Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

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

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: afternoon. Welcome to the House Environment Committee. Afternoon, we're looking at s two eighteen and actively to reducing chloride contamination at state waters. And we have Bethany Sargent from ANR with us. Welcome.

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: For having me. So for the record, my name is Bethany Sargent. I am the Monitoring and Assessment Program Manager, so that's in the Watershed Management Division in the Department of Environmental Conservation. The role of my program is really to help coordinate our monitoring assessment activities across the division. So we work with our lake staff, river staff, wetland staff. We are also our point of contact for EPA, so overseeing our water quality assessment and listing process, water quality standards, etcetera. So I am here today to talk to you about s two eighteen, and specifically, there are really four main points that I wanna get across in my testimony today. So chloride concentrations are increasing in Vermont surface waters, that in some streams, those concentrations are reaching levels that are toxic to aquatic life, that deicing salt is the most significant source of chloride, and that, really, the solution is to optimize our use of deicing salt. And specifically, how does S218 fit into our approach for optimization? So not to lose you with too complicated graphs, but essentially, the takeaways from these are two things. So we're seeing chloride concentrations increase in our largest body of water, Lake Champlain. So the graph on the left, all of those little dots are individual observations, and you're seeing that trend, data goes from 1995 to roughly 2023 in this graph. So we're seeing that in the main lake, which is the red line, Mallets Bay, Missisquoi Bay, just as three examples where those concentrations have been increasing. The graph on the right shows mean, annual means, for the Lake Champlain tributaries for chloride concentration. So again, this is for Winooski, Lemoyle, and Missisquoy. We're seeing concentrations of chloride increase in those large river systems. Where we're seeing them reach the chloride concentrations reach levels that are toxic are in some of our smaller streams. So all of these circles on this graph are chloride observations. So where we have collected data measuring chloride in surface water. So it's hard to see all of those little gray dots in that, but those are concentrations that are less than eight, and then working their way up gray, yellow between two thirty and fifty, sort of orange and red, and it's hard to distinguish between those two colors, but we're seeing concentrations in some cases exceeding eight sixty. And why is eight sixty important? That is the concentration of chloride that causes acute toxicity for aquatic biota. So if it exceeds that concentration for an hour of time in any three year period, then science has shown that that's toxic to aquatic life. Chronic exceedances, so that's the two thirty, two thirty milligrams per liter. So that's more of a long term exposure. So it's a lower number over a longer period of time, but we're also seeing exceedances, in some cases above that two thirty milligrams per liter. The important thing to know, though, is that we can see impacts, and it the chloride can impact aquatic life at concentrations even lower than that when combined with other stressors like sediment, like temperature when you have warmer waters entering through storm water. So we do have impairment listings, and I'll talk a little bit more about that shortly, where chloride is a contributing stressor but may may not reach that two thirty or eight sixty milligrams per liter amount. And just as a reference, forested watersheds in Vermont are generally below 10 milligrams per liter. So unimpacted watersheds, sometimes much lower than that.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Representative Austin.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: That can you Sorry. We'll go back. Yeah. Thank you. This were the four red I think they're red dots. Mhmm. That looks like Burlington's Yes. Thinking. And I guess I'm wondering, I think of Florida's roads, that it comes off roads. I'm looking along 89. It doesn't look like there's a lot of it.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I'm just wondering what's going on there.

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Yeah, so it's important to think about, and I'll talk a little bit more. Let me go to my next slide. So where we're seeing these really high values are in our small streams, small watersheds with a high percentage of impervious surface. We are seeing increasing concentrations in our larger river systems like the Winooski running along I-eighty 9, but it's really these small streams that have small watersheds where they're reaching those levels that are toxic to aquatic life. So as I mentioned, the numbers eight sixty and two thirty, so we do continuous conductivity monitoring, so that's sort of a surrogate for chloride, where we can get that continuous data set that we need to look at either a one year or one hour, excuse me, timeframe or a four day timeframe over a period of years in order to document that impairment listing, and impairment essentially means it's not meeting our water quality criteria.

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

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: What is the impairment level that you've when does a stream get on the impaired list?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: So if it has an exceedance, so exceeds that $8.60 for an hour or longer, yep, in any three year period. So we do that continuous conductivity. The roundups that I saw are essentially when we dip a bottle, collect one single sample, and then measure chloride, but we need more data than that to actually list it. So these are all of the listings that we've done to date. We are proposing an additional chloride impairment for our three zero three list of impaired waters. We're in that process right now. We'll put out our proposed list of impaired waters within the next couple of months. So putting it out for public comment, and then it'll be reviewed and approved by EPA after that. So Stevens Brook in St. Albans is the additional stream that we anticipate listing. So what happens after they get listed? So we develop TMDL, which total maximum daily load, you probably are more familiar with it in the context of phosphorus, like Champlain TMDL, but we also do that for chloride. So it's essentially developing a pollution budget. We assess sources of chloride and then develop or establish targets in that TMDL in order to bring the stream into compliance with our water quality standards. So we've done that for Sunnyside Brook in Colchester. That was the first chloride TMDL that we developed. It's been approved by EPA. And in that, we assess sources of chloride. So that watershed, and this is a great example of where we're seeing those toxic levels, that watershed is 31% impervious surface. So again, watershed, significant amount of impervious surface. So within that 31%, 6% are roads, 7% are buildings, so we're not gonna be salting buildings, but 19% of that is other paved, so think primarily parking lots. And that's important, and that's where, in part, S218 comes in, and I'll get back to that in a minute. So how do we reduce chloride contamination? Again, it's about optimizing use. So most of those, to date, all of those impaired waters are in our MS4 communities. MS4 municipal separate storm sewer system, lots of Ss, that's why we call it an MS4, but that's a permit that it's a general permit where our cities in Vermont that have stormwater impairments have to have coverage under, and that allows the city and that requires the city to manage their stormwater, And in this case, where there are chloride impairments, they also have to develop as a requirement of that MS4, a snow and ice management plan. Colchester has done that. That's where Sunnyside Brook is located. Vermont Agents and Transportation also has a snow and ice control plan where they essentially lay out their policies around how they manage snow and ice and BMPs practices they use in order to optimize that chloride use so that they're not causing excess chloride loading into our surface waters. But as I mentioned before, so that's through the MS4 and then for VTrans, the TS4 permit, so it's essentially the transportation equivalent for our permits, but how do we get the roads or the de icing salt being applied to that 19% of parking areas. Some of some of that, yes, that'll be municipally controlled and that would be under the MS4. But really, how do we best get at that those commercial parking lots? So this is a picture of Williston on one of our listings. So you can just see the amount of surface area that's commercial parking lots that's contributing to that chloride loading causing impairments. So S-two 18, so this is a bill that should look very familiar to you all, and it really has a few fundamental pieces of it. So it establishes a program for voluntary education, training, and certification of commercial salt applicators, and then through the local roads program, municipal salt applicators. The purpose of it, the overall goal is to optimize the use of salt and salt alternatives to ensure safe surfaces and reduce chloride contamination. And that's the other important thing is that we have, in sometimes opposing values, right? We want to maintain, we need to maintain safe surfaces, but we also need to protect our surface waters. And really, the way to do that is through optimization. So the bill also incentivizes participation through the establishment of an affirmative defense. It can be implemented by agency staff, third party vendor, or a combination, and implementation, except for the state and municipal salt sand storage report, is contingent on funding. So there is not currently funding associated with the bill and the way the bill is written, implementation is only required if there is funding to implement it. In terms of timelines, so there are sort of three critical timelines that are in the bill in terms of implementation. So again, I mentioned that report on management of municipals and state salt alternative and sand storage, so that's something that would be required regardless of funding. Also, by January 1, it requires the agency to solicit the interest in third party vendors to conduct the training and certification program for the commercial SALT applicators, and then it also requires a report to recommend a fee to be charged to the commercial applicators and to municipal applicators. It requires the adoption of an administrative rule that lays out the best management practices, the program standards, reporting requirements by 07/01/2027, and then finally, by November 1, that curriculum that's developed based on the rule would need to be incorporated into the Local Roads program, which is administered by B TRANS. So this bill, it's crafted as a voluntary program, we see as filling a critical niche to help us better reduce chloride by incentivizing participation in the certification program. It's closely modeled or would be potentially closely modeled after other programs in existence like the New Hampshire Green Snow Pro program, so it's not something that would necessarily be need to be created from whole cloth. That being said, you will hear from the agency secretary, I think after my testimony, this is not currently in the administration's proposed budget. And so it's something that we, you know, certainly see the value in and would help support our goal of reducing fluoride contamination, and I will defer questions on that piece of it to the secretary. I'm happy to entertain any questions if you have additional questions for me at this point.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did you mention what the asterisk means by the salt sand

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Oh, so that's the one element of the bill that would be required, even if funding is not appropriated.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. No, thank you. That was really helpful. Has there been a watershed that you're aware of, just like research wise, that's just decided, that's had this contamination happened and then decided to spend a few years using no salt?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: No, not that I'm aware of. I think in New Hampshire, where there are impaired fluoride impaired waters, they have salt sort of reduction zones. And I think Colchester in their snow and ice control plan has specific sort of reduced application strategies for the Sunnyside Watershed, but not in terms of, you know, able to completely eliminate the use of use of salt.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: New Hampshire's been doing this for I don't know, well, probably know. How many?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Yeah, I think there are, I want to say it's about a dozen. They established initially the commercial applicator program. The municipal program is, I wanna say, four or five years old.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: They've been able to reduce or turn any of those around?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: So anecdotally, so in terms of salt reduction, it's really difficult to demonstrate from a year to year basis reduction in salt because of all of the variables that exist, whether it's the snow and ice in any given winter. Also, when you think about the changing, the amount of commercial applicators that are enrolled in this program, and relative to those that may not be enrolled in this program. So similar to other strategies that rely on best management practices, it's really these are the practices that demonstrate an optimized use of salt, and it will be hard, and New Hampshire has described this as well, it's really hard to document a reduction in salt use as a result because of the variability. In terms of bringing a stream back that's impaired, typically these streams, and one of the challenges is that the chloride can stay in and it can impact the shallow groundwater and it moves through the soils, and so it's going to take some time to move through the system. It's also the fact that aquatic biota, so your bugs in your streams, are dealing with a lot of stressors beyond just chloride. So they're also, they're in stormwater impaired watersheds as well, so dealing with habitat challenges and things like temperature and the sediment that occur in those stormwater impaired systems.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Do you know much about the protocol that's used to establish the impairment? I mean, it seemed like when you took your sample would really matter, and then it looked like you have a sample of one that's continuous. But between the spot sample and the continuous, how do you get to continuous?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: So by using conductivity data loggers. So we'll place a logger in a stream and leave it in there for a couple years to get a really long, large data set. And we're able, when we sort of alongside that measure chloride at discrete points, we can essentially create a relationship between conductivity and chloride for that particular stream and can essentially calculate what that chloride level would be based on the conductivity numbers. So once we do that, we can look at the We also measure the flow in that stream to understand the loading. So it's a similar process in terms of what's used for phosphorus, just a different pollutant. And because it's that toxic impact that we're measuring, it has to be over that either hour period if we're looking at that acute exceedance or a four day period, which is why we need that continuous data set.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So all of these points represent continuous Discrete. The points was asking, how do think it's discrete to knowing when you want to have a continuous log or in a stream?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: So if we find based on a discrete sampling event that the chloride levels are really high, then we would consider placing a conductivity logger in there, depending on when that sample is collected, how many we can collect. We don't necessarily need water quality data to know where most, you know, where we should have the greatest concern for chloride. It's really looking at impervious surface cover and impervious surface relative to the specific body of water. So we can predict, we can essentially model where we would expect to find the highest levels of chloride. And we have a discrete set of conductivity loggers, so we can't be out in all of the areas that might need it or may eventually reach that impairment threshold. We have limited resources to do that, but we have been incrementally working in those areas where we are most likely to see impairments.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That's what I was trying to get at. How underrepresented is the chloride contamination?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: In terms of our list of impaired waters? Probably I mean, yeah, it may be under it's underrepresented. And I guess what else isn't on that list are all of the impairments that we have where chloride is a contributing stressor. So when we list a water body as impaired for aquatic biota, that the aquatic biota did not meet our criteria and our water quality standards, we look at the pollutants based on our results that are causing that impairment. And typically, if it's related to stormwater, chloride is typically higher than what we might find in a reference and likely contributing to that impairment, even though it may not reach that level that's considered toxic by itself for the listing of streams that I have here that are actually chloride impaired waters.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. Representative Pritchard? Yeah, I just don't from what I hear you telling me, what said, though, is there's no measurable results for this. There's no way to measure this accurately if we're gaining, if we're losing, if, we're making progress, if we're

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: For those that have some So, in speaking with my counterpart in New Hampshire who has been involved in the development and implementation of their program, they have had participants convey that they have reduced their own salt use as a result of their participation in the program overall. If you try to evaluate and look at on the whole from one year to the next, whether or not this program reduced salt use on a whole, we know based on the best management practices are designed to optimize salt use, and I think that's part of the issue is that we've got two goals. We want to continue to maintain safe surfaces, and we want to reduce fluoride use. And so really optimization is the goal, and by optimizing it, and again, this is going to depend on your conditions in your winter in terms of how frequently you need to apply salt, Is it too cold where salt isn't gonna be as effective and, therefore, you wouldn't be applying salt? Is it in that sweet spot where salt's gonna be most effective and it's below freezing? So there are all sorts of variables that are gonna influence.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: But the goals, the real, the main goal is to lower salinity levels, is it not?

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Yes. Okay. It is.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: Okay. So, you know, one of the things I go back to is in testimony that we had, I think that Jared gave it, as I recall, they showed some areas that salinity levels had increased. One of those was Route 30 that has been, for the last six or seven years, is it's entirely maintained by the state of Vermont, who has been using

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: that these

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: we all want to put in the thing, and the levels have risen 13%. So, it really makes me question, if we want to, and especially when we can say, well, there's a lot of variables that'll change it. There's always excuses as to why it's going up, and I'm not buying into that argument. What I like to see, and I don't know if anybody's ever done it, New York has a bare roads policy. So they use a ton of salt. I would like to check salinity levels in Champlain on the Vermont side above the bridge, and go to South Bay, where it's all New York, and take salinity levels down there, and see what those measurements are. And if they're the same, I just don't buy any of this. Because for years and years, that is specifically maintained by the state of New York, the road goes through the lake. I mean, so the salt is obviously entering the lake. Would just like some measurement that tells me, well, it's reducing. And a comparison for an extreme use of salt and one that we think is not. I just like to see So that

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: your question is more specific to do we know that the best management practices are effective? Yeah.

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: Think the most effective way is to stop using salt.

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Absolutely, but that's not

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: And what I'm questioning is it doesn't really, especially when I go back to this METAWIE thing, it's made no difference. It's made no difference.

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: Based on the data

[Rep. Christopher "Chris" Pritchard (Member)]: that's And it's using what we want to put in place, and it's been in use for the past six or seven years, and it's still rising. And now we're subjecting, and I know it's voluntary, for now, for now, it's voluntary. But we're subjecting all these people to extra expenses, which is gonna raise expenses for the people that they service. And what are we really where are we gonna end up here? And nobody can seem to say with certainty that we're gonna lower salinity levels. I I've yet to hear that.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah. So I think it's important to remember that the folks who spread the salt support this. In fact, I think they asked for it because they have heard from their customers that there's a desire out there to use less salt. Did you have a question? Yeah. Alright. We have more witnesses coming in to the theme who apparently were not joining us quite yet, but did you have a question, representative?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Just real quickly, the liability incentive, is

[Bethany Sargent (ANR DEC Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager)]: that in this? It's now an affirmative action. It's the way or sorry. From, affirmative defense, the way that it's written now. I am not the person to speak on that. My expertise is is the water quality science. So I will leave that for We will mister Carpenter's Right. Testimony or Brady.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. For being flexible. Members, we were gonna hear two witnesses on this this morning, but or this afternoon, but we're not. We're gonna hear from Jared Carpenter on Thursday morning on this same topic. And, right now, we're gonna change topics and, I guess, take a brief recess. Let's take a brief recess.