Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Here?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I got a little cold.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Oh, no. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: So it goes. Relax.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Well, I I think we've got an actual schedule.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Oh, no.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, good morning. This is Southern Natural Resources and Energy, and it is Wednesday, January 14. And we are going to start the morning off with some conversations with some state folks. You can feel free to come join us. Thinking about impacts that Vermont is feeling from federal actions. So if there's any updates about that, and

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: we have Eric for this, welcome.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yes, for the record, I'm Eric Warren, I'm the Director of Vermont Emergency Management, so thanks for letting me invite. I do have some prepared statements, and then hopefully you can try to answer some questions. You'll see that from my statements that I don't necessarily have a lot of answers, so I think we'll still work through. Good morning, so FEMA has not canceled or denied a grant filing but is using delayed actions. Because of these delays the EMS had forced owner to cancel business travel, curtail or cancel training from exercise, and quickly to purchase the phone holdings. These delayed taxes include defendant's spend which requires all grants over $100,000 to be approved by Secretary Novaky, adding additional requirements that were not in the original application and sometimes just letting approval sit on their desk. A period of time, the current budget consists of roughly 37% EMPG funding, is about 37% of the EM's budget. The whole land security grant, HSG grant, about 11%. The mitigation funding and PA funding which are direct results of specific disasters are 1613% respectively. And then general funds, our general fund bucket is about 23% of our overall budget. So all of these delays are having significant impact on how we do business are affecting what we can, can, provide to municipalities and other state agents. So I want to get into a little bit of each one of those funding sources. So EMVG, the Emergency Management Performance Grant, that's our big grant, it was supposed to be delivered on October 1, so it has been delayed. Basically there's some lawsuits that have come into play that are delaying when the application is submitted. So there's several lawsuits that are delaying until January 31, even after the application is submitted we anticipate there will be additional holds put on some additional roadblocks. Due to this delay, the EM has put on hold contracts with regional planning commissions to provide direct emergency management support to tenants. For example, supporting the regional emergency management committees, that's a meeting of local emergency management directors that we held quarterly where RBCs will do that for us, we've had to put that on hold. Due to cost saving measures that we put in place, we are currently able to use the remains of previous grants to pay more expenses while we wait for this 2025 funding, but that funding runs out in mid February. Another funding source, the Homeland Security Grant Program was supposed to also be delivered on October 1, but it's been delayed with several lawsuits. The new obligation deadline is the thirty first, but we knew there's several additional holes to be put on after that, so we're not entirely sure what we're delivering. Again due to some cost cutting measures we put in place, current HSGB funding kind of will get us through till October. Public assistance which is the funds received for municipalities after disaster, we are not seeing fundamental slowdown in those funds being paid directly to towns for those reimbursements. What we are seeing is the delay in management costs, So the basic management cost portion of that is being slowed down by the $100,000 bottleneck. So anything over a 100,000 has to be signed by secretary Newman directly. So we actually haven't seen anything over a 100,000 since September.

[Speaker 0]: I think over a 100,000. And

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: most of those PA funds are higher, usual expenses for that specific it's over a 100,000. We may need to implement some excess funds and new bursaries to hold us over. Again, not cancelled but being moved. BRIC, BRIC, which is the Building of Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, that was cancelled in April 2025, but then a court order declared that that termination was void. So that order requires students to continue the 2023 grant funding and the release of the 2024 funding, but we have not heard anything from FEMA on that implementation of that order. So BEM applied for scoping under '23 and you're planning to apply for '24, again it's kind of been a whole pattern. For what's called SWIFRM, which is mitigation assistance, we submitted an application in early twenty twenty five for roughly $10,000,000 mostly for bios of individuals affected by the twenty twenty four flood. This program remains under review by FEMA and currently nothing is being moved from that, so we cannot confirm whether or not we are going to get into the next section of the FX16 properties that we will submit applications for. Mitigation funding already awarded by us, so already awarded before change administrations, but in our mood we are seeing those fundings we had about 61 net flows and then we are seeing now an additional 92 properties that we had to resubmit due to some change to their cost effective in bedrooms. We submitted those back in July and have not heard anything on those, so those are sitting as drawn. So, supposedly nothing has been canceled, but money is not being received in a timely manner and this delay is adversely affecting how we can support the state municipalities. So it's kind of a waiting hold pattern right now. They're not denying and or canceling, which would allow us to appeal and have a due process, but they are not also sending us some of the funding so we can earn a whole path.

[Speaker 0]: In a way, if the money had been canceled, you could pursue that with a suit, but that's not really not an option since it hasn't been used.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: So not necessarily a suit, if there is a denial there's an appeal process. So for example for the twenty twenty five flooding that happened in some, we requested a major disaster declaration that was denied, we have appealed in for that, it's a very sad process. What we're seeing that is our appeal is now sitting like me, the denial, we have a certain amount of time to submit the appeal, they don't necessarily have a requisite amount of time to address our appeal. So that is also sitting and waiting on the lawsuit side, for example, we're, I don't know, roughly I think for the six months of 20 lawsuits as it relates to this, but what we're seeing is the application for some of these grants came out last July. We applied, we were supposed to receive the money in October. What the administration attempted to do is change the requirements of the application that we entered filed for. So for example, they changed the period of performance from three years to one year. They changed the requirements or they added a requirement for states to conduct their own census to decide how many individuals in the state minus how many were removed due to the legal immigration status, we see the genetic acid. So those are the things that processes fall off and we have several of those. Those two specifically are the ones that were just resolved in our favor, so that language is being taken out. That is why the theoretical application will be posted again at the January for Russell Middle, because those two things were the things that were holding us up. What I can't define is whether there'll be something else or some of the next burdens across, so we're not holding that.

[Speaker 0]: You mentioned also briefly that you might need to do some excess receipts. And so depending on how things play out, it sounds like there's a potential, there's some important deadlines coming up, you know, or anticipations, right? There's money that you hope to see in January, something else is running out in February, then there's one in October. So depending on how that plays out, we may have some rolling IRRs. Yes,

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: the issue right now, the metaphor is the balls in the air, all the balls are in the air, so we can't adjust one way or other. Once one hits the ground we can go one way or the other and try to compensate whatever that mechanism may be, but right now we don't know specifically what the results are going to be at any one of these branch. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So there's different buckets, right? There's the in some broad strokes, there's a part about buyouts and individuals, you got that stream, the that has to go with your ability to function and managing the money for the LTC, especially their part of the job. How much money are

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: we talking about now? The one for our budget, the EMTG, the emergency management performance grants, about 2,700,000.0

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: that has been, that's like, you're getting along to a February without it. We're getting money. You're sort of using other money to get a loan to

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: a bank. Yeah so then what has happened in the past is every year you get each grant by so we have a little bit left in '24 because we were not buying any computers and we're pulling off on travel. So we have some residual on that. That small amount will get us to mid February. So I don't have

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: the money. That's the time for me.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah. So after that point, several potentials ranging from layoffs to reducing services to the whole campus. One is roughly, like I said, you know, 38 percent of our budget. Of that, throwing a lot of numbers, but of that 2,700,000, 1.5 of it's personnel. And then the next big thing is RPCs and then the contractor we have with them for direct support and then you get into specific technologies that are used for disaster management, and then you get into telephones and gas and small incremental traces like that at the 2.7. So cutting costs, making sure that we're spending only what we desperately need to spend to keep the lights on, it's kind of as we creep toward that February, you know, when it was supposed to kind of knock over first, we started to think about implementation, now those two days are getting closer and closer and closer. So what our next steps are, we can't pull anything specific because we don't know what the algorithm is doing. So we can't dodge left, can't dodge right, we're kind of at least enough holding pattern, is a bit problematic. But we have implemented, we're not doing any of those instructional trainings on hold, we've reviewed some of our exercises and we're not buying new computers that are up on the station capacity, our vehicles that we use to go out to go sit towns to support them. All of those things are on hold to stretch it as long as we can to make sure that we don't have to any bigger consequences.

[Speaker 0]: Well, and to speak to those consequences, so maybe know, if money doesn't materialize, we do some ERRs in the meanwhile, and then we get to next year, let's say, money hasn't materialized. Maybe one possibility is finding money from other sources, but in the absence of that, you know, you're talking about layoffs, cutting services, that means disaster happens and potentially your team is not fully capable to help out potentially.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah, absolutely, so we always think of those two, we have two jobs, right? We have a BEM during Blue Sky days, we're creating plans, we're training more exercises, we're preparing for and also regarding from past instances. But in the response phase, we put on a different app, we go into emergency operations and find staff, there's only 30 miles, are the first occupants into the emergency operations center to stand up and support state agencies and municipalities during twenty three, twenty four, twenty five floods. We are actually doing it a lot more often. We are slammed sometimes just for logistic measures or picking up the flips that we had on large events, so we do a lot of events that kind of slide under the radar as well, but those events take the time of that individual that is already working forty hours under BDMs have, so if we did lose any personalities and directs impact to the ability of the SDLC to manage its capabilities, and then as you put tertiary effects here, you can't update your plans to be ready for the next one, can't make changes from your last events to be sure you're ready for the next one. We have things to make sure our emergency operations center is running and ready to turn on all lights at a month's notice, making sure that we have the ability through our modeler to alert citizens and our staffs and things that are happening. So all of it has a cascading effect. We're certainly out of position where we have, you know, fat on getting a certain big trend that's maybe kind of stretched out, Like I'm sure our agency has done. Right.

[Speaker 0]: Gotcha. Yeah.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: It's so nice to see you.

[Speaker 0]: We did get you a couple more positions a couple of

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: years ago. We're three additional regional coordinators.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Two of them are funded totally by Travis' bodies. One was

[Speaker 0]: Oh really, okay.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: So the 31 staff that are the director, the deputy director, those two regional coordinators, three other grants are always funded by general public. The rest are all funded by grant funding.

[Speaker 0]: Wow, so there's a lot of staff. I

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: mean, at various levels.

[Speaker 0]: And what about funding for things like the urban search and rescue? Fought hard to get some

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: more work That with is out of the Department of Pirates AAT from our sister division. Okay. But yes, they did get some funding last year, which was great. I think it was about half their annual budget, so they have a significant impact by general fund or by grant funding as well. Homeland security is where they get a lot of funding for, and then tertiary to that, like special teams at VSP, the Vermont Information Center, they all use a significant amount of grant. Yeah. So, again, everyone's at different levels as to what it's gonna cause them.

[Speaker 0]: So So I can understand. Two years ago when we did that major bill and you lived in my committee room over there, we gave you a lot of new duties, most of them planning. So I'm assuming that's the kind of thing that is put on hold when this federal money is.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yes, planning, know, for example, something that's working right now is legislation on South Adams safety. So all of those things we have to prioritize, know, tree up really is what we have to do. What's the most important to do with the capabilities that we have right now. And then that always put on hold if there's a flood.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Yeah, I was going say,

[Speaker 0]: and if there's a flood next year again, does this stuff potentially prevent you from having

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: the kind of response we might need? Absolutely does.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Because the EMGT funding supports the emergency operations center personnel, they're training the ability for us to turn on our lights based on our office space that houses the emergency operations center space, there's direct ramifications. You know, I don't want to be the doomsday, pardon me, that's the part of the job, but the expectation is that EMPG 25 will come through at some point, but to explain what that means, EMPG 25 has been level funded, EMPG has been level funded for ten years, So the cost curve obviously are going down. So every year we have to have an exercise where something gets cut that we funded before. So we try to move it to a different grant, we try to move it to general funds, we try to make sure that we keep the cap on NPG just because of the actual limit of it, but there's also the idea that you never know the next year is fun, you could go away.

[Speaker 0]: Well, is important that we

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: are informed as to where we're at so that we can be vigilant to see how we can be supporting them all. Thanks

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: for coming in.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. Rosette and Brett

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: have written testimony before us. Thank

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: you very much.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Thank you.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Hopefully I'll be able to give you an update in February as to where it can be.

[Speaker 0]: That'd be great. If you could send us an email as to how it all plays out, that'd be great.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Right, so I don't think we have anybody from the rest of this set here with us yet, so we're gonna unless

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: I could be wrong. We're

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Anne Gray.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Oh, hi, Anne Gray. Welcome. Yes,

[Speaker 0]: please. We might as well switch this. Yeah, because I mean, you're just sending a I guess she's

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: It's wonderful. Welcome.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: I'm sorry.

[Speaker 0]: It was good to meet you. Go ahead and go right in.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Yeah, for the record,

[Speaker 0]: my name is Miranda Bray.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: I'm the Deputy Commissioner of

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: the Economic Services Division. We've

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: sat before some of you before. And the Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program does stick within economic services,

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: as do other benefits programs. And you just supplied a letter last week. I think we have

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: a bit better news than previous, just in terms of our funding did come in. It was a bit delayed. I think there was a fair amount of attention about that. Sorry, I missed that. Do have Richard Gates, the field director,

[Speaker 0]: online with me as well in

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: case he has some questions. But we did receive our block grant.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: It was maybe closer than we've had in past years to the date

[Speaker 0]: when we roll out benefits, but

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: we were able to send the monitors their fuel benefit on time. There was no delay there.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: We received 90% of the benefit,

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: which is normal. We usually receive 90% in November,

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: and then we'll get the additional 10% in April. We have no reason to believe right now that we won't be receiving that additional 10%

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: just because we know that funding for this program was in both the House and Senate budget federally. So we're feeling confident that Vermontchers will be all set for this year. Yeah, it was our slipper lining to everything that we were navigating and another snack. But

[Speaker 0]: myGeek was for a while really, really questionable whether you were going to get it.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: And

[Speaker 0]: I know there was a big push at the federal level to save the program.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Yes. And if you think, yes, the administration perhaps didn't have that in their budget. And I guess that has happened in the past for sure to be able to speak to that more. But we weren't as nervous about this just because we did

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: see it in both budgets.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: And so we felt pretty confident that we were going to

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: see that. You're right, for

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: a little bit, we were just cautious.

[Speaker 0]: Right, that is great news. Yeah, so in this, the season that you're talking about is like eating season, right? So 90 now, 10% in April, and then that process will start again for the following years?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Yeah, it's a federal fiscal year, and

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: it is leading to most of our, eating homes with

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: the exception of wood, due to a summer benefit for wood, is getting that to people. So, it is just a high level of yes, if it is normal at this time. Here. We've done some studies then. Okay, that is a great relief. Great. Any other questions?

[Speaker 0]: Okay, super. Well, you so much. Oh my goodness,

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: I'm proud of you, That's really good.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Just a very good thing. What are we not? It's the only news, or do you have another?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: That was all that I was in

[Speaker 0]: the program. She took lots of

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: other programming, so this is the only one

[Speaker 0]: that's I have lots of questions about other things.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Yeah, yeah. And

[Speaker 0]: at some point, I'd love to chat more generally about my heat and how we can be, you know, helping people transition to more cheaper and sustainable heating solutions. That may be a foundation for another.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: No, wouldn't be happy to have it.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: I'm so appreciative of your symptoms. Thank you so much.

[Speaker 0]: Wonderful. Thank you. Stephen, thanks for being here.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Of course. Thank you for

[Speaker 0]: being here too, Mr. Giddings.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Thank you both, bye.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, great. So we're anticipating that we may have our next witness at 09:30. We're a little ahead of schedule, so we are going to take a break until 09:30.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Oh, it is? I just turned off.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, okay. All right. Right. Good morning. This is Center for Resources Energy coming back from a normal break. If you need a minute, it is okay.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I'm just reading out notes. I should be set as soon as I'm on.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, super. And just to remind everybody, we are going through looking at how actions from the federal government have impacted state of Vermont, particularly areas under our jurisdiction. So, morning, thank you for having me. So for the record, Julie Warren, I'm

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: the Secretary of Natural Resources and thought that I could touch on a couple of different pieces, sort of our core federal funding, the couple places where we have seen clawbacks from the federal government that affect our work, although not necessarily the core work of the agency, And then just sort of a little bit of what we see as the challenges looking forward. So in terms of our core funding, it remains relatively stable and that appears likely to continue into federal fiscal twenty six. There's that federal minibus that's advancing right now that includes EPA and interior appropriations, which is where most of the major federal funding streams into ANR come from, whether that's EPA, US Fish and Wildlife Service, or US Forest Service. That many of us did pass the house with a high level of support and at least the Senate markups we've seen thus far look pretty similar, meaning that it would be limited changes in comp. So sort of a good news story. I think the asterisk on that is how the Office of Management and Budget has asserted their role in the federal budget process. I think suggesting the budget passed by Congress is a ceiling as opposed to a directive. So clearly that's been their assertion essentially is they can't go beyond what Congress appropriated. But they need it. And they don't need the resources. So that's something we will be watching carefully once final action is staged. Included in that is DEC standard SAG grant, which is the state and tribal assistance grant. And that's sort of the base funding EPA provides in partnership for our work on things like Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water FPR receives federal funding, but a significant component of their funding is actually multi year competitive grants. I would say that's a space that bears watching. US Forest Service, along with NRCS have been hit very hard by some of the federal staffing cuts. And so their ability to continue to move dollars through competitive grant programs is at least somewhat of a question mark right now. Fish and wildlife monies are restricted. The federal funding we get is generated through excise taxes on the sales of hunting and fishing and sporting goods, and is in sort of a held and separate account and makes it much harder for anyone to mess with, and therefore feels like it's less at risk. Couple other notes, just what we're seeing in that minibus, the state revolving funds for both wastewater and drinking water projects. Those appropriations look to be level funded. That said, we are fully anticipating that congressionally directed spending will come back into play as part of the minibus should it pass. And what that has the practical effect of doing is reducing our state revolving fund awards. We prioritize our investments through the intended use plan that I expect you've heard Neil Camden and maybe Eric will have to speak about previously. It means we work further down that list and instead congressional priorities get pulled out and bumped to the top. So it's a little bit challenging therefore for us to kind of manage municipal expectations since it's outside of our process. Generally it ends up being about half of our SRF dollars are used to fund congressionally directed awards. The Lake Champlain Basin program also is currently receiving significant funding under the bipartisan infrastructure law, as well as plus up Senator Leahy of that help with TMDL implementation and their $25,000,000 budget also appears full in many of us, which is good news for us. And about half of those resources in general flow to the state of Vermont. The other thing I would flag in the minibus is EPA itself looks like it may be seeing some substantial reductions in staffing and funding. So again, it's both having the dollars available and then having the human capacity to actually deploy those dollars and certainly have concerns about our federal partners capacity in that latter regard. I can pause there before getting into a couple of the specific initiatives that have been impacted on the federal front. If there are questions.

[Speaker 0]: I do have a couple of questions, but if others have some.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Go for it. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: One of the things that you mentioned was FPRs, competitive grants, and this is another one the areas, I just want make sure that I'm clear, so I'm just saying it back to make sure I'm Because there have been staff, because the federal level, that's one of the areas where the money hasn't dried up, but again, like moving the money to the state may be delayed. Is that correct? Potentially delayed. And sorry.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Oh, I was just going to say, it may be that there are areas of emphasis change. We have been very successful over the past administration in securing substantial competitive grants, like way sort of outside what our grateful share would be. And just have some concerns that depending on the administration's priorities, may not line up as well with our work. But you have a

[Speaker 0]: sense of with the current brand that we're operating under, how long, it's multi year, so when does that go?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Most of them are three to five years and so they intentionally, I think, designed to sort of overlap so that you were never fully without funding. Commissioner Fitzpatrick could talk much more about the specific initiatives.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: But for example, there was

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: a grant we were expecting over the summer of next year and it didn't actually arrive until, well, the very end of this fiscal year. So there's just, there's a delay built into the system now that hadn't been met before, then just this uncertainty.

[Speaker 0]: Did I understand too that there's multiple and they're meant to overlap, so your deck was out funding?

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Correct.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: And that's how the US Forest Service tends to deploy, or has tended to deploy their money over about the last five years, is they reduced sort of the core base appropriation to most states, but then are doing these larger competitive grants.

[Speaker 0]: And then the other question I have is maybe, I may hold back on this question till the end, but just to pin it for now, because we're talking about the money aspect of it, but I have, we've all seen the news about policy rollbacks or policy shifts that the EPA is rolling out. And so I'd love to chat about that too. Sure. Okay. Maybe some of that. Any other questions? Yes. Go back. You might be getting to this, but given the uncertainty, the possibility or actuality of cuts, are one, are you losing staff? Because I'm assuming

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: you have federally funded staff. We do. Yeah, that's Okay.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: And then two, what are the things that your agency is not able to do because of all of this?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So, so far we are level service. We haven't had to reduce staff. Most positions within the agency are funded with a mix of state, federal and special funds. Okay. And so we have a little bit of ability to shift. I think in 2025, the federal fiscal '25, we received what I would refer to as a haircut, like a couple percent off of the staggering 30 PA, and we're able to sort of make that work. If it continues to be incremental bites or if it's a much bigger bite, that becomes a different story. But because we use that mix of funding, it's helped us sort of to move over some of the rough spots. We do have a bunch of folks that are limited service positions working on implementation of the Bipartisan infrastructure law who are fully federally funded. That said, have drawn down all of those funds. Are now sitting in our account and ready for us to deploy the projects, and so should be at risk for new administration. Oh, that's good. Yeah, and that's part of the reason we have worked with the legislature two years ago to sort of set aside all of the federal match. It allowed us as soon as the government reopened in federal fiscal twenty six to pull down that Los Trump's funding, as opposed to our standard practice, which would be have asked you guys to appropriate it this year. And then we would pull it down before September 30. So having put that money in a reserve fund really, I would say paid dividends in terms of reducing our risk. Sounds great to hear. Yeah, it was. It felt really good to pull that one. Yes,

[Speaker 0]: for sure. Okay, any other questions?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: No, you must. Okay,

[Speaker 0]: Can you remind me us what is that? What are some of those projects that

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: you put that money is paying for? So the vibration and insertion level just increases generally in the amount we have available for long super clean water and drinking water SRF program. It was the money we provide them to do the lead service line inventories for every public water system in the state of Vermont and then supports lead service line replacement where they are located. It's also allowed us to do work around emerging contaminants, including PFAS and help provide some of the cost share on the alum treatments that we complete in Lake Carmine Lake Warren over the last two months. So it's been an incredible boom. It's on the order of $300,000,000,000 during this five year window that we're seeing into those programs. And so it's just been this pretty dramatic acceleration of our work

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: in that space. It's great.

[Speaker 0]: So

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: then I want to touch on the two probably sort of highest profile changes or challenges that we are currently facing. One is with the Regional Conservation Partnership Program or RCPP. This is a competitive grant program run by the U. Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Conservation Service. Vermont's been very successful in the RCPP program. It essentially allows us to apply for funding to either accelerate work around farming and forestry or promote novel practices around farming and forestry. Both ANR and the agency of agriculture have successfully obtained RCPP funding over the course of about the last ten to twelve years. We had a late twenty twenty four award worth $10,700,000 and we signed a contract with RCS. So this is our most recent RCPP, and it was terminated without notice on September 30. As I noted, this was fun projects to assist farm and forest landowners with water quality improvements, resilience to flood from droughts, and protecting wildlife habitat. We believe USDA lacks the basis for being able to terminate the grant and filed an appeal on October 30. We have thirty days to do that. Just last week on January 6, we did receive notice of a pre hearing that's been scheduled for January 29. And the pre hearing will address the basis for USDA's rescission decision, the grounds for our appeal, and then what the process would look like. So more to come on that space, but that is an important pool of funding that we use for our clean water work in Lake Chamfretting.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Can I ask any other questions?

[Speaker 0]: Okay. You had a question.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: How much money are you talking about?

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: $10,700,000 And

[Speaker 0]: you mentioned that this money or a program that the state has participated in the last ten to twelve years, that 10,700,000.0, was that just one year's allocation or was that It's about five. This funding is supposed

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: to be available for five years. So we were about six months in to our work. And that's one of the questions we had regarding the termination. It was cited as a failure to send the funds, even though we have the bulk of the timeline of the grant program pertaining to us to deploy those dollars. So they did not try to claw back anything we had extended already, but just essentially said no further work can continue. And it had been paused before then. We really hadn't done a lot other than setting up the systems within ANR, readying ourselves and an RFP to deploy those. Were there any, I guess

[Speaker 0]: they'd call them liabilities to the state of money that has been spent and now can't be reimbursed because that money's gone?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: No, effectively paused it very early after the contract was signed and asked us to not spend money on practices or directed us not to spend money on practices so that doesn't exist. That was a problem previously where many NRCS programs are on a cash reimbursement basis and farmers, even in some of these clauses in programs were then left out of pocket money they had spent on projects they had contracted with NRCS to complete, but then weren't able to receive reimbursement. So some

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: of the farmers may be out.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I think that has since been cleaned up. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. That kind of financial uncertainty is I think a huge risk to our larger work in getting partners to participate in some of these programs. So even though the funding exists, I think there will continue to be questions about people's interest in participating.

[Speaker 0]: Go ahead, you can give some of answers.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Okay. The second initiative I wanted to flag was the Eco AmeriCorps program. So following the new administration taking office, they terminated federal support for the twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five program. Generally our programs run September 1 to August 31, although we don't have board members necessarily for that full twelve month period. They tend to be ten month assignments. The termination of the program that we would have had to dismiss the current year core sort of evolved effectively. They told us on Friday and expected that the termination would be on Friday. We ended up using what would have been our match money for the '25, 20 '6 score to continue or offer all of those AmeriCorps members the ability to continue in their roles as seasonal state employees and finish out their care services. The majority of them took us up on that offer, but then that puts us in a position of not having the match for the current year program, but even more so really significant concerns about the likelihood of some similar action being taken at the federal level that where we could recruit and get a number of young people to relocate to Vermont only to face that same kind of disruption. And frankly, we didn't believe we would have the ability to backfill the program a second time. And so it made the difficult decision to conclude the Eco AmeriCorps program at the end of the last service year, which was effectively August 31. And so it's really disappointing. AmeriCorps members, as you may be aware, are often detailed to solid waste management entities, watershed groups, conservation districts, as well as working directly within AMR. And so it is a significant loss to that body of work. The capacity, the energy they bring is incredible. And frankly, a lot of them are doing outreach and public engagement work, which is so important to bringing folks along. And so that is a gap left for the termination of the program.

[Speaker 0]: That's really sad. First of all, thank you for finding funding so that they could finish that. I actually know a bunch of it today.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: As you know, I have young adult children, so they know a lot of these people and they were just that panic that weekend when it They were all trying to figure out where they were going

[Speaker 0]: to live, what they were going

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: to do because they thought

[Speaker 0]: they were fired that day. And as you said, this is a program that brings a lot of young people into Vermont who might often stay to live here and work here, and that's not going to

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: happen with ANR, I think is probably a disproportionate beneficiary of those folks looking for jobs within state government. As well as again, some of our partners.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: I know there are a lot

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: of AmeriCorps alum that are in working for solid waste management districts, working for watershed groups at this point. That damage to the pipeline is challenging on top of sort of the immediate effects and that lost capacity that we can prescribe. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Emotions. Right.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: And then the last point I wanted to touch on is really just the challenges with funding uncertainty. And that's reflected in a number of mixed ways. I think it's particularly true for our small community partner organizations like Watershed Groups. When the president announced in January, I think a pause on most major funding lines while they reassessed, that had a ripple, almost immediate ripple effect into projects that were being planned for the summer. And one of the examples I use is the Friends of the Manusky was doing a dam removal project in Barrie, but that had a price tag of about $350,000 They had a contract through the Lake Champlain Basin program with federal funding to support that dam removal. And their bank account is less than 10% of the cost of that project. So the ability to, in good faith, move forward with such a substantial construction project, not knowing if you be reimbursed on the back end has been challenging for folks. We tried our best to help mitigate those concerns, but there's frankly a limit to what we're able to do. We can't possibly backfill the federal resources that are being used in this space. And so I would say the majority of projects ended up going forward, but I think there were some that were casualties of that risk in the farm space. I think that's saying uncertainty and risk shows itself. Milk prices are declining, so farmers finances are becoming increasingly constrained. And the idea that they could be left, even if it's for a period of only months, effectively folding the bag on an investment they're making becomes harder and harder decisions to get to get. And I do worry that that uncertainty is gonna continue to be a challenge. I think a lot of people have said, well, we should just come to the city programs first, except our programs are maybe a third of what the feds have to offer in terms of resources. So we can't make the kind of progress we want to and need to make absent federal resources. But it is really hard to ask our small community organizations to take on that risk.

[Speaker 0]: Absolutely, Anne, talk can

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: a little bit about the policy stage? So obviously I would say the two areas where we're tracking most closely are certainly in the climate space and then in the clean water space, and maybe start with the water quality side. So obviously the administration has announced changes or proposed changes to the definition of waters of The US. It has limited practical effect in Vermont because we have our own definitions codified in statute. The most significant impacts are felt in those states that are tied directly to the federal programs and federal standards. That said, it does express clearly what their policy intentions are and that in and of itself is hard. I think the continual moving back and forth and definitions of waters of The US creates a lot of uncertainty and challenges for landowners in Vermont who don't know if in addition to ANR regulations they are or aren't subject to army core regulations. And so that will continue. There's some questions around interstate waters that were raised in the new definition of WOTUS as well. And I believe the attorney general's office is filing comments on behalf of the state on that particular rulemaking. Also announced yesterday were changes around the section four zero one certification process. As you may recall in Trump one, there were changes announced that would sort of limit the timeline for state review. Those are back in the proposal that was announced yesterday. What is Section four zero one again? Section four zero one of the Clean Water Act. So it's where we are providing comments on federal permit programs. So most often when we're issuing a four zero one certification, it's related to hydropower relicensing or a larger highway project that incates NEVA, those types of products. So we don't issue a lot of them in Vermont on an annual basis. Would say probably a dozen or fewer, but they are an important tool. The other thing is it indicates we have to applicant gain support for any changes we're proposing to make, which feels anathema to running a regulatory program if the applicant has to agree with our terms. So that one just hot off the press and one we will continue to monitor closely. There's also a lot of changes at EPA in terms of their organizational structure. The Office of Research and Development has been substantially overhauled and reduced in size from about, I think 1,200 staff to close to 400 staff. Of those staff have been pushed back into program offices, but it's not clear how we will continue to access their expertise. And those are folks doing really applied research, things like remote sensing of cyanobacteria blooms or wildfire smoke or PFAS destruction. So these are really germane things to our work. It is research. We certainly don't have the financial capacity and possibly in some spaces, the technical expertise to replicate, nor does it make sense for 50 states to go off and do this 50 different ways, which was the beauty of having EPA leave in the applied research space. So there's a little bit of still more to come. I don't think the dust has settled on reorganization. We are active in the environmental council of states. So sort of my counterparts in all 50 states. And we've been pretty engaged with EPA on this and trying to, well, say, obviously you have the right to organize yourselves however you want. Here are the services we continue to need from EPA. We'll see how that moves forward. In the climate space, there's a lot going on, changes in how the federal government views carbon dioxide as a pollutant or not, changes around vehicle efficiency standards that are continuing to make their way through the courts, and just a general pullback in some of the data and monitoring requirements. In terms of carry on effects to Vermont, starting with that last one, we do rely on a number of federal data sets for our work up to and including the greenhouse gas inventory that we produce each year, which is the basis for whether or not we've met the requirements for Global Warming Solutions Act. Other states have similar requirements. And so through the US Climate Alliance, we're continuing to talk with them about ways to kind of maintain those data sets and ensure that states are able to produce their inventories. In terms of the work around vehicle efficiency, clean cars, clean trucks,

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: We were in front

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: of ICAR earlier this week, if not, it'll be on the February ICAR agenda. California Air Resources Board is proposing changes to advanced clean cars and clean trucks regulations. Currently the problem is there's sort of all this question around advanced clean cars too, which Vermont had adopted. Effectively they're staying right now. And the question is what is the fallback position? California is working on roles to make clear it's ACC one. So it's what was in place up until they adopted against Clean Cars two about two years ago. We are moving to start the process to adopt that. There's a little bit of chicken and egg that California has to go first and finalize their roles.

[Speaker 0]: They are

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: close. California, as well as most other states, can enact these changes through emergency rulemaking. We cannot. And so we submitted the package to ICAR to get the clock started so that we leave ourselves flexibility knowing we need these rules on the books by the end of this calendar year to affect next model year's comps. The changes in the advanced cleaning truck space actually address a lot of the concerns that were raised to the governor in the recent issue of the EO around advanced cleaning trucks and sort of confusion around how credits are calculated. This has been worked out with the manufacturers and I think is actually just sort of straight across the board when we've been gaining that clarity. So that whole package will start to move forward and release the step we need to take, stay aligned with the California regulations. And then there's sort of just the bigger sense that the current administration does not see climate change as not only an existential threat, but maybe not even a concern. Sort of how we manage in that space. I think thinking about how much federal funding has been available to us through EPA in particular over the last five years to support climate action in Vermont. To me, this is one of the biggest challenges with this sort of new policy posture that the administration is taking. We saw this dramatic scaling up of resources, and now it's a equally dramatic scaling back. And it is cause for us to consider our priorities and our investments. It's not 100% in the list, but we do an annual climate funding report as part of the report we submit to the general assembly about the work of the climate council chair, which will come to you by the end of the day tomorrow. In fiscal twenty twenty, federal, oh boy, maybe it was calendar year '24, we were able to account for over $500,000,000 in investments. This last year, it was closer to 300,000,000. Some of that's flooding and flood response, but some of that is the federal government sort of dialing way back on the opportunities that are available to us to support this work. So I think there's a hard conversation to be had around how to pay for climate action, if Vermonters can afford to pay for it outright, because we won't have those federal resources and just that very sudden change in the funding landscape around that.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Any questions?

[Speaker 0]: So the $300,000,000 you mentioned some of it has been used for flood mitigation? Yeah, so

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: the climate spending includes both greenhouse gas mitigation, adaptation resilience, as well as some of the hazard mitigation investments that kind of flow out of or follow a disaster.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Any other questions?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So there's a combination of state and federal dollars that are used for bloodplain restoration work.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Certainly hazard mitigation framework. And resilience. Yes.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So the, right, like the RIC program, which is a relatively new FEMA initiative that was intended to promote resilience was pulled back on. So those projects are lingering while that conversation continues. We have been able to continue to make investments through the flood resilient communities fund that the legislature funded initially with ARPA dollars, and then has continued to provide some of that funding with one time state general amendments. Those dollars are just about exhausted at this point. We also pay for some of those projects through the clean water fund. Oftentimes, not, those projects also need to be able to demonstrate that they are having a sediment and nutrient reduction benefit because that's sort of the underpinning for those dollars. And so there are flood resilience projects that may not rank well when we think about them in terms of sediment and nutrient reduction, even if they might rank very well in terms of resilience. That's one of the things, the resilience implementation strategy that we released at the treasurer's office back

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: in

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: September noted and asked us to dig into, or we agreed to dig into and have started to do that work. Are there ways to better bring together these conversations about climate resilience and water quality and make sure we're getting the maximum value out of each one of those dollars because we are making such a significant commitment to clean water.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Has that happened?

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: It is. Yeah, those teams have started to work together. I think in the clean water fund, there's clean water enhancement money, as you may recall, which is more flexible, frankly. And then there's sort of the money committed to implementing the TNTLs. They're starting by looking at the clean water enhancement money, which is capped at $5,000,000 but those dollars can be used for

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: any water quality project. So I'm involved in a couple of efforts to try to move forward some resilience. And it sounds like that money gonna be hard to come by. Yeah, I think that that is an accurate sentiment.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: I mean, may be a lot of

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: the programs the federal government has attempted to cancel have subsequently been reinstated if the BRIC money comes back. That was really an exciting opportunity from my perspective, and Eric may be able to talk more about that. But that was where a lot of that proactive resilience work would be big.

[Speaker 0]: And just as a follow-up to that, I mean, with some of these changes, so the Eco America program is canceled, are you thinking about any alternative funding streams for any of this at this point, or this is just work we're letting, we've got a bill that goes and we can't have parents.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Right, any other

[Speaker 0]: questions? Okay, Silver in, but I know, would say it was better news. Although I would say

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: there is

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: The Clean Water Investment Report is also, I believe, scheduled to be delivered to you all tomorrow. Good day. Yeah, and continues to show some pretty exciting progress in our work to reduce sediment and phosphorus pollution. Some of the long term trend data is really exciting, continued adoption. So I do look at that as a ray of sunshine and that is a state and federal partnership, Lake Champlain Basin Program dollars. So just there is really good work continuing to happen on the ground. And I don't want to, I would be remiss in not acknowledging that that progress continues to be made even if it's a little bit more of a challenge kind of work.

[Speaker 0]: Well, and I do want to make sure that to relay that we are so grateful for all of your staff and all the work that they are doing. Yes.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: Thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, and you have one more question. Sure. So last year we did a few things in statute to sort of freeze the point in time before there were a lot of changes at the federal level, mostly definitions and things like that. Are there more of that work that we need to do that your staff may have identified once, you know? So I don't think that

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: language actually is even across the finish line. Always do. Oh, god. So I think three nineteen is still on the wall in here and it's in there and we have our current beer housekeeping bill that also has that language.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So that language ended up in a Govops bill.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Last year? Yeah. We couldn't find that it passed.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. I'll follow-up with the chair of If

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: it exists somewhere, we would love to have it, but it's also, yeah.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I know it's also there. Yeah, it's also in our current warehouse keeping. Okay. But it was pretty generic, like we're going to freeze sort of title 10 references to federal code of regulations effective January 1. I think the plan Right, okay.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: As long as it's far

[Speaker 0]: too late to do that. And also, I mean, for example, the bill that we did last year on gate bows, used the definition of which

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: was strategic. Yeah. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 0]: Good

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: morning, Melissa Bailey with the Department of Public Service. I'm the director of the State Energy Office. Been with the department coming up on four years as a director of the committee public service department, represents the public interest in utility proceedings in Vermont, and also conducts long range comprehensive energy planning for the state. Up to every six years. State energy office within the department was established in 2023, really in recognition of the considerable amounts of federal funding that were flowing through the department.

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: So SEL was the primary responsibility of administering those federal funds relating to energy and climate work for the department. It's a federal designation from the Department of Energy as well, which states designated SEO and annually receives kind of some base funding to conduct energy activities. And then typically, significant infusions of money come through our inflation reduction act, etcetera, I think I think. Let's see. SCO, just for context, also houses the Clean Energy Development Fund that the department was charged with increasing renewable energy generation in Vermont and conducts the climate work through through emergency coordination and the line of funding councilor. So hopping over to kind of impacts of federal funding, similar to, I think, what you've probably been hearing this morning, like other departments and agencies, we've been affected by both the uncertainty at the federal level, as well as just direct decisions of money. So there are two programs that I'll talk about that are probably most significant for the department in our work. So first is the home energy rebates program. This was authorized by Congress under the inflation reduction act, an $8,000,000,000 program nationwide. All states received formula allocation. Think one state did not accept the formula allocation, but again, nationwide program. Vermont was slated to receive $29,000,000 under two sub programs. So a total of 59,000,000 was expected to come to Vermont. The first program we use the home efficiency rebates. We call that the homes program here in Vermont. Walter is very, very active in getting that authorized about ten years from concept to passage inclusion in the high rec. So the home efficiency rebates support whole home efficiency for residences and include enhanced funding for lower income households. So for Vermont's deployment of the homes program, we intend to grant the entire 29,000,000 to the office of economic opportunity, which administers the laborization Assistance Program in Vermont. We've really looked at the landscape of programs and said, we do not need to build a new program. We have a model that works well for both achieving significant energy savings, carbon savings, and most importantly, improving affordability for low income households in Vermont. And again, the weatherization assistance program serves households earning 80% of area median income or less. We serve homes of maybe 1,200 or so a year, and that's been ticking up in recent years. Go ahead.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Just a quick question, maybe I missed it. The formula, who controls that formula?

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: That's a good question. That would be, DOE control. When they have a pot of money, they can, you know, population and other factors.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So it's the 82 level, they determine. Yes, like if Congress says here's 8,000,000 program.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay, so it comes through the FEDS.

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: Yeah, and I think, so that formula is in place for our annual allocation, which for Vermont, our annual allocation is in the ballpark of like 400,000. But then when there'll be significant infusions of money, they can apply the formula for the one time funds as well. It's a big one time

[Speaker 0]: funding. So I'm

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: not clear, is this funding still available or is

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: this what's been cut? This has not yet been cut. So homes, we are crossing our fingers and hopeful I'm

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: gonna get into the status. It has

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: not yet been cut. It's in the limbo is the best I can provide for you. And I'll give more detail on status in a quick minute. So yeah, you'll just see here we expected for weather's acre system burn to be able to serve an additional 1,600 homes. Again, WAC has seen an influx of funding over the past few years from federal sources as well as they're tapering off. This would kind of help sustain them going forward. And homes and here money would need to be deployed by 2031. So it's actually a pretty long ramp rate. Make the funds available, we're able to spend it, we'd able to spend it quite appropriately in 2031. The home electrification and appliance rebates, the HEAR program, is the second program authorized under IRA, energy rebates. And that's really, it's an electrification program to support heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, stove technologies, etcetera. In Vermont, we had intended to offer kind of three sub programs working with existing buildings and new multifamily buildings, so building new construction to be all electric. That money, I would say the prospects

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: are more believed, that was

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: a conditional award from DOE, and DOE has not communicated with us at all over the past year on conditional awards. Anything that was conditionally awarded, which means you're going to have to meet additional conditions before you're able to access the funds, Those are completely on hold. Then I'll just have the 1,000,000 that was associated with this funding for workforce development. Know, Congress recognizes the huge infusion of money we're going to need to build the workforce to be able to bury out these weatherization, the constellations, and heat pump installs. So on to status, both track and here, so track is contractor training, and here is the electrification money, are completely on hold. We haven't had communication with you. We can just spend a year on those. And the So then on homes, which we are cautiously optimistic we'll be able to move forward, we have had consistent communication with DOE on this. Our program officer has stayed in place, still employed at DOE, answers the phone, answers emails, has been reviewing documents. All of our documents have been kind of revised over the year to reflect DOE feedback, and those have all been revised to DOE satisfaction. They're staying away from using the word approved, or saying your plan is approved, but they say no further revisions are necessary. So we are hoping to get the green light in 2026 to launch homes. And again, that would be where a grant OU is ready, working closer with them. It would just be through an MOU to transfer the funds. The two potential hiccups are our software approval is still pending. We checked in with, and that needs to be approved by DOE. So DOE is, we need to approve the software that you're gonna use in people's homes to model the energy savings. They're using a software called Hand Talk. That's what they already use for the Weatherization Assistance Program, which is a DOE funded program. So we were hopeful that they allow that same software to be used in this application. But that is moving slower than expected and slower than is desirable. We talked to our contractor last week and they are saying they anticipate a March approval from what they're hearing with their DOE contacts. But again, programs can't move forward without that approval. Just to note that we are not alone, no state has gotten approval since last January. So there were a few states that managed to launch their Homes and Here programs before the change in administration. I think about a dozen launched the HEAR, the electrification program, and a handful of them launched the HEAR program, few of those launched both, like New York and Arizona, Minnesota, some of the states that have existing programs, but no state has farmedically received approval since Trump came into office. And then the, probably bigger, the big question mark, the big barrier is that DOE is conducting a review of all of their programs. So like all federal agencies, they were directed through an office to mention the budget memo back in January to review all programs that they have within the agencies for consistency with administration priorities at the federal level. So that review is underway. And I spoke with the director of the home energy rebates program around the holidays, and she said some programs, they're actively moving through that, and the programs are getting the thumbs up or the thumbs down day by day. They don't have a timeline for when the efficiency rebate programs will get that determination. Folks may remember, in fall, there was about $3,000,000,000 in cancellations that came out of DOE that was a result of this program review with the internal review saying, no, your program is not consistent with administration for release. We are calling back a month. Thank you. You can speculate about the potential disposition of home energy rebates. I mean, again, some states have them running. So then I would just add that the other information you hear

[Speaker 0]: is that they expect that would

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: be for the whole program, it won't be state by state. It would be, we're either canceling home energy rebates or we are not. Again, some of these funds are actively flowing in states. They, programs are being offered in all states, red states,

[Speaker 0]: blue states. If a state has

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: implemented the program and started to send money to people, to real people.

[Speaker 0]: And there's the federal law back. Like what happens to the money that's gone to an individual, to homeowners? Do they have to spend it there?

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: I mean, it's unclear. I don't think, no, I don't think the homeowner would ever be on the hook for that money. I think we could try to cancel the order and not split the money back from states, so it seems unlikely. Disclaimer, I'm not a lawyer, but there's always the potential that the Feds can come and say we want our money back. I would expect that they would just cancel the awards. So the way that, I back up, I would use awards work is it's a reimbursement basis, even for the states. So that would be sitting in the, I don't know if folks heard about the ASAP account, the federal bank account, you know, so we could go and look and see these monies in our ASAP account, 58,000,000 for Vermont. And we're not able to draw those down until we get that green light. So states, I guess what I'm saying is states would just be drawing against that balance. I think it's very unlikely the Feds would ever go after more than what was remaining in ASA. Just I think they just take the money that was remaining to look into insolvenus and $8,000,000 projects intended to alleviate energy burden. So sorry, can't provide more definitive answer. It really is a big question mark on status. Again, we're really poised to launch an ASAP if we get that final green light from DOE. Awesome. Pivoting gears here in the second program, I'll touch upon is Solar for All Vermont. Folks probably heard of this in the news. EPA has purported to cancel this program. So just, this was $62,000,000 slated to come to Vermont over five years, be extended prior to 2029. 75% of the funds were required to be direct incentives to customers and low income customers exclusively for essentially discounting solar energy, solar electricity. We conceptually developed three different programs, different segments of the market, renters, folks who live in affordable housing and with homeowners. There's also some money here associated with workforce development. And you'll just see here some details that we expected in aggregate to serve about 8,000 low income Vermonters through different channels. This one, we were getting very close to launch in '20, back in the 2025. This is, I know we have a lot here, but I will try to give you the takeaways. I mean, we received our award notice from EPA in the 2024. We initially applied for $100,000,000 We

[Speaker 0]: were awarded $62,500,000

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: Did the work to design our programs and revise a budget for that lower amount, etcetera. Throughout the year, you can see some of the steps to be carried out. But in obviously this year, received first via tweet and then via formal notice from EPA that the Solar For All program nationwide was being canceled. This was a $7,000,000,000 program. EPA claims that under One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that they lost the statutory authority to implement Solar For All. Vermont and other states are challenging that. The bill did not speak to Solar for All. The Solar for All program was embedded in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was 27,000,000,000, and the other 20,000,000,000 of the unspent funds were rescinded. But again, solar call was not addressed in that bill. And we had legally binding agreements, contracts for this money. So we had just begun contracting with an implementer at the time with the EPA determination. And you'll see here just kind of all of the steps we've taken to dispute this. The takeaway again is that we're availing ourselves of all channels to dispute the termination, working closer than the attorney general's office. There are two lawsuits to which Vermont is a party. There's some precedent coming with the National Institutes of Health case that said, you challenge have these determinations in the court of federal claims. So it's a contract dispute, so you have to actually go after damages. You can't sue them to stand up the program and get your money back. So we actually had to figure out through two legal channels. One is part of federal claims to seek damages, whatever those are determined to debate. And then another suit where we're asking EPA to reopen the program, there would be no funding associated with that pathway. So it gets a little bit complicated from a legal perspective and makes it more challenging, but those cases are active and underway. And our posture is we are not accepting the termination courts. We're not closing out the award. We've gotten multiple communications from EPA asking us to kind of do our closeout activities where you submit final reports, etcetera. We're not doing those. We say, well, you will be out of compliance with your grant.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: And so,

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: again, we just continue to go back and forth on the validity of the determination. I think that's all I have for you here. I include this appendix just, it's probably not legible.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I don't talk to that.

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: But this is just because I get, is the whole portfolio of federal funds that with SEO is mainstream. You'll see the ones on here. They always, you know, that column is just conditional. Again, anything that's conditional is just completely fund loan in terms of whether the EOB will ever pick those back up. This

[Speaker 0]: is really helpful, this ethics. Thank you. Can I sort of, so I just wanna make sure that I am understanding this? So under the column where it says conditional, if it's conditional and it's, I'm sorry, if it says no under conditional, it's not conditional, which means that it's solid, like we have one? No.

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: Conditional means when the Feds granted it to us, they said, you know, this is kind of pending some further work. There's, you

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: know, some speculation that like

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: the Biden administration did that, you know, to get money, to get awards kind

[Speaker 0]: of issued kind of quickly towards- Sure, so what does the yes versus no mean in that comp? So

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: we would have thought that awards that were not conditional were more secure,

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: but you'll see that Solar For

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: All was not a conditional award. Was a flow, I mean, from our perspective, a legally binding award. Okay. So that was kind of, but I will say we're not getting any communication, like we're just not getting any communication on anything that's conditional. Whereas EPA was talking to us right up until the day before they canceled the work. We were, you know, I mean, there's obviously that disconnect between staff level program managers and then whatever's happening at the board. So there are staff engaged on these programs moving ahead as if they are going to launch. One of the

[Speaker 0]: things that we heard from Secretary Moore was that the EPA is experiencing a lot of staffing shortages. Is this also mirrored in DOE as well?

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: Yes, I can't remember the number, but yes, DOE lost a huge amount of its workforce through voluntary and involuntary interaction. They're also reorganizing the offices we work with, our state and community energy partnerships and like the Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Those have now kind of been subsumed into the office of critical minerals, I believe, minerals and innovation. So restructuring, changes in leadership at DOE. We've had, we're middlemanner degree based. We've the same program officers throughout the year. That's kind of an anomaly for other programs. We've had four or five program officers as they kind of shuffle and figure things out.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, and so aside from the Solar For All, and guess what I want to get

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: at is for your

[Speaker 0]: department's core services or functions? Those are a whole, what's the exposure for federal dollars there?

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: The core functions, I think the

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: department carries out really, you

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: know, we're funded through the gross receipts tax and that's kind of our base budget. And

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: that

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: work is being carried out, The planning director, TJ Bongartz, the efficiency director, Alex Bongartz, they are continuing to operate as usual. It's kind of the state energy office, again, we were stood up to accept all of this money and build that grant management capacity within the department. And now we're ramping gas very much more quickly than anticipated. We have several unfilled positions because all this turmoil, the money doesn't come through, we won't resolve those positions. But I'd say the core work of the department, comprehensive energy planning, utility regulation, that's all, again, funded

[Speaker 0]: through the Diversities Tax Road. Okay. And that's long as people keep buying fuels

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: and electricity? Yeah. Very good. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: Stable source. Yeah. Okay. Good.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Any other questions for Ms. Gaitlin?

[Speaker 0]: Okay. And so what I'm gathering is that we're looking at 120,000,000 of either canceled or delayed on hold kind

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: of money at this point. Yes. Okay. Okay.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Great.

[Speaker 0]: Well, again, so great, but important to know. Yes. Thank you.

[Melissa Bailey (Director, State Energy Office, VT Department of Public Service)]: Thank you. We'll stay in touch. Thanks. Sounds good.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Okay.

[Speaker 0]: All right. So we are, I think we're ready to transition. We have a topic shift, I like to have like just a mental break, but we are, I think, well we did have sort of a little bit of break earlier, do you all need a break? How are you doing?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Well, just had a schedule, perfect gas break.

[Speaker 0]: I think that's fair. Okay. So we're going to jump right in then. So we're switching gears to talk about S-two 18, which is the fluoride bill. We have a couple of folks with us on that. Will complete first. I know there's no clock.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: I can't wait for your

[Speaker 0]: clock. Okay,

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: well, Mr. Carpenter, welcome. Nice manager.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: So good morning all. First time in the chair this season. My name is Kafir Reichardt, I'm chair of carpenter of Lake Shannon Planning Committee. Here talking about what is now S-two 18,

[Speaker 0]: the

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: Florida bill, also the North Salt bill. I submitted a PowerPoint that has been put up on your website. It's an adaptation of the one that I've been using all the way along. I'm not gonna use it here since a lot of what you've seen before. It's the impacts of chloride on infrastructure and habitat. The various elements of the bill that you've become familiar with all the time. I just wanted to very briefly just sort of touch on support of the bill. I know you had a question yesterday when Mike walked through. I was gonna comment on and exit the stage rather quickly. Yes, the new bill is S-two 88 and it's new machinations. It is the same bill as was last in the committee under H-three 19, has the same elements. The last change that was made was by Senate Judiciary, changing the liability language from over to the formative defense, which is still a good liability protection. It's just a jurisdictional shift where rather than my understanding is rather than the prosecution having to prove that the BMPs and the record keeping was followed, the defense asked if I'm gonna that he or she did follow the BMPs and the record keeping.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: that part of the program is still the same. It still establishes the best management practices, does commercial and municipal certification, and required, and has the liability language in a voluntary program. The environmental advocate community, we are still very supportive of this measure and we think it's necessary. And the fact that so many in the waters is increasing, this would be very helpful. Does it have everything that we want in it? Of course not, but we think this is

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: a good landing spot.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: And we urge the committee to support the buildings. So one very quick thing which I noticed, I think if I remember correctly, yesterday

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: the bill on page six,

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: in the lines 15 through 19 issue had talked about whether annual summary of salt or and or salt alternatives would be reported. From my perspective, it's the language that is here in terms of salt makes sense because this is, it's an order of track chloride, not whatever the alternative would be. Believe, Senator, you mentioned beet juice. Yes. We don't need to track beet juice. So the point is to track chloride and, you know, try to get a sense in the baseline of

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Is beet juice right? It's effective. Yeah. I don't know if it's economical or practical or whatever. Everybody isn't

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: here. It's actually.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: I'm not sure if it would if it would be

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. A cash crop. I mean,

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I said Could be. Can

[Speaker 0]: can grow lots of beets here. It's a climate.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Yeah. Yeah. It's a place we can't grow over long.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: Yeah. Yeah. She's doing season most things.

[Speaker 0]: I would hope they'll love for. Spirits.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: Now my brain's gone as well.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: It's like, oh, possibilities.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: Growing beets and then expanding our farming capacity. So in terms of, I mean, it's sort

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: of get

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: a baseline and see what the reductions in use are. So chloride salt makes more sense. And the other question was whether or not there should be, the word usage is in line sixteen and eighteen is to track the amount of salt applied. I think the language has is, meets that requirement for the purpose of establishing a baseline. So I wouldn't recommend any changes, but I know the committee hasn't had a chance to discuss that. I believe that was the only issue, Madam Chair, that you all sort of put a pin in, you know, to come back to him. So unless there's any questions, the bill is a great step forward in addressing this problem. Thank you all very much for your continued work on this, not only last session and this session as well. Meeting has landed in this time.

[Speaker 0]: Super, any questions? Super, thank you Thank so you so much.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: I'll be back here for whatever reason.

[Speaker 0]: All right, and we also have Ms. Ordans from DC.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Welcome. Thank you. I'm gonna just take a moment and share my screen.

[Eric Warren (Director, Vermont Emergency Management)]: Okay,

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: for the record, my name is Bethany Sargent. I am the manager of the Monitoring and Assessment Program as a program within the Watershed Management Division of the Department of Environmental Conservation. I wanted to just take a moment to update the committee on where we're at with our monitoring assessment for fluoride, the status of our impairment listings. We are entering a listing year. So we update our list of impaired waters every two years. So 2026 is one of those years. I also wanted to talk briefly about the TMBL status and then really emphasize the critical gap that this bill fills in terms of our ability to reduce chloride use and chloride loading on a landscape. So we do a lot of fluoride monitoring work around the state. So all of these little circles on the map are places where we have monitored for fluoride, and one of the things that we've realized over the years that we've monitored fluoride is that we don't necessarily need to dip a bottle everywhere to understand where the challenges are. So most of the areas where we're seeing the highest concentrations of fluoride, as we testified on before, are very heavily developed watersheds. So those small watersheds with a significant amount of impervious cover. I have some values listed here. So when we're looking at chloride concentrations, we're referencing our water quality standards and those are listed here. So there's an acute standard, so big short term impact, very high concentration. There's also a chronic standard, So lower concentration, but over a longer period of time. What we found though, upon our monitoring assessment work is that impacts can happen at concentrations lower than our water quality standards. And that really happens when our aquatic life are dealing with multiple stressors, so not just chloride, but potentially temperature, sediment, things that are often coming in storm water. So we need to be able to respond to reduced fluoride levels even before we get to the impairment thresholds. We have a number of waters that have explicitly been listed as impaired perchloride. So again, these are areas where you look at the towns where these impairments exist have really significant impervious surface cover. And we anticipate in this next listing cycle that we'll be adding Stevens Broken, St. Albans, another impaired water on that list. We also, as I mentioned, have a number of aquatic biota impairments where our biomonitoring data has indicated it's not meeting that use within the water quality standards and chloride is contributing to that impairment. So those aren't included in this list. These are just the ones where the chloride criteria have explicitly been exceeded at either the chronic or acute. We're also working on total maximum daily loads, TMDLs. So think of those as our fluoride budget for these watersheds. Our first fluoride TMDL for Sunnyside Brook in Woolchester was developed and approved in 2024. We're currently working on and anticipate we'll be finishing TMDLs for Potash and Wilsby Brook, and then we will be working on TMDLs for the other impaired waters. Sunnyside was our first one, so it's definitely a learning opportunity. And now that we have our methodology worked out, it'll be a simpler, more straightforward process.

[Speaker 0]: And when you implement a TMDL for these waters, it's basically a required amount, is that?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: The TMDL sets the loading target. With chloride, there's so much variability and we have, when we're looking at the loading targets, it's not something where they'll get an allocation of like, you can only put down this much chloride in one year. We have a target and we have requirements within our MS4 permits, within the TS4 permit for the Vermont Agents of Transportation, that for those watersheds that are listed as impaired, they have to have a fluoride reduction plan as part of their permit conditions. And so develop that plan and have an image here of Colchester's plan that they developed when Sunnyside was impaired. But essentially, there's a requirement to develop this plan and to implement it. And when reviewing these, they're definitely around optimization. Again, we have a need to maintain safe surfaces, but certainly optimizing the application of fluoride is the best way to get at that necessary progress. And as I mentioned at the outset, this is really a gap. So we're able to get at some of those communities where there are impaired waters through our MS-four or through our TS-four permits, but we don't have as clear a pathway to reduce fluoride loading from private salt applicators for parking lots and those services that aren't maintained by municipality or by the agency of transportation. And so being able to develop and implement a program that can incentivize self optimization is really critical. When you think about the area of impervious surface that's managed by private entities versus a municipality, the agency of transportation, it's incredibly significant. And so we see this bill as an important first step in creating a voluntary program and the incentive necessary to participate in it, all with the goal of reducing fluoride use across the watershed. In reviewing the bill, that S-two 18, it aligns well with the comments that we had made and some of the changes that had been made during the last year and don't have additional comments based on the language as proposed in S-two 18.

[Speaker 0]: And one question on that. Don't know if you are allowed to say this or not. Don't know if the department is supportive or just neutral or

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: The department is supportive of the program, sees the need for the program. There are new concerns as there were last year around legislation that creates, you

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: know, if it requires any additional resources for implementation. Okay. Good

[Speaker 0]: to know. And then a couple of questions, particularly about the timeline. If you could go back one slide or so. I remember last year we talked about something like Brooke as being the only one that had a TMDL, and that there were others sort of in the works, or potentially coming. And here's a list, And here it is. So how lovely, what is the timeline? What's the gap between you identify that there's this, you know, you've met the threshold, have too high a concentration in a particular watershed, and now you're in a TMDL.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So, depends on why can't you do all of, like, more of them or what the process status at this point. A lot of the work, so our MS4 community, we do a lot of flow monitoring. And so we're reliant on that flow data to be able to do the loading estimates necessary for developing a chloriteMDL. And so when we're listing surface water as impaired, it's not, do have beta loggers that are measuring conductivity continuously. And so we do that for a period of time and then couple that with the flow record, we're able to develop what those estimates are for loading from various types of impervious surface within the watershed.

[Speaker 0]: And so, because all of these are MS4 communities. So it possible that there are other places that perhaps should be in the pipeline, so to speak?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So what we do with our monitoring assessment, so we have both the ability through remote sensing, looking at per day surfaces to understand where we're going to see the highest fluoride concentration. We're also out there in terms of, with our La Rosa partnership program, actually doing just sample collection and measuring that chloride concentrations. And that gives us a snapshot of time at hundreds of sites around the state. They're also measuring fluoride in Brewer Lake monitoring program for Vermont Lakes. And so we have a good snapshot in any given year, then we'll follow-up and do that continuous conductivity monitoring where we're seeing those high levels.

[Speaker 0]: And so is that remote? I mean, it's very cool that you can do that from remote sensing. Is that mostly based off of percentage impervious surface? Yeah, percentage of impervious surface,

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: they're typically smaller watershed with a higher impervious surface cover, and then also just the location of that impervious surface relative to the body of water. And then I should say too, a TMDL is not necessary to know what the action is. We know that we need to reduce fluoride application and fluoride loading. A TMDL gives us targets in terms of by how much, but again, it's really about optimization. We don't need to get to the TMDL part in order to know that we need to reduce chloride. And it is going to be variable from winter to winter. And so depending on the conditions of the winter, it's difficult to track in terms of have we reduced it overall based on just looking at the total amount applied. But again, as with all of our best management based programs, we're relying on the science to tell us that this is optimal use of chloride, which optimization leads to reduction. And that's how we manage from a best management practice basis.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So I couldn't really see on from our map, you have the red dots. So all these municipalities that have TMDLs are all except for one over in Sugar County. So but there must be other you you guys are testing statewide here.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: We are. So it's much more difficult to see, but there are also a bunch of gray dots on this image as well. And so those are all sites where we have sampled, but where the chloride levels are low. These are all stream sites. We aren't seeing levels overall in lakes that are reaching our chronic or acute targets at the level that they would be listed as impaired or with consistency. There have been a handful of higher concentrations in lakes, but not exceeding standards to the extent that they would be listed as impaired. So we're really concerned about streams, particularly in the small, very developed watershed. We have had a number of impacts, as I mentioned, to aquatic biota from storm water, which likely includes chloride in those areas, like in the ski areas where we have had in the past impaired waters, we've also worked with the ski areas and their water quality remediation plans to incorporate best management practices to minimize fluoride as well.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So you take into consideration the salt must be in the ground along roadsides. I mean, every time it rains, that's going to leach in and contribute.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Exactly. And in these watersheds that have been listed as impaired, we find that the low flow conditions in the summer are often when we see our highest concentrations because of those impacts to shallow groundwater and less volume of water flowing through. And so that's the concern as well, is when it builds up in the soil, in that shallow groundwater, and then these small watersheds can be pretty significantly impacted as a result. Yes, ma'am.

[Speaker 0]: Well, just to Senator Williams' point, it does look like on the map, if you blow it up or, I mean, there are orange dots all over the place. I mean, two here in Montpelier area. Any, looks like there are a couple, maybe around Middlebury, they're

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: not in Rutland, it looks like, but-

[Speaker 0]: Intruder. But anyway, there are other places where maybe

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you haven't gotten to the level of TMTL, but they're sort of-

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Yeah, there are, they're all, yeah, they may not be at the point where there is consistent enough. Between, so if you're bit, you have to be at or above that two thirty for a long period of time. And so we'll get these flashes where there can be a spike, but that spike may not rise to eight sixty. If it's below eight sixty and doesn't last very long, then it's not going to impact aquatic life in the same way to this extent that we would have a chloride impairment. It may still be one of the stressors that are contributing. So it is an issue in any more urbanized watershed that there would be impacts potentially, again, in our smaller streams where there's not the same volume of water that's diluting that chloride, that's where the greatest concerns are.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So, I guess one comment. So one takeaway I have here is that the two thirty clinic is actually, 100 clinic is actually difficult. It's not just-

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Even potentially. So in terms of the criteria value, EPA, promulgates what are called 304A criteria. So that's EPA's recommendations to states for water quality criteria that should be adopted. So Vermont has adopted those criteria. EPA has been researching whether those criteria values should be lower. They haven't issued draft.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: That's a benefit.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: But in terms of, yes, management, we should be concerned about chloride concentrations that are lower than that as one of the stressors that can be negatively impacting our treatment. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: going back to the slide, you don't have to go to them, but they show potash twenty twenty six. What's actually happening? What does that trend go to?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So that's the TMDL. So right now, so our hydrologist who's part of the division staff is doing the analysis of loading for those watersheds based on the conductivity measurements, so that continuous data sets relative to the loading from those streams and developing targets through the TMDL. Once the TMDL is drafted, it will go out on public notice for comments and then EPA, then it's submitted to EPA for formal approval.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And so then that gets set and then how do you actually effect change?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So that's where we go through the MS4 permit. Once, even before a TMDL is developed, once the water is impaired, there is a requirement to develop a fluoride response plan. That is a condition of the MS4 permit for those impaired watersheds where they need to implement practices to optimize the use of

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: salt in their ice and snow removal.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And so at this point, it only matters we have to pull where that end or stay in municipal cases. Correct. And so that's where this comes in as a potential missing piece. So

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: you said there's a requirement to create, is that a EPA requirement or a state requirement?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So it is part of our MS4, so the municipal storm separate sewer system permit, that in impaired watersheds, they develop the Fort Fluoride Response

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Plan.

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So that's the condition to develop and implement it.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: To the state. To the state.

[Environmental advocate supporting S.218 (name unclear; possibly affiliated with Lake Champlain Committee)]: So you stated, was it?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: It is a NIPP delegated program. So if we get those, then I would have to talk to the person who oversees the Pollutant Discharge Elimination System. So it's one of our delegated programs. But in terms of that actual requirement, I believe that a state requirement to develop that, but whether we're requiring it as a requirement for federal, the Clean

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Water Act is, I guess that would be my

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: guess, Christy would be able to speak directly to them.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I just heard the term.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. I think I know.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So what are some of the things when you get to the development then, what are some of the things that you can actually, with the community, I get the notion of salt reduction somehow. That doesn't seem like that's even getting up. So what are some of things you can do to actually bring a vote

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: So in terms of the requirement, they have outreach and education requirements that they do with the MS4 permit in terms of reducing storm water. They're now incorporating education on best management practices for salt application. I also noted in Colchester's plan that they are not applying salt to their sidewalks. And so they're maintaining their cloud on those surfaces, but they are not based on their plan, applying salt on those surfaces. But then it doesn't, as far as based on my understanding, it doesn't explicitly, they're managing their services. The plan does not reach to the privately managed services, owned services within their municipality.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So a rule of thumb about percentages, Like is most of the issues by the application or is most of the issue stated in this application?

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: Most of the issue in terms of our, both our understanding, so we, in developing the semi side TMBL, we can, know, Colchester, we can understand from the Colchester how much salt they're applying. We work very well with the agency of transportation and they do a great job of tracking how much salt they're applying and optimizing that. The gap is understanding even, when we're doing the TMDL, everything else, if it's not municipally managed or if it's not agency of transportation, within that private category. And we have no way to directly understand at this point how much salt is being applied on those privately owned and managed services.

[Speaker 0]: Okay. Any other questions? Thank you for that update. Was Okay, very

[Bethany Sargent (Manager, Monitoring & Assessment Program, DEC Watershed Management Division)]: thank you for having me. For

[Speaker 0]: sure. We, How about we take a little break? Did you schedule for eleven? The next person. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's just a couple minutes. Well, that'll make it five. Yeah, maybe before we do, just checking in on this particular bill team, I am not planning on taking significantly more or any more testimony on this because we have been through it. And so we'd love to have a vote on this,

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: not right now, but in one or two days. Think we have it

[Speaker 0]: scheduled for Friday. So, just to put that on your radar. That sounds great. Is it going to go back to transportation and transportation? So I spoke to one of those chairs about where we're at with this, and I think their communications are doing a fly by language one more time.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: So unless

[Speaker 0]: they request it, well, it would just go to the floor. So anyway, that's where we're at with it. Okay, so we are going to take just a couple minute break. Waiting for Megan, for our next Tuesday. Hi Megan.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Hi there.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks for zooming in.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Sorry to give you a heart attack. Yes,

[Speaker 0]: I know it's okay. We're good. We're good. Yeah. All right. We're live.

[Miranda Gray (Deputy Commissioner, DCF Economic Services Division)]: Somebody left tonight.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Oh, and we're unmuted. No. I Yeah. Right. Okay. Very good. Okay.

[Speaker 0]: And you're feeling right?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Me? Yes. Yes. Am. Yep. Am I allowed to share? Yes.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Yes. Yes. I will make you a little colorful. Can you keep it in? I'll turn it on. Yeah. Yeah.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Let me see.

[Speaker 0]: Oh, you're letting them know that that we're starting to see there. Okay. Okay.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Can you test the volume now Megan again?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Yes, can you hear me?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, perfect, it's great. Okay, super. All right, well we are gonna get started again here. This is Senate Natural Resources and Energy coming back from a break, and we are taking up a new topic, which is S212, which is about, really a bill that came out of a study around maybe to get water, wastewater permits. And so we're joined right now by Adelegan Moir from Burlington. Have I said your name correctly?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: It's Moyer. It looks like it should be Moyer, but I think it's Scottish

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: for Moyer.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, good. Well, welcome and we'd love to hear your thoughts.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Yeah, no, thank you so much for making the time. I'm really excited to be here to offer Burlington support for what was outlined in S212. As a participant in DEC's working group, where we looked at efficiencies that could be gained during the water wastewater project review process. What you guys have in front of you very closely aligns with some of the outcomes of those discussions. I think big picture, it allows us it provides a mechanism to leverage our local strengths at local technical review, which includes not just looking at the available treatment capacities at our plants, but also the collection and distribution system. We also really appreciate that it's voluntary, because frankly, not all communities have the resources that we have invested on our side and in our org chart, which I'll show you briefly to support our very large and sometimes complicated system. So, just a little background, Burlington Water Resources, we are part of the Department of Public Works in Burlington. We oversee the drinking water, wastewater, and storm water for the city. So, we are potentially somewhat unique in that we are a one water system. We have approximately 10,000 existing connections. And I'm just sharing this because it's often misunderstood, but I think it's important context. Of our funding for drinking water, wastewater, stormwater comes from the rate payers. We are not supported in any way by the city's general fund, which comes from the tax rules. Specifically, we oversee three wastewater treatment plants within the city and one drinking water plant. But very importantly, and I think this is one of the thing that came up during the working study is we also oversee the entire system of the drinking water pipes and the wastewater pipes and pump stations that convey water. So we're not just looking at the plants, we're looking at all the systems that go to support getting that water and that wastewater to and from. As part of that, and I don't know that all communities have this, we maintain both two computerized models, right, which enables us to look at our collection system and capacity needs and capacity constraints, And we're able to actually plug in large projects and understand how a given project, a given housing project is going to affect the local pipe in that neighborhood, right? And may not have enough room for that wastewater. And then we need to figure out what to do about that so we could still have that project come in. Same thing on the drinking water side. There are places in the city where we have less water available than other places, and it just depends on where these projects are going to land. So, one of the things I mentioned, and again, this is some of what I believe the state would look at when they're evaluating the technical capacity and whether or not they're willing to let a community like ours participate is, I've got a number of people, these people in purple, I don't know if you can see that. I can zoom in a little. Those people are directly involved in reviewing these projects right from the ground up. Even into the existing system or the existing regulatory framework, we have to take a close look at these projects and issue a capacity to serve letter, which then goes with the project to the water wastewater permitting. But then once it leaves our office and they go on their merry way to the state and they pay the permit fees for the state and the state is providing review, We are continuing to review that project very, very closely and make sure that it's meeting all of the standards. And conditions that we need. It's probably no surprise to you. I've I guess I've been in this role since 2016 and even in those short seven years. I have seen lots and lots of things that I wish hadn't been done in the past. And we're constantly trying to continuously improve and make sure the standards are really clear and that we're getting eyes on things before they're buried to make sure frankly that the people that come after me don't inherit some of the stuff that I've seen in the past. In addition to the people who are directly involved, I have a number of other staff in the green who are also supporting those projects at various stages throughout their project trajectory. So let me just get back to my notes. When I've talked with our team, we believe that we are probably providing as much of maybe 90% of the total project review process, potentially duplicatively with the state. We've been interested for a long time in taking over the process and there was, or there currently is the ability to receive delegated authority. But one of the things that's been a hitch is standing up an administrative database and trying to align with how the state has kept track of these permits over a long time and having to recreate that on our side. And we really like what Brian has come up with where we're doing the technical review and then we're leveraging what the state is doing extremely well, which is the water wastewater permit database, keeping those records over the long term. We know numerous people in Vermont, realtors, lawyers, even ourselves, we often go to that permit database to research and reference things that happened in the past. And we think that that is a great thing to continue to go on. So ultimately, we do believe that S-twelve allows for communities such as ours to demonstrate our technical capacity and to take over those technical aspects of the review, and that at the end of the day, we'll be able to provide overall better customer service to the local projects while providing the best protection for our systems, which we are the ones who know the best as the boots on the ground. It's certainly to our benefit that these projects be closely reviewed, right? And that we'd be able to maintain or even potentially expand our capacity to quickly review these projects and facilitate the growth that we all want to see in Vermont and in Burlington. Another thing is that we don't currently charge for our technical review. I've wanted to, and I feel sheepish about doing it, knowing that these projects are paying the state a fee. And so one of the things we are interested in, and I have some questions on or some comments just as this progresses, is exactly what that fee is for the general permit. I think it's listed here as $500 per permit, and I'll come back to that. But we are really interested in having some sort of fee at our level, and potentially because we could bake in incentives for certain types of development, like affordable housing or childcare facilities, right? We might be able to have our policymakers decide that we want to give certain types of projects breaks, but not others. And I don't think that that's available right now at the state level. With respect to the pricing, some questions that I have, and I wasn't able to get ahold of folks in DEC, but I want to understand their thinking because I'm sure and there should still be a fee of some sort to meet the cost recovery of the state continuing to provide the administrative service. I'm not looking for that to go away. I am a little head scratchy on if we're going to charge $500 my understanding is a lot of the smaller projects, the single family homeowner projects, I think they're only currently being charged like $300 And so, may want to figure out some way to not have them pay more. I also and I need to educate myself a little bit more. I know that I saw on the fee structure that there's the $50 permit fee for projects that are in certain neighborhoods. That was news to me because we're not handling any of the money. So, I have some ongoing questions to work with DEC on to just see, is there maybe a difference in the permitting fee structure on the general permit side? Maybe there's two tiers or three tiers. I'm not sure. But with that, that's all I have as far as my comments, and happy to take any questions about this topic, or anything that's on your mind in water, wastewater, storm water world, because it's a lot.

[Speaker 0]: Awesome. I have lots of questions, but Okay. When I think about the the people who may be able to take advantage of this, so you were on the committee, and I mean, Burlington, right? Like you're at one end of the spectrum in terms of capacity, and we'll hear from other folks from the state, from smaller municipalities, but I guess I would ask, I don't know if you know this, but how common is it, let's say, to have staff that can do this kind of review, that have this kind of technical process? Do you know if, and one additional question, do you know if your technical review process is very similar to many other communities that say have their own wastewater water and wastewater systems?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: It's a good question. I don't know. I probably don't know enough. One of the things after this, I was going to sort of pull at least the Green Mountain Water Environment Association folks to understand. I think having this pathway may encourage people to go this direction because I think a lot of us were hung up on the like having to stand up our whole a whole different administrative system because that's the way the delegation, my understanding of the delegation regulations in the past were like, if you're taking it over, you're to take over the whole thing. I think there's also some communities where they may be able to leverage having a on call engineer that they work closely with, and they develop that sort of institutional knowledge. I can't say enough about the fact that like, I mean, it's like any of you, this is an old house. You know the quirks of that faucet and that tub and that toilet. And that's what we know. And when a project comes forth, we're integrating all of that as we look at that individual project. We know that it's, okay, yeah, this project's coming in, but there's two or three other ones that are in development, and we need to be looking at them as a larger piece and not just this once off. And it would be impossible, right, for the state to be able to know all of that. And I think it's easier maybe with the smaller communities. So it's a great question. I don't know, but I still hope that because it's voluntary, it kind of leaves it open that if you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it. I do hope that enough communities, like this would be my big vision for water quality, regulatorily speaking in Vermont is if there are enough of us that are taking off off of the state's plate, not necessarily that they would reduce their capacity, but they would be able to focus their capacity more on the smaller communities that do need more support, right? Particularly some of these small communities that may see a lot of growth that they've never seen before, right? That's going to be a thing they need to wrestle with, not just about their plant capacity, but the collection system piece. So that's my hope and dream is that it shifts. Like we're already doing the work. We're just going to do the work and then it makes it so that the state isn't having to duplicate the work and could actually provide even better support for other smaller communities.

[Speaker 0]: Great. And so you would also recommend that we get in touch with the Greenwater Environment Association?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Yeah, I'm happy to do that or get Karen Horn, been working with us to kind of give you that information.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: And I think we're hoping to have him in, hopefully, we'll see. Hopefully next week. And so this is a thing that certainly Burlington would be interested in pursuing if this bill passes.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Absolutely. Yep. I think we'd have a little bit more work to do just to the there's a couple of things that we sometimes defer people to on exemptions and whatnot, just because the regs are long and whatnot. And then understanding more from DEC exactly what our sort of qualifications package looks like, right, to make sure that we're able to check all the boxes. But 100%, we would love to be able to take this on.

[Speaker 0]: I have at least one more question, but any other questions from

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: the community? Yes, go ahead.

[Speaker 0]: Bill. Oh, two twelve. Okay. Yes.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Yep.

[Speaker 0]: So to that point that you were just raising about seeing what the requirements are, I mean, one possibility is that we could bake in some minimal requirements into the bill, which doesn't exist right now, or we could say to DEC, you go ahead and develop those requirements. I'm curious for your preference there, if were going to call out, here is the baseline minimum of what a municipality needs to demonstrate in order to qualify for this, to

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: be

[Speaker 0]: able to petition for this, do you have any recommendations on what those kinds of things might be?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: I think you need to defer to the experts at DEC because it could change over time and I would want them to have that flexibility without having to change statute. There's so much in our lives where we have to change statute when it really, in my opinion, could be referred to or in reference to a document or something that maybe you guys still have oversight of, but ultimately is coming from the technical experts that we have a great relationship with. And we're all about the same thing, is making sure that there's consistency across all of the communities and that water quality is protected at the end of the day.

[Speaker 0]: Go ahead.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: In your experience with Department of would have taken this over, would it make the process, I guess, on one level, would be more efficient because it would not be duplicative to extend this to now. And what about on frames? Pardon me? This is where it's typically issued a lot faster than the

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Than the state my understanding, and you should have Brian Redman come in, is that I think when they looked at it, you know, as much as maybe people were perceiving that there was a timing issue. I think he said that that wasn't really there usually because they're still going through our local process anyway because of zoning and all of the other lovely permits that you need in Burlington. I think what I would hope taking a step back is, for instance, if we were able to charge at our local level and thus not have additional work absorbed by existing rate payers who are already feeling the burden of the rate increases that we're having to pass for our system. Me being able to add some additional staff capacity to even make our process go faster, I can't promise that's certainly the direction that I would go. If we can make it even quicker and smoother. I don't have good. I have some metrics I can send you on how many projects we're reviewing and the sort of like total size or gallons per day that we're managing, but I don't have good like start stop clocks on how long it's taking us. It really depends on the project because there's a couple that are hugely complicated as far as our collection system. And then there's others that are fairly straightforward.

[Speaker 0]: Just to follow-up on that, to be here though, for if this bill were to pass with effectively this one additional step, it's not exactly taken out of the process, but reduced significantly. I assume that projects may be able to come online faster or

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Yes, I mean, it's one less, you know, people already have to go to so many different places to just get their project off the ground. And my understanding from what's being presented in the bill and talking with Brian is like, basically, if they get the local if they have our approval to connect permit from us, then they're just taking that and filing that with the state. And I don't know what timeframes she would have in place on the general permit side. You'd want to ask that. But it is an administrative review at that standpoint. Is the paperwork all there and not a you know, somebody sitting down and having to technically review it from the from the get go. So, it it should I don't know if I don't think it's the thing that's slowing down growth in general, but I think it is going to squirt a little more oil on on the skids.

[Speaker 0]: Yep, fair enough. I think that's fair. Super, any other questions at this point? Fabulous. And just so you know, we had wanted to get Brian Redmond in, but in his way, so I'll have a call from him sometime next week. And I think that is it. Any other questions?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: No, know they're going to be speaking, some others are going to be speaking with you about 02:13, the water metering one, which we're also keeping a close eye on because we are the one piece I will say is that some of the more advanced metering technology, it really is for benefit of the customer. We read monthly right now, and that at least allows us to catch leaks, right, before they get going too far on the house side. And we are transitioning in Burlington, albeit slowly to more even advanced meter technology, AMI, where a user would be able to get a notification on the day, right? The system would be able to recognize, hey, all of a sudden you're using way more water than you've ever used before. You probably have a leak and they'd be able to intervene and keep their bill from growing exorbitantly. Mean, that's our from our side, we think it is about affordability to have these in place. So, and then I don't know if you're going to speak with technical experts about the what people are maybe afraid of as far as the risks of radio waves and Wi Fi. I mean, I understand that's a concern, but I think the benefits outweigh risks. And I think ultimately, I guess one of our questions is whether or not it really needs to be taken up at the state level or it could be left to local policy decision makers. So I'll just put that out there.

[Speaker 0]: Since we're talking about it, I mean, if I had been more savvy, would have scheduled testimony on 02/13 at the same time. But since we're talking about it, one question regarding that, do you all, if somebody opts out of a, you have an opt out policy for smart meters?

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: We don't. We don't.

[Speaker 0]: Okay, so.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: And and one of the things I've only quickly looked at two thirteen. One of my questions is is it seemed to be written to not only it seemed to be written to not only provide an opt out for future meter technology, which is the fixed network where we basically have a collector or transceiver that's on high points in the city and it's constantly collecting data and the boxes are constantly transmitting data. That's where we're headed. Where we are currently is that we have radio boxes that use radio frequency and they are also transmitting data, but we don't have the receiver point. But it allows us to drive around in one day and read all of the meters basically to collect the data. And in some cases, we can go closer to the house and get more granular data. But it seemed to me that two thirteen was allowing people to opt out of even existing technologies, which would mean we'd have to do manual reads on houses. And I know there was a provision in there that we would be able to charge for that. But I think it just gets tricky because I don't know if we even with the charge, we have enough staff to read? Obviously, it depends how many people opt out to schedule appointments, to meet somebody at their house, to go and get visual eyes on the meter. For those customers, we might end up transitioning them back to like quarterly billing, which means we're not going to catch those leaks. I'm really mostly worried about the customers and while they may be frightened of the technology, they're going to miss out on our ability to tell them what their water bill is and that they may have a problem. They could have a leaky toilet and you can end up racking up much more significant water bills as a result of that.

[Speaker 0]: And we have a question here.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. Hey, Megan, thanks. The two thirteen is my bill. Senator Ruth Hardy. It came as a response to a constituent who had concerns. And I will note that I don't represent Burlington. So the water systems that I was looking at were much smaller rural systems. The constituent had a concern with the technology. So I was trying to balance his concerns and also the cost to the water systems, but obviously you're in a scale that's much bigger than the water systems I was looking at. So your points are super fair, But another concern that came up in drafting the bill is about cybersecurity. And that's been a big issue. And that's why I included the language about requiring, if you're gonna have a smart meter system and do all the things that you're doing to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. So, you're probably not prepared to talk about it now. We certainly could have you back about this hopefully. But just talking about water system cybersecurity and making sure that if you're gonna move to this

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Yep.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Advanced system, you're doing everything possible to protect the system and your customers as well.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Yeah. That's been a huge topic for us, and we are fully in support of any and all regulations to ensure that, again, consistently not only we're protecting customers' personal information, but also that our systems are safe from bad actors who might be trying to mess with our system. We've been having lots of tabletop exercises here with the drinking water plants themselves, making sure that we are as protected as possible. So I fully support that piece. I also understand if in the case of your constituent or your community, if this is what's enabling them to move forward with getting more advanced metering systems by having this opt out. I think I'm just questioning whether or not that's a state wide conversation or if that's a local community conversation.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Well, it came about because there is an opt out for gas and electric systems now. Because my constituent was like, why is there not one for water systems? So maybe it's a broad conversation about opt outs for all of them. And if the cost to the system in your area is so high that if you charge customers to opt out, probably most people are going

[Speaker 0]: to be like, I don't want to

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: pay that cost, so I'm not going to opt out. So there is that also. Exactly. You know, happy to have more information. I was trying to respond to a specific situation in district, but obviously there are lots of different systems.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: So you are doing your job. I think the one distinction is that, right, gas and electric. I guess electric is municipal, but in many places, it is private or it's not municipally driven. And so you don't have very much control over them and what they're doing with it. So that may be the distinction. I think we just have to have a conversation about, you know, its applicability to local system. I'm not Yeah.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Always forbid for the conversation.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: I love that. I love the conversation about policy.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: You're right about the municipal connection that

[Speaker 0]: you know, about. Yeah. Super. Well, thank you. Really appreciate your testimony. Thanks for this other conversation as well. And, yeah, looking forward to moving forward, hopefully with something here.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: So Please use me and or my staff as a resource, right? I mean, we are different than a lot of other communities, but we have we're happy to share any of our background and our knowledge. Maybe there's another piece I've been working on with DEC that's a little bit related to this delegation around industrial pretreatment and whether or not we would want to do it on the local level. And I'm about to send it off and then try to find one of you all to maybe work with. And it might be interesting to merge in with two twelve if it goes further. Again, we're trying to do the right thing for Burlington while also taking the pressure off the state because we know that, frankly, they don't have enough resources to do the giant job that they've been giving for the entirety of Vermont. It's really admirable what they do do, as well as you all. Thank you for your service and wrestling with all these tough things.

[Unidentified committee member or staff (facilitating remarks)]: Super. Well, thank you so much.

[Megan Moir (Director of Water Resources, Burlington DPW)]: Okay. Be well. Have a great day.

[Julie Moore (Secretary of Natural Resources)]: Alright,

[Speaker 0]: and so with that, we are going to wrap it up for the day.