Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: We are reconvening our afternoon meeting of the House Environment Committee to talk about next steps on bills that we have been taking testimony on, and I would like to start with the one we just left off with, H seven seventy eight, an act relating to dam safety. Taking a fair amount of testimony on this, and I'm curious what members' current thoughts are. I know I think I'll let Ela start. Yeah, go ahead.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Thanks. We've heard from a number of parties. We're definitely going hear from Green Mountain Power later this week, and that's sort of one perspective we haven't heard from as a private dam owner. You might hear from someone from Waterbury. I think that's all the rest of the testimony that we have scheduled or potentially scheduled. And my observation is that generally folks, the stakeholders are pretty supportive of the bill. VEM didn't spend a lot of time on this, the director, but he did mention that he'd really like to see us take out that first section that sort of says we will do all the EOPs across the state for high hazard dams that have PAR over 100. And understandably, he's just asking us to focus on the pilot project. So what I would like to propose is that we sort of lose some of the language somehow into, I don't want to lose that our intention as legislatures that we should have LPs for all of these regions that could have a really significant impact. But I think if we put some language and Michael, you'll tell me if I'm wrong. If we could put some language into the report back, under the section about the pilot and perhaps basically a report back on how will VEM over the course of certain number of years, Please describe that. I feel like we can capture that as our intention in that report back and request VEM to talk about in that report back how they'll be able to accomplish that. I feel like we captured the essence of that intention without putting it in that first section. Mark, Molly and I both had that conversation with VEM even before we started testimony in this and had already understood that that might come from VEM. You might not have heard it really clearly because we had already talked about it separately, but that was my intention. And just as a reminder, that's 33 dams that are state regulated currently. There's a couple more dams that are going to get moved over from PUC over the next few years into DEC regulation. We'll add, I think, a couple more dams to that list. And then there's a I'm not sure how many, but I don't think it's I think it was seven. Think somebody told us it was seven federally regulated dams that might fall in that category. Actually,

[Rob North (Member)]: sorry, we were

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: also told that we don't exactly know what the PAR is on the federally regulated dams, and that DEC thinks they can get that number, but they just don't have the data already. So one of the other changes I want to make in here was to clarify that we do intend for EOPs to be done regardless of who regulates the dam. If it's it meets that PAR over a 100 persons.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Could I could

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I just interject?

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yes, please.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So the flood control act federal flood control act says the Corps of Engineers pretty much has exclusive jurisdiction over flood control dams. And so we can't permit them, and I'm not sure what authority we have to dictate who does via planning for for flood control dams. I I have to look into that.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Right. But it wouldn't be on the dam we wouldn't be asking anything of the dam owner other than DEC. I mean, what I heard from Ben Green was that he did think he'd be able to get the information about the PAR. But, like, what I hear you saying is we can't

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: No. It's not that Brett, well, I I don't know. That's that's

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yep.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: They're they've largely just been excluded from state regulation for as long as I've been here. And there's a section that says that in statute that says they're not gonna be regulated by the state. I don't know who who gets to dictate who does the EOP for them. I I don't know.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: K. Well, I think Ben Green felt like that was doable, and so I'd love to with you and him on exploring that.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Rob North (Member)]: In real world, the Army Corps doesn't do the emergency planning, like you heard from Drew, Ball Mountain Townsendam, and in my case with the North Springfield, they meet with the fire EMS let them so that they're familiar with how they operate and what they're capable of doing, notification downstream, etcetera. Good communication, there's good relationships.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Regulated might be a different story. Anyway, I think my intention would be to work with Ben on that because he seems to believe the state could work with the feds to get some of that information. And then there's a variety of things that I've heard really should get incorporated into this report back on the pilot. And that's, I have a long list of things I'd to talk with Michael about and try

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: and work against that and have

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: a more robust description of that pilot project and report back. And that's the changes I've been thinking about.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So, do members have more thoughts on this bill, questions, more people they want to hear from, or Michael, anyone we haven't heard from that you think we should hear from?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So does Section one come out and just become part of the pilot, or does Section one remain And you have them as part of the pilot report back how they're going to achieve the that requirement. My

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: vision was to take it out. Okay. But that's because that was the express request from VEM. If we left it in, think we'd need to make those dates way longer.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Well, or you make it, I think, Michael, are you suggesting use that language for the report back on, like, what would it take for VEM to do this is what we need. The information is how much do they need to make that happen?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. I I think I I wanted to know if you were gonna use section one as kind of a leverage that if they didn't report that, but it sounds like you you're not. You're gonna take it out and you're gonna put language in about how they're gonna do the EOPs for all of those high high hazard.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: That's what we've been requested to do. And I Mark and I felt comfortable with that. You as our lawyer, do you will you advise us on the pros and cons of doing that?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I I think VEM will be a lot happier if you take section one and l.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. And then they're gonna come back and tell us how what it would take to do

[Rob North (Member)]: it. Right. Right. Yes. Good. But when you say take it out, you mean just move it to

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: three minutes?

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Take out the requirement. The requirement. And move into some and then add language about

[Rob North (Member)]: The characteristics we're looking for

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: in Yes. The end of

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: How would you do this over what time frame?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Alright, Representative Austin.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Just having worked on emergency response and as an EMT, I'm very concerned about this kind of notion that we have time, that this time when the rain events are increasing. So we have this element out there that we don't know about in terms of rain events. And it's like, oh, we have two years or something to plan it. But that's concerning to me. I'm just wondering if it's possible to require, like all schools in a floodplain, to have a plan and to practice it once a year, an evacuation plan. The fact that they don't have a, that's concerning for me. And also, just thinking about busing and family, families will relocate. The other thing is just I don't understand about the warnings of the siren. I don't know why every town that could be impacted by a flood isn't required to have a warning siren that goes off at least twenty four hours ahead of, you know, a possible flood or a dab breaking. You know, would be the minimum. It would be a warning siren.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Chapin.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: I guess I appreciate your concerns, particularly about sensitive community, sensitive populations in facilities like schools. Maybe there's also like senior living facility. You know, there might be a number of types of facilities we might call out in this report back as making sure the planning and the training is inclusive of those entities that aren't actually necessarily run or owned by the municipality. So I think that that could make sense. So I'd be happy to try and work on some language that would include that.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: And I'd be glad to help in anything I can.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Rob North?

[Rob North (Member)]: A couple of things I heard from Drew that I thought were very interesting, and again, am not an EMS person, so maybe all this stuff is already in there implicitly, and I just don't know enough to note that it's included. The whole list of all the different things that he said should be included in the plan, like make sure you're working with urban search and rescue, interoperability and interagency communications, Emergency equipment and its freshness, which is the term I think he was kind of getting at. It still good or not? Infrastructure, evacuations of medically vulnerable, shelter sites and their access, school evacuations, all those kinds of things. He was going through a big list. Maybe it's in there, maybe it's not. Don't know. We got make sure all those individual things are like, yeah, all that

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: on land. Yeah, I basically have that exact same list from Drew's testimony.

[Rob North (Member)]: Another thing he mentioned is this term, again, that I'm not familiar with, uncontrolled release notice.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And

[Rob North (Member)]: like, what does that mean? It sounds pretty ominous. Maybe that's a standard terminology, but I just did a quick search of the bill and I don't see that listed anywhere. It's that one of the many thresholds that need to be included in an emergency operation plan. If you get to the uncontrolled release notice, here's what you do.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Make sure it's in there. Yeah. Right. Can I

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: just ask about dam owners? Are they responsible for making sure their dam is operational? Thanks.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Well, to the uncontrolled release thing, Drew was referring to specifically to federal dams in his testimony just now, but we also have that with state dams. And I guess I don't know if there's I I know that the southern towns have warnings, you know, sirens. You know, I don't know of towns around us that have them. They're probably mostly related to the nuclear power plant, but they also may be related to the larger federal dams. Do you guys don't with the state dams?

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: That's called Texas Fleming Fleming in Texas. That one town that did have a warning system, people survived. Mhmm. The one town that voted against it because they didn't wanna spend the money, that's where there were a lot of deaths. And I just don't understand why we can't just mandate, you know, that there's a warning. And town said face to rent unletting.

[Rob North (Member)]: Yeah.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Spelling out recommendations on warning systems.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. All right. Other thoughts on substance of it or witnesses? We will be hearing from Green Mount Power, who has a representative in the room right now, and I don't know if there's others on the agenda.

[Ela Chapin (Member)]: Possibly someone from Waterbury if he's able to make it. I don't think it would be substantially different than what we heard from folks from that point.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay, great. Alright. Moving on to the beverage redemption. That's no longer with us, but Michael, the number's changing for the sheets. I think I made a certain request, and then they they seem to have changed a couple times. I guess I'm curious what the what what where are we with them, and what do you know about where they came from?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So there was the original request to just have some your request to me to move some of them or to make them available. And then Matt proposed language, which you are away and the other members approved that it go into the bill. And that's the the the the numbers that are in the the draft right now.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And is that is the current is the current draft 2.1?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes.

[Rob North (Member)]: Okay.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And then Matt came back with new language for increased numbers, and not all of the representative Essex specifically said don't include it. And so I didn't. But that's what Jared put up and said, oh, this is the numbers that that that hasn't been approved yet.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. That clarifies that. Then I I get it. Alright. Members have thoughts on the redemption PRO and or the amount of these sheets?

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Exactly. I'd still would love to hear more about what they're actually spending the money on more specifically than what we've heard so far and what their estimated costs are. We've heard the kinds of things that they're expecting. We sort of heard very broad strokes of what their needs are, but they're coming up, they've told us they have this very specific range, which isn't really that bad. And so it sounds like they must have some sort of pretty well worked out list of projects that they're expecting. Think it'd be great to know more about.

[Rob North (Member)]: A Yeah. Couple of comments. One is Paul Burns. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of what he usually says, but I liked what he said today, actually. It's been around times when we can find agreement. All of the concepts around fair compensation for redemption centers, that maybe there should be some kind a floor or appeal process or something to make sure that they are being fairly compensated. I just go back to this conversation I had with someone with the guy in my district who owns several reduction centers and he's so he's just terrified of being pushed out by the PR of the business is going to come in and just eliminate a deal. They'll undercut him for a full year. He won't survive and then they'll raise the prices back up. Know, if they get into a negotiation from the dealers, bigger company can just get rid of the little guy. He absolutely recognizes the need for efficiency improvement. If we could work in some, again, Paul Burns was mentioning it, but it's capitalistic society and you get to encourage investment somehow, but without continuing to pay them the higher levels once the efficiencies are achieved. If there's a way to encourage some investment, like with tax breaks or something for the redemption centers or matching or something with some of these sheets, I'd almost rather do it with some kind of a matching incentive than just, all right, everybody gets the 1,500,000 or whatever the number is in there, just divide it up and go figure out how to spend it.

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: So that's two thoughts. One is

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: just on the handling fee. Let's just have a little discussion about the handling fee that was brought up because, yeah, I share the concerns. And I so I wonder about other members' thoughts on the handling fee concept. Right now, it's fixed in statute, and it has been. And it could be we keep it fixed. Then I don't know if there's a way of I don't know. Is there a way of staggering

[Rob North (Member)]: after or we need some creative thinking right here. Yeah. I agree.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Michael, do you have thoughts on that part of Paul's testimony?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, number one, you can be very clear that as part of the collection system, redemption centers have to be offered the opportunity to be part of the system. Right? So they they can't just be excluded if the PRO doesn't believe it's efficient So while.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Existing redemption centers must be must have the must be included.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Right. Just like the retailers and the solid waste management districts, the bill says they have to have opportunity to to opt in.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And does it say that now?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Okay. Yeah. But it doesn't it says retailers, municipalities, solid waste management districts. You could add redemption centers to that.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's do that.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: As to the handling fee, you could build a floor into whatever the cost for the program for you know, they get paid no less than x. And you could build that off of what the handling fee is now so that they couldn't, as rep North said, undercut them for a period of time, drive them out of business, and then fill that with their own collection.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So but you're saying keep the handling fee where it is now?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, it doesn't necessarily need to be a handling fee. You could say as part of the plan that their fair reimbursement are there for your compensation to a retailer redemption center shall be no less than a certain amount. And it could be per container, or it could be, you know, what what an average of what the what the redemption center collected over the past three years. Something, you know, some way to set a floor on what the compensation for redemption will be.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative. I like the

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: idea of of a floor. We have a system which is operating at a certain level right now with with with a certain amount of profitability. Apparently, not quite enough, but it's keeping some of these places alive at the moment. If we do have greater efficiencies, it might be nice to be able to see that number potentially go down in the future to make the whole system cost less if people can still make money on it. So I don't think we necessarily want a floor for forever. And also, whenever we put a number like this in statute, if inflation happens, the world changes and our statute stays the same, which

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: is part of why it's not profitable now.

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: Right. And so I do, but at least as an interim measure, think a floor makes some sense. I like the idea of the PRO being a nonprofit, they don't have that extra sort of incentive to undercut existing distributors and redemption centers. And and then I also wonder I thought the idea of a sunset also sounded like it had some potential. So, we could have a I mean, we heard about the idea of having a sunset to make sure that the negotiations that were being considered, that if they weren't successful in the way we envision, that we'd be able to come back to it. But I also but I wonder if we include a floor, whether we could have a sun sunset that would then go back and look at whether that that floor is still the right number.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: One concern I'm thinking about is for the floor, would that not just be then the default handling fee? Why would it ever be higher than that?

[Rob North (Member)]: The proposed answer to that is that, like, where we have redemption deserts right now, it's just not profitable to be in that area and we've set requirements. Gotta have at least three per county. Like Northeast Kingdom, there are big areas where it's just it costs more to come in there. So they'd have to maybe provide 4 and half or 5 and a half or 6 and a half cents or whatever to encourage somebody to open a redemption sign or be more into it. In fact, that was the answer I got when I said, well, why don't we just skip the whole PRO and just increase the handling fee to 4.5¢? And wouldn't that make a profit? Well, you have more redemption sensors coming in. And then the response to the thought on that when I asked that last week was that, Well, it might cost 4.5 or 5.5¢ in your area but up North East Kingdom it might cost 6.5¢ whereas in Chittenden County where it's easy it might only cost 2.5¢ so maybe it would be better to be negotiable by geography. PRO could do that. That was the response to why we need a PRO rather than just increase the handling fee. I don't know if I can abide that or not, but that was the response.

[Larry Satcowitz (Ranking Member)]: My other thought was about if there's a role for some When I talk about negotiations between the PRO and the redemption centers, if there's a role for if those negotiations are too difficult for something to go to some sort of arbitration, which could happen relatively quickly to not hold up the process of the PRO. It wouldn't have to come back to the agency to decide, which might be a time consuming process, but some sort of unbiased third party that could help the two parties come together.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Alright. Other thoughts on the Michael, you look like you're clear as mud on this.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I'm just

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I think we're gonna try on the floor at the level that we're at now. Okay. I'm inclined to make it too complicated. Yeah. Those are just Let's just try on that. And

[Rob North (Member)]: then the next item was you started into it, representative North. Ways to incentivize investment or to enable investment efficiencies. How

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: to use these sheets and whether or not we should have a one to one match.

[Rob North (Member)]: Yeah. Whether it should be a one to one match or or rather than just giving them money to spend, it's some kind of a match. I I don't know. I'm just trying to think of ways to

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. Would yeah. Won't be just giving them money. That's what I was trying to get clarity from Matt on. They're going to have a grant requirement that would be written up before they spent the money. We haven't gotten a lot of information on the budgeting or what other money they'd have to spend.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: You could provide more detail into what the grant program is going to be. Right now it is it's consistent with how the solid waste management assistance account is set up. There's not a lot of detail in that account on how they get to spend the money, but but you could provide more detail for this grant program. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with Matt's language. It's just that that account has never really been like the most detailed grant program. You could be more detailed.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. Maybe we should put some boundaries on it. We will think about that. Feeling like we're low oxygen in the room right now. In fact, I can see that we are low oxygen in the room

[Rob North (Member)]: right now. Two other ideas. Again, on Paul Burns' testimony that I liked. Building on Larry's thought of the nonprofit entity, Paul also mentioned the required for a diverse stakeholder board. Want to make sure that PRO board has people who are redemption center operators on

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: it. Okay.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did you catch those, Michael?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I heard the board for the PRO needs to have redemption center. Well, not just any it should be people that are part of the collection system.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. Yes.

[Rob North (Member)]: Right. Just to make sure everybody's doing nonprofit. And nonprofit. And make that it needs to be a nonprofit. That that I heard when I went to some of those conferences over the summer that appear it needs to be a nonprofit. Yep. Sorry. Totally do that. Last last thing for me then is Paul suggested a list of required characteristics or, you know, like metrics that redemption center collection centers would need to to report on, like their percentage of uptime, how they need to be open for a certain number of hours, the speed with which a person can get rid of their bottles. It can't be like a reverse vending machine where it takes a minute to take a bottle and get a dive on it. You just stay on there for half an hour, put your stuff in. The amount of lighting, the safety of those kinds of things. Thought that was a reasonable-

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Basic standards and Standards all

[Rob North (Member)]: for everything. That's it. Great.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did Paul send his testimony yet? Paul Burt? All right. Other thoughts on this? I would like to do one more topic, which is the budget. Water fund folks came in also last week. Sounds like Rob that representative North would like more detail from them on the clean water fund

[Rob North (Member)]: separate from the budget. Yeah. Just somewhere that probably gets spent.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: There's probably more in their links that they gave you. I would follow those first because they probably have access to it. Yeah. And then on the budget, any I'm sort of getting a sense that it was any questions? We're gonna hear from Jared this week, Thursday on it. We're not getting a lot of are folks hearing from people in the budget? Or do you have burning questions that you need answered on the budget?

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I'm just a little concerned about the Clean Water Fund and losing money. I know Jared said it you know, won't have a huge impact, but I still say I like the idea of a sunset on that. I don't know if that's budget related, but.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: On the issue, it's moving to the yeah, it's definitely a short term time bound.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I am concerned. Last night I was on the Champlain Advisory Committee, like two hours, just listening to them and the people that are carrying out a lot of the projects to implement clean water initiatives are dealing with The EPA was on also, representatives from the EPA, and it was saying the administration that the EPA is requiring, they keep changing it, you know, in terms of when people can get their money or they can't, forms they'd have to fill out, and that costs them money. So they were trying to just, you know, relate that it isn't that they're not being responsible, but the administrative costs, you know, are changing and not in order of how they do projects, how they pay out contractors. So that was just interesting to me. Because it sounded like they were doing very good work.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: All right. Final thought is tomorrow we're going to walk through the latest edition of H-six 32, and Michael hopefully moving towards passing that bill out. So please read it and think about other editions. Michael?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: For the next draft of that, the walk through tomorrow, do you want that municipal tire hauler language that Matt had in h two zero four?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. A paragraph would be good. And

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And then he was gonna come back with more language about

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: About his report back to

[Rob North (Member)]: us. Yeah.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Great. Fish and wildlife are coming in this week as well. And we and are we gonna try to find, like, a compromise or a better solution for the purple paint?

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm not sure that's what they're coming in on this week.

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

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I was wondering. You said miscellaneous something.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: We we what what I wanna do right now is give folks time. I think the producer thing hasn't actually started, so we may miss it. But a lot of great Vermont businesses will be here Mhmm. At 04:30. So I wanna make sure people have time to go to that and anything else they need to do this afternoon. We can any other thoughts on 06:32 before we move on to other topics? No. Okay. So the posting conversation. So what I what we need to do is kind of move some bills out of committee before we start taking up new things. So I wanna have closure on the things that we just talked about, including the budget letter.

[Rob North (Member)]: K.

[Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: I just think we need the commissioner back in. Yep.

[Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes. Well, if we take it up yes. For sure. Alright. With that Thank