Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

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

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: back to the House Environment Committee. We are going to continue testimony on S212 with two members of the study work group who are joining us remotely. Welcome. I'm not sure who wants to go first. Andrea, you are listed first, but if someone has a time constraint, speak up now, please. Okay, great. We'll start with you then, Andrea.

[Andrea Day]: Okay, that's great because I have to go play coach

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: at four. So

[Andrea Day]: the many hats we all wear. So good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to provide testimony today. My name is Andrea Day. I am co president of Dufresne Group and have been a professional engineer since 2009. For the past twelve years, my focus has been on municipal water and wastewater, primarily in Vermont and somewhat in New Hampshire along the Connecticut River Valley. Earlier in my career, I believe Brian mentioned, I worked in the state of Montana on both private on-site and municipal water and wastewater. In my current occupation, I primarily work for municipalities, but at that point in time, there's a lot more development in Montana. And the firm I worked for did a lot of work for development and housing projects and subdivisions. So slight difference, but in the civil engineering world, it's two branches on the same tree. I was part of the stakeholder group that developed the report on the municipal water and wastewater connections permitting and housing in accordance with Act 47, and I am also a member of the Green Mountain Water Environment Association. As a consultant, I am based in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, so I work with public water and wastewater systems, some of which are very small, less than 50 connections. But then we also do work with the city of Burlington, Champlain Water District, some much larger municipalities. We see both ends of the spectrum. As you've heard in testimony previously for larger municipalities, I'm sure Megan Moore told you about their process. So there's a lot of technical review that goes on at the larger municipal side within their staff. They have engineers on staff that are fully up to speed on their system. But when you look at the smaller systems, they are often run by part time staff, sometimes volunteers, and they really do not have the technical expertise to review an application for connection or possibly even to really provide that assessment of capacity of their system. Sometimes they'll work with a consultant to help them with that. That particular discrepancy, the wide range of technical ability of these municipalities was one of the items that the stakeholder group identified as a challenge, and we wanted to be sensitive to that when we were looking for a solution to the tasks that we were asked to address with Act 47. In accordance with Act 47, our target was to address permitting standards of other jurisdictions, how to simplify and expedite the process for municipal water and wastewater connections permitting, to identify solutions for data management and document sharing. I know that Brian highlighted this, that that's a huge area where sometimes municipalities in the past have fallen down and that the state provides a great resource for document storage and access. We're also asked to develop revised criteria for issuance of connection permits. One of the topics that has also come up in previous testimony was the definition of capacity and how having a better handle on capacity and what that means for municipalities would greatly help with identifying where housing can be placed in those systems, and that is something that we also discussed in the group and needs some support and clarification so that everyone's looking at it in the same way and tracking it in the same way. So we got together several times and considered all of these challenges that we were up against and developed some options for how we might approach these challenges and concluded that development of a general permit that allows local technical review by approved municipalities. So those, we talked about some of the requirements that they might have to be able to have that technical review capacity. They have to have qualified staff and the resources and the processes. That along with an update to the regulations was the selected approach. There's one document that has lots of different things in it related to on-site and also municipal, and it's kind of mixed together. We felt like if there was some separation of those regulations, that would be beneficial. This recommended approach takes away the duplicate review, that the larger municipalities are currently going through. If the city of Burlington chose to be a designated municipality to complete their own technical review, that would be the technical review and it wouldn't be duplicated at the state level. But that is also available for those smaller municipalities that need that support from the state. That's something that we wanted to be careful to be sensitive to because, like I said earlier, those smaller municipalities don't have the same capabilities. The regulation update and design manual will clarify the requirements for municipal connections and can also provide that clarity on what capacity means and how that should be tracked and communicated. The general permit for those systems that qualify and for those simple permits that qualify can serve as a means of record keeping. Consultants, realtors, property owners rely on having those records available to them, and so it's really important that we don't lose that. It's a great resource. And the design manual will provide consistent design standards and clarify expectations across the states. Like I said, some of the smaller municipalities don't have the capabilities of the city of Burlington or other municipalities that have that technical staff, and the design manual can provide some consistency across the state on what the expectations are. The lack of consistency was one of the items that was brought up when we were discussing things in the stakeholder group, and so that was one of our solutions to that, was to provide some sort of overall state manual. The stakeholder group looked for a solution to support all the different challenges with different sized municipalities we have, and the bill addresses these concerns and will improve the municipal connections permitting process. Given these recommendations and what's included in the bill, I support S212 and am available to answer questions.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Great. Thank you for your testimony. We have questions. Can you show me the page that's on the I don't have a hard copy right here, but there's a second general permit considered in this bill. And I am wondering if the stakeholder group talked about it. It's on page five of as past the Senate version. It's at the top of the page. The secretary may adopt a general permitting programs for other activities that require a permit under this section that the secretary determines are low risk, low impact and low complexity. You. Is that part of your recommendation? So are you familiar with it? If so, what are your thoughts on it?

[Andrea Day]: Our recommendation didn't go into that much specifics as far as what levels of permitting the general permit would cover. I think we're mostly focused on the ability of the recordkeeping for the municipalities that are doing that technical review to have the general permit as a means to store those records of those reviews. However, the state does have another general permit that we work with in the municipal water world. There's been a lot of training and guidance on what projects qualify for that. It is very similar. It's your simple, straightforward, typical projects. And so I don't see an issue with providing a similar thing for municipal connections.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: That's a permit for municipal connections to public water supplies?

[Andrea Day]: Typically, would use it if we're doing a water main replacement project.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Maybe we'll look and see how that one is strapped in.

[Andrea Day]: Yeah. Brian Redman is is very familiar with that because it's under under the drinking water program at the state.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Great. Thanks. Any other further questions for Andrea Day, representative Austin? The

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: criteria, recommendation. I'm sorry. I was listening, but I was I don't know if you addressed how that would be, addressed.

[Andrea Day]: As far as for municipalities to do their own review?

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Yes. I mean, I know I had my notes from another witness who also said it was important to get, I think, clearer definition of the criteria.

[Andrea Day]: This will be something that's going to have to be worked out in ANR, all the finer details. But when we talked about it in the committee, we talked about that they should probably have a professional engineer. They should have written standards. They should have a clear process on how their review occurs. Those are the types of things that we talked about including, but there'd be much more detail developed as part of the development of that program.

[Rep. Sarah "Sarita" Austin (Clerk)]: Thank you. All

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: right. Any other questions? Not seeing any. Craig Jewett, thank you for your testimony.

[Andrea Day]: Thank you.

[Craig Jewett]: Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Craig Jewett. I'm a senior engineer at MSK Engineers, and I've been a registered professional civil engineer in the state since 2011. I'm also a member of the technical advisory committee, which in part assists the oversight and implementation of the wastewater system and potable supply rule. I'm also a board member of the Vermont American Council of Engineering Companies, ACEC, and a member of the Green Mountain Water Environment Association, Gimliavia. I wanted to just take a second to thank you for the invitation to come testify about S212. And from my perspective as a practicing engineer working daily with municipalities, two twelve helps address long standing inefficiencies in municipal permitting connections that directly affect project costs, timeliness and predictability. The following kind of outlines my involvement with the stakeholder process and opinions related to key components of the bill. And I guess I won't go into much detail about why the stakeholder group was put together. I think you're all familiar with why what we were tasked with and why we were tasked with it. But I think some key components that came out of that discussion are contained within S212. And those mainly are improving municipal connection related technical standards and requirements, reducing the administrative and technical burden and corresponding costs for applicants. Also the predictability of how long that process will take, Ensuring transparent and consistent oversight and records management, I can definitely say the municipalities that were involved in that were very clear that the records management needed to stay with DEC and that if if that was going to be placed on them, that they would see that as a burden that they wouldn't be able to manage. And they were very clear that the consistency of this DC doing that was important to all the municipalities that participated in that process. I think the biggest thing that comes out of this is improving the state review process and clarifying the municipal role in connection permitting without lessening the public health protections. What was clear was each municipality had a slightly different process for essentially the same thing. And things like capacity mean different things to different people, depending on the situations that we're talking about. So the general permit I do see as central tool to achieving the goals outlined in the stakeholder group and the bill as a whole. I think it will help provide clear standards and process and reduce uncertainties, delays and redesign costs. It does reduce some of DEC's administrative and technical burden, which is of importance, they have a limited technical capacity. And this was looked at as a means of trying to not have that capacity burdened by things that could be handled elsewhere related to that. The clarity and the predictability of the permitting review process I think is also a big component of that both from the applicant standpoint but also the municipalities standpoint. What was also clear in the stakeholder group is some municipalities felt that they were in different parts of the process than other municipalities and that inconsistency was causing issues both for the consultants, but also the municipalities of themselves not being sure exactly when their approval should come versus the state approvals. I also think the general permit will help clarify and strengthen the municipalities roles and responsibility in issuing municipal connection permits. It will make it much more straightforward for them where their role is related to this and how they play into the state's process. And I think it does reduce friction between the local and state permitting processes and the overlaps that currently exist. As I stated before, DC continuing to manage the database and the record management is a big component of this. As Andrea has stated, that's used by consultants, municipalities, lawyers, and real estate agents. It's used by a number of different entities for different purposes. So having that in one centralized location and not having it be by municipality, I think is an important component of this. And then the guidance manual that's proposed is really to provide clarity and consistency across the state, both for the small municipalities and the larger municipalities of kind of setting the floor of what the expectation is when we're talking about municipal connections. The partial delegation for connection permitting approach preserves the statewide consistency of oversight through DEC's continued maintenance of centralized database and records management, while also allowing municipalities that qualify the ability to further streamline the process when it comes to their municipal connections. Having the municipalities have a little bit more ownership in how this process works, I think was a big component that came out the stakeholder group. For these reasons, I support S212 as a practical and balanced improvement to Vermont's connection permitting framework. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Thank you for your testimony. Do members have questions? Thank you again to both of you for your work on the stakeholder group and for joining us today. Thank you. Alright, members. That completes our scheduled work for the day. People have thoughts they want us to talk about before we adjourn?

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Yeah, this particular section statute lends itself well to a portion of Bill 8,805 that I had proposed earlier this year that was had some ideas in it that were offered to me by constituents in my area, engineers, professional engineers, water systems engineers, that had some ideas on primarily in this particular section around around consistency and dealing with any permitting with the state. It seemed like they were experiencing significant inconsistency when they worked in one area of the state to the next, depending on who the responsible party for approving permits was in those various areas. So one of the slight adjustments or adjustments that were suggested, and I worked with Michael back at beginning of the year to put it in statute or in a bill, this H-eight zero five, Section three, which addresses MBSA seventeen ninety three. And I was wondering, I was thinking it would be directly applicable since this bill opens up. Paragraph seventeen ninety three.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Did you mean okay. Nineteen seventy three. I'm sorry. Did I say something different? Just got them. I think you

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: switched the numbers. Okay. 1973. Yeah. Sorry. Dyslexia. TED USA nineteen seventy three. If you look in page eight zero five, section three, address that same stuff. And under, in this case, section F, where the secretary shall give up with this where it's certified it's certification by a license to sign our respective design, etcetera. I added two, some paragraphs, and four. Again, this was working with Michael, so I can't say I'm going to this particular language. This is what Michael suggested in terms of how to accomplish what we were looking to achieve.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Maybe just tell us what you were looking to achieve.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Well, we were looking to achieve a consistency to define some minimum threshold below which basically the permit granted the state ANR would do essentially only an administrative compliance review as opposed to getting into the details what was going on. So it really is number four here. Secretary Sheldon should probably under this chapter for portable water supply and waste log systems serving residential fields. So it's residential, 1,000 gallons per day or less. If it meets those two criteria, it's just after reviewing the design related information submitted by a licensed designer only for a maximum of months as opposed to digging real details. Because what these guys I was talking to were finding is that, depending on where they went, some places, for a small residential system, they'd like, shit, they'll probably put it right on through. Other places, it would be weeks and months even, reviewing and back and forth and just increasing the cost for the property owner in China.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: So I wonder about how this relates to that second general permit that we're talking about.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Yeah, exactly. It might be redundant. I think

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: we might find that out. Yeah, I was

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: wondering, I have to admit, I haven't gotten what I should do is show this to Brian Redmond and have him look at it and see, does he think that this is redundant or necessary now that we are doing what we're already planning on doing?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: But your bill is 11 pages. That's one piece

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: of it. That's just one piece. And that's the one piece that I think might consider other aspects of it. But that's the piece that's That's

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: directly this So that's great. I think you should pursue that and see if we're right that that's the same kind of area. Yeah, might actually help us define the low impact in

[Andrea Day]: those three things.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Maybe that would just end up in rule, some of the guidance that they're defining as opposed to statute. I don't know.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Yeah, but that's what Ela brought up and reminded us that Second Amendment is what we're waiting to hear back on from I'm

[Unidentified committee member]: just going to ask you about this section. Is it just for wastewater? Is it just for septic?

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Section F?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Bottled water supply or wastewater.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: Yes, it's for both water systems, which is potable and wastewater.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: This is for both. I don't know. Yeah,

[Unidentified committee member]: I mean, I think this is a really interesting area. I think we've, representative North, I think the whole committee has been curious about when general permits or administrative reviews could be utilized in what is otherwise an incredibly complex permitting arena that while we know we really need these protections, we're also figuring out where we can simplify. I'm very curious about this very broad piece and the bill that we're looking at. It looks like it covers it looks not

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: I think yours is providing more detail. That's why I think it could help that.

[Unidentified committee member]: Think we should.

[Rep. Rob North (Member)]: So, I'll just forward this to Brian Redmond and say, just look at this one section and see if he likes the term.

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: And Michael, and just highlight this section. Yeah.

[Unidentified committee member]: Are you guys expecting him back in to testify?

[Rep. Amy Sheldon (Chair)]: Not sure what we're going to expect from Brian in the next he was going away, and we're not quite clear when. So okay. Other thoughts for now? Alright. Not seeing any. We will adjourn for the afternoon.