Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Good morning. It is Tuesday, January 20, Senate Agriculture. We're to spend some time talking about some solar primarily in Vermont, and I'd like to start off this morning, first day, and introduce the committee. Senator Collamore, representing those up in

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: the District, and I'm Robert Plunkett, Senator Beckwithin District. Senator Heffernan from the Hudson County District.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Senator Majors from Windsor. Senator Russ Ingalls from Essex Orleans.

[Linda Lehman (Committee Assistant)]: Linda Lehman, it is.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We're gonna have, start off with a conversation with Peter Sterling. And, well, the floor is yours, sir. Thanks.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Hi, my name is Peter Sterling, Executive Director of Renewable Energy Vermont. We're the trade association that represents all of businesses doing work here in Vermont to bring on new renewable energy, opinion read, since 2021, and just as whole history prior to that, I would speak chief of staff to Tim Ash here at the Senate. I would see Ashland for Ashley, although Ashley's played better than I'm doing. We work more together than we need. So thank you for inviting me to talk a little bit about solar power here in Vermont and what it is it's doing on ATLANS there. Slideshow, great. All the information in this slide deck, by the way, is publicly available, so none of this comes from

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: our numbers.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: It's all stuff that's either at the PUC or with USDA or the Department of Agencies. So in the first slide, just as background, Vermont has about a million acres of prime ag soils. Just thought I'd throw that out there as a start, so anytime we're talking about a solar array going up, or anything going up, potentially could eat to that million acres of primate soils. Just as a reference point, to meet Vermont, we have renewable energy requirements here in Vermont. We have a law that says to purchase you renewable energy. There's an in state requirement, and those are limited to five megawatts. Those five megawatt arrays, the rule of thumb is it's about five acres per megawatt. So when we hear about a five megawatt array, that's about 25 acres of land in total. We have a two megawatt array, that's about 10 acres. We're putting up about, in state, to meet that in state only requirement, we're putting up about 28 megawatts, but a bunch of that goes on rooftops, so we're probably putting up, I don't know, five, maybe five of those Dream projects a year, six for the year again. Something else. Oh, we can go down. Okay, next slide. I went through all the CPG applications for solar projects to meet those in state renewable energy requirements. Between 2023 and 2025, 47 acres of primag soils were within the area of disturbance for the smaller solar rays, 150 kilowatts to 500. Three seventy one acres of Primax soils were within the area of disturbance for solar rays, the bigger projects, 500 kWs up to five megawatts. I just wanna point out that land that's in these applications that are cited as within the area of disturbance doesn't actually mean they get plowed up, They're just within the giant fenced in area, so it doesn't mean a road is going to, they could still be in a part of a field, you just fenced it off, there's no amount of people near there. Also, Vermont has a law that all Primac soils, when they're on a site for solar, the soils have to be stored on-site. If you have to grade something out, you don't take that soil and ship it somewhere, you pile it into a berm on the site. Within twenty five years, when the solar rate could be decommissioned, you want that land to go back to ag, the conditions of the CBGR, you gotta push that soil back onto those lands. Primate soils are not putting a landfill or into a quarry or anything like that. Again, just as context here, according to the 2022 USDA Ag Census, between 2017 and 2022, Vermont lost 19,547 acres of land and farms, average of 3,900 acres per year. So, we're losing about 3,900 acres a year of ag grant, according to at least what's been for permits being filed for solar over the last five years, we lost about 400 acres to solar. So you can see the land is clearly being If you're looking at what the main threat to ag land is, of that 3,900 acres a year, most of it is probably going to other developments other than this.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We're gonna talk about them too, Peter. Not picking on the solar. Oh, know. Solar. I think we've had this conversation, and and we don't have a bill yet, but we're just kinda going around and talking to a lot of folks. And, you know, we have plenty of land in Vermont not to impede with what you guys wanna do. It's just not the land that you guys wanna build on. Little bit more costlier, we get that, but just across from the fence from where you want to go, there's other perpetrated lands. Here's the ziggish point. It also helps farmers out because this land, when you have a thousand acre farm and two fifty of it's prime ag land and you have seven fifty acres, that is really not much left. Well, that land becomes more valuable if you guys decide that you want to build on it, and it helps that farmer, when it's all said and done as well, to take that land that was worth $1,000 an acre and maybe make it worth $5,000 an acre. It is all about supporting farmers in

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: the contest of. Yeah, I'm just giving you numbers. I'm not really feeling picked on. Know there's

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a No, and I just really want everybody to hear what we're thinking and why we're thinking and be fair with everyone. Good.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: All right, next slide. Just another quick number from the American Farmland Trust. These are the numbers we see out there the most. American Farmland Trust predicts about 41,000 acres of ag land will be converted to development in Vermont by 2040 versus about 1,200 acres for solar. Again, it just shows you where most of the stuff is, and Happy to digest that one a bit, and I have two more slides, and then we can chat if we wanted. One of the bigger picture things that I always think is important to remember, next slide, is when Vermont puts up solar, at some point it displaces a natural gas plant that's elsewhere in New England, and in that lower right corner, you can see a map. That map goes from the State House up the hill to National Life there, all the way down to the Shaws downtown, the library, that's 60 acres. That's the size of a natural gas plant. There are 64 of them in New England. None of them are in Vermont. I think you would imagine we would have a very difficult time siting a 60 acre natural gas plant in Vermont. When we put up a solar in Vermont, we displace the use of those plants. I think it's super important to remember when we generate our own power, we're asking basically low income and minority communities where all those are sited to not have to live next to one of those things in you know, Connecticut, Massachusetts primarily, some are in New Hampshire, but those are massive plants that we rely on for power. We don't have enough energy, and none of them are in Vermont. So there is another good kind of ethical reason to go solar here in Vermont that I think is worth discussing. In the last slide, one other way we could help improve your open space in Vermont is by supporting the Net Metering Program. The Net Metering Program is the program that allows Vermonters to go solar at home. These are all on-site projects, meaning they have to be either on your roof or adjacent to your house. Net metering, there are five CPG applications for the bigger 150 to 500 kW projects, like on that barn. You could offset a five megawatt solar array with about five of those big projects, about 150 smaller residential projects. Senator Ann Watson has introduced S one seventy to help make that metering more affordable for more people. If we wanna one of the best ways we can protect our open spaces and generate energy is by driving it into the already built environment, like on a barn roof or a home roof or over a parking lot, but that requires a vibrant net metering program, which has been in decline for the last few years. We could discuss that, but there are other ways to preserve open spaces by driving our solar production to the already built environment. Just let me just ask perspective, the chair, you mentioned something about farmers and solar and how it makes their land more valuable. Most farmers lease their land when they go solar, they don't sell it out. Lease deals, they can vary, but they really earn a baseline like $1,000 an acre. If you want a 2 megawatt array on your place and you give up 10 acres for that, dollars 10,000 a year, we're not saying we're doing nothing, but you know?

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: My point is that they have other land that you can go on, and you're still gonna pay that.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's my point. Yeah. And I will say this. My last thought on this is, I've been, like I said, I've been a Rev for four years, before and that I was here in the building, and I was pretty close to Senator Bobby Starr. We talked all the time, it's, you know Bobby, like he told you what he thought. Really admits words. No, Bobby never once said, The problem our farmers have is they're being driven off the land by solar. If they were, we were kind of dumb and sobbed in. So I think, Bob, who knew, didn't hear it in the Senate, certainly not heard it read from farmers that the threat of solar development is what's making it harder for them to keep their land open and keep the farms intact. Only hear about the threat of solar on farmland, mostly from third party people who don't like to look at it. Now wind is different. I think wind, a lot of people have much stronger feelings, I get that part of it. But if you're literally looking at who gets the most upset about solar on ag land, it isn't the farmers, it is other people around them, if I experience both working here and in like five years down, Brad. Thank you. Yes, you're very welcome.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Go ahead. Thank you.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: So we're saying we're displacing a natural gas plant. How many acres of solar would it take to get rid of one plant? How many acres?

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Well, you wouldn't be able to do it just, you would need a lot of acres of solar. So if you needed, I could do the exact math, but basically those gas pipes are like 300, three fifty megabytes. And that's constant. And that's I was just saying the capacity factor of that being is like 50% to get the capacity factor of solar, which is what we need to figure out how much is about 20% for those big ones in the field. You would need many, many hundreds of megawatts of solar to completely get rid of a gas bank. But most of us who work in this renewable sector don't envision a world where, especially at this latitude where we have so much snow cover and cloud cover, you would do it with solar. You would need to bring on batteries on it. That would help a lot. If those offshore wind turbines come online, that will also greatly offset those gas effects. Honestly, and I know wind onshore wind is controversial, but, you know, there's a lot of that on wind is being built in Quebec that I think we're gonna get soon. We can have a good winter of interior. You know, you have to do a bunch of different things to completely get rid of a natural gas plant. You remember that all was solar.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: And my drive was is that the likelihood of us ever getting rid of one of those plants is pretty probably not gonna happen because of we have winter. It it you might not have a nice sunny year and and then it's not as reliable as, even wind is not as reliable. It doesn't say, I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but when you come in and say, hey, we're gonna a natural gas plant, that's not a true statement. They're gonna be there. The nice thing is we might not be relying as much on it. And getting to your point, I know many farmers that are happy that hey, I don't really use this land, it's not great land. I do wanna put a solar field here, I can give you four or five farmers that dig that. It's like you should, I agree with you. It's usually the third party comes in, I don't like looking at it.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to be clear, what I said earlier in my testimony was I never said, If you put up a solar panel in Vermont, that gas plant will close down. No. I said, It displaces the power. That plant doesn't necessarily have to run three sixty five twenty fourseven. It could run three hundred days a year, which is a big deal. If you live next to that plant, that's sixty five days less of that stuff pumping out gas. I'm just saying it displaces the power of genes, it has to run less. That's, just to be clear, what I said, but the other part is I do think when you look at ice of the people who are planning for New England's energy future, because that's our greatest New England, they're not bringing on new natural gas plants because they think the wind is coming, the batteries are coming, there's offshore waves coming, We are in a way, by building more renewables, we're also stopping the construction of a new natural gas plant, which is, to me, very meaningful. It speaks well to the technology, how it's evolving, but you're right. My guess, if you were to ask me to bet my nickel, I would say that New England will never have zero natural gas cleanse, but we can tamp it down to where they're not running very often, and I think that is a very long goal to have, especially since we would never build one in Vermont.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And I have not a problem of renewable energy. Think it's really part of the mix, so it's about really excited, and I want you guys to work a little bit harder. Only you, but the housing folks, anybody who wants to get on this nice flat field that's going to grow food in perpetuity for the rest of the world and ourselves. I just want you guys to You get a lot of breaks. You get a lot of tax breaks that you have. You don't really have to pay much taxes on the land that you're sitting on. You know, you pay one little small fee, then for the rest of the time, you're not paying a school tax. You know, that's all good stuff. I mean, you get it you get a lot of breaks for that, and I'm okay with that. I really, really am. Let's keep all that stuff in place. It's just to cite you a little bit different. You guys just work a little bit harder because you might have to forgo one year's worth of profits to put it someplace else where you don't want to put it, or whatever that might be. Fine. I get it. I mean, there's just a lot of things in life that you'd agree with or don't agree with. I'm not going to fight against renewable energy. I'm not. Not going to fight about where renewable energy's going, and also where anything that's going to attack a perfectly good field that can grow food forever because that, I don't care. Once you put something on that, as I think we've had a discussion about it, it doesn't revert back to a farm field ever again. Once it's gone, it's gone. Yeah, I see the TikTok, the TikTok. Oh, we're only doing this, we're only doing that. Well, our job in this building is to think about hundred years from now or two hundred years from now, and then what do we do when it's all gone? We're not going to go back and chop those things out of there and go on. The best way to preserve farmland is preserve farmland.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Peter, can you give us a sense of how many panels have been retired, and what exactly happens when they do?

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: I would say a very small fraction of solar rays have been decommissioned or retired. They're most of them are so generative. These things last twenty five years, so we didn't build that

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: many in the '90s. But we have some that are 25 years old. Yeah. What happens then?

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Okay, so I can tell you what happens then, but just say, as of today, a tiny, tiny fraction of solar arrays have been actually decommissioned and taken out of service. That's not really happening yet, but a solar panel is about 90% silicone, which is glass and stuff like that. There's like 10% of other stuff. A solar panel is encased in metal. It's like there's this idea that when you have a car and you see it, it feels like it's like leaking balloons. Cars don't leak unless you start beating on them or something beating on those engines or they hold everything in it. A solar panel's like that too. They don't leak or leach or anything unless a tree falls on them and then maybe something can come out, but if you take a Long story short is you can store a solar panel, it's like a tire really, if you store a tire in the right spot, it doesn't cause environmental pollution, right? Like a solar panel, even if you have to decommission it and you can't find a place to recycle it, most people are holding them in warehouses now till there's a proper recycling program, which US EPA is working on. I know ANR has talked to us about a recycling program, but solar panels, even if you do take them off of the roof or out of that field, just store them, they don't do any damage to anything on it. You know what

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I'm saying? Mhmm. So they're not

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: a threat to anything. First, they're 90% glass.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: And how many of those panels are owned by Vermonters? In other words, I live down where Connecticut, for some reason, seems to have the rights to a whole bunch of solar fields, and all of that money leaves Vermont.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Moog, I don't know who owns a lot of the arrays, you know, who developed, but, like, a lot like, when a Vermont comp almost every array that's put up and run is built by a Vermont company. It's very rare that a company outside of Prison District, or like Encore or Norwich you know, Encore is Burlington. Norwich is out. Norwich, I mean, MHG Solar is down there in Bennington. They build it, but most of the time they sell it to someone else. They're just in the it's like a contractor builds a house. He doesn't own a house. They let somebody else buy the house. So these solar builders, they sell it to whoever wants to buy it. I don't know who owns most of those arrays, but they're all governed by the same Vermont laws as far as decommissioning and recycling, and that's all done by state law. So no matter who owns it, have to do the same thing when the day comes as far as having a decommissioning fund and remediating the site.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I'm also struck, at one time spent more time in Florida than I do now. I always have lived in, however. And I'm struck often by how little solar activity is going on in a state which labels itself as the sunshine state, and I don't know why.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Well, it's a good news story for Vermont. Our utilities in general are really, really good about being forward thinking, and a bunch of years ago, most of them saw that the future in New England where natural gas is really expensive, going with wind or solar was gonna be cheaper for Vermonters. It's why we have the lowest rates in New England.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I don't believe that, not for one minute.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: The lowest rates in

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: And natural gas is not expensive, so Well When you guys are putting these solar things out and you're charging 21¢ mandated that everybody has to buy solar at 21¢ to put it back on the grid, I get that. It's part of it. But we're buying natural gas driven power out of the Midwest for 6¢ a kilowatt hour, and we are.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: First, well, there's a lot to unpack there, but first let me just say one of the things, when you look over the longer You are right that currently natural gas is like 3¢ an MMBtu, which is really historically cheap, but when you look at the arc of time, the cost of having power from natural gas increases a lot more than solar. Also, right now, solar is being built in Vermont for about 10.5¢ a kilowatt, so that 21¢ you cited was old, older net metering rates, but right now utilities are buying 10.5¢. That is a pretty sweeping deal. And New Hampshire, which has a much different utility market, they rely much more on the spot market and natural gas. So, yeah, they sometimes have lower rates, but when natural gas spikes, like it did after Ukraine, everyone's bill went up $70 a month because Vermonters, Vermont regulators have well, actually, was the legislature said, let's not deregulate the market. We buy long term fixed contracts like either nuclear, Hydro Quebec, or even solar. Those twenty year contracts over the arc of time are always cheaper than the ups and downs of natural gas. But Florida, those utilities, they make more money by selling their customers power from fossil than they do from renewables.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But they also have solar power plants that are supplying power at a much cheaper rate even than what solar can provide. Solar doesn't,

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: what I understand, solar doesn't like extreme heat. That's definitely correct. So when you're in the hundreds, it's almost Right.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: But Senator Collamore's question was, why is there so much less solar in Florida where it's so sunny all the time than what he sees in Vermont? The reason was that when a utility makes a capital investment like a power plant, they get an ROI out of what is Florida. In Vermont, it's 9%, so if you do a capital investment as utility here in Vermont, you get 9% return on investment. But you are talking about a billion dollar gas, that's a pretty good ROI. So they Florida has chosen to invest in building those plants, which profits they are all for profit utilities. We only have one for profit utility. Everything else is either municipally owned or a co op. Our utilities are generally less profit driven, and even our one investor owned utility, Crown Power, generally speaking, is doing a really good job of of keeping rates low by making smart investments. So it's just a different culture of what your utilities want to do. I think Florida is more and more profit driven, and in Vermont, there's more focus on keeping the rates down. And do you believe that the incentives that Vermont puts out

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: there, we would still have as much solar going on as we do? Because we do make it, like the chair was saying, we do make it pretty, pretty enticing for big companies to come in and and set up fields. If those were eliminated,

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: do you think it would slow it, drastically slow it down? Oh, 100%. If you were to eliminate the net metering program, you would see, you know, Vermont very few Vermonters would go solar where they live or where they work. If you were to change the permit fees or the whatever tax structure for current solar, if you were to increase those, that would make well, what it would do is it would drive up the cost of the projects. So that it's I don't mean to be evasive, but there's an interesting net metering stuff that's on people's roofs and the bigger stuff in the fields. Right? Mhmm. The net metering on the roof, no doubt, if you got rid of the net metering program, nobody would do it and there would be less solar people to lose, power funds and all that stuff. The bigger stuff in the field is a little different, and I encourage you if you really want to better understand that, talk to the much, much smarter people at our utilities, whether Greenmount Power or Burlington Electric or that. My guess is what I think would happen is because Vermont alone is growing, we would need we need to get more power from somewhere, and right now, Hydro Quebec is pretty much tapped out. They're not selling us any more power. That's they've been pretty clear. The nuclear plants in our region that are capable of supplies power, all of those are contracted out, so we're not getting new hydro or nuclear power in the next twenty years, so that means you have to buy new power either from a gas plant or some wind or solar, something like that. The gas prices, like I said, most utility, our utilities are not that interested in buying power from them because it does tend, because it goes up and down, and can be more expensive. So that's my long way of explaining. Most utilities these days in Vermont are seeing the most affordable power that you could bring online the quickest, like two years, coming from a solar array in a field. So if you were to make that more expensive, to answer your question, there are lot of talking, is you can make it more expensive, but I'm not convinced you would build less because I think that's where utilities need to get it from. I think you just raise rates to ratepayers, and I think you should have a utility come in and testify if they're really interested in a detailed answer, because I think most of them would say if you need to procure energy in the next two years, you will not get it from any other source in the next two, three years other than new solar. There's no gas, nuclear, hydro, offshore wind, stuff like that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But we do have hydro. We have we have we all we gotta do is call Hydro Quebec, and they're gonna be happy to sell us hydropower.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: And it's there. I I we don't I gotta disagree with you on that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: They We've worked on that on the kingdom as far as doing the bilateral Okay. Power coming in and and all of that stuff.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Okay.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: So but I get

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Peter, I have another question.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Well, go ahead. No. No. I was just gonna say, you know, between president Trump's posture about making Canada the fifty first state and just the amount of how much more other states can pay for Hydro Quebec's power more than Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, they will always outbid us. Even if there was new power, they will always outbid us for it. This is not the 1990s when it was power. That power that Quebec just sold to New York City through their new power line running down the lake there, that's 11¢ we could never pay. We could never afford to pay that. New York City will always outbid us for any even if Hydro Quebec does have new capacity.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: That's the difference of millions of people to success.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Hartford, Boston, they will always outbid us for anything that's new from hydrocrack. So we can get

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: you information on that. There's been a lot of talk, well, maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration, there's been some talk about the remote nuclear facilities, the smaller ones. Does REV have a position on whether or not that's a good idea? Seems to me to make a lot of sense.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Sure. I think REV's position would always be any time we can get electricity from a source that does not burn fossil fuels, that's a good thing, if it's affordable. Okay. However, I will just add that the modular nuclear is still a technology that really doesn't exist in a practical way, like this idea that you could that you will be able to build a five megawatt or a three megawatt nuclear plant in modular nuclear, which that's a lot of power. Those things, their capacity factor is like 90%. They would generate power all the time. Right? But that doesn't exist. And the one that's in development in Idaho, has been subsidized by the federal government, which is great. It's a prototype. You know, they're not anywhere close to being cost competitive with wind or solar or battery or storing power batteries. So should the technology come to exist where it would be cost competitive, it's and we have a place to put the waste. I think it's a fantastic idea because we have to stop burning things. We have to stop burning things. We're gonna make more problems for ourselves, but the technology at an affordable price does need to be done.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Committee? Again, I want to say that we're not against renewable in any way, shape, or form. I want to make that very, very, very clear and apologize that if it sounds like some of the discussions that we are, I'll certainly go to the chair, because I'm not. I am solely on absolute positively, no matter whether it's you sitting there or anybody else that wants to grab a montage prime ag lay and sat. We're gonna we're gonna talk about that.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Well, I just wanna say thank you for your time. Thank you for the great questions. I leave this committee feeling like you all are just asking good questions, kicking the tires, and doing your due diligence. I feel like you did a great job in bringing this issue out and asking the right questions, so thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Committee.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I wasn't supposed to be sitting here by 10:30.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Okay. Wanna just wait just a few seconds? Yeah. Yeah. Vanware online, which I'm very happy to be, but I just did Google about where Vermont's electric rates Again, that's not the issue. I don't want to make this about the issue. I'm not here to debate the cost of power of Vermont. I'm not. It's part of the conversation that we're having, and I really want to stay focused on it because that's a larger discussion that gets out of our lane as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I know it impacts everyone, and that's not the point that I'm trying to make, and I hope it's very clear to the committee that it really is just about protecting farmland. That's where I'm at. So you know very well that I do not allow politics in the room, and I don't want to break my own rule because I don't really have a dog in the fight with. Again, my whole purpose is to see if we could write a bill. I've got a note sitting down here, Procado Baker, should I not be here? Sounds like I might be. The one of the questions I would want to ask the agriculture agency of ag is if, what would it look like if we were to write a bill, propose a bill in here to prevent all future developments on primagglut? What would that look like in this state? What type of can of worms are we opening up? That's a big one. Well, I would have a hard time with that myself. Right. Certainly want to ask the question. Again, that's why we're having the conversation, right? Find some way to get there. I hear it, well, we're only taking this much land, we're only taking that much land. But again, we are responsible for the rest of our lives and everybody else's life forever and a day as far as to make sure that we are a farming community. So, yeah, there's going be uncomfortable conversations that I want everybody to be part of, and I don't know even where I lie on it, other than the fact that I want to protect this land as best we can. I guess that's why I asked the question. I know there

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: have been panels up for twenty five years, and some of them initially probably did go on primagulate, And I wanna know whether those panels can be taken down and the ground under it returned to the Right, or will they just renew it with no repair.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Right, yeah. And they say that it will, but it never does, right? It's never gonna come back to a new No, comes down. Well, does.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: Always that. Always that. So that's why I asked the question of, if they weren't getting so many such things, would it be going on? The answer is no.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Or, as I said, once they're there, they pay a $2,000 fee or whatever it is due to the school tax, that's it. They don't have to stay forever in a day in perpetuity like everyone else, they get to use that land. I was just gonna say, We have to pay in perpetuity. No, not. But again, only because it's part of the discussion and that comes out, I'm trying to stay the best I can away from all of that policy discussion and talk about why we're not. I see the point you're driving at is that

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: we do have agricultural land that we don't want to lose to development and solar, or what have you, other than trying to keep it for vegetable produce, animal production, what have you. And we all see where we wanna go with that. It's how do we do Right. Because I've been a farmer for all we work, still kind of are. They're 90, dad's in his 90, he has hundreds of acres that are prime acre. We just did seven lots that was on prime ag. You hated to see it go that way, but it's like, that was his investment for the future.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But, again, perfect, I I know you described it, because it is, but, again, just across from that, there's pasture land that maybe isn't prime, but

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: it

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: could be built upon. It just costs a

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: little bit more. It's not one particular spot,

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: but once you open that discussion up, that land starts to become more value, again, you know? Yes.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Ari's here.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Jeff. Good morning. Ari, how are you? Well, thank you. How are you? Good. Whenever you're ready, come on up.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Okay, sounds good. Coming in

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: from the

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: cold, so No problem. Take your time. Take

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: your time. You're early. Take your time. We're all here. We're still alive. We haven't gone off, so we're just having a wide range of discussion. I can set it up

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: once you're up. Is that alright if I should

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: put the restroom and come back to Absolutely, please do.

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: Please do. Yes.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: He's sitting on my bastard.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: A bit more agreeable. And yes, and I get it that this has got to create some conversation. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to create some conversation about this and some more awareness. And I think that anybody wants to be listening in or anybody that's in here, there's no decisions we've made.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: We're at the Conservation District. Wow, that's good.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Anybody else? If we're missing some folks, Linda's doing a great job of Yeah. Doing the schedule up. If we're missing some folks, let's get them in. I think we're gonna start to see some language fairly quickly I think from the agency as far as some of the things that we've talked about. Until then we're just kinda, we're learning. We're building up, we're learning.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: It'll be good to have that farm here. Yes.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: I still we got an ambulance right outside to pass out during the testimony. Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I assume that's only because

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: the governor's day. Yeah. I know. Well, I thought getting in the building today was a little bit easier than what it has been in the past. I would appreciate all that.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: Well, sent I her to the office here, and she was saying because they have one van. And when they do the single entrance, when they don't have a van.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. There's never a problem at 6AM.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I walk in the Lincoln door, and there's no one here. Amazing what you can get done too in that first hour. It is six to seven. That's the first hour. Mine. And then people start wandering in. You gotta talks along with At seven, they start wandering.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Yeah. Because the cap opens at seven. Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: The general public now can't come in until 07:30. Interesting. They moved that half hour.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: It's

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: from what I understand. The reason was they needed save some money in order to be able to pay people for the single entry. Well, they got more law enforcement.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: You have to pay well, they

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: took a half an hour. Doesn't make sense. Which

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: are you good? Yeah. Yeah. On.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: So they're already here.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Appreciate your patience. Yeah. But it costs a

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: of money to have people standing there screening people. Good morning. I'm gonna stay out

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: there this morning. Are you open? We never went off live, now we have the AG CEO of Agriculture Food Markets. We have Aerie Rutland Miller, senior agriculture development coordinator. Just to bring you up to speed, Aerie, the conversation has started about concerns about people who are wanting to use or take over prime agglutin, so we're starting a discussion on that. We've had the solar folks and we had Peter Sterling, our Director of Renewable Energy of Vermont, a good conversation. We don't want anybody to think that we're just picking on that. We're also looking at preventing anybody who wants to develop primag land from doing so. Not that we want to stifle any development, we just are a firm believer that a lot of these farms have lands that can be developed upon. There would be the old pasture land types areas, and that does a lot of things. It protects our primag land, but also makes that land more valuable to those farmers that typically haven't seen much value in that land. That's the discussion where we're going. We have made no decisions about anything, just for your knowledge. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair and subcommittee. I appreciate being here today.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: It's a cold morning, nice to be warm and cozy in here. So, again, my name for the record is Ari Rockland Miller, and I'm Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator with the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. I'm grateful to be here with the committee this morning. Yeah, if it's okay with the committee, I'm gonna talk a little bit about primary agricultural soils in general, as they're defined in Vermont, and talk little bit about the different ways the agency reviews and considers impacts of the soils and kind of the framework for for mitigating or addressing some of those impacts under both Act two fifty criteria nine b, and then also under section two forty eight and kind of solar and renewable energy side of things. And then I'm happy to take any questions, or throughout, feel free to interject with any questions or comments. So, I've been working with the agency for about eight years now, little over eight years, and the bulk of my work has been in the Criteria 9B space. Criteria 9B is one of the Act two fifty criteria that addresses primary agricultural soils, and then I've also been enjoying recently working as well with the Section two forty eight review team as it relates to solar projects, which I understand is one of your interests this morning. Excuse me, sorry, I'll turn that off. So, yeah, so primary agricultural soils as defined in Vermont, the starting point as far as the legal definition, of course, we care about the pollutants on the ground perspective as well, not just the legal definition, but I thought it'd helpful to explain the framework, how they looked at in Vermont. Primary agricultural soils include soils that are rated by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service as being of prime statewide or local importance. The starting point when we look at is the soil good for ag, is these mapping that's been done by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. They've done very thorough mapping. It's quite accurate. Of course, nothing can be perfect as far as overlays on ground reality, but that's kind of the starting point in the analysis. Are these soils rated by USDA as being important farmers? To understand that rating, and anyone can look at this, there's kind of two main tools we use. One is the NRCS web soil survey. It's worth playing around with it. If have a minute, you can see where you live and how the soils are rated, the different soil map units as designated by NRCS. Then the other tool, which is pretty user friendly, is the ANR, Natural Resources Atlas, here in Vermont. One is kind of a federal tool created by NRCS, and one is our state tool, the ANR Atlas, but both use the same data, the NRCS data, so even the ANR Atlas is looking at the NRCS rankings of these soils. And there are three kinds of soils that are considered primary ag here in Vermont. Prime soils, which are the best of the best and the most finite of all. Statewide importance, which are still overall excellent soils, but they may have some limitations. They might be a little slopier or have a shallower depth of bedrock. They're still great for farming, but not quite as perfect as the prime. And then local importance. So, some regional, Some regions or municipalities have worked, I think, together with NRCS to designate soils that are maybe not otherwise called prime or statewide, but that are used for agriculture in their regions and have a proof of being good ag soils, can get a local designation. Those are also, under the law, considered a primary agricultural soil. The definition itself is in Title 10, it's NVSA 6,115, that's where this is defined. The other thing is that what if you have soils that are good for farming, but they're not rated by NRCS? There are some excellent commercially viable farms that maybe some, but not all of their soils they farmed are actually rated. The definition of primary ag soils also encompasses soils that are of agricultural importance due to agricultural use. If they've been used for farming in recent times, or they're actively being farmed, irrespective of the rating, the proof is kind of in the pudding. Right? So if they're good soil, they're good soil. So any active farmland or recent farmland can also be considered primary ag soil here in Vermont. Of course, there are many instances of areas where soil could be rated as being statewide or prime, but it might contain a parking lot. So how do we address that? There is a part of the definition saying the presumption is they meet the definition if they're mapped as such, unless the applicant provides evidence they've lost their agricultural potential due to a variety of factors, including the most obvious would be previously constructed improvements, like buildings or parking lots or gravel. Other factors could be more site specific or more nuanced, topographic barriers that make access almost impossible and can't be reasonably overcome, things like that. In our reviews, we kind of look at a practical sense, and if something is a narrow sliver that's less than 100 feet wide that no tractor could ever access and has been shoe worn by development on every side, a sliver in between buildings, maybe that does not meet the definition anymore. But the starting point is that the soils that are mapped do meet the definition, so that's kind of the presumption until someone proves otherwise. So that's what the primary ag soils are, and they they usually have an agricultural value group rating. One is the best of the best. This is an NRCS designation, so a natural resources conservation service. One is the best of the best. Two and three are also stellar prime soils, and all the way up to seven is still considered statewide or primary agricultural soil. Once you get to eight and above, it's considered usually MPSL, not prime statewide or locally important, as rated, but again, if it's being farmed, it could still be the definition. So that's kind of the Can you say that one more time? Absolutely, yeah. The numbers or the, yeah, so one, two, and three being the primest of primes, one being the best of the best, and then all the way up to seven, typically still being a primary agricultural soil, and then eight and above is usually NPSL, not prime statewide or locally important. But even at value 10, which is not a great soil, but it still could be, if it's being farmed, then we'd still consider it important. Of course there's beautiful, flat river bottom kind of valley land, which can be great for farming, but also can have flood risks, but we also have hill farms in Vermont. Know, there are farms that are farming pretty slopey land, pretty bad rocky land, it's amazing the ingenuity of farmers to grow food and raise animals in some complicated situations, so we like to recognize that even the soils that are NPS Dallas rated, in some cases, could still be important farmland if they have a history of being farmed and really producing crops or grazing animals. That's kind of the definition.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: How many acres in Vermont are primagulated?

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I'd be happy to get you that figure. I don't have it memorized, but we definitely could get that

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: to you. Thank you.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Happy to follow-up on that.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Hey, Ari. Can you give us an idea county by county who's got the most prime ag land based on the 14 counties, and how is it mapped? I know, not to drag the three acre rule into this conversation, but most of the research there was done by drones. And I think there's some issues with that. If you're way up and you look down, it really is not that clear what that is. So how much of that was done that way or actually walking the land?

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, as far as the county by county, I also don't have that memorized. I could definitely infer that Addison County has a lot of Great Apron primer ag land, Franklin County, Chittenden County, it's losing a lot of it, but actually has mapped, has some pretty great soils, like almost all South Burlington, Dorset Street area, that's a lot of big corridor of primer ag soils, for example. There are ag soils, every county has them. Was recently reviewing a project near Killington, and in some of the more mountainous regions, there still are pockets of mapped soils, maybe less abundant, but I'd be happy to get you the specific analysis by county. I have work with a GIS to get that data, so I don't know the exact rank of those references, some of the ones that have more, but every county has at least some primary ag soils, and as far as how the mapping is done, I don't do it myself, so I have to read off a little more on the NRCS methodology. I believe the majority of it is done in kind of more of an aerial or mapping. I don't think every single spec of soil had boots on the ground walking it because that would be a lot of time, but in our reviews, if it's ever complicated or we think, Oh, maybe this is a good soil and it's not mapped, vice versa, we always can do a site visit and the agency can walk the land and either say they're better or not as good as mapped based on the site specific analysis. So, The desktop review is a starting point, but there's always the opportunity for more of a actually walking the land and doing a test pit and looking at soil strata. Thanks. Yeah, thank you for that.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: How many acres a year do you think we're losing a prime ag land?

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Again, I'm sorry I don't have these specific numbers on front of me, but I'm eager to definitely get them for you. We are losing soils every year, I can tell you that. We also are mitigating impacts, so that's kind of the silver lining or the other side of this.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: We'll talk

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: that a little bit. Yeah, let me talk about the mitigation, because under Act two fifty at least, and of course, not all land in Vermont is subject to jurisdiction. There's non jurisdictional land, so it's not capturing everything, but at least for projects that are under Act two fifty jurisdiction, the agency, the statutory party under Act two fifty Criteria 9B, so when there is development that meets those triggers of Act two fifty, there's a number of triggers, but a common one would be construction improvements for a commercial purpose on a tract of either over one acre or over 10 acres, depending on what the town has permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws, or there's some nuances that the Land Use Review Board would be best to speak to, but if you have a jurisdictional tract of land, we are a statutory party of the Agency of Agriculture under that proceeding, so we review the, we work with developers and project consultants, engineers, and landowners to, we encourage them to reach out to us, either before they apply ideally, or once they have applied, if needed, to submit site plans and to determine how many acres are being impacted of these primary ag soils, or are certain soils making no longer meet the definition that already been impacted? And then, based on how many acres are being impacted, under Act two fifty-ninety, there's a section of the law, Title ten-six 93, it's the section, that's called Mitigation of Primary Agricultural Soils. And it's a pretty robust framework where, if you're doing jurisdictional development under two fifty, you need to mitigate at least double or up to triple as much as you impact. If you're outside of a designated area as defined in that section of statute, there are certain designations where you can be eligible for one to one mitigation ratio, or even no mitigation in certain scenarios, like for density plus affordability covenants, there's a few specific provisions like that, but overall, there are multipliers required by statute between two and three. Let's just say you're impacting five acres of primary agricultural soils, you might need to mitigate 10 acres. How does it mitigate? Great question. So, you mitigate either on-site, which means setting aside land on the project trapped for present and future agricultural use by permit condition issued by the commission, so it would be like, okay, I'm impacting five acres here, but I have 10 acres of equally good or better land here. I'll set that aside for present and future agricultural use by permit condition, so it can't be otherwise developed or used. You're just conserving land that you'd

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: want to conserve anyways, and we just didn't allow people to build on it to begin with.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: That's one way to look at it. In some cases, land that might otherwise be used for a project. There are tracts that are out of land that don't have room for on-site mitigation or that don't want to mitigate on-site because they want to save that land for future development. There are pros and cons to on-site mitigation, but it is a way to ensure that soils remain available for present and future ag use. The other kind of mitigation is off-site mitigation, which is typically a fee to the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, VHCB, which VHCB then leverages, along with other funds, sometimes federal matching funds, sometimes state or locally available funds. So, BHCB takes those funds, which again, already usually have a multiplier applied to the impact acreage, unless it's in a designated area where it's one to one. And then take those funds and leverage them with matching or other funds, and purchase conservation easements for permanent protection of agricultural soils in the same geographic region. So, it's not gonna be always on the same tract of land if they're using offset mitigation fee, but it is gonna be in the same region, and BHCb really conserves some excellent soils and large tracts of historically important or recently important farmland. So, that's kind of a dollar figure that's calculated using a recent cost of conservation per acre based on EHCV closings. So, offset mitigation is also a really important tool to mitigate farmland loss, it's, in many cases, depends, but some applicants actually prefer it, and others prefer on-site mitigation, depending on a variety of factors.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: But you're not taking suspicious land, only suspicious being that it's not probably, it's eleven, twelve. You're not putting ditches in or doing whatever to make that land less wet or more desirable. You're not actually taking secondary lands and trying to turn them into primary lands when you're talking about mitigation. You're just swapping lands out here or there. Are you asking whether the developer themselves would try

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: to make land better to make it suitable for mitigation, were there

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Or to make land You've got this field that's always been historically wet. A spring in the center of it or whatever. You're not going into those and diverting that. The only reason it's wet is because there's a spring there. You're not going in there and diverting that water so that it could become climatic soils again or be able to get on there. You're not mitigating it. You're not taking land that is less desirable and making it better by doing some type of ditching or switching or something.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Right. That's an interesting question. I mean, that's certainly making land better for agriculture is always encouraged, assuming it aligns with the required agricultural practices, but that's not really the framework for mitigation under the statute. So it's encouraged, but wouldn't count toward your mitigation acreage unless it otherwise was kind of mapped as being statewide or prime or acts of

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: that use

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: soil. That would be a policy of change, but not necessarily typically done in the framework.

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: It's what I've seen from this. Say you had a farmer that had 30 acres and he's trying to develop it, or let's take less, say 10, and it's ideally right at the edge of town. Yeah. And And it had to activate two fifty for, act two fifty for any

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: of this to come into play, and

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: it does, but he doesn't have any land to mitigate. Right. Is there any way that they can work around that? Because it's been in the family farm, they've decided that finally we're not farming it anymore, is prime ag, but this is the way the town's moving, this is the ideal, it makes sense all, you know, after all the studies that this is the way we're gonna go. But now you get hung up in the ACT two fifty wells, geez, you've got this 10 acres, but either you only fell a little bit of it, but the town wants all of it because that's the right thing to do to expand the town. Is there ways around that? Or is it set in stone and you're locked in that, oh, you can't get the compensation plan.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Right. Or can they pay? So that's exactly, so that's, thanks for the question. So that's where, if someone has, either does not have enough land for mitigation, or they do have the land, but want to use it for housing, or a business, or some other land use, that's where an offset mitigation fee to VHCb might come into play, depending on the facts. We also have a de minimis threshold, so if you're really just only impacting, let's say, half an acre, that might fall below the de minimis threshold, so it's not like every speck of soil, we're requiring a big onset mitigation area. There's kind of a practical approach after you develop something, with the multipliers, less than two acres of mitigation is calculated, we consider that de minimis, and we still might require mitigation in a future time once you've reached that threshold, but might defer it to not wind up with a lot of tiny mitigation areas, you want viable mitigation land. But, yeah, in some scenarios, that's where a developer or a landowner may propose an offset mitigation fee to VHCV to mitigate that impact, if it's jurisdictional. The other thing is that there are areas that are non jurisdictional or certain types of projects that don't even require jurisdiction, so. Well, what happens in

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: this case is you may have, like, a traditional farmer who's been in it for years, and they feel that's extortionate because it's like, I worked this land for the last thirty years, right? I bought it, and now I want, I paid taxes on it, and now I wanna do what I planned on, and the only way I could do this, it, it, it, it put it out there that a lot of farmers, a lot of landowners go, it almost feels like extortion that Act 50 holds us over our head that if we can't have other lands, and I don't know what we can do about it, that's really not right in your department, but I wanted to

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: just say that. I appreciate the concern. Yeah. Definitely balancing a lot of factors, so it is complex. I appreciate all the work farmers do to keep the soils excellent, thank you. So, that's kind of the general framework as far as onset mitigation, offset mitigation fees, which are used by ZHCB, and they've conserved a lot of incredible farms throughout Vermont, every district of activity with those funds, and then we have the section two forty eight side of things, solar development that meets certain thresholds, and under section two forty eight, we have some colleagues as well in the room with a lot of knowledge there, but there's kind of two main strategies used. One is reclamation, so there's a whole suite of permit conditions that are recommended or requires a condition of a certificate of public good for solar projects that meet the Section two forty eight threshold criteria, so requiring not reducing, sorry, not increasing the bulk density of the soil unduly, making sure you avoid an adverse, avoiding an undue adverse impact by not compacting the soil too much, so requiring pre and post disturbance soil testing to avoid that compaction outcome, because compaction can really do a number on soils, conditions about how the machinery goes on the site, and how trees are grubbed, just a whole suite of recommended permit conditions to address putting it back the way you found it. So, yes, the land will be used for solar for a certain period of time, but ultimately, under the law, those soils, once the site is decommissioned, are still considered to be primary agricultural soils, so making sure that, put it back the way you found it, for lack of a better phrase. And then there are some types of impacts that can be associated with Section two forty eight that may be permanent, especially if it's a transmission station or a building that's being put down on the ground with a foundation that might not be decommissioned. Temporary impacts can be reclaimed, at least in an ideal world, be primary soil skin. The permanent impacts, the Section two forty eight team has been recommending offset mitigation fees to the HCPs in that context as well, so kind of a similar framework to the Act two fifty mitigation under criteria that I described, where the multipliers are applied between two and three, so we're actually conserving more land than we lose, at least in an ideal world, as far as the jurisdictional projects, and multiplying that by the recent cost breaker in that region. Those are under Section two forty, again, reclamation, putting it back how you found it, a lot of nuances and technical aspects there, paying a fee if it's not temporary, and then ultimately, at least for the solar panels themselves, the decommissioning rule requiring these soils, in a legal sense, become prime react soils again once it's all complete.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ari, in a similar vein, I have that same word in my brain when you asked your question about, in essence, I guess if you make it as simple as paying the blue, I mean, it's the same sort of principle. And in terms of, for instance, the Vermont State Fair in Rutland, again, I keep going back to this three acre rule, but they're surrounded by very challenging mitigating circumstances. They have a road. They have a state road at one end. They have a railroad at the other end, and they have privately owned land on the other two sides. In order for them to come into compliance, they could pay. They could pay a fee. I call it a fine or a penalty or however you want to phrase it. I asked this of Peter Sterling earlier. I'm just curious whether your agency has any idea of panels, solar panels that have been on prime ag land for and they keep saying that the life of the panel is above 25. So okay. Saying there's been something there twenty six years. How much of that land has been returned to prime ag by taking the panel off and taking it away and reintroducing methods to to use it for farmland again? Do you have any idea about how much acreage we're talking about?

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I don't have a specific figure. We certainly could get that for you. It hasn't happened.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Would wanna say

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I would bet a zero. To be fair, this whole topic of solar is, in the scheme of human history, relatively new, so do think we're somewhat trailblazing here in that we are hopeful that it all will be returned to a disturbance PAS, primary ag soil state. In reality, not all of it has yet, so I guess there is a question mark in the future, but we hope that at least these legal protections provide durable protections to make sure that we don't totally lose these soils in the future, and that they're treated as ag soils in future proceedings, but yeah, it's not easy, and you end balancing a lot of different interests, know, kind of landowner rights and private property rights with the importance of these soils and then farmer viability and renewable energy and business interests, so it's a lot of different

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: balancing act, yeah. And to

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: the Chair's point earlier, and he'd been repetitive of this, which I appreciate, this committee is concerned with farmers, farming, and not politics to the greatest extent possible. But I think we all see a difference between putting a solar panel up on that hill there, and that's not disturbing any primag land that I'm aware of. Right. I mean, I don't know. It's 20%, and it's rocky. Right. And it's hilly, and it's tough to do versus a complete flat land that It's all good. Will better. Anyway, I make that distinction because I think there is a difference between if there's a panel up there, I don't care if it stays there for the rest of its life, I guess. Right. Although I'm still I'm not convinced that they don't leak or leach or there's some sort of negative environmental impact at some point if it's twenty six, twenty seven, now it's thirty years. Or maybe they should comply with

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: a three acre well. Yeah,

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I don't know. I just wanted to make that point. We're concerned in here with farming. Yes. And not necessarily other aspects.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Farmed land that is being taken for other uses other than growing food or what have you in perpetuity. Happens when, What okay, well I get it. It's only, again, repetitive, but I'm okay with repetitive to make it be. But, yeah, I mean, if we start, oh, well, we're only losing this amount of land every year. Well, there comes a time when there's no more land. Right. Right. It's done.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yeah, that's

[Peter Sterling (Executive Director, Renewable Energy Vermont)]: good And

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: who is it, who is it, gave us responsibility for three hundred years ahead of time for us to make that decision? Yeah, that's

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: a fair concern, Wayne and I share your concern for the soils and the farmland, and I agree they're not making any more. It's a finite resource, so I think it underscores the importance of this conversation. There are certain preferred sites, or kind of preferable sightings, and at the same time, a bit of ladder land that's already cleared has fewer costs and barriers to being used, can require cutting down fewer trees, so it's a balancing act, but I think it's a valid point, yeah. Okay.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Anybody else? Committee. Yes,

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: sir, if I may. Alex Topolis with the Agency of Agriculture. These projects must be decommissioned except in the case of something that's permanent and is not even proposed to be decommissioned or doesn't have to be decommissioned like a substation. So it will be decommissioned, and there is bankruptcy remote money to do that. So if a company goes bankrupt, the PUC can reach in, public utility can reach in and grab the money to decommission How

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: many have happened, sir? Say again? How many have been decommissioned?

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: There are almost no examples I've been able to find. We're tracking a case now in California that's being decommissioned.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Right. And Vermont really is what we've

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: agreed to. Yeah. Well, it's the same construction. It's the same kind of posts, same kind of thing. So yeah, it's an open question, and I look at those decommissioning estimates, and I'm not exactly sure how to evaluate them. That's a good question for the Department of Public Service who really bird dog those things, and what that letter of credit or whatever it's be, what that looks like. So they're pretty they watch that pretty carefully. It'd be good to talk with them.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Yep. I'm not sure I understand exactly. It sounds like a legal term decommissioning. I don't know what exactly that means.

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Well, Ari said reclamation, so everything gotta come out. It gotta all go back the way it was. The metal- In the greatest degree practicable, I think, is the- Well,

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: I'm sure that's what we use, because we always use it.

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: We like practical.

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: I can't remember what you're trying to say.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: But there's cement foundations in there, I think, for some of the panels, and then these metal now.

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: Yeah. It's all driven posts. They're like guardrails, but smaller. Okay. Picture a guardrail post. Pound them in. And the only concrete might be for a small on-site substation for almost like a it's a it's it's like electric conversion before you actually send it to the grid. Most of the time, a lot of these projects, what I'm seeing, and again, we review it to make sure that we think it can be decommissioned. So a lot of time, what I'm seeing is actually, again, hosts with that electrical conversion equipment on the posts. Sometimes a bigger project, they'll have a kind of on-site substation. Roads, gravel with geotextile underneath, you know, again, we are trying to ensure that whatever is altered there can come out. Gravel comes out, geotextile comes out, soil goes back down, stockpiles of soil separated by a layer. Layers have to go back in the same order they were originally. Okay.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Are there other guardrails or requirements? So Peter seemed to, and I don't mean to put words in his mouth or mischaracterize what he said, that when the panels come out, they're just stored like in a barn or a building somewhere,

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: but I I'm not sure that so when

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: you say decommission, does that mean only then it comes off that land, but we don't really care about what happens to the panels afterward?

[Alex Topolis (Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: No. The decommissioning when you read the decommissioning document, it always says stuff has to be disposed of in accordance with the law. So whatever that means, I don't know. Again, it'd be a good question for the Department of Public Service to say and we've had discussions with Renewable Energy Vermont and other stakeholders about panel recycling. So, again, still pretty new. Panels are getting recycled. They are. Yes. Okay. It's it there's enough projects out there that are that old. I have not found the decommissioning budgets or numbers and actual figures, but there are old enough panels out there that their recycling thing has started.

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: Have had. Sounds good to know. We've had that actually. Think about it. We've had a small sack and food scrap Oh, okay. Yeah. Now we just compact them, send

[Sen. Robert Plunkett (Member)]: them down, they recycle them. You just kind

[Sen. Brian Collamore (Member)]: of chew them up and Yeah. Okay.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thanks. Well, good. Anyone else? We're good? Yeah. Pretty good? Yep. I want thank everyone, especially the committee, for digging into this. I'm sure we're gonna have some more thoughts and some ideas and some more questions. And as we move forward, if they see which direction we're going and can offer us any assistance, we're very much with that. We just wanna make sure that we have no proposed language of anything that we're trying to do. We're just looking at the aspects of how much land do we have? It's pragmatic land. How much are we losing in a year? And when does it run out? And that's kind of where this discussion is headed in that vein, and that's where we're at. Thank you. Victor Mays got any other thoughts on that? Nope. Okay. Well Thanks for

[Ari Rockland Miller (Senior Agricultural Development Coordinator, VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets)]: your time. Great question. I appreciate your concerns you raised in exploration, so thank you, Charlie.

[Sen. Russ Ingalls (Chair)]: Thanks, Robert. Thank you all, and unless committee's got anything else, then do well.