Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

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

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Welcome back to our meeting, the morning meeting of the environment committee. We're gonna shift gears to h 7 78 and hear from, Green Mountain Power's dam safety engineer. Welcome.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Thank you very much for for having me. My name is Johnny Fintenden Henry. I'm the chief dam safety engineer at Green Mountain Power. This is a position that I've held since May 2024. Just a little bit on my background. I'm a licensed professional civil engineer in Vermont and New Hampshire, and I have about fifteen years of work experience that is mostly within the fields of heavy civil geotechnical engineering, and the majority of that is within within dam safety. I have prepared some notes here that I can go through. These are just really to keep me on on track. I'm happy to answer questions along the way if there's if there's interest in going down any particular topic in in more detail. But before we get going, I would just like to take the opportunity to to thank everybody for the opportunity to to be in this room to to present this, and, you know, thank you for all the hard work that you do on the environment committee. I I think what what is helpful for what what I think is most helpful for this committee is to provide an overview of what we are doing at Green Mountain Power relative to our our damage safety program. I'm gonna focus more on the the high hazard potential dams that we have because that's specifically what the bill is is looking at, but I am happy to answer questions on other other dams also. So we operate six medium sized, high hazard dams within the state of Vermont. Four of those dams are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, and two of those are regulated by the Vermont Public Utility Commission. First basic question, what is a high hazard A high hazard dam dam? Is a a regulatory definition that focuses on the expected consequences in the result of a failure of of that dam. Specifically for high hazard dams, failure of a high hazard dam is expected to result in probable loss of life downstream. What this definition does not include, this definition does not consider the condition of the of the dam. So it is not possible to make a risk determination based only on the hazard criteria from that definition. A little bit of background in terms of how we operate our facilities. At Green Mountain Power, safety, including dam safety, is our number one priority for all projects, for all operations, and all practices that we that we conduct. Dam safety is heavily ingrained in our culture and our and our mentality, and it is what we bring to work every day with us. We implement and measure ourselves against the most stringent regulatory criteria when it comes to dam safety. For for us, that is comparing ourselves to the the FERC Federal Energy Regulatory Commission guidelines and and rules. Those those go beyond what the state state's dam safety regulatory groups require, and that is a practice that we employ across our our fleet, not just on our FERC regulated dams. So we we apply the FERC methodology to our dams that are regulated by the Vermont PUC. My position at Green Mountain Power, again, as I said, I'm a licensed civil engineer with a lot of experience in in dam safety, and my position is 100% focused on on dam safety. I don't have other responsibilities within my organization. That that is the program that I manage, and that that is what I do. And within that, I have excellent technical resources to to support me both internally and externally to to GMP. And I'm also involved in various different technical conferences, seminars. You know, I'm I'm going to the United States Society of Dams conference in in May to to to make sure that we're staying engaged within the dam safety industry and keeping on track of things. The overarching objectives of our dam safety program, relatively straightforward, that is to have safe dams within our fleet.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Remind us. You might have said, and I missed it, but how many dams are you responsible for?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: The dams that we're responsible for let me just double check my g We have we operate 40 dams within within New Hampshire, and six of those are categorized as high hazard dams. Within New Hampshire, meaning on the Sorry. Sorry. My my bad. Sorry. Within Vermont. Yes. Sorry. Slip of the tongue there. Yeah. So we we operate forty forty dams within Vermont. And, yeah, six of those are high hazard. Okay. So, yeah, again, so the the objective is the program of the program is is safe safe dams. And, you know, when we say a safe dam, we're looking at that from a hydraulic standpoint, from a structural standpoint, from a geotechnical standpoint, and from a from a civil engineering standpoint. Specifically, what that means is that dams are required to be safe for all operations conditions. So that's a sunny day. So that's that's anytime that we have normal flows in the river, they need to be safe for that event, and they need to be safe for for seismic events. And they also need to be safe for for storm events. And the the storm event is probably the one that requires the the most conversation here. And so all of the GMP high hazard dams are required to pass extreme order of magnitude events. Specifically, this is a term known as the probable maximum flood, and this is this is a storm that through a rigorous weather study is found to be the largest storm that could happen in Vermont. And specifically in Vermont, that storm is is modeled as a as a tropical storm or hurricane that stalls over Vermont and brings between twenty two and thirty inches of precipitation. To to contrast that, so so we we know that informally as the Noah's Ark storm, essentially, and that that is the upper criteria of of what is what's possible and what dams are are designed for. And all of our high hazard facilities are are able to to pass those those events. Just by by contrast, so that 22 to 30 inches of rainfall

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: what amount of time that

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: would be? So the modeled storm, it's a seventy two hour duration storm.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. And by by contrast, Irene statewide brought three to seven inches of rainfall. There were some isolated areas where we saw up to 11 inches. July 23, four to nine inches of rainfall in a slightly smaller area. The callus gauge topped out at around nine inches through that storm event. And then in July 24, we saw typically three to five inches of rain, some isolated areas of of six to seven inches through that storm.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Representative Just to clarify. So your role is to make sure these dams are safe in the event of that extreme weather occurring, the 72 inches or whatever

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: it was.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: 72 up, I mean.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: It's again thirty Twenty

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: two

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: to 22 to 30.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: 22 to 30 inches of of

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: That's what when you're looking and inspecting, you're you're making sure that the dams could sustain that level of of weather.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: That that is that is correct. That is the criteria for the high hazard sites. I I would say that it is not it is not me. It is our our program. And I I think in the next bit of this, I'm gonna kinda talk through a little bit more what those resources look like and what, you know, specifically that program looks like to to make sure that we get there. But, yes, that is the the criteria. On that, you know, how do we get to that prudent safety program? So we we start with inspection frequency. And, again, the FERC rules for high hazard sites, FERC dams, high hazard dams, they're inspected annually. And we will we will FERC from their New York regional office. They will send out another dam safety engineer who's also a licensed professional civil engineer. We will come out. We will meet with them, and we will inspect the the projects. We don't have that resource from Vermont PUC that comes out with us, but we do our own inspections. We document our own inspections for the non FERC sites. We still go through that process with those. And then we have on a on a daily basis, we have our fields personnel, our operators. They are they are trained to to monitor critical dam safety features of of projects and to to collect data. On a on an approximately monthly basis. I'm collecting that data. I'm reviewing that. So we're summarizing everything as as we go. Really, to categorize the program, it's about inspection, evaluation, and then and then mitigation. I think the biggest the biggest piece that goes with the the dam safety program in accordance with the FERC regulations would be the independent consultant program. And so on a on a five year basis, we will engage with a team of qualified independent consultants who will come out with us, and they will do a detailed inspection of these these projects. The requirements for the consultant independent consultant team is that they're required to be licensed professional civil engineers with at least ten years of experience specific to a given discipline. And because because we're looking at civil, hydraulic, geotechnical, usually, that's more than one person to to span that that range. And because of the somewhat niche skill set that's that's associated with with dam safety, we tend to find that those teams are typically made up of two to four, you know, professional civil engineers with, you know, on the order of twenty years of experience that that make up those teams. And, yeah, we're we're seeing seasoned professionals in the prime of their career coming out to look at those sites. By you or by FERC? So that those are hired by those are hired by by GMP, by by Green Mountain Power. But what what is also important to kind of understand with this is that FERC has has a lengthy list of rules and criteria that require independent consultants to report out on any potential conflicts of interest. They they take the independent portion of this work very, very seriously. So, for example, an engineer is not allowed to review their own work or their own company's work. They are required to test that they have not been put under any duress to make any decisions to to to their conclusions are independent. There is an expectation that we provide the data to those consultants and that we work with them and that we accompany them through the process, but they are very strictly independent consultants, But they are paid by JMP. Yes.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And are you seeing FERC regulations changing given that we're seeing all kinds of regulations changing right now? Have they been shifting?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. That's that's a good question. So the the FERC regulations, they changed most recently in 2022, and the the biggest change that the FERC regulations had was when it comes to to risk analysis. And, you know, the the the process prior to 2022 was that every five years, you would go through a risk analysis process, which is known as a potential failure modes analysis. And I can kinda I'll answer this question, then I can kinda go back and dive into that. But that process has now changed, and so what we have now is we have a periodic inspection and a comprehensive inspection. And so the comprehensive inspection goes into a much deeper risk analysis process, and that's done every ten years. And then the periodic inspection would be would be in between. So that's changed a little bit since since '20 that would probably be the be the biggest update to the real change in in 2022. And to to dive into the to the risk assessment. So for all of our sites, we have done a detailed risk assessment. What this really looks like is we have the independent consultant team. We do a detailed visual inspection. They will review the project analysis, project records, and then we we get together in a room for a day or two, and we have the independent consultant team. We are there. Our field operators are there, and we come up with a list of potential failure modes. So that's really just thinking out every possible way that we think that this dam could could fail. And we then, with the team, will go through with the project records, the designs, the calculations, the analysis, and then we'll categorize those potential failure modes into ones that are credible, non credible, or more information required. And what this risk analysis does is it just helps us to go take a deeper dive into the specific features of of the DAM and to really just assess whether or not we have any any vulnerabilities. It's it's really a process where we we take what we know about the dam. We set that to one side temporarily to go through this process, and then we we bring the two together to to come up with that. And it's a it it for us, it's a really good process of just checking that that we're aware of any of the potential vulnerabilities that we have. It could also be used as a process for prioritizing which projects to to do also, and it and it it could be helpful from that standpoint.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yeah. Representative Chapin? I know you might get to this later, but I wanna make sure not to miss it while I'm thinking about it. So in that risk assessment, I'm thinking about the situation that we had in Marshfield where that dam has an emergency release system, and there's different types of emergency release systems. And it's been described to us how once you pull it, you can't shut it. And so I'm curious about all of this risk management and prioritization, all makes sense from the company's perspective on the infrastructure that you own and operate. Wondering how much it considers risk downstream versus risk to your infrastructure and power capabilities and just how the downstream impacts. And so in the case of this, are you considering putting in a different kind of emergency release? Does that kind of project end up getting prioritized?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah, absolutely. I can answer that question.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: We're going get there. I'm happy to

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: just No, no, no, for sure. For sure. I can answer that question. And so the the potential failure modes analysis does look at risk across the board from that standpoint. But to maybe look more specifically at the Marshfield project. So the the normal operating pond level for the Marshfield project is below the flow inverts of that emergency spillway system. So that emergency spillway system has a a gate system that is about six and a half feet tall, but on a on a sunny day situation that does not have water behind it, there's two primary well, there's three outlets. So there's outlet through the the Penn Sock through the powerhouse. There's then a second service spillway associated with that site, so that service spillway can be operated remotely, can be remote remotely operated from our Colchester control Center. It can also be operated on-site by by personnel that are there, but that can be that can be opened slowly so that it does not result in in flows downstream that would be potential to impact and exasperate flooding downstream. The emergency spillway system has a a a stanchion system that contains stock logs. And in a situation where that system would be operated, there there are two bays, and the the stanchions would would essentially drop, and the logs on on one one bay at a time would would release. The thing to keep in consideration here is is that this bay would only be used in extreme order of magnitude events, such as, you know, we discussed the Noah's Ark storm. And in those extreme order of magnitude events, it is reasonable to consider that the river downstream would already be at high flood stage. So while this system does does drop and it does activate that spillway, the incremental rise and impact difference that would be felt downstream would not not be a significant rise in in water level downstream. And you are correct that that system cannot be replaced during the storm, so we we cannot, you know, go back in the middle of a storm and put those stop logs back in. But then the thing to keep in mind there is that we have the normal pond level is below the flow inverts of that of that system. So, really, when the the storm passes and water levels return to to normal, the the pond at Molly Falls is is returning to normal also. So we we will not be releasing any of the the lake beyond the normal pond situation. Does that answer that?

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yeah. So what I'm hearing is that your risk analysis that you do for a particular dam does take into account risks downstream in the event of, I guess, any of these kinds of releases.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yes.

[Representative Ela Chapin (Member)]: Yes. And so you do take into account potentially changing these kinds of physical attributes of a dam based on that risk. But in the Mollies Falls situation, you don't believe that spillway design to be a particular risk for downstream communities.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. And so I'll I'll add to that a little bit. That that's that's correct. I'll I'll add to that a little bit, and I'll I'll say that this is a system that is evaluated by your independent consultant teams, And this is this release system, this emergency spillway, this is this is an so my my background, I've worked as a dam safety regulator in the state of New Hampshire. I've seen similar systems on many high hazard dams within New Hampshire and in in Vermont as well. It's not a particularly novel system, and it is it is something that that I've seen on a lot of high hazard dams. And it is not a system that we have any any concerns with. It is regularly inspected. So I'm sort of jumping ahead a little bit into the sort of EAP section of this, but this would fall into the category of emergency equipment. And so as part of our EAP program, we're testing this twice a year. So twice a year, our operators will go out and they'll test the mechanisms on this on this gate system and the service spillway as well to to make sure that everything is in in functional order and that it is available if it is if it is needed. But that need for that particular gate is reserved for an emergency situation. Okay, thank you. Can't really remember what I wrote about that. So, yeah, so I was talking about the the potential failure mode analysis, and I think once we go through these rigorous inspection programs and evaluations, you know, it is it is natural that we do from time to time come up with issues that we that we look to improve, and, you know, that Git system would be a good good example of of a feature that is looked at in that that level of detail. And just to just to kind of give an overview of what this might look like, you know, a typical maintenance project for us that might consist of, you know, resurfacing concrete on a concrete spillway. A typical upgrades might include Mollies Falls as a good example. The service spillway was upgraded there within the last five or so years, so that would be a good example of an upgrade system. Then, you know, from time to time we do get into, you know, heavier civil, you know, geotechnical construction projects. You know, an example of that would be, if we went through our risk criteria and we had concerns about the erodibility of soils downstream of our dam, we might put in an energy dissipation structure or some sort of subsurface cut off wall to mitigate against those. But the takeaway that I'm kind of trying to give here is that this independent consultant program started in around the 1980s. So since the 1980s, we've had a lot of very qualified independent consultants that have looked at all of these these dams. As of the the last findings of these reports, and and and I believe all of the reports that we've received from these, our high hazard sites have found to be in good working order, and there have been no observations or issues anticipated to be detrimental to public safety on our on our high hazard sites or any of our sites that have received independent consultants evaluation. The other the other pillar of dam safety, if you will, sort of changing the the direction of this a little bit is the the emergency action plan program. For all of our high hazard sites, we have emergency action plans. So I guess the first question is what is an emergency action plan? An emergency action plan is a formal written document that identifies emergency conditions, defines responsibilities, and establish protocols to mitigate the potential impact of dam failure. Some of the specifics that go into that, know, as we discussed earlier, it discusses all of the emergency equipment associated with that project. We already discussed floodgates, but, you know, this will be backup batteries. This will be generators. This will be alternative means of communications. You know how we would function through these projects in an emergency situation. It it will reference the the monitoring capabilities that we have. So at Green Mountain Power, we have two control centers that are operated on a 20 fourseven, three sixty five basis. One is in Colchester and the other is in Rutland. And at any given moment, we have lots of high-tech instrumentation at our sites. We have pond levels. We have pressure gauges. We have high resolution adjustable angle night vision cameras. So our our control center is able to to constantly monitor these these sites. Our control center receives annual dam safety training, so they they know and understand what abnormal conditions look like and and what to to look for. And then we also have a a a field team. They visit the sites most workdays, but they also have on call time. So at any given moment, if our control center observes abnormal conditions, they can dispatch a field's PPW power production worker. We call them to the site to evaluate, to get a better look at something. So, you know, we've had, you know, recently, you know, the weather patterns that we've been in. Right? You know? So there's there's ice on the camera. I can't see see this. So the control center will send somebody out to go and clean off ice off of, you know, a camera so that they can get get a view of that. You know, on our on our generation equipment, I mean, sometimes there's, you know, alarms that go off. Right? So, you know, if we have a a water goes in through the intake structure, sometimes that clogs with debris. If there's debris there or control center sees it, they'll send out one of our power production workers to look at that and to just get a second set of eyes on the structure. I am rambling a bit, but yeah. So the I guess a couple of things that are really useful within the emergency action plan. So there's there's inundation maps, and the inundation maps, they they communicate to the the emergency responders the potential areas that would be the inundated flooded resultant of a hypothetical breach of of a dam. I think one thing to to kinda note about these inundation maps. So we talk about the bookends, and so the the inundation maps run from the impacts associated with a sunny day breach. So that's that's when there is not a flood coming into the dam. It's if the dam were to breach in a sunny day, what that would look like. But then we also have maps that show what that would look like in a in a storm situation. And, you know, again, with these these storms, we're we're looking at the probable maximum floods. We're looking at the a flood that the the dam is from a civil hydraulic geotechnical structural standpoint safely able to to pass, and then we're looking at a hypothetical failure of that structure at the maximum water ponds elevation. So we are looking at what is what is possible with this, not necessarily what is what is probable for for these. So just something to consider when when we look at these. There have been situations in the past where people have confused these inundation areas with the hundred year FEMA boundary. So the hundred year FEMA boundary is a is a flood that has probability, so we have a 1% chance any given year of receiving that that flood. With the breach of a of a dam that is, you know, inspected, evaluated, and, you know, we we do a lot of mitigation work on this, that probability isn't there. It's much more remote situation. The second thing that we have in our EAPs that that's is very useful is we have notification flow charts. So this is a compilation of all of the contact information for the emergency responders, for local, state, federal agencies that would be involved in a situation, you know, should should a hypothetical should a failure occur. Those are updated. They're checked on a on a regular basis. You know, we we have election day coming up, so it's, like, some changes there. But this this is a collection of information that the the phone numbers, the contact information, this is regularly checked on at least an annual basis or more often if we know of changes. And then probably probably for us, the biggest difference from the protocols that we follow in accordance with the FERC system and the state system is that on an approximately five year basis, we will work through functional exercises for our high hazard sites. And what that what that looks like. We we had one for we had one for Marshfield in 2024. We had one for the Lemoyle last year. We have one scheduled this year for for Silver Lake, and then we have Chittenden scheduled for for next year. But this is really just a great opportunity for us to spend a day with with emergency managers, you know, at the the state, local, and federal level. We will engage with an independent consultant, a different independent consultant to the one doing the inspections, but they'll come in and they'll facilitate this. It usually starts with, we'll go through the EAP, we'll go through all that information with the group, and then there's a hypothetical scenario that we that that they simulate and that we work through that. The the the the tabletop is where we work through that as a as a group. And then the functional is is a bit more than that. The functional is where we all split into our own different, like, work groups. We go into different rooms, and we simulate what a what a damn failure might look like and what everyone would be doing in that that situation. And for me, the the the benefit that comes from that is is almost like 50% icebreaker. So, you know, it's good just when you go into these emergency situations, you know, heaven forbid we were ever in that situation, to know who the emergency managers are, to know who the players are, to have that, you know, face to face interaction with those groups. But we always come away from that with just just thoughts on on how how we could do things better, how we can learn from the emergency managers, and and also, you know, for us to to respect the command of the emergency managers as well. I think maybe one thing that's worth pointing out here is that one thing that the EAP program does not do is that it it does not put Green Mountain Power as the incident commander should should an incident occur. That that is the responsibility of the emergency responders, and that is because of the authority that they they have. And that's that's about what I've got in terms of, you know, prepared notes, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I think there'll be a bunch.

[Representative Michael “Mike” Tagliavia (Member)]: I I'm gonna thank you for

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: your presentation. And you may have kind of already gone to this, but I wanna how how do you work with the host towns and the downstream towns, and are the incident command emergency responders that you're referring to typically volunteers or professionals?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. That that's a good that's a good question. So let me just check that I understand this this question. So how do we work with the the municipalities? Is this

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: These are located in Okay. Assuming they're part of these functional exercises and part of your planning process, maybe just flesh that out a little bit. But then related to that, who are the who are the incident commanders?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. So the the incident commanders are are you know, a good example would be yesterday in Rutland. I was at a meeting with the the Chittenden group. So I I don't know if you're familiar with Jan Sarakis of of Pittsburgh. She kind of heads up that group. So we we have quarterly meetings with that group. It's largely us sitting in, listening, and participating where it's appropriate to do so. But that's a situation where we meet on a fairly regular basis. We're able to hear what what the the towns and municipalities are doing.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I don't know. I'm not familiar with her. She

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: She's the emergency management director in Pittsburgh.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: For the town?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: For the town. Yeah. And so so yesterday, the the attendees at that were we had Pittsburgh. We had Proctor. We had Rutland Town. We had Rutland City at that meeting. We had hopefully, don't butcher this. Department of Health was was there. We had Vermont Emergency Management. We had the Rutland Community Planning Board at that. I I understand that some of these are a mix of full time paid positions and volunteer positions. A lot of the time we see fire chiefs. You know, I think it's one of those things that, know, a lot of municipalities in Vermont wear more than one hat, so so to speak. So, you know, it's common to see that the the fire chief is also the emergency management director, But that's that was that was yesterday. So that's one example of something that I attended. But the the functional exercises for us, I think that's really where we can add to just have have that interaction because we get the local emergency responders there, but we also get state and we get federal. So we'll have, you know, like the weather service there. We'll have, you know, federal energy regulatory commission there for the FERC sites.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You coordinating like yesterday's meeting was that brought by GMP or who coordinated that?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yesterday's meeting was not coordinated by GMP, that was tended by GMP, but the tabletop and functional exercises, those are put on by GMP. We are putting up this office space to do that. We're organizing the invite list. Engaging with a consultant to to come up with the the scenario for the exercise.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Who did yesterday's, though?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: The yesterday's was organized by by that group that It's groups. I I cannot remember what this stands for, but it is the CREEP group, c r e a p.

[Eric Warren, Director of Operations/Automotive Management (Green Mountain Power)]: That's a group over the last fifteen years that it's been working Can

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: you say for the record

[Eric Warren, Director of Operations/Automotive Management (Green Mountain Power)]: you are? I'm Eric Warren. I'm the director of automotive management. That group basically built itself in response to what they perceived as a danger to their potential community. So that group got together the E and Ps of all those local towns, they brought in all the variable entities that might be involved, and they get together and they work through response plans. As you talk about EOPs, that's what that group is building, is an emergency operations plan. What would we do if they connect with their manpower and their EAP? So that's a grassroots group.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yep. And I know you have questions, Sarita, but I'm going to just finish a couple. You've told us four of your high hazard dams in just in your listing of your functional exercises. What are the other two?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: So the other two are projects. So the a good example would be the the projects that we have on the Lemoyle. So we have two high hazard sites, but they are on the same river and they're relatively close to each other. So they they would be considered one one project. So maybe one thing I can clarify is the the functional exercise that will be for a river basin. So in on the Lemoyle River, where we have these two projects that are I believe, within a quarter mile of each other on the same river, we would have an exercise that covers both of those facilities. The similar situation would be we have Goshen Reservoir and Silver Lake down in the Berry area, upstream of Big Dunmore. So that would be the same situation where we have two two structures that are within the same inundation area. So the same functional exercise would cover both of those projects. They're they're clustered, if you will, if that makes sense.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That makes sense. Representative Austin.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Yeah. One is, can we get a copy of your testimony, or do we already have That's just

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: I'm happy to provide I don't know what the procedural is. I'm happy to provide

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: We just send it to our committee assistant, Kathy.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: So this is a testimony I've been waiting to hear about emergency management with dams and what kind of oversight. And we haven't heard from other people, so I don't know if this is going on across the state. But I'm wondering, would GMP want authority to be in the, you know, to be in that command center or the control center?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Well, authority is an interesting word from that standpoint. So we would we would wish to collaborate in all of these situations. And so certainly, in terms of the the EOC, we would be contributing to to in whatever way we can should an incident ever occur. But I think that in terms of authority, the the authority falls with the the emergency management team. And, you know, I don't think anybody wants, you know, me coming into their town, you know, exerting authority on on anyone. I think that that's there's some sovereignty associated with that.

[Representative Sarah “Sarita” Austin (Clerk)]: Except that you have expertise that they might not have that could whatever, you know, save lives or prevent a disaster. So, I mean, I understand that. Yeah. You know, and I know Vermont and the municipalities and how they operate, but I've just I feel like every town in Munchuk have this process that you're talking about? And I know it's probably very expensive, but we're talking about lives here and I'm just, I am very concerned about weather. I don't know this, but whether we have this level of oversight and follow through and implementation and just really the worst case scenario, we thought this through.

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: Yeah. So I can I can speak to that a a little bit? And so as I as I read and as I understand the EOP bills, I would say because of the protocols that we put in place and through our collaboration, and we do have experts within our organization and resources to call in where needed, I think that the the perceived gap between an emergency action plan and an emergency operations plan is relatively thin when it comes to GMP projects. And I wherever this lands, wherever this goes, we're going to keep doing what we believe is a prudent practice. And, you know, we're open to ideas and suggestions. You know, if if the industry feels there's better ways to do things, we're open to that that idea. But I think that we are going to keep doing what we're doing, which seems to to work well and, you know, keep having these functional exercises. I think that's probably the biggest break between what the state agencies don't require and what FERC does require. I think that's that's a big one And that that gets into it gets into training. It gets the right people in the room. And, yeah, from our standpoint, that's something that we're going to continue to do.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Tagliavia,

[Representative Michael “Mike” Tagliavia (Member)]: I think Representative Norris might

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: have been

[Representative Michael “Mike” Tagliavia (Member)]: My mind got answered. Thank you.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: You

[Representative Michael “Mike” Tagliavia (Member)]: mentioned abnormal conditions, normal pond level, and you said something about the weather service. Yeah. With respect to the floods in 2023, I believe it was, one of the contributing factors that I heard come up was soil saturation. Yeah. We had such a wet spring that when we did finally get all the rain, you know, in a drier condition prior, maybe we wouldn't have had all the runoff. I mean, we had mudslides in numerous towns, stuff like that. How much in your risk assessment going forward does that play into trying to figure out, okay, do we want normal pond levels given we've had such a wet spring? Do we wanna actually lower the pond levels? Is that something that you're taking into consideration?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: That's a really, really good question. And, yeah, thank you for for asking that question. We have the capabilities. I'll answer this in sort of two different different ways. So we do have the capabilities with our forecasting abilities to to to look at what's coming in. Certainly, if it's a tropical storm, which which the bigger storms would be, we have the ability to see those see those coming, and we have the ability to to make room in our in our ponds to facilitate that storm. And that is something that we do as a practice. But in dam safety, we look a lot at redundancy. And so while this is a prudent practice that we do, we do not assume that that happened when we're looking at the ability of the dam to pass that storm event. So the potential maximum floods, as I said, it's a it's a seventy two hour tropical storm stalls over Vermont, drops 22 to 30 inches of rain. The assumption for us passing that storm is that the soil is is soaking wet, so anesthetic conditions, it's called, And so the soil is is soaking wet. We've already had you know, there's another storm that just went past. Everything's soaking wet. We also look at, you know, okay. In a prudent situation, we would we would, you know, drop the pond level. Well, what if we didn't? Right? So it it looks at that level of redundancy, and and that is the the storm of design that we are that we are required to to pass, and that's what we're designing our our dams to do. So there's there's certainly redundancy that that goes into that. You know, I think that, you know, the storms in in '23 and '24 and Irene and, you know, so many to talk about, They they bring a lot of of precipitation, a lot of flooding, a lot of damage, a lot of distress to to Vermont. They the twenty three storm does did not stress our high hazard dams because we were able to safely pass those those storm events. And there is it is important to distinguish between what is flooding and what is a dam safety and risk and not confuse the two because in the communities that are that are downstream so, you know, Vermont was built around a lot of mill buildings in the river, you know, so there's there's areas where we're sitting in one of them right now that is prone to flooding and that that's a natural occurrence that happens irregardless of whether or not Green Mountain Powers dams are there. And so I think I kind of mentioned at the start of this, our our dams are medium in size, and that's a definition in the Vermont PUC rules. And so what that means is that we don't have. We don't have designed flood capacity within our dams. So if you were to compare, say, a water barrier reservoir, that is a dam that is designed to protect to mitigate flooding downstream. For the GMP sites, they're they're teeny tiny in comparison to that. And we get into a storm situation. We go into what's known as a run of river mode. So what comes into the ponds goes out of the ponds. So in that in that situation, we're we're neither helping or hindering downstream flooding. It's a it's a natural event that occurs with or without us.

[Representative Michael “Mike” Tagliavia (Member)]: I think just brought up that neither helping nor hindering. Is there a way to like, you said, okay. You know, if your dams are small compared to some, could they there be something in your risk assessment to be designed to try to help?

[Johnny Fintenden Henry, Chief Dam Safety Engineer, Green Mountain Power]: So there there the the flood of nineteen twenty seven, which which was a devastating flood in in Vermont. In response to that, the federal government built the Winooski Flood Control Sites. So the Waterbury Reservoir, you know, buried the the various different flood control sites. That is a response to that situation to to prevent flooding. Our tallest dam is about 65 feet tall. Waterbury Reservoir is a 187 feet tall. So we're not talking a small project to do that, and, you know, I I don't know. It it would be it would be quite the logistical project to to to do that. I mean, certainly, that was, yeah, that was the nineteen thirties response to to the nineteen twenty seven flood. Is that something that we're we're talking hypothetically? Yeah. We're going down a route. Okay.

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: It's ten ten minutes past the hour. This was great testimony.

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

[Representative Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Very helpful to us. Thank you. Thank you for coming in today.