far down the path to coordinate with other plans, but we'll be working with hospitals and working with regional emergency management directors as we kind of move that part of the plan forward.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thanks Kristi

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: so much, Drew. Can you speak a little bit about have one really, hopefully easy question, and then I have a longer question. My first easy question hopefully is we have to be more articulate in the next version of this bill about whether we expect these EOPs ultimately to be done for both state owned and state regulated dams as well as federal. Right now, it's not super clear. Would you encourage us to include, since you're in a region that has federally owned and regulated dam, for us to be inclusive and say EOPs for any high hazard dam, whether it's federally regulated or or state regulated?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: We've had really good luck with our federal partners, but I absolutely would, you know, include those those dams. When we in 2023, when we we had been out for many, many hours doing water rescues, when we got the notification, when I got the phone call from the Army Corps telling us that we were they're about to have an uncontrolled release out of Ball Mountain, and we started looking at inundation maps. And the number of people that, you know, we had been up for thirty hours already that we then had to figure out how to evacuate. I I think having having a plan for that, you know, Ball Mountain Dam holds over 17,000,000,000 gallons of water, and so does Townsend. So we were looking at what was going be a pretty catastrophic, uncontrolled release. And I was really tired already. So it made for a very long night. Downhill. It's not being it is all downhill. Yeah. And when you start looking at, you know, the population affected, and trying to to coordinate with, not only, you know, the the towns and, emergency management, but then we had to get the new thing emergency management, the emergency management. And, you know, we we say a lot when I teach, flood rescue that for us, if we get dispatched to the town of Newfane, for example, for for a person that's in the water, really, we need to be responding to the town of Dammersen because by the time we get there, that incident's moved. And and these floods are the same way. It's all gonna keep going. So that was part of the challenge that we had. If we had really good communication, we had really good plans with the town of Townsend where the dam exists, but then we're having to explain to the next town down and the next town down that, like, the in inundation maps continue to move down the river and start coordinating that that evacuation at midnight and 01:00.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Maybe just to follow-up as my with my second question related to where you're going with that. I think as we work on this bill, we wanna get specific and make sure we're capturing in the pilot project what the state is going to what VEM and all the entities that would be involved in working on two regional EOPs to see how that works, what's needed to do that across the state. Is there anything you'd encourage us to make sure we have in that sort of learning and report back about anything you would add to this bill to make sure we are learning? I think there's stuff like infrastructure and communications needs. Anything that you would add?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Yeah. So there's there's there is language in the bill about coordinating with the the regional response organization. It doesn't specify, but I think that's important. I think it's important that that you include Vermont's urban search and rescue team as part of that since they're the ones that will take typically take the lead in coordinating the, in state and out of state resources. There we we still we still struggle in Vermont with, the ability to communicate. So I don't know if anybody's been, well, paying attention to the public safety telecommunications work that's that's ongoing. We still, for example, in our area, don't have radio infrastructure to even communicate with state assets. So we, during the twenty twenty three flood, relied heavily on text messaging between team leaders in order to, know, coordinate emergency response. So we still definitely need investment in interoperable communications. We need to, you know, support the teams that exist to continue to do their work. Providing flood response is extremely time consuming and extremely expensive. A lot of people don't realize that the amount of equipment and training that goes into putting one of these teams out the door is very high, and it all has a very short life. So most of the equipment based on the standard has to be retired in five to seven years, whether it's used or not. So even though, you know, you may not have a flood for the next ten years, all these teams have had to recycle their equipment twice. So just to put it into perspective, one of the little throw bags that we use now is just over $280 for each one. The dry suits that our team wears are over $2,000. We get three years out of the dry suit. So as you're thinking about, like, what do we need for response assets in Vermont, There are places that, you know, are looking to either expand their teams to provide more services or or start a team. It is really cost prohibitive to kinda provide that service, especially with the frequency of of events.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Austin.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Just wondering, like, there would be a command center, right, in in any kind of emergency. Who who would the government, you know, would you want there? Because I I remember very, very clearly, you want people who can make decisions, big decisions. And I'm wondering who you would want there and what they should think about ahead of time before they're there, what kind of decisions that they would have to make.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So in a in a large scale, like, flooding incident, we rely on the state EOC for that coordination. My observation in doing this for a long time is that even with the state EOC up and operational, 911 calls are still getting routed to and continue to get routed as if they would be on a normal day. So in our area, nine eleven calls go to a dispatch center out of Keene, New Hampshire. So when we're down in our neck of the woods and we have flooding and our team is engaged in doing a rescue somewhere and we're looking to get that information, but there's a second rescue somewhere. That team that was helping us out of North Carolina had no way of knowing that there was an additional, rescue until I would text them and say, hey. I need I need you to go here and rescue a patient because, you know, we're tied up. So we have some infrastructure work to do, but I do believe that, you know, based on how we bring resources together for an incident like this, it really needs to be at the state DOC level, whether that's a in the building where they are or at a remote location, but they need to be coordinating that because they're the ones that can pull those state and federal assets for us.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Interested in learning more about this uncontrolled release notice. Is that a one off? Have you had one before? What was the cause of it, and are you concerned about more of them? It seems like if it's something with the dam, it's gonna happen again.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So so Ball Mountain and Townsend Dam have both had uncontrolled releases thirty plus years ago. And what that means is that their inflow is exceeding what they can they can discharge and they have spillways on those dams. So, what we were looking at in 2023 was that the dam level was rising faster than their ability to discharge. So, thankfully, the the storm and what national weather was telling us at the time was if the storm goes South Of Mount Holly, you're gonna have an uncontrolled release from a dam. If it goes North Of Mount Holly, it's gonna be real close, but you should be okay. And, thankfully for us, it went North Of Mount Holly. The dam came up almost to its spillway level and started going back down. But in our area, we know that we have, for example, channel capacities of a certain amount of cubic feet per second. And then as soon as we start exceeding those channel capacities, we start flooding certain areas of so the dams the Army Corps will not intentionally push the river out of its banks. So they'll hold that water until they can't hold it anymore. And that's what they were notifying us was that they were gonna have an uncontrolled release. Not a failure, but it means that they were gonna be releasing more water than the than the channels could handle.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And it's happened thirty years ago, but not since. That's interesting.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Yeah. Thankfully, we don't have a lot of rain events that so, again, like so Ball Mountain Dam normally has somewhere between twenty five and fifty feet of water. It still weighs at 211 feet. In in July 2023, we went from 50 feet to 200 plus feet in, you know, twelve or eighteen hours because of the inflows that were coming into it. So it's not

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: it

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: it is an impressive dam. And when when I talked to the army corps earlier in that day and said, hey. What's the status? How are dams looking? And they're like, no problem. We we can take all of it. And so when they called and said, hey, change change of plans here. You guys need to start doing evacuations. Like, it's a it's a real concern. But again, they do a great job. They communicate really well with us. We we work with them. We train with them. So so I can't the partnership between us and the army corps has been wonderful in our area. I don't everybody shares that, we certainly do.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Do have other specific thoughts on this legislation?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: I just again, it's already in there, but emphasis on the getting the people that are gonna be responding to these incidents involved in the in the planning and keeping in mind that that's not just the the local, maybe local fire department, but there's probably a regional swift water asset that's part of the state response plan that's gonna be sent to that. The state urban search and rescue team should be part of that conversation, because they're the ones that will ultimately be helping us make those decisions about where to move teams and how to move teams. So, you know, just just making sure that from the response side. And then on the EMS side, conversation about how do we make sure that we move the how we evacuate the medically vulnerable people and and what is the process for that? Right now, there really isn't a great I mean, there's no standardized process, but there's really no good place. Even our shelters now are much harder. I've been doing this for thirty years. We used to have shelters in almost every community. Now we have more regional shelters. So the Red Cross doesn't have the staff it used to. So they used to be able to set up, you know, four four shelters in Wyndham County. Now it's like, hey, we've got the staff. We're gonna set up one shelter. Well, means as we start evacuating, we have those those turn times. Right? As we move one person out, it's taking us twice as long or three times as long to get them to a shelter site. So it's making our evacuations take that much longer because we have a a finite number of resources, if that makes sense. So, you know, again, having part of that plan, like where are the shelter sites? One of the things we learned during Irene in Jamaica is that our shelter site was between two branches of a river. I don't need to tell you how that worked out for us, but our shelter site was great. It was undamaged, but there was no access to it for, you know, two and a half weeks. So, again, making sure that those those shelter sites are in reasonable places and that EMS has a has the tools they need in order to get those evacuations done.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Or is it Pritchard than Austin?

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: I'm just thinking about because I have a unique situation in my areas. How this how does this come into effect with border towns and what what I mean by that. I found not too long ago that we passed a law up here where rescue squads have to meet Vermont certification in order to service folks. In my area, three, almost four of the towns are serviced by New York State Rescue Squads, which has caused a real problem for us because one of the rescue squads is just may not go ahead with certification. And these are folks that have been, you know, been doing this for twenty five years, how many, let me know if it's maybe hard, is my area a unique situation? So when these mass casualties or whatever, do you get help from out of state? Yep.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: You do. So I guess this

[Rep. Rob North]: Okay. I found this on the web for am I unique situations? So these mass casualties are whatever you get from out of state.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Check it out.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Never mind. I'll let her answer. We can just ask AI. So Vermont being the the size and the shape it is, many of our services are border. And we so, for example, we provide services into to New Hampshire services. We're right on the border of Massachusetts. We move in and out of Massachusetts, trade goody. So during any of these events, we we move resources across the border without too much trouble. In order to get an official team out of so we have what we call local mutual aid. So in my area, I can call for all of the surrounding teams in Northwestern Massachusetts, all of the Southern New Hampshire teams. But if I want a team out of, for example, out of Boston, like a a big USAR team, that would have to go all the to the governor. The governor would have to go to the governor, and then we'd have to kinda go through that process. But for those kind of standard mutual aid across border, that is seamless. It's been going on forever, and and I don't think we would have any trouble for for that. It becomes a little bit more challenging through when you want those larger kind of more specialized assets when, you know, we have to go through emergency management and get approvals for out of

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: state EMAC requests. So those folks are included in the plan then, are they? The out of

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: state ones. They absolutely yeah. Okay. Yep. And now every so certain communities may have their own mass casualty plans. So and in fact, I bet a lot of communities do. What we don't have is a statewide EMS mass casualty plan. So if I was to request say, I needed six more ambulances than I have available in my region. I would have to pick up the phone and call six different service leaders, on their cell phones at home and say, hey. Can you send me an ambulance? There's no magic button or person at EM I can call that says, hey, send me six ambulances. Hopefully, soon we'll have a plan for that because I think it I think it needs to exist in Vermont like it does in every other state.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Representative Austin? Yes. Thank you. Do you coordinate with schools do schools are schools required to have, like, an evacuation bill plan for flooding and train with you and practice with you if that event helps?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: As far as I know, no. I've never worked on a plan with a school for evacuation for flooding. We have worked with all of our schools on, you know, active shooter response and evacuation and reunification for active shooter, but I've never worked on a flood type response plan even though we do have two schools that are in flood zones.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: That's a good point. Just two? Two of

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: our yeah.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Representative. Vermont?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: No. In my area.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Oh, in your area.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: It's in my area.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Chapin.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: I just checked, I think, on Vermont emergency management, but this bill really relies on VEM to be the entity that's doing this coordination. I know they've been building regional capacity and have recently taken on the LEMP, supporting these LEMPs. Do you think that they're the right entity to coordinate this? What do you think the press role is for the EM in terms of what I'm thinking of is sort of like we're talking about dams that are gonna impact multiple municipalities and usually multiple EMS providers. Does BEM seem like the right entity and what are you hoping their role would be?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Yeah, so my experience has been that they've done a really good job with what we've had recently in coordinating the assets for flood response. We've never really had BEM involved in the mass casualty planning of for EMS, but that's certainly something that we're talking about as part of the planet moving forward. And, again, having more of the the task force mentality of how do we get additional resources to an area. In my experience, I think that BEM is is the right place. Like, they've done a really good job at setting up response, partner teams in the state, deployment, restaging of assets. A lot of people probably don't know that, you know, as these floods as these rains predicted, VEM does move partner teams. So it's not uncommon if Northern Vermont is, you know, getting heavy rain and potential flooding. We have two type three teams out of our organization. It's not uncommon for us to have one of our teams in Barrie and another one in Lindensville because the southern part of the state is is not subject to that flooding or may we may have less water. So VM's doing that now where they're kinda playing this game of chess with the very limited resources we have, trying to position us in places where, you know, we're we're best located and hopefully not gonna get geographically isolated. So, again, I think they've done a really good job of that.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you so much for joining us. I guess I'm I have one more kind of big question, which is do you have anything you want us to be aware of that we're not talking about right now that you think we should be addressing?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: As far as flood goes?

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: And emergency response, from your world, you have a very unique perspective, and I really appreciate it. If there's something and you're like, Man, I wish the legislature would deal with this.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: So the EMS world, right? That's what I do all the time. So, we're in the process of we've done a complete assessment of the EMS system and kind of put that document forward and we're actively working as a community. We have representatives from across the state from all different types of services to writing the plan. So at this point, we do not have a consensus. We're just starting the actual hard planning work. So, I guess I want to make sure that you're all aware that that is coming. We plan on having a kind of a comprehensive modern delivery of EMS plan to put in front of you next session. So I would ask that you, when we get that in front of you, you guys take a really serious look. We've put a ton of work into what we've done so far, and we're continuing to put a lot of effort into making a plan that's modern for EMS. EMS was created in the 1960s and a lot of our structure and governance still reflects that. So we're trying to update EMS significantly. When it comes to the water rescue world, I know there's some other bills floating around about funding and supporting local teams for helping to offset the cost of that equipment and funding to help support our urban search and rescue team and its mission. Both are critical. We if we if we have plans for flooding or whatever the incident, hurricane, disaster is, and we have underfunded and under supported the response element, we're still going to be disappointed with the outcome. And the work that we do is extremely complicated and really expensive. I did a presentation for emergency management providers about what does it cost for us to keep our team up and running every year. And it's a huge investment. Get a team up and running. You're you're in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just this month alone, our team has spent over $25,000 on just outdated ropes because they have a date cycle. And it can be brand new in the bag, but you still have to throw it away. So it's just things to think about when you guys are looking at funding, and, you know, that response side is that it is it's tough. DPT is up and running, but they're they're critical.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Where are those requirements coming from? And, you know, is the equipment actually at risk of failing, or is it kind of a bureaucratic?

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: It's professional standards. So when the standards all say that the equipment has to be retired as per the manufacturer's recommendations. So the manufacturers say that they have a life expectancy of that equipment else, a certain amount of time. So should, for example, we have equipment that is older than that, then you end up with viability and potential, you know, fine should we end up with inspection of dates of our equipment.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: There's a manufacturer recommended to buy their stuff.

[Drew Hazelton (Chief of Operations, Rescue Inc.)]: Yeah. And it's and then during floodwater, it's also very damaging. So one of the things that happens post flood is, you know, a lot of people don't realize that all the boat motors that we put into floodwater have to be completely disassembled. We've put new water pumps in all of those motors. A lot of times we're in water that has fuel oil. Know, floodwater quite often has sewage in it. So the suits that we wear many times have to be completely disposed of post flood. So, you know, like, for example, 2023 when that flood happened, post that incident, all the vehicles that we have in our organization that we work that work in our our technical rescue team, all of the differentials in the front, all the the axles had to be taken apart and redone because they were all full of water from driving through floodwater. We had eight boat motors that had to be completely rebuilt, and we ended up disposing of almost half of our ropes and dry suits because Gore Tex, that keeps us safe from the elements and the contaminants, doesn't do diesel fuel. So another thing, again, just it it's tough. So and, you know, I know there's a bill floating around about, you know, some microgrants to help teams, and I know the urban circular rescue team is looking for some additional funding to help support those purchases. And said that that's important because we need people out there doing doing the job. It's it's tough work. And, when it comes up, it's critical. And we did it during, the flood in 2023. We I I lost track of the number of, rescues, evacuations that we did just in our own little area. You know, we had one rescue that we walked over nine miles, because the roads were gone. So we had to walk and swim and then walk and swim and hitchhike in over nine miles to get to the rescue in order to do it. Like, that's the commitment and dedication we have out on the streets, but we do need support in order to keep making it happen.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thanks so much for your work and your testimony.

[Jared Carpenter (Lake Champlain Committee)]: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So members, what I'd like to do is, I'd like to check-in with Michael. Michael, you're still in the room.

[Rep. Ela Chapin]: Curious. Thank you, Drew, for coming from so far.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Are you able to stay with us if I I would like to take a a break and then have committee discussion about the bills that were that we've been talking about.

[Rep. Michael Hoyt]: I can stay until 04:30.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Okay. Great. That that should be plenty. So I'd like to take another five minute break just to walk around, stretch our legs, and then come back for a community discussion.