Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: We're live.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Good morning. Welcome to the House Environment Committee. This morning is, well, it's conservation day in the State House, and the conservation districts are with us this morning to share their good work. And I won't introduce you all, but before you speak, if you could, introduce yourself and say where you're from, that'd be great. Welcome.

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: Well, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. My name is Claire Ireland. I'm from the town of Whitefield, and I'm here with the Vermont Association of Conservation Districts. It is

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: our advocacy day today, so

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: if you have some time throughout the day, you can find us in the card room. And we are also going to have a stream table demonstration in the Lieutenant Governor's Office. So I believe that's at noon. So if you have some time, yeah, you can go for a hands on demonstration of some of our work. But I'm gonna share my screen and just we're going to talk through a little bit about the conservation districts this morning. And then I am joined by some of our district managers who are going to share their work. Coming through?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: One second behind you. Yeah. Okay. All right.

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: So I'm going to just start with a quick overview of what the conservation districts are. Vermont has 14 conservation districts and they are units of local government. They operate at the county scale, but don't always follow county boundaries. But they were established as units of government in 1939 by the Soil Conservation Act in response to the Dust Bowl. Their initial mandate involved clean water and soil health, but have since really expanded their portfolio to all manner of natural resources issues. They are supported at the state level by the State Natural Resource Conservation Council, which is in statute as an agency of the state and operates as a board. That said, the way we like to think of the districts is that they are very rooted in their local communities. District staff and their supervisors live in the districts. They are intimately familiar with the communities and with the land, and we believe that being rooted in the communities that they serve really helps us to strengthen and support the environment. Some quick results from fiscal year 2025. We had about 3,200 participants in public workshops. A lot of these workshops are technical in nature and they help land managers to be able to better manage the land, but they also include youth outreach events. We had over 2,000 youth participating in various outreach events over the course of the year. We planted almost 30,000 stems throughout Vermont. In a lot of cases, this is for riparian buffer zone work, flood restoration work. But we try to plant native plants and trees throughout Vermont. We treat invasive species, both aquatic and on land. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But we did treat about 500 acres of invasive species last year. We assist towns and some of the bigger projects we assist towns with are with stormwater remediation projects. So we help towns install bigger projects. We did 38 of those projects last year. We assess culverts. We assess 101. We do culvert replacements, and Sam's going to talk a little bit about that process. We also do bridges as well as part of our overview, our overall clean water work. And we restored about 170 acres of wetlands. That's by no means everything that the districts have done, but it's a sampling of some of the types of work we do. Districts, our history is that we work very closely with the United States Department of Agriculture, particularly the Natural Resource Conservation Service. So although districts are units of local government, they have very strong ties with the federal government. And there have been pros and cons with that this past year. But one of the unique advantages that we have as districts is that we're able to work directly with NRCS to backfill federal capacity. So you may have heard that we've lost federal staffing as a result of the current administration's workforce reduction actions. We believe that here in Vermont, about one third of staffing has been lost within NRCS. We're able to help backfill some of that. So we have already hired an engineer that is helping with engineering projects to move those forward. We employ 17 conservation planners, which can actually design and assess project work that needs to happen on the ground. And then we also employ a lot of program assistants. These are the people who do the behind the scenes work to actually make grant funding available to communities. So they're doing the contracting, they're doing the grant agreements, they're processing all the payment paperwork that actually gets money on the ground. So because we have this ability, we are looking to expand the ways that we support NRCS work here in Vermont so that we don't end up in a position where federal money is available, but it can't get to the ground. So that's one thing we really want to highlight this year, particularly with all of the challenges we're facing. We do believe federal money will still be available. We just want to make sure it gets on the ground. So happy to talk more about that. Another unique aspect of our relationship with the USDA is that we have this locally led conservation process. So this process, we do it every year, but it's a way to direct federal funding to match local needs very specifically. So we have a process where we engage local landowners, local farmers, local partners, and they give input on what they see as the most highest priority natural resource concerns within their area. And this can be anything. It can be invasive species, or it can be unique ways to do farming practices. It can be farm viability. Districts can then take that data, present it to NRCS, and NRCS will look at that and create what are called local fund pools that are available to local landowners then, again, tailored to meet the needs. And in the current fiscal year, about $4,400,000 has been directed in that way through this process. So we're really excited and the district managers can tell you more about this process if you're interested in hearing more about everything that's involved. I'm going to go just back up and do a little bit of a high level overview. We've gotten into the nitty gritty of our relationship with federal government, state government and local government. This is an overview of what the conservation districts do. So big picture, they work in flood mitigation. Again, we plant a lot of trees. We do a lot of floodplain reconnection work. We do dam removals. So flood mitigation broadly. We do drought mitigation. Again, we're working with farmers and other working landowners, and we can help them with practices that make our landscape more resilient to flooding, or I'm sorry, to drought, as well as improve soil health overall. Some of that might involve some light infrastructure like irrigation. Others, it might just be land management practices. We also do farm viability work. So a lot of the work we do is helping to connect landowners to funding sources and really making the match of saying, You have this natural resource concern. Here's a grant that can help you address that. And then we can help connect the dots and also do some project management as needed to make sure things get done. One of the really cool things we do, or Lauren does, is put together every year a guide for agricultural assistance opportunities. It's about 90 pages, I think. It's 160 pages. We found that this helps because from the ground up, it can be really challenging for people to navigate all the programs and funding sources. So having them in one place where you have federal, state, private, local, all the types of resources in one place has been extremely helpful. So we try to help with farm viability and food security, and that's one of the ways we're doing that. And then broadly, we help with clean water. So I work with the Natural Resource Conservation Council, and about 85% of my budget actually comes from the Clean Water Fund. For any given district, most districts do take advantage of funding through the Clean Water Fund, but it varies depending on their location and their needs. So I would say about anywhere between 30 to 75% of a district budget might be comprised of funding from the Clean Water Funds. And again, they do through a variety of different programs, but all supporting Clean Water work. Those are some of the big areas that we do.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Chapin?

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: I

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: just want to clarify, so you're a Clean Water Service Provider? Because we've heard from the program about all the clean water service providers. Districts are able to service clean water service providers. Currently, only one does. Holtley Meadowwe is jointly serving as a clean water service provider with their local RPC. In other cases, it's mostly RPCs or BHCB that's filling that role, but districts do serve on the basin water quality councils. Sometimes they chair those, and they do get funding through the formula grants. So in that case, they're actually making decisions about what projects should get funded with the Clean Water Funds. And in other cases, districts are receiving funds to do projects on their own. Yes, that's right. So we're involved with the entire process in various ways. But in short, districts do receive funding through the formula grants as well as the enhancement grants, and in some cases, some other home water grants. All told, for every dollar that districts receive from appropriations from the legislature, we bring in about nine dollars of additional grant funding. The vast majority of district budgets is comprised of competitive grant funding, both from federal and from state sources. And really, they like the most of sort of a bare minimum operational budget that comes from the legislature. So all of our project work, a lot of the things you'll hear about today, broadly supported by competitive grant funding that we bring in. And I think we're going to talk about one of those projects right now. Hi, folks.

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: Oh, sorry. Yeah. Sam Maine. I'm with the Essex County Conservation District coming to talk to you from Brunswick. And I'm gonna talk about a handful of projects that we did in the last year. So this is kind of a little subset of what I've done up in my corner of the state. And for each project, I'm gonna talk through both what we did, but also kind of the groundwork that we had to lay before that project came into into being, because that is the really important work to make projects actually happen on the ground, but it's also the hardest thing to fund through grants. It's why we come and ask for some core funding. So this is the big one that I'm going to circle back to after I give you the backstory. So when I started with the district in 2022, one of the first things that I did was I went and met with their Lunenburg Road foreman. And one of the first things he said to me was, you know, we are behind on our MRGP compliance. We don't have the clean water practices in place, and I don't know how we're gonna do it because we don't have the money. Luckily, the reason I was there is because we were trying to build a plan to to get the town in compliance. And so six months later, I came back to him with a capital budget plan. We had been discussing in between those two times, and handed him this 112 page report. Happy to leave that if anyone is interested to basically lays out all the priority areas for the town to get into compliance and put in those clean water practices that are also going to build resiliency in their road infrastructure. Unfortunately, had to do that two more times because the town had a hard time holding under road foreman. But I will say every time I met with a new road foreman and handed them this report, he said, wow, I have been trying to wrap my head around how I'm going to address these roads. And this is my roadmap. Thank you. So I really do feel like that it was a very helpful document to create for them. Unfortunately, in 2024, we found out it was a little more accurate than we would have liked. I I'm not going to dwell too long on this. You all know how much damage to the environment and and to people this much flood damage can do to a community. I'm sure you've seen plenty of these photos before. But the silver lining here is that speaking to that third roadman foreman who stuck last fall, he said, you know, between FEMA and the grants you help me get every year, we've done 90% of that ten year plan that you handed me two years ago. So there is a real hopefully not every town has to get major flood damage in order to get into compliance with MRGP, but having those just a report that lays everything out, which districts help to do quite often is really important. And I will just note, as I'm heading towards the culvert, I heard East Haven mentioned earlier, We do this with almost every town in the county. East Haven is one of them, and we have a very similar project, a little smaller on the in development for for the town of East Haven addressing flood damage. So this is a kind of a big one for us the last year. This is a 15 foot pipe culvert that has been well is still technically under construction, but is being replaced with a 40 foot wide arch. And this was identified in that report. We said this is a big project. This is going to cost a lot of money. We're going to have work with you, the town, to figure it out, figure out how to fund it. And we were kind of aware of this already because we had been working with US Fish and Wildlife in Vermont with Fish and Wildlife DC, a working group and identified this as a priority fish passage restoration project in the entire Upper Connecticut watershed. And so knowing and working with US Fish and Wildlife, we knew there was going to be large infrastructure funds coming down the federal pipeline. And so we actually went to NRCC ahead of that and got a $200,000 grant for it was through the enhancement grants, clean water grant, to leverage what we then got of a $1,200,000 federal grant to replace this structure and actually two more up in Brighton and Ferdinand. So we ended up putting in this 40 foot arch to replace the 15 foot pipe, full fish passage to an additional 20 or so miles of brook trout habitat. And this is, you know, this was awarded competitive with the entire Northeast Region which stretches down to Ohio. These federal funds as well as the other two further north stream compatibility a lot less erosion and sediment. It's going to be flood resilient. It's going to last for one hundred years for the town of Lunenburg. Did it for pretty much no cost to the town.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: What's the total cost of this project?

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: This culvert construction costs were right about a million dollars. A little bit there's some grant management and engineering oversight, that type of stuff that makes it a whole not exact, but right about a million. Yeah. So we were able to do that, and and I'm actually gonna I'm gonna switch over to another type of project that we do now. This is a lakeshore restoration that we did in the town of Maidstone on Maidstone Lake. So this was identified through the Maidstone Lake Watershed Action Plan. And I guess I won't dwell too long on kind of identifying the benefits here. It's a bio engineered vegetated shoreline that's going to grow in over time and be basically exactly like a natural shoreline in replacement of a cement wall. So it's going to be better fish and wildlife benefit, less erosion going on, not that pile of sand ending up in the lake and adding to the increasing phosphorus in the lake. But really what's important here is the relationships that we've been building with both the town and the lake community at Maidstone. We've been going to the Lake Association meeting every year for ten years to build the energy behind first of all doing the lake watershed action plan to identify this type of project to, you know, those identify the highest priority projects in a watershed, and also just having the local buy in. You know, this is just somebody's camp that they said, yes, I would like to restore that and have it be a natural shoreline. That type of local buy in is that's a lot of time of just building relationships in a community and gaining trust over time. And I think it's something that we as districts, as local entities do really well, is we are based in our communities, and we can devote that time. So this is actually a future project, although they're about a quarter mile downstream, we did about seven acres of tree planting this spring. And this one is it's reasonably straightforward. We have a bare bank with not a lot of root structure to hold it together and it is sloughing off into that's the main stem of Connecticut there. And off to the left in that photo there's also a like floodplain wetland that has an old agricultural bitch. This hasn't been used for ag in twenty years, but an old agricultural bitch that it's still draining the well and so we're losing that flood storage that we could have on that floodplain. And then off in the woods there are a bunch of invasive species. So the solution here is reasonably simple. It's plant the bank, plug that ditch in a few spots so that we hold water on the landscape there and then remove the invasives. But the story here is we were we kind of had identified this project and we're developing it and we had two of the three landowners here on board. And we were trying to get basically, you know, our foot in the door with the third. And we had just hired a watershed specialist. From Guildhall, who said, Oh, you know, this is when I'm introducing him to the project. He said, oh, I know them. I drove their kid to school for a month because the parent broke their ankle. It's those types of close community connections that seem to happen all the time that really to me is the Value Conservation District. And it's the only way that these projects on private lands, which is really our model because so much of the important natural features are are privately owned, you know, voluntary projects and private land get done is is through that trust that we've built up over time. So I'm going to hand it off now to another local partner, John, I believe.

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Yeah, John. Do you wanna go ahead? I'm here with you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: By Zoom. Okay.

[John (Village Manager, Enosburg Falls)]: Hi. Good afternoon. This is John, village manager for the Village of Venus Creek Falls. Thank you for having me on here. I guess I'm following up. I've been working on a project with Lauren and the FCNRCD, which I joke with Lauren. It took me about two years to memorize that acronym. Team, Lauren and team have been great all along. We, the village owns about 100 acres, that houses our two wells, that service our village. And Lauren came to us a couple years ago, about three years ago now, in removing an old dam that was up in that area. In the a little over one hundred years ago in the 30s, the dam served as our village reservoir up to about 1949, and was decommissioned, and we moved over to the wells at that time. The wells, the dam since then has just basically been sitting there deteriorating, and at some point in the in the near future would be an issue. So not only did the project help free the Trout Brook, which comes out of Canada through Berkshire down to the Missisquoi River, again not only environmentally did it help free up the Trout River and hopefully we'll start to see some fish make their way back up. It also is kind of helping secure any future issues with high water level events. Our well one is just downriver from where the dam was, so if that dam ever let loose during a high water event it probably would have more likely washed out our well one, which is our predominant well that the village uses on a daily basis. So it definitely would, was going to solve that issue. And then again, now with the grant funding that helped us secure and remove the dam, you know, the team secured $120,000 for final design, secured $800,000 for the construction, and also another 115,000 for monitoring and work site that is underway and and afterwards. It it took a big load off the village, both, you know, ratepayer wise, you know, this isn't a project we'll have to now tackle in the future as the dam starts to deteriorate and get, you know, got more serious of an issue. You know, again, Lauren and team kind of took the bull by the horns and they, you know, they worked for the grants, worked with the engineers, know, did 95% of the work. I just went on-site for meetings and so forth. So we've been very grateful for what they've done throughout the whole project. You know kind of, you know, again like a lot of small municipalities, wear a lot of hats in the office here and again kind of took something off of off of our plate that we know we'll have to work with.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: So I just wanna point out to members that the and I appreciate that you made a live link in the PDF that we have because I just watched the time lapse in there. Very cool. Oops.

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Now we'll see other bits.

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: Thank

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: you, John.

[John (Village Manager, Enosburg Falls)]: Yep, no, again, thank you. And yeah, it was quite a project and it's turned out well. We appreciate their efforts.

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Yes, hi there. I'm Lauren Weston. I manage the Franklin County Natural Resource Conservation District. I was very glad John was able to zoom in today and talk about kind of the other side of our relationship. And please do watch the time lapse over and over and over again. So, in addition to dam removals, which are great and lovely, we also have been working with the community in Montgomery. They have not necessarily been hit as hard as some other communities in the past years of flooding, but in 2019 they really got hit with the Halloween storm. So building off some of that work, we were able to secure funds through the state to assist the village and the center with modeling flooding along the Trout River under small, medium, and large floods to really understand where points of intervention could be to improve the flood resilience of the community. And so, as you can see in this image here, the darker blue is the existing stream channel, and it's where the water is the deepest, and then it is less deep where it's lighter blue. But you can see, even under a small flood, it's taking out some houses. And then in a medium flood, there's also a video for you here that might not load as well as I would like it to on the screen for you that shows during a medium sized flood, so a one hundred year storm. It's working. Wonderful. It is flooding most of the village of Montgomery, which is how villages were built in Vermont, and there's many things we need to do about that. We've been developing in close collaboration with the community a project to lower the floodplain actually right here on this town owned parcel, which is going to allow to reduce some of the flooding upstream, which is very exciting. And through that process, we had to apply for FEMA dollars and some of the appropriations money we got last year, the district spent trying to understand the FEMA application process and get this project moving forward. That certainly looks like there we go. There we go. Franklin County is also home to Lake Carmi, the only lake in crisis in Vermont. And as many of you probably know, there was an alum treatment done this year to try to work with the phosphorus that's already in the lake. So, one of the things that the district has been doing is trying to continue to identify projects to reduce the phosphorus load going into the lake so that the alum works. We have so far moved 10 projects through design and implementation processes, and so we're making a good amount of headway here. A lot of private landowners in Franklin, the town of Franklin, and everybody is on board with water quality for Lake Carmine, which has been just wonderful, so that we can not have another summer of cyanobacteria blooms that are just disgusting. And with that, I'll hand it off to Cory. Thanks, Lawrence.

[Cory Ross (Manager, Windham County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Good morning. I'm Cory Ross. I live in Brattleboro, and I manage the Wyndham County Natural Resources Conservation District, which covers all of Wyndham County. A couple of other really key areas of work that districts work on include invasive species management. There are several districts that are heavily engaged in managing invasive species. This work is critical to protect habitat quality for both resident and migratory wildlife species, also critical for working forest landowners, which can be pretty heavily impacted by invasive species. On a broader scale, managing for introduced harmful species benefits all Vermonters. Recreational spaces that are overgrown with barberry and buckthorn and multiflora rose become impassable. And there's also quite a bit of research to show that, some of these habitats areas, when they become, inundated with these species, support a much higher prevalence of Lyme disease carrying ticks, which make these spaces no longer safe for Vermonters to to explore. Districts, including Wyndham, Essex, Pulteney Meadoway are playing a leading role in coordinating and implementing the response, to early detection, rapid response priority species, species that we think there's still a chance to prevent the introduction from becoming unpreventable. Species like water chestnut, Japanese stiltgrass, and Japanese knotweed in some parts of

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: the

[Cory Ross (Manager, Windham County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: state. The agency of natural resources relies on conservation districts to be the boots on the ground for a lot of these removal efforts, including for water chest network, which both we intend them and the Potomacoway District spend hundreds of hours on both the Connecticut River and out on Lake Champlain surveying and removing water chestnut. Wyndham and Essex NRCD have US Fish and Wildlife Service funding to coordinate early detection rapid response efforts. In Wyndham County, we're focused on stiltgrass, which is a new priority species that's only recently been discovered in the county. We think there's still time to prevent its introduction. In Essex County, they're focused on Japanese knotweed. Conservation districts also do a variety of work that assist with habitat restoration and protection for rare, threatened, and endangered wildlife species. Things like riparian tree plantings and wetland restoration projects can benefit priority species like wood turtle. Franklin NRCD has begun research to look into ways to improve wood turtle turtle habitat in relation to riparian tree planting projects, as well as things like upsizing culverts and removing dams improves aquatic organism passage, which benefits migratory species like American eel and brook trout. In Windham County, Windham County, we've secured funding from The US sorry, from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to provide outreach, education, technical and financial assistance to support declining grassland bird species. So species like Bobolinks and the state listed endangered Eastern Meadowlark. We work with landowners and farmers to try to counsel them on ways they can change their management practices to allow these species to nest successfully. And we also provide financial assistance to farmers who delay mow because, of course, they suffer financial loss when they engage in delayed mow. All these areas of work, the invasive species work and the habitat supportive work are really only made possible through our core appropriations. The time it takes to build these partnerships and develop these grant proposals are just really not fundable through any of our other funding sources. So we've been able to leverage these funds very effectively.

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Thank you.

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: We're nearing the end of our presentation, but we did want to mention that we have a funding request this year for $948,200 And this represents a continuation of our ongoing funding that was appropriated to us last year in addition to a renewal of the one time funding that was appropriated last year with a small increase for cost of living adjustment. We do believe that this is a really important request this year. We've been in here before requesting more, but we understand that the state is facing a lot of tough choices with the budget. We believe that this is going to be the bare minimum for leveraging some of the funding sources we've talked about today, as well as continuing our staffing levels, including the staffing levels that we are trying to bring to bear within the NRCS system to continue federal funds flowing to Vermont. As you've heard from the district managers, this really is our best source of match for a lot of grants, and it does enable our district managers to spend the time to develop grants both for the district and for the towns they serve. So that's our request, and I think at this point, we're happy to take questions.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Thank you. That was an impressive array of some very interesting projects. I suspect questions for you. I I'll kick it off with I'd to hear a little bit more about the specific projects on the lake in the Lake Carmi Watershed and how I mean, the ALM treatment seems to have been successful, but we know we need to stop the inputs. And so what kind of projects are you working on there?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: It might be easy to answer what kind of projects we're not working on there. It's small watershed with lots of private landowners and a lot of farmers. The farmers have certainly been stepping up and doing their part for a lot of manure injection, as well as just improved nutrient management across their fields. We are also working with the lakeshore landowners to do similar projects to what Sam was mentioning of bioengineering the lakeshore so that there isn't just continued erosion into the lake, especially with the high wind gusts that Lake Carmine experiences, especially on the north end of the lake. We're also working to plant lots of trees everywhere anyone will let us. I believe there's also seven tributaries that go into Lake Carmi, and we have been working to remove berms and restore historic floodplains along those tributaries. So basically, unditching those streams to give space to those streams to dump out the phosphorus or sediment that they're collecting during higher floods so that it doesn't ever reach the lake. We're also doing a wetland restoration in the Lake Carmi State Park. That's towards the end of 30% design, so probably a couple more years until we actually start moving land around. And one of the largest tributaries to the Lake Marsh Brook, we have I believe, four projects going on there to restore that area and to add more wood into that stream to slow it down, to drop out some of the sediment before it hits the lake and accumulates, and it's too expensive to move once it hits the lake. So we're trying to hit from all angles, certainly. And there's a lot of community buy in at this point in time. Everyone seems to be dedicated doing their part, which is a wonderful space

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: to work in.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Yeah, that's great to hear. Thank you for that. Representative Tagliavia.

[Representative Mike Tagliavia]: In one of the previous slides, 12, I used show a lakeshore restoration. With respect to some of these lakes, is there funding available for residents who have failed sex, or is that a completely different program?

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: I believe that there's not a lot of funding available for failing septics. I think it's definitely a missed point of nutrient additions to lakes that doesn't get caught very well by the grant funding structure. Do you know anything more about funding?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: I do. Oh, yes. There have been programs in the past for low income homeowners, especially if their home is their primary residence. If it's a camp and not somewhere they typically live, they're typically ineligible for any assistance. And I do believe that those funds are limited to begin with. So in Lake Carmi, it's mostly summer camps that are not four season. And so most of those landowners are not eligible. So Lake Carmi has a fun thing where most of the camps are actually ninety nine year leases, and so the people who are maintaining them are not actually the landowner and don't have decision making ability. So that is a fun nut to crack.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Who does own the land?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: A lot of the farmers and farm families continue to actually own the lakefront. The ninety nine year leases, most of which are coming up in the next decade. It'll be interesting to see that.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative Austin and then Morris.

[Representative Sarah Austin]: Yep. The other day I was on a Zoom call with the EPA and the Lake Champlain Advisory Council, and the project managers that were working on dispersing the federal funds, they were talking about how out of sync kind of the timing and the regulations are for getting these funds out to pay people. And I just was wondering, are you experiencing any of that?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: I was actually I was one of the presenters. Oh, you were? I was. Yes. I am experiencing that. Neither of these folks have Lake Champlain grants in their area. It's here in the Connecticut Riverside. But I'm just wondering

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: The Lunenburg Culvert was frozen for a few months because

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: of the

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: federal issues. Yeah. That's why we were we were late to get it out. But,

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: yes, there's there's certainly some disconnect between when you have a good idea and you have community buy in and you actually receive the funds. It can kill projects, that delay.

[Representative Sarah Austin]: And it seemed like the disbursement of the funds, even when you have them, the timing didn't line up, and you lost a project, or it was at risk. And so you're experiencing that as well? We are, yes. Yeah, didn't recognize it.

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: No, that's certainly everyone behind the Zoom screen looks completely different to me. I started during COVID and everybody had masks on, so at least there's real faces now. Yes, a lot of the grants that we do are reimbursement based grants, so we have to carry those costs till our funder can pay us. And sometimes they change the rules they play through, which, again, we're happy to play by the rules. It's just when they change and they're not communicated well seems to be the challenge. But great projects do still move forward.

[Representative Sarah Austin]: And are you confident? Because I'm noticing that FEMA is not paying for £5 in Northeast Vermont. Are you confident that you continue to do you know that you're getting funding from FEMA?

[Lauren Weston (Manager, Franklin County Natural Resources Conservation District)]: Every grant I've applied to for FEMA has been a competitive grant, and so I never have any confidence. I don't know enough about the disaster recovery funds from FEMA to see That's my understanding.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: Representative North.

[Representative Rob North]: Thank you, Chair. Thank you for your presentation. Just technical question on budget then. So the 2027 request is 948,200. What was the 2026 budget recognized?

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: Our 2026 request was for 3,000,000. We were appropriated 612,000 in baseline funding, plus an additional $2.50 one time funding less for this current fiscal year. So this request does represent a continuation of those plus the cost of living adjustment that I mentioned. Just so you know, right now we are in the budget for 06/12, a continuation of that. Yeah. So right now, I guess the increased request would be I tried to do some math right now, but I believe It's, I think, 336,000 or so. Yeah.

[Representative Rob North]: So you're

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: currently in for a base of 612,000.

[Representative Rob North]: 06/12. And no one time is in?

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: No one time is in currently. We were asking for that to be restored. Thank you.

[Chair Amy Sheldon]: It's a pretty good place to wrap. These are all great projects. I have a lot of questions and not so do others. I'm going to just say we have to transition to another large presentation, and I want to be respectful of time our need to stand up. If you have a question, maybe take it offline, and I think we'll take a break. And thank you so much for your presentation and mostly for your work.

[Claire Ireland (Vermont Association of Conservation Districts / State Natural Resources Conservation Council)]: Well, thank you so much for the opportunity.

[Sam Maine (Essex County Conservation District)]: I'll be in the Fire Room all day for trouble. Yep.