Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And this is Bennington, and this is Friday, January 16. And we have some new bills to explore this morning. Psyched about that. So we're going to start off with, who told me to? I'll

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: start with the bag.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right, and this is Senator Bongartz's film. Do you want to take a minute to explain this?

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah, so at least what I'm trying to accomplish. Yes. We have testimony here with labs different than what I've done with the about sort of that help with legs and the extent to which many of them were both effective. And I'm thinking more we tend to think when we say legs, we tend to think about the big ones. Think about the point eight to 30 megalod. I'm actually thinking more about all of our gems and terrier lakes, those are the lakes, and want to ensure we have a real pain on their health. And I want to look at whether we have the right classification system and whether we are, part of what I'm hoping to achieve with this is to develop a real web underneath the system of late classifications and management that actually serves as the basis for making decisions on things that they come up in front of the agency. It just feels to me like the story of scattershot right now, And I'm not sure that the systems we're using are actually designed to protect Lake Lake Hell and its entire ecosystems. So I had, at one point, I was looking to actually put an ability to do it all and realized that it's probably better to step back a little bit, spend the time with the study, and then put some, like, session together. So those are the things I'm actually looking to accomplish with this. I'll let Mike go through the detail.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Super. Welcome to our legislative council. Morning. Morning.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: How are you?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Pretty good. How are you? Pretty good. I'm I'm

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: happy be that mindset. So this is my under day, but I said it's just to add some further background to Senator Bongartz's statements. The water quality standards that Vermont has, which are required under the water act, basically have classified waters of the state. And and frankly, you, the general assembly, have set the classification for most waters by saying the default is most waters are But being two unless by rule they are reclassified. Well, you know the extent of waters that are in Vermont. There's creeks and streams and rivers and ponds and lakes and wetlands. And the concept of one classification and one set of standards for the multiple very different types of surface waters is, to an extent, it's administratively efficient. It leads to predictable standards, but does it do what is necessary to protect the water quality of the various different types of waters, especially with lakes and how lakes and ponds can be very, very different. You can have the glacial deep lakes like Willoughby, and you can have the kind of shallow, you know, kind of spread out lakes like Iroquois or or Joe's. And so how do you how do you regulate them, classify them in a way that is intended to to protect and conserve them to the best of the general sense stability. When you look at other states, other states do have classification systems for lakes that are different from their general waters, and those classification systems are often based on the use of that lake or the nature of the lake, whether it's, you know, pristine, high elevation, it shouldn't be viewed, it shouldn't be developed. And, you know, when Senator Bongartz and I were first talking about it, we looked at a couple of states and looked at how they do their classifications. It's a possibility, there's potential for that in Vermont, but what you also need to work into that is what's called an anti degradation policy. That's also a federal requirement. And then it's a requirement that water quality needs to be maintained at its existing quality if it's meeting standards or it needs to be improved through a plan or some other way of remediation. Well, if you're managing a lake to the lowest standard of B2, and you're not amending that classification by rule, there's 190 waters in the state that allegedly meet higher standards but haven't been reclassified. Now I don't know how many of them are lakes or lakes segments, they're still being managed. Theoretically, they have to be managed at the higher level. You can degrade that higher level of quality, but they haven't been identified as that higher level of quality. So part of what you need to look at with any classification or refestication of new systems is how anti degradation plays into how we do that classification.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Did you say there were 190 of those potentially higher? They could be higher quality, but they're not.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So every two years ANR has to go out and assess the status of the water quality of the states and they do really, it's a really good report, it's really interesting people tell you like how many miles they are in the state of rivers and how many lakes or acreage of lakes and how many are stressed and etcetera, etcetera. Not in this past year, but two, four years ago now, their report said that there were 190, approximately 190, that were could be reclassified up and have not yet been reclassified. So and I can get you that report that specifically.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: That would be great.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Now with all of that said, I'll just walk through the bill. On page one, you're on line 17, section one. This is creation of a water quality lake classification and induced high degradation study group for the purpose of reviewing and evaluating the existing statutory regulatory frameworks, policies, and procedures governing water quality and the classification of waters in the state. The group shall recommend to the general assembly whether the current regulatory framework for waters of the state is adequate and whether legislative policy changes are needed in order to strengthen environmental protection and other public interest in the waters. Membership is two members of the House, two members of the Senate, Secretary of Natural Resources or designee, and the Department of Conservation Water Quality Scientist or technical staff member appointed by ANR, two persons from business that interact with water quality and two persons representing nonprofits, environmental advocacy groups, and one person representing the Federation for the Non Police Department. That's 11 total members. The study group developed an inventory of the existing water classification designations as set forth in water quality standards, including high quality waters, water quality data that meets our seats in the form of criteria. Wording in that They shall accept the most obligations under the Canadian Water Act with respect to adoption and implementation of the mandated validation policies, including any statutory and regulatory requirements, identification of any legal administrative or practical barriers, we will comply. We're to stop right there. Federal Clean Water Act requires every state to have an anti degradation policy, in every state that has a procedure about implementing or to have an implementation process for that. Vermont has an anti degradation policy. You were required ANR to adopt the implementation by rule. You were required to do that by 2016, and that was after extending the date several times. They have still not adopted that implementation by rule. They instead adopted a procedure which they say is sufficient, but you told them to do it by rule, then they have done. So part of what this will look at is whether or not for legal compliance with both the Clean Water Act and state statute, whether the anti degradation policy implementation policy needs to be adopted or put it in statute. Some states have anti degradation in their statutes. I will note that it's not the easiest thing to digest, so mold probably would be best whether you're not getting a dollar agency to be a little routine. Maybe it's statute. Maybe statute. Moving on page three, line 17, the study committee shall assess and identify current and potential threats to water quality of the waters of the state as defined under the water quality standards. Includes an evaluation of whether existing statutory regulatory frameworks, rules, policies, and procedures are adequate to protect and support the designated and existing uses of the waters. Weather management practices effectively minimize the risks of those things, and then identify and evaluate existing statutory regulatory policies applicable to waters classified as Class And that's a higher standard. And is it enough? Is it working? Are they being reclassified when they need class a? And then on page four, I need to evaluate whether amendments to the water classification system are warranted that encompass all classes of surface water, including stream givers lakes, and shall consider whether modifications are necessary to advance public interest by promoting ecological integrity, health, and functional capacity. And also consider whether separate class ifications or systems are needed for rivers and streams and lakes and mountains. As I said, other states have different classifications for earthquakes and bombs. Men would recommend legislative amendments and identify any water quality rules, policies, or procedures that require revision to implement the statutory recommendation.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You have a question. Sure. Just as I'm reading it out, this idea of functional capacity, can you just speak to what that is?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure. So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is is it like ecosystem services?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's basically supporting all of the designated uses. So when adopt, when ACID adopts a water quality standard, what they do is they designate the uses of the water that the waters need to be managed for, and so it's things like recreation, drinking water, irrigation, product habitat, aesthetics, and I'm missing water treatment. But then you have to look and see whether or not that water is being assessed for its capacity to support those uses, including over time. Mhmm. And

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: What direction is it going? Right. Right. Yeah.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That that report that I talked about that ANR does every two years, it will identify this in different waters, and and there's another requirement called the three zero three listing. But those lists, they will identify those waters that are impaired, those waters that are impaired that have a plan already, but they also identify the stressed water, so they don't call them stressed waters, I love to have them when they call them stressed waters. But they're not stressed waters anymore, but they're waters that because of things like flow or nuisance species are potentially not going to meet those designated uses in the way that really the lake has the capacity to do it, but those things are, these things are there, lake flow like in a drought time, promising with all the aquatic invasive species, I mean lake has capacity to provide a lot, but the aquatic invasive species are limiting its ability to do some of those things. I mean I've vacationed there. I skate above above the the bridge, you know, on the north end, and it's it's it's beautiful, but it's Mill Foyer. Right? And so that's that's the kind of thing that that that criteria

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you very much.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The group gets the assistance of ANR for administrative, technical, and legal, and then legal and drafting systems of legislative council. They report to you on fourth January fifteen twenty twenty seven, includes its findings and recommendations. The secretary shall call it for first meeting. The committee elects its chair from among the four legislators. So that is something you can decide, do or not. It ceases to exist 02/01/2027. I do think the timeline might be a little ambitious, but that's something to discuss with interested parties. You and the appointed members get compensation and reimbursement for eight meetings, and that's that's it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Questions, comments, thoughts? Thank you.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Does it have

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: any useful thing to do? Okay. So, we are going to roll right into the next one. Two twenty four, which has multiple topics. So I'm actually thinking of this as a little bit of like a miscellaneous bill in a way, related to topics having to do with lakes. So there's a few things I want to explain about it. The first section comes out of a situation that is emerging in Barrie, in which someone applied for a fishing tournament on a body of water that is a drinking water source, and the entire perimeter of that drinking water source is owned by the city ferry, and they were very alarmed that this fishing tournament permit was granted. So having been on the city council when a similar process unfolded regarding Berlin Pond, which is Molecular's drinking water source, I'll just say I have high sensitivity to the uses of bodies of water that are drinking water sources. I feel that those ought to be particularly protected, and so one of the difficulties with that fishing tournament is that with the entire perimeter being owned by the City of Barrie, people would have to have crossed that land in order to get there. It seemed to be reasonable that if a municipality owns the entire perimeter of their drinking water source, that they should be able to control the activities that occur on that lake, especially as they have a very high interest in the quality of that water. And so the first section is really about allowing a municipality that meets those criteria, so they own the entire perimeter and it's their drinking water source, that they could petition the state to be able to regulate the uses on that water. I believe, thanks to the city council for helping me track down this number, I think it might apply to the scale of 11 municipalities in the state of Vermont. Some municipalities have a couple of sources for which that is true. However, it's a limited set. So that is the first part. The second part is about Wake votes. So this is a topic that we've discussed a little bit last year, especially with the possibility that weight are very hard to decontaminate. There was this idea of a home labor rule where Wakewood would have to be assigned or could choose, I suppose, what their home late would be. So they've got to stick to that late, which would help with the issue of spreading aquatic invasive species across the state. That is don't worry, the second is your chunk as I think of it. The third part is about the use of fishing access areas to be used potentially as aquatic nuisance inspection stations, and just making it clear that that is an okay use for those locations. I guess that has been in some dispute in some parts of the state. And then the last part, especially coming out of this situation with the fishing tournament, it was surprising to me that as a part of the fishing tournament application, that there was not a question regarding access. The last part just requires that as a part of the application, that they include a question about access points so that by granting that permit, the state is not sort of inviting people to trespass. So if there's not a public access point, then they're going to use a private landowner's land to be the access point for the tournament, do they have permission from that landowner to use that? So that is the gist of all the parts of this bill. Yeah, and I'm interested to see how that lands with writing books. Just gonna read it all Thank you.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So again, is Doctor. Grady Flutland's Head of Council. We're gonna begin section one, page two, line three, and then use the public water statutory authority. So let's before we go into the statute section, let's discuss the background for this. So the surface waters of the state by common law, which we stand by the constitution, are public waters that are held in trust or be used by citizens of the state for recreation, commerce, travels, etcetera. The entity that holds those waters in trust is you, the general assembly. You are the ones likely by your constituents, citizens of Vermont, to manage those waters and trust for the state. You can delegate your authority to other entities, and you can delegate that authority with conditions. And I will give you an example of public trust lands because if you fill a surface water with fill, with dirt, sand, whatever, they're creating land where water used to be. It doesn't take away the public trust nature of that, so then it becomes public trust land. So the Downtown Burlington, Echo Center, Sailing Center, etcetera, those are all filled lands. And those are lands that you have delegated the regulation of the control of to burden. But when you did it, you conditioned the use of those lands for recreation and scientific sector.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: It's not there for commerce

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: unless it's intended to the other facilities. Occasionally Burlington advocates will come in and ask you to amend that either to clarify a boundary, clarify a use, etcetera. But that's the level of delegation that you can engage in. You can specifically say, hey, municipality, you can regulate this, but you can only do this type of regulation. And so there is in title 10 in section fourteen twenty four, you have delegated the regulation of the use of those public trust waters to ANR, and they are allowed to establish rules for the regulation of those waters. And you can see what those rules are, scope of those rules on page two, lines five through 16. Nothing's changing there. I'm just putting that there for context. So you can the rules can regulate conduct in an area, it can regulate if boats are allowed, it can regulate if uses are allowed in a very good time. One of the other things that this section does already, it's on page two, line 18, is it allows the secretary to delegate authority for the regulation of public water to a municipality. Authority for delegation of public water is already there for municipality. You've already delegated it in session law to Burlington, but you've also delegated authority to Newport for regulation of waters in Newport. And you did that through this statute where the municipality accepted the delegation by creating a bylaw or ordinance for the regulation of the water, and the secretary proved that it's actually an appendix to the use of water's rule. And so there are opportunities already for delegation, But what this bill would do, it would require the delegation, you know, on page three, one, and six, on the petition of municipal select award with the commissioners of the public water system, the secretary by rule or written agreement, not just by rule, shall delegate authority to regulate the use of public water when there are certain conditions that met. The public water serves as the source of the drinking water for municipally operated public water system. Now when you have a public water system you have to identify your source and that's how Ben Montrose at DEC was able to identify that there are a lot of municipalities that would qualify under this because they had the source permit and he was able to see from the source permit who controlled the land around that source, and thanks to Ben for doing that. And then the municipality that operates the public water system owns or controls all of the public or private lands surrounding the public water, and the municipality accepts the delegation by adopting bylaw or ordinance approved by the secretary for the regulation of the use of the public water. Now municipality that is delegated that authority shall comply with and be at least as stringent as to state public water supply requirements and rules of the fact that on that chapter, but potentially could it be more stringent, especially with regard to uses of the water. And then appeals from the final act of the municipality under the bylaw would go to the environmental division, and the secretary would, of course, have authority to terminate the delegation for cause or without cause upon sex most notice.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Question here. Yes. So who's the agent designated to provide understanding that the municipality does work that you've done with some of the. Well, that

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: would that would be in the bylaw that the municipality has to adopt. They have to adopt adopt who's gonna be the regulatory entity for the delegation, but it's it's it's they're going to have to basically show ANR how they are going to do it, and then have that adopted at the municipal level.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Then the ANR has to go back and make sure that they were part of that?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, ANR still has oversight authority. That's what that page four aligns to work in five, so they can go and they can look for cause for violation. And this type of thing is very citizen focused. You will get complaints if there is not compliance. So

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: how does the public trust stop and fall out of this for being able to use the waters for

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Well, that's the thing. You're delegating to this municipality the ability to regulate those uses to limit those uses, and that is in your authority. Just like the ferry naturie, the animals, wildlife of the state are also in your public trust, you get to regulate who, when, how they are taken or hunted or trapped or fished. And so you can say, no, you cannot take that animal. Here you're saying, we're giving to the authority about whether or not to use lake or a pond, whatever, to the municipality. If they are a public water system, they can control all the land around the water, and they have a bylaw that AR approves that sets with how they're going to do. And controlling use of a reservoir that's used for drinking water is not a unique and unusual thing in The United States. Right? Like, drive in Massachusetts, you're driving along, like, one twenty eight, and you'll pass by, like, three or four, like, big, huge waters, and they all have fences around them. Those are American water. And in Massachusetts, they have the discretion to put up fences and to exclude people. Walk through the neighborhoods of Boston, walk through Cleveland Circle, walk through Jamaica Plain, you're going to find reservoirs and they'll have fences around. And that is authority you can give a municipality a public water system if you wanted to give them at that point.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Moving on page four, where I said, You're moving out of the the public water system regulation on the use of water into two weeks. It's still something within the use of waters chapter, and you will see some definitions relevant to that on page four going on to page five. And you come on page five to two new definitions. One is of motorboat, and it's cross referencing the definition of motorboat in '23. I thought I brought that with me, but I'm still about to do my best. I'm sorry. It is okay. And then a definition of Waco. If this is drawn from the use of Waters rule that already exists, remember, there were provisions that are added to that that rule by ANR regulating it'll authorizing, regulating the use of a on the waters of the state. So the motorboat has

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: one or

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: more ballast tanks, ballast bags, or other devices that are assigned features used to increase the size of the North Posture. Now the chair referenced that there had been a rule looking at how to regulate weight boats even further, and one of the provisions of that was the home move, home weight provision. And I just took that provision from that draft rule, rule one, tweet it to prevent us from a bad thing, but put it in this bill. So a person shall operate a wake vote only on a link authorized by the department, and only in the area of the lake identified for use by a wake vote. And then on page six, in order to operate a wake load, in the remarks, person who owns or controls it shall identify a home length for those wake loads for the given calendar year. A wake quote, home leg is the only leg on which the weight quote shall be used unless the weight quote is decontaminated according to requirements of later on in the subsection section. Another person who owns or controls the Wade Cove Chubb's plan and Wade Cove's court side, now a current agency issued invalid identifying Wade Cove's home and encourage condominium. Page six, line 10. Prior to entering a Vermont Lake, other than the WakeWorks homeland and prior to reentering a homeland after use of WakeWorks at any other Lake Water body, the person who owns or controls the WakeWorks shall decontaminate WakeWorks at an agency approved decontamination service provider. Then prior to entering the lake, the law enforcement officer, employee of the agency, or a person staffing an authorized supply of nuisance inspection center may request that the person who owns the controls or is using the weight code provide a group of teeth contaminated and the patient's safety of the teeth contamination service provider. All provisions of the section regarding aquatic nuisance, all provisions of section fourteen fifty four regarding control of aquatic nuisance species, they still apply. So there are provisions already law that a person transporting a vessel to or from the water shall, prior to launching the vessel upon leaving the water, inspect the vessel and other equipment, shall remove that improperly dispose of any product transport, plant parts, and species. You have to drain the vessel prior to transport away. All of that still applies. All of that still applies to this vessel. There's nothing that's different just because it's a great fault.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: I'm just questioning you. So do we have a authorized legal examination? Well, that that's probably one of

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the things that you need to talk to ANR and advocates about whether or not those services are there, and and then you need to decide whether or not that's something that will prevent you from or I don't know. Do you care? You know? If there decontamination services aren't there, that means the wait folks can't move. And is that something that the bureau gave us? And so Moving on from there, this would be a judicial bureau offense, just like other use of waters law violations are. Does everyone know what the judicial bureau is? It's a branch of judiciary that just looks at civil violations and generally minor violations. There's a list of judicial bureau offenses. When you amend a judicial bureau jurisdiction, I recommend that you bring the the the administrative judge in to notify him and notify the judicial bureau and see if that's something that they're available to do. Sometimes they say, no. We don't have the capacity to give us just just too many detention violations. And sometimes they say, fine. Thus, this is something they basically already do for diesel waters, and so I I don't think they'll have much resistance. But you just need I just recommend it because you get out to work. Somebody asked you to talk to the administrative judge about this, and you say no.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: could see the existing authority for use of waters is already there on page seven, five, thirteen, fourteen, but you're adding that authority in the link provision on the list. You're also clarifying some of the existing provisions relating to product nuisance. And I say that when fourteen fifty four was initially enacted, drafted, the concept of when you had to drain your vessel was discussed, and they decided not to like give a time frame just to say when you need you have to drain, but this is saying after you leave you cut your drain to no longer provide opportunity for urban being developed. And that is the use of water's rule. We now come to one of my sarcastically favored subject matters, and that's the Fish And Wildlife Access Area. I say sarcastically favored because the department and I have had a difference of opinion about how federal law controls access areas. So let's step back. There is something called the Dingell Johnson Act and another act related to sport fishing, where there are excise taxes on hunting, fishing, sporting equipment. Those excise taxes are then used and made available to states to pay for a host of activities, but including construction of access areas to provide access to to hunting, fishing, and recreational opportunities. I don't say recreational opportunities. This is the federal law specifically says the access areas need to be available for motorboats and not just motorboats used for hunting and fishing. And so when the states get this money for a project or an access area, there are conditions and restrictions on the acceptance of that money, and one of the restrictions is that it has to be used for the purposes identified in the grant of money, but that doesn't mean it can't be used for other purposes. But the federal law says that if there are other purposes or other uses of the access area and they conflict with the authorized uses in the grant, but priority uses, well then the other non priority uses need to go away until the conflict is resolved. It doesn't mean they need to go away forever, but they just need to go away until the conflict is resolved. And would anybody think at an access area where this and why this comes up, why there might be a conflict,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: where you wanna park your car or park your

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: trailer park, you know, and that's where the conflicts come up, when people are there using the access areas like parks and people want to park their trailer or their truck in order to use their vessel on the water. Now over time, there have been there there's been over time the department has cited people for using access areas that weren't priority uses in a way that seemed unusual. Tourists eating sandwiches at an access area, person painting and painting, face boats. One of our legislative council attorneys got cited for putting on stand up paddleboard. Because they're not allowed because there's a rule that says what is an allowed use and what is not allowed use. And what is in the lab use are called the priority uses and they're set up in a priority system. And if you're not one of them or you're not, you don't receive a special authorized authorization from the commissioner, you are not allowed, and you can be cited for using that access area in violation of that. You know that because one of our attorneys got saved. And you can put in a kayak, you can put in a canoe, you can put in a sailboat, but you can't put in a sailboat, which is considered to be stand up. You can't pick anything there, you can't have a campfire there, you can't recreation there, you can't sell anything there. And there's chanting there, and there's a few other things. But when you look at other states, they allow certain instances, they allow, Alaska, you can can, Alaska, you can have a barbecue, you know. Other states allow certain activities, but if there's a conflict, those other activities have to stop. Well why are we talking about this? Because aquatic nuisance inspection stations, something that you basically have authorized in statute, use some of those access areas in order to do the activities and the provisions that are required under law, and some of them have been told that they are using the access areas in conflict of the access area rule because they are not a listed authorized priority breach and they don't have a special authorized use funding commissioner. Well if you look around the nation at where authorized product nuisance inspection stations occur or are located, lo and behold they're at other states Fish and Wildlife access areas. Now some of those inspection stations they were actually given the grant by Fish and Wildlife for that. But some of them know it's just an authorized use in that state of that access area. So what this language does is it says on page 10 that fishing access areas may be used by approved aquatic nuisance inspection stations in order to allow for decontamination of wake boats under section fourteen twenty four b of the spectrum or inspection of vessels entering race eight or return under section fourteen thirty four of this type. Any use of an access area needs to comply with those federal requirements, that federal provision that says if you're going to conflict with the priority use then that conflict has to go away, but consistent with that federal regulation if the aquatic nuisance inspection station conflicts with the use of fire priority, the aquatic inspection station shall modify its activities until the conflict is remediated. This section and any rules adopted under it shall not be construed to mean that a conflict exists between a station and a higher priority use when an operator of a product inspection station informs the user of a vessel or requirement to decontaminate a week of your inspected vessel. Now why is that language in there? Because when there is a conflict it's not the word that's that are you know affirmatively noticing it, it's the users, users complain And so if an inspection station is fulfilling its requirements under 1424B or fourteen fifty four, you don't want to let users call the warden and say, hey there's this conflict, there's this station there that's not letting me use the access area, or telling me that I have to decompaminate my vote or show proof of decompamination, that's a conflict with the access area rules, you have to come

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: and get them out of here.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If you didn't have a science, I guarantee you that would happen. And so now you have this, and so that's not that's not a conflict.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And we have a question right here.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: So where does the funding from Johnson legal audit come from?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Comes from excise taxes, ditching, hunting, and sporting equipment, and so the users, that's that's that's a large, well it's a large part of of the regulation of fish and wildlife in general. It's like the model has been for decades that the users pay for the right to use state man's Zero zero two. Access areas, either through their licensing for hunting and fishing or through these access taxes on fishing, hunting, sporting equipment. I think I think none of you are on an appropriation.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I am on the.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. Well, that model is failing, and it's been failing for for several years. And the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department can no longer pay for itself through user fees, and it has been getting a substantial part of its budget from the general fund for years. And the trend is not looking great. So U's or Ps are going away, but the excise taxes still exist, and the federal conditions for those excise taxes still exist. And as I said, this is one of my sarcasm, big picture. It's okay because I've been doing it so long. I've talked to US Fish and Wildlife about this and they say yeah you know you have to give those priority uses priority and you have to remove the conflict. It doesn't mean that the use can't come back in if it's no longer using in conflict. And their position is we want people to access waters, we want people to use nature, we want them to go out, maybe they're not a payer of an excise tax, they didn't buy placements, but the more you have people using the waters, the more opportunity and potential is there that they become those users that are paying into the system. And that's kind of the concept of Fish and Wildlife when I talk to them, Pat, it's like don't snarely snoo people, just follow the rule and avoid conflicts. Now I do say that the department has a point that it's administratively to invoke the 200 battle. You need warrants that will probably be called out more often. It's administratively more effective to just say these are the only allowed uses and therefore nothing else could happen unless it has a special authorized use from target commission. I think that makes more sense if you were really in a user fee model budget. It's not a user fee model budget. But that's your call. You are the supreme legislative policy makers, so you get to make the call.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let me see the follow-up question. So just

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: a, something I think nine out of 10 times the disputes I've seen at these access points are real estate. Don't have nothing for parking. It's all park. And it could be it could be repaired. We had more real estate where we could accommodate more people who are trying to use those. Yeah. So I just I mean, we want people to come use them. So

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And a lot of it would say eight out of 10 is parking there's others like people using it for drug activity and things like that, which is that's a, you know, a real need to have to have that activity, but, you know, some of the real estate around these waters is limited. It's often limited by the roads, because ultimately, in order to get to the access area, you need to go on a road to get there, and the road is off in the boundary from the access area. So One of the things that that you have the unique, maybe not so unique, but one of the things that you did when you created the Fish and Wildlife rules, you created them in statute. And you said, Fish and Wildlife Board, you can amend those rules, but we get to amend those rules too. And so in section seven, you are amending the use of state controlled fishing access areas, the rule, and you are on page 14 saying that an improved aquatic nuisance inspection station is an improved use. It would be last as priority. It's it's is literally the last one, and that means something. So ATVs and snowmobiles used for ice fishing, we get priority over it, but it would still be unauthorized. And then you will see on page 15, line 14, I just wanted to point the second, because the city council got cited, launching and recovery of sailboars raft, no cuts in the parking of the footprints of trails, sporting them, did not allow. My colleague was aprophlegic. Page 17, line six, section this is the fishing tournament section of the chair reference. You will see on page 18 that when an application to hold a fishing tournament submitted to the commissioner is going to be on a form issued by the commissioner, and the form shall require the applicant to identify and access to one of the waters for participants in the tournament, and if the access point is on a private right of way, whether the applicant has secured means to use it right of way or looking for us. Now there have been issues with this over time, usually with the larger tournaments where parking again is an issue and parking for the general access area gets used up and that would be so overblow. The tournament's going to have to show that they have some authority for that.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Okay. Thank you. There's a lot in there. Lots to talk about. Any of you questions for our legislative council before we move on? Okay. Alright. Thank you so much. Okay, so we have Mr. Batchelver here. Welcome.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Thank you so much.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'm also joined by a general counsel I think, just grab a seat, and our access area program manager Mike McDowellske, who is available if we want to chat with him at all, he's seeping the nuance of our DG related access area restriction that I think you can have a lot to say in opposition and perhaps counter a lot of what Mr. O'Grady said, but I do know that this has been something of a phony protection over the years for everyone. So I'm here to talk about S223 and S224. Thank you so much for having me, my name is Jason Bashelder, I'm Fish and Wildlife Commissioner for the record, I'm the most recent past EDC Commissioner also. I've left that fond memory to the experts, and although they're here today and will be gone after me, I understand I'm going to be talking a little bit about posted land also, would we like to just go into that after

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: the That would be great.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Happy to do it. Sure.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: S-two 23, I don't have a whole lot to get into around that bill. Water quality lithotripsy anti day is something that's left to DEC. If there is a study group that materializes from this bill, we would appreciate a fish and wildlife fishery biologist likely to be on the study committee as the federal Clean Water Act have established that a national goal for U. S. Waters shall be visual, and we would like representation on that work or on that study.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You said a fish violence, wouldn't you?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Fisheries violence, yes. Someone from our fishery staff, you do mention that the secretary will have a designee that would like to be from DEC, but we pass that if this would be under the bridge, and we would also be included for their expertise. And that's really the only input I had That's fine.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In 02/23. Yeah.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Before we do that, are you otherwise, supportive, neutral?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I feel like we're neutral at this point without having had a long moment with secretary and the deputy secretary to talk through it, we've been commissioner to commissioner on this one, it seems as though however DEC lands we will be there. Moving on to 02/24, I think Mr. McGrady identified very accurately the there are four parts to it from our perspective, the drinking water Thurman W. Dix Reservoir aspect, the home lake aspect over wake boats and decontamination station, the act sorry, the access area rule and the change thereof, and then the fishing kernan aspect. And if I can just jump right into it, drinking water sources as we all know, we've had ten years history with Berlin Pond, have water treatment facilities that can literally, well adequately and literally get anything out of a drinking water source, and so we feel as though this would be an effort to manage a very small problem, and which is currently in courts as I think you know, there's a, it's to tell the whole story about Thurman Dick's, in 2006 I was the warden who was assigned to patrol that reservoir when it had decades of only, I'll use air quotes, lawless access. I think that's up for debate, but the city of Gary designated three spots on Thermomix Reservoir for boats to fish, and they came to me and they said through channels, didn't, I didn't speak record to city employees, they said would you, you're the warden here, and I was junior warden, you patrol these three areas so that people can fish? We've had a lot of requests folks to fish this reservoir, and I was absolutely glad to do it because it is an access to a spot where we hadn't had access lawfully prior, and they did some sort of designating of what would otherwise be an unauthorized ability to designate a use of a public water in our opinion. Regulating fishing on a public body of water is not something any municipality in the state has authority over, but they did, and we followed along because it was a wonderful gesture for the city to be offering to the people of Vermont, and I had a wonderful four years there checking licenses and bag permits and you know writing people in their own tickets on occasion and other stuff, but it was great. And then up until recently that was offered, and unfortunately it's not anymore, but my point being, excuse me, that the city had had the lawful right to post all the way around that that way, and when they offered the access that I think that is when the question was asked, well if I can go this far, can I get this far? And I think that's to be played out in the courts. Certainly don't want to appear supportive of anything that would otherwise prohibit access to public body of water, right? It's their land, it's our water, it's their drinking water, but it's the public trust resource offered to the state of Vermont through the constitution that we won't stay up for no matter about. Fully respecting the private land, fully respecting their wishes in the city of Barrie to have a public water supply, if you look around the city, I'm sure Mr. Montross included among those 11, well maybe he didn't, but we were looking at Lake Champlain, we're looking at the town of Derby, which has cows walking there, Derby Pond, if you look right there, there's cows walking in that pond, And I don't feel as though in the modern era looking at people as a threat, especially anglers as a threat to a public drinking water source, as anything other than a small worry. Does not cross my mind at all, and Burling Pond bears that out, the ten years into Burling Pond is ten year old shoes. I do understand your five invasive species concerns there, we can manage, and we have managed around the state, live date, as a department, okay, that's within our ability to manage through the board. If by some miracle, Thurman Dick's was open to the fish, which I don't think it's on to put, who knows? We would certainly offer that as a concession for those who are worried about AIS on that lake. Worms, flueers, no fish, that would be a concession to go out. Any questions about my assignments there?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Something I did not mention is just the threat of safety to those waters. I mean, we have an increasingly hostile environment from a cybersecurity perspective, but in terms of being able to quickly respond, let's say, to a threat, I guess I'll just put that other as an additional concern, because when it comes to people's drinking water, people want to have assurances that it is secure, that it's safe. And so, you know, in terms of contamination of, you your run of the mill cows or worms or, you know, that sort of thing, It seems like, especially for modern drinking water treatment sources, that is sufficient. But, I mean, any thoughts on other potential actual malicious threats?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: No, what comes to mind is a place like Lake Champlain, where I'm not certain how many municipalities receive their drinking water from there, but I also think of the Fallen Risk War that Mr. O'Graton might have alluded to, if the defense system is going to stop anything, if someone is held back, they're held back. But I think we're talking about a handful of anglers, hypothetically and eventually here on my seat, a fishing tournament, which I think is in name only and not in intent. I don't worry about access to waters from anglers, or the attention that anglers draw to waters. I think in 2026 it would have pointed itself out by now, can't predict the future, but anglers are also extraordinarily responsible, and I often get into this battle in my head about who cares more about x y and z, the people who enjoy it this way, or people enjoy it this way. I think the person in question enjoys this place because he loves to eat the bass out

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of this place, and I

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: would argue that he cares more than I do, because I don't eat bass out of there, but that's his food. So I think he cares in a way that is very special about this place, and would go to great lengths to call out any nefarious use of it, which he doesn't think his use is, and I don't. I do hope that all the rules are followed, and I do respect law to involve him, so I know he knows that also.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anyway. Great, thank you. I also have great faith in our anglers as well. One of the other things that you mentioned was that you said for drinking water, you can get anything into it or out of that sort. And guess I just want to flag that as a question mark that I would want to discuss further with. Sure. So people who are in the drinking water world about the ability to get anything out.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yeah, appreciate that, and I don't mean to sound like an expert there. I'm sure I've proven wrong. Well,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: we'll see. Sure. It could be, but let's find out if we let it go.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: In my head I go back to Berlin Pond and how there were concerns about fossil fuels, ice augers, and snowmobiles, and we we as an agency were responsive to that, and not allowed to use a power auger out there, you're not allowed to bring a motorized vehicle out on the reservoir. I think there was concern about oil and gas, so full disclosure, I would rescind any collusion idea to be an expert on what they develop, I'd leave that to those fine folks. But thanks for hearing me. Yes, absolutely. Thank you. Requiring weight boats to designate a home water more under the EDC purview. We're obviously strong supporters of aquatic nuisance spread prevention, including clean, drain, dry, and procedures for all boats. I think it is worth pointing out that there are other methods that do spread body nuisance that we sometimes permit, and that we sometimes allow like the filling of tanker trucks, landscaping, irrigation, filling of pools, things along those lines, and that weight goals are not the only vector. I feel as though you'll hear some some wonderful testimony in BEC there, I just wanted to recognize that there is some crossover there, and that if a law were to be passed around the home late rule of ordinance would enforce it, and we can find common ground and certainly follow through. I feel the most problematic of the proposed changes are of the fishing wildlife access area rule proposed changes. I almost feel like jumping out of my seat and letting Mike in here. I'll do my best until he gives me the, you know, the severed, where that's go. But we do feel Mike does feel as though this would be viewed as a loss of control on Department of Lands for which we do receive federal feedback. I think that is as far as I really need to go. I will say that this is another issue that we feel is focused on a single kerbuffle at Joe's Pawn, and Joe's Pond is simply just too small, and from two aspects of the agency, size of an accessory and parking are a thing, but there's also weapons on both sides and we feel we would have to withstand, to accommodate. Folks who know Joe's Pond know that there's some some VTrans laying right up the road at the 3 Ponds Junction, and I feel that so getting that water away and getting a cleaning station away would be to everyone's benefit, I don't know if that's an ideal spot or not, just throwing it out there that we've done quite a bit of thinking about this, and getting those away from access areas is a good idea for a lot of reasons. To give you some insight baseball, we had no joy in saying that there could be no vote loss station at Joe's Pond, we as I said we value the efforts to combat a lot of nuisance species, we do want, or we I would say rather look at look at Malice Bay or look at a larger access area where there isn't so much cramping, there wouldn't be the ability for the water to get right back into the lake where it came. We work together on these problems routinely, and we certainly will continue to work on this rather than risk the higher of the Fish and Wildlife Service or the federal entity that might look across at us for this. And I'll go to my last plan quickly, and then if Mike wants to jump in you're amenable to what I offer, might kill in many more cracks, but I'll just jump to the fishing tournament part, and then I'll be done until posted land. So the requirement for fishing tournaments to be named, or to name an access point, also appears directly that Thermodix which we've acknowledged, and just to say that if you use several other fishing tournaments that come to mind, Blade Champlain is probably too big, but Caspian is a comparable size, and if you were to watch the Kaspien tournament on opening day, or any other day of fishing, summer or winter folks access through private land and without trespassing. In fact there are at least two points on Kaspien that have an arrow arrow sign that said fishing department this way or fishing access this way, and I actually actually let them hold on a couple years ago when I was retired just to say thanks, the lady came off and found me, and it was really nice. So they do appreciate the acknowledgement, but we do have other places other than Thermidix, which is why we don't designate access, because in a state like Vermont where we do have the right to cross lands that are otherwise not enclosed or posted, people do, and they do what I would say every day. That is why we don't designate an access area, and to designate one on certain places other than others probably would not be the end of the world or a policy decision we would want to, would, I think we want to die on, I just wanted to explain that there are many other places where we don't, obviously we don't, doesn't create any authority for anyone to cross a posted side or to cross someone's private land if they've been given notice that they can't get that done. Those are not free passes to doing convention law enforcement. I just wanted to point that out and and to say that we certainly would would work with you in any way that we could to to build out allaying fears around what what folks are doing at this time. So We can get through this one.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes, thank you. I'm unclear whether means what you just said means you are supportive or unsupportive of what's in here. It sounds like you don't think it's necessary because people are used to having people parking on their private land because they're next to a place where there may be an issue tournament.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Not quite, I think, so to break that apart, let's say we're going fishing at Caspian, I park on the side of the road where dozens of cars, maybe six or seven cars park, and I do walk down someone's private driveway where there is a sign that says fishing access here. People have bought this land while anglers have come and gone for one hundred years, and they acknowledge that this happens, they could post and we would respect that, but that's the instance I'm trying to get at in this game to give you a hypothetical. But I do feel like this is a single example problem that we're trying to fix, whereas this will have a statewide attack if we put it in play. It isn't necessary anywhere else is my point.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Besides Cassidy?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Besides Sermindix. Cassidy doesn't seem fine. Okay,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So just in response to this, so there are 11 municipalities that own the entire perimeter of their drinking water sources. If someone was to try to have a fishing tournament on one of those, you know, it's not the same kind of situation where people aren't used to having their land, trust us. I'm anticipating that there may be more, of these kinds of attempts to have fishing tournaments on otherwise, you know, and excessive, like this was new. Guess I could imagine that it could be a problem elsewhere. So in a sense, trying to get ahead of it, you know, if someone did try to have a tournament on one of these other bodies of water, according to the application as it exists now, I assume you would grant that permit.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: We would grant it, yes. I haven't had a chance to look at those other drinking water sources where municipality falls all the way around. I suspect that they may not meet other criteria that we would ask for and I would have to study that. It may not be of a certain size, don't, I'm not steep enough in how many cross references we have to come through to grant a permit. I'm happy to do that for you though, and I will for my own knowledge, I'll get back to you on it.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And in addition to the example that you used with the Aspiend, is there sure, so yes, there's maybe a lot of private land that people are inviting the public to use as an access point. Is there a public access point setting that if those people did not allow people to cross their land, is there specific public access point that someone could use at Casper?

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So there is, so that is a wonderful question. We do not have a Fish and Wildlife access at Castleman, so the town beach I believe is owned by Hardwick Electric. Next to it is some town land that is government land and until otherwise posted, anyone could use. But if that's a yes, then yes. So if we do not have a fish and it can't pass.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so it's not a fish and wildlife crisis, but there is a town.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: There is a town beach there where people swim, and there is a boat launch at adjacent townland, so if you have to look at a map to see who owns the sliver, maybe Mike knows exactly or Laura knows, but there is an access where you could launch a boat, there's a greeter there for body nuisance control, it's a lovely spot, it does get low, they're most susceptible to drought, but we would consider that a public place, that's where all the anglers go now that need to launch with a boat or a kayaker clinic.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So that could theoretically be a point that someone could set.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: And they do have the town government land just adjacent to there that is not part of the access area, but I'm not sure if there's a publicity out

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: there, just really the town might, Question?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Okay.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Okay,

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: and hosted land, or would you like to bring Mike up? Mike's an absolute expert.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let's go to Mike first, and then we'll come back. Amazing, thank you.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Thank you. I'm just going to leave my stuff up here though, okay?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Welcome. Thank you. And if you could see

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: your name. Yeah, Mike Petrosi, I'm the Access Area Program Manager for British Modeling. Go ahead. Yeah, the commissioner touched on the issue, the biggest concern now with the access area of both modifications,

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: loss of

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: control. Maybe I should back up in a moment and say that we fully support three programs, the AIS kind of education programs that are slightly different than decontamination stations. Decontamination stations are those that have wash stations of some sort that can wash boats. They typically take up a little bit more space, but at our access areas outside of Lake Champlain, there are probably, we have 146 boat ramps and we probably have something like 40 different breeder programs operating at our access areas. Some of those do have wash stations. As Richard said, the problem is that, when there's space issues, when there are parking space issues, that's where we have problems. And so going back to that comment about loss of control, if this becomes a priority use, currently we permit them and if it's priority use, then we really don't have the ability to tell people, labor associates primarily, that you can't be here. Because now they may be taking up two, five parking spaces. Jones Bong, for example, you can maybe get 10 vehicles with trailers if you're parking really, really well and everyone's getting along. But the reality is it's probably more like seven or eight and just continuing on the Joesphon example, it would probably take away at least two parking spots. On a pretty big and extremely popular lake, if you're down six, seven parking spaces, that's a loss of each. And so the priority for

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: our next

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Just a clarity, the boat wash station would take up two, is that what you were saying?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: As is proposed, So as they the typical process now is a lake association or sometimes a watershed group will come to Fish and Wild and say, hey, we'd like to have a greener program for a wash station here. And okay, give us your design or what are your thoughts on what you want to do when you have it. And then it's kind of a yes or no. If they're big parking lots, Seymour Lake and Morgan, huge parking. They've got pretty good sized footprint, doesn't impact boating or access at all because we have so much space and we work with them pretty frequently and we've never had any issues there. But we still permit every year. We issue a special use permit to ensure that has to approve. If you have much smaller access areas out of the catalyst, correspondence is hassle.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: There's not a lot of parking space there.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So they do, they've had off and on the town's category of parking. Typically a car parked inside somebody in the lawn chair. That's not a ch. But when you want to have say wash station, typically it's something like a horse trailer or shed and hers pawn to Joe's pawn, you're going

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Member)]: to take away park. As soon as

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: you start to take away parking, there's

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: a loss of

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: access. If we don't have the ability to permit it and as the rules or the statute is proposing, it would be a prior use. So there's no ability for us to permit or deny that we're reporting on Washington. So now we've lost control over the activities that are occurring at the access station. As the rule is written now, you can hunt, fish, trap, and vote with absences. Those are the things that the federal government says we have to allow. So in our rules, the prior uses

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: are the things that we have to allow.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So you can do any of those things and we want to do so that's why those areas are there. We want to protect water quality and reduce the spread of the product use of species. And we do that at access areas where we can, where there's space that allows for them. And we work quite a bit with lake associations or certain large agencies, municipalities to try and figure out the best approach. And we've tried that again with the Joe's Pond example, looking at some other spaces, but the reality is where they want to put it, they're gonna approach into a wetland. The water's gonna get discharged into a wetland and it's problematic. That's just the one that comes to mind because it's been the most recent movement communicating with the Children's Pond Association on that. So I'll stop there if there are questions.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Go ahead.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: There's a question. You required ADA accessible to services?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes, with a caveat. So there are different ADA laws. The original was 1992. Then in 2010, there was an update to the federal ADA rules. And in those rules, there are standards for recreational boating facilities and pretty much any ADA laws, I understand it. If you've got an existing facility, it's not required to be accessible. Once you upgrade it, it has to be accessible. So two years ago we wrote a plan, ADA transition plan. I don't know of any other than the state. And that transition plan is basically a roadmap. It gives a snapshot from 2024 and then a roadmap for the next five years, how we're going to get from where we were in 2024 to where we want to be five years down the road when it comes to accessibility. So anytime we put in a new dock, upgrade a boat ramp, or dramatically change the facility, we are creating accessibility. Out of our two zero five access areas today, we have 74 that are accessible. Our goal is to have 50% and we've got three years to get that 50% mark. And our goal is also to have that kind of effectively distributed around state. Not every site on Lake Champlain is gonna be accessible. We wanna ensure that folks down in Ludlow or Springfield also have the ability, they don't have to drive to Lake Champlain. So in those examples, we just put a new dock at Lake Rescue in Ludlow and it is accessible. So that says, I believe it is now fully accessible. Thank you. So

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I'm not clear on your point about loss of control, because it seems to me like we are just adding the ability to use the space for aquatic invasive control, that feels like a pretty limited expansion of what the uses are. So I guess I'm not clear on

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: your Sorry if I didn't

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, it's okay.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So, the way the rule, the way the statute is proposing the changes, the Lake Association, for example, could go and put in a wash station whenever they want, and if we don't know about it, they could, in theory, take over half the access area and say,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: oh, well there's

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: no one here. What's the harm? But if it's a cold, rainy day on Tuesday, well there might not be a lot of people there. But if it's a weekend, fourth of July, holiday, that parking area could probably triple in capacity. And so now we don't have the ability to say yay or nay, and we can't tell a lake association, you got to pull up your stuff for the holiday, for the weekend. Lake associations are actually pushing to allow their infrastructure to say year round. They've asked for that repeatedly and we've told them no, you can't have it year round. And so there needs to be some communication, there needs to be some back and forth, there needs to be an approval process, and that's where the permit comes in. We rarely deny it, but having the ability to do so, keeps that control in our hands. Once we don't have that ability, we lose that ability to say yes or no, you can put it here or not, or modify their request. Once we lose that ability to do that, now we've lost control of the facility.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: So can, I guess I'm going back to the testimony that Mr? Hardy gave us, which is that if there is a conflict that the the priorities priority, are in priority, so that you would, could you, because this is literally the last priority, that it seems to me that you would be able to say, all these other things are happening,

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: and so

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you have to take priority still, so you need to go until it's not a conflict anymore.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: So that would require a warden to go out there on a Friday afternoon and say, Lake Association, you have to take your trailer, go find your flatbed and your piece of equipment and haul it away for the weekends and then yeah maybe you can bring it back because it's just the weekend that these sites are busy. Nobody wants to do that. Certainly Lakeshore she's not going be happy with the warden saying you need to pick up your stuff and go home you can only be here Monday through Thursday. They want to be there on the weekends, that's the busiest time of year. That's the best time to interact and educate voters and potentially intercept quite a species. So they want to be there at those busy times and of course that's when we want them there to educate the public, but we have to ensure there's not a conflict and having this very wishy washy, like you can be here today, but not tomorrow. It's kind of an unworkable situation. It would require the wardens or myself, and I've had one other staff person with you that works for me to cover the entire state. And again, there's no approval process. So at what point does the commissioner or the department get to say, yeah, you can be here, or you can be here if you modify your program, your footprint in this way.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: You have a comment from Mr. Green.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The language says it has to be an approved aquatic nuisance inspection station. So if you need further clarity on what that approval involves, including the ability to not approve it, I think that could be added.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: My understanding, okay, thank you for that. My understanding is the approval typically comes from DEC on an inspection station. So DEC one approve the inspection stations to ensure that folks are educated properly and then they will come to Fish and Wildlife to get that approval through a permit. And so if there's an approval language that needs to be added, it's kind of pointless because that's the process we go through now is to get the approval through the permit. So you'd be changing the rules to what ends. I mean, would be the point of the change if language should be added in for approval? And it's a pretty simple approval process as it is today. It's a one page permit. I issue 40 of them a year.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I don't know how many it's denied,

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: it's less than one year. I guess it's not broke. Why the change? Why the push for the change? That would be my question.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: One of the things that I think about with all of this is the acknowledging that this is a It falls on a list of primary uses. There are things that are prohibited here for sure, but it seems to me that there's, I think it would add, I would say, I think it adds some clarity to the process and acknowledging that this is a thing that we value and that we want to see happen. It also seems to me that if something is taking up one or two parking spaces in the service of protecting the aquatic life of the pond or lake or whatever, that has some value, even for other purposes that we've acknowledged are our priorities. So it feels to me that it is appropriate to have it in the mix as we want to protect the wildlife that is one of the attractions for people to fish in the first place. So, sorry,

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: go ahead. I'm sorry, were you, you probably involved the committee or you want to chime on the?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, think in terms of, I was thinking actually in terms of the angling, recreating community that we value having high quality, guess you should say, wildlife was part of the attraction. So I was speaking to them. The

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: way the rules are written today, we have our prior uses, which are in other words, those are the alloweds. And then we have a list of the prohibited uses. And then anything that's not listed as prohibited can be specially permitted through a special use permit. We can't, you know, so those things that were listed as prohibited were identified as conflicts in 2006 when the rule was promulgated through the Fisher Modeling Court. So the public said, these are the things that we do not want to see at access series. That's why those things are there. There are clearly what is not there are AIS inspection stations, deep examination stations. So they're not a priority, so they're not allowed to, people can't just go there and do it. The only things that people can go there and do are the things that both Vermont Fish and Wildlife and the US Fish and Wildlife Service have said, we want you to be here to do these steps, which is hunting, fishing, trapping, boating, and activities, engaging those activities. So parking, floor, boating, or whatever. There's other things that we may allow or say perfectly fine doing these things there, but they're not listed as priority uses because it could potentially be a conflict. We allow weddings to happen in our access areas, we allow different meetings to happen in our access areas, We get calls all the time. Hey, I met my fiance here ten years ago, fishing. We want to have a wedding. When do you want to have it? On a Saturday in June at some random access area, we permit it. And so similar to the breeder program, if we don't feel there's going be a conflict, we can permit it. We tell them, well you can be there for a very specific amount of time, we don't allow too many vehicles, we know there's not going to be a lot of activity going on in that time of year, so we're not going

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: allow that same activity to happen on

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: the July 4 because it's going be very busy. But we do allow a lot of kind of different things that you might not think are allowable, but we do allow them because it's not a con. We've never gotten a call saying, hey, there was

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: a wedding at this site.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It was terrible. Like you, we've never gotten those calls.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: How would you feel about taking picnicking off of the list in prohibited activities?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: The example that I give, and the commissioner could back me up on September. If somebody's out there and got a picnic basket and they got a line in the water, They're having lunch and enjoying the day, they're fishing. Great, you're fishing, go ahead and do it. But Vermont is a very attractive state. People love to drive around, pull up, hang out. I can't tell you how many times I see people sitting in their vehicles just looking at the view, having really not affecting anybody. No one is going

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: to go out there and

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: take it, somebody single got to leave. But if you're not engaged in those activities certain times a year, it could become a conflict. If we allow that to happen and then what's the difference between that happening and Mr. Grady mentioned the painting. And now you start this little creep of we're allowing all these other little activities, we're not parks. And in some of our big accessories, it might not really matter, but by and large, a lot of our accessories are very small. And if you get a couple extra vehicles there not engaged in fishing or boating, now you start to get a competition for that space. And that's the big issue is the competition for space between those prior uses people fishing and boating and all the other things people want to do that they might do at state parks and municipal parks. And we can start to divide and cut, well you can do it at these accesses, you can pick at these access areas, but you can't pick at these access areas because there are two zero five of them and we every year add one or two and so it gets, it just starts to really muddy the waters. Where can you do these things? Where can't you do these?

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Those signs. And

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: it gets difficult. So the department's always trying to hold the line, you're boating, fishing, hunting, or trapping, go ahead, do it 20 fourseven, we're not gonna ever bug you or ask you any questions. Anything beyond that, maybe we can issue a permit for the way, something like that. Okay,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a lot of these places that you're talking about, I've never been to, so I can't visualize them in my head. I just know the ones in my area. Where is that? Pass the District. So Lake Dunbar, Lake Shumley, place like that. But that being said, don't, I also am not exactly familiar with how to deconnect, contaminate a wake boat. I don't have a wake boat, but does it involve spraying water on it or does it involve just like taking the stuff off of it? What, how does it, what does it involve?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'm not an expert, but what I can tell you is that there's been some research and for decontaminating boats in general, there's a requirement that if you want to, so say kill zebra muscula villagers, the water, you have to apply hot water for a certain amount of time. And it's not hot water coming out of the nozzle of the spray, it's hot water coming off the boat to ensure that that boat is being hit with hot water. So it's like 140 degrees coming off the boat after hitting the boat for say two minutes. So if you're putting in the ballast, which are the tanks in, you'd have to spray that hot water into those ballast tanks for a certain amount of time. And some of them are up to 1,000 gallons. So it's a lot of water, hot water. That has to be, I'm not saying you have to fill it with a thousand gallon, but you know, there's certain apparatuses that you can put on the Okay,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm just trying, I hear you about the access areas being cramped at some of these places and not having, and if these things take up a couple of parking spaces, there may be issues. Is there another place that you could say, if you have a wake boat, you need to go and get your boat decontaminated before you go to this pond?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: There's been a lot of discussion about that with myself and DC staff and some of the Lake Association folks. There's been a, I don't know if it's formal community group that Kim Jensen and her group, the AIS folks within DMC have been organizing meetings to have these sorts of conversations and try and figure out where can we put these. I'd like to thank municipal or properties or AOT lodges, especially on the weekends. Have not a lot of people there, then I don't know what kind of security and access issues there are. But if there are somewhat centrally located places, big parking lots that have some sort of drainage, paved or gravel would work, trying to center them in some way around the lakes that do allow wayfels would be ideal. And I don't have a map.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Right. Seems like if you put one centrally located and people are like, I'm going to go to, I don't want to name a place that doesn't, like I said, I don't

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: know what most of

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the lake, but it's going to go to X Pond or X Lake to do your wake, you know, be on your wake boat for that weekend. You have to go get it decontaminated at the station. You have to get a little ticket that shows you did it, and then you show the warden at the access area and they ask, did you get that decontaminated? Is that something that could work and then you don't clog up the access area?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: In theory, yes, but now you have to, so you have to have that centrally located decon location. You have to have somebody there that's going to de towning that boat and then give them some sort of validation.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: But don't you have to have

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: that if you have them at the access areas too?

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: No, if you have them at

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: the, maybe back to you clarify that question.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, I mean,

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't have a dog in this place, so I'm just trying to figure

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: out I understand.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So I may be completely way off. It's not my area of expertise. Talk to me about schools, but if you have one of these stations at a fishing access area and somebody comes with their wake boat, and let's say it's under current law or this law, whatever, but it's just one of these stations, somebody comes to

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: do their wake boat, there's

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a decam, de contamination or what decam is that? Decon. Decon. Okay. Cool. There's a decon station. They got to spray it off. They got to inspect it. And then they're like, good to go. You can go in the water with your boat. So somebody has to be there at the access area doing all that stuff too, right? And making sure they're all good to go. So it's just a matter of where the station is.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes and no. So a few things. Those stations aren't staffed 20 fourseven, they're not open 20 fourseven. So those stations are staffed when that lake association municipality thinks it's the busiest time to catch the most So

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: this other place could be too.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: It could be. So you probably have, doesn't that have like Friday, Saturday, Sunday's holidays. So it absolutely could happen, but there's a big funding piece. That's probably one of the biggest issues is like who's gonna pay for it. And they have to be centrally located enough so that if somebody wants to go from say Lake Champlain to Dunmore, or maybe as a bad example, Lake Champlain up to somewhere in the Northeast Kingdom, they're somewhere in between. They don't have to go down to Bristol or Rutland to get DCOM and then go all the way up to Northeast. They have to be reasonably located, somewhat centrally located, so that people will actually use them.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And these are just, we're just talking about wake boats here,

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: not every

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: kind of boat, right?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'm glad

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: you asked that question.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And that's what the bill says, just wait boats. Is there only a certain number of places allow wait boats?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes, so-

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: We've got this really cool mapping tool.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I mean, Zener Bongartz is an expert on this. So maybe you could create a map about where the best places to locate.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: But one thing I did want

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: to bring up, 28,000 registered boats in the state of Vermont roughly. There's maybe 300 wake boats, there's less than 1%. So where are those wake

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: boats and where do we put the We

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: don't exactly know that, I would say Lake Champlain for the most part, but the reality is like when we're talking about 1%, boat to boat, fast boat, pontoon boat to wake boat, a wake boat is a bigger risk. But when you have 300 versus 27,700, where's the risk? It's not with weight loss. That is such a miniscule risk.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: All the filters of all

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: the other So when we talk about like, deconstations are a good thing, but shouldn't you just focus on weight loss? Need to focus on

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Cool. Well, then we could do could do bone tea on stations. I'm just trying

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: to solve the problem.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: This means it's an easier problem to solve than other problems we have. I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just wanna acknowledge that we need to take a break. It'll be soon. But I wanna go to center.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: We have a reciprocal agreement in New Hampshire too. We can, like, be registered in Milwaukee to go to New Hampshire. We accept votes from other states too. So that kind of bounds the normal trade.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Oh, absolutely. That would definitely, yes. Any boat registered in another, as long as you're legally registered in any of, not just New Hampshire, we get people that come from North Carolina and they'll rent a place for a month and go fishing on Lake Champlain. That happens a lot and so it's not just New Hampshire or Vermont. There's 28,000 registered Vermont boats. We certainly have significantly more boats than that in Vermont.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do you have any idea of the 300 weight votes, how many of them actually aren't conforming

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: to the only rule on their own anyhow?

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'm gonna let DC answer, I think Laura might know much better.

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I'm gonna be able to move around.

[Laura Lapierre (Program Manager, Lakes & Ponds Program, VT DEC)]: Very few. If you can introduce yourself. Oh, sorry. My name is Laura and I work in the Lakes and Ponds Program with the Department of Environmental Conservation. So these are the boats that we've tracked at our public access greater area stations. Count how many boats enter and what type of boat they are. So this past summer, we had 17 waveboats done between lakes. All the other wake boats,

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I think there were

[Laura Lapierre (Program Manager, Lakes & Ponds Program, VT DEC)]: about 120 launches that we counted, they all were returning to the same lake. And so even under the home lake boats are allowed to travel between lakes, that's not forbidden. They just are required to have a decontamination. So we are only talking about 17 boats this year. Last year, in 2024, was 23 boats. So it's a very small amount of boats that are moving, and a lot of them are coming from Lichtenham's plane, which does have the capability to provide those hot water decontaminations at the Lichtenhams Plain Basin commodity decon stations.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Which those are artificial water access areas. So you could

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: have an econ station. If it's

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: limited to weight books, they might have four or three visits a year.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: That's the reality.

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: We want all watercraft to get contaminated.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's not just weight books. Or especially ones that are high risk, if you know they're coming from an infected water body that perhaps did have some zebra mussels, we would prioritize that one for deontentment.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: That was kind of my point is where there's a hyper focus on wave boats, but we have all these other boats that are in the same water potentially moving boat to boat, less risk, but the reality is the risk is in all the other boats. So, white boats are being vilified. I think they're getting a lot more blame.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I would love to ask more about just vote washing in general for non wave votes and how we're doing with that, but I also want to recognize that we are running out of time. Thank you so much.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: And would go to DC when it comes to DCOMs some They're other going be much more educated on that.

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Fair

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: enough, thank you. Now I do want acknowledge we have not talked about posting yet. So what I'd like to do is take a five minute break and then we'll come back. We'll come back to you to talk about, to Commissioner Batchelor to talk about posting.

[Mike Petrosi (Access Area Program Manager, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: I'll be back.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, great. After our five minute break and then we're going move on to a different topic. Thank you so much. Okay, all right. This is a natural resource synergy. Still, oh, I think we've got that Okay. Kind of And then just pause and pause. Okay, we're good? We're good. Okay, no worries. All right, so it's still Friday, January break. We're back to Commissioner Beth Elder. Welcome again, and we're talking about NAN hosting.

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: Yes. Okay. So we have a small story for you, and hopefully a conclusion and a story with an end. So Jason Dotheler, Fish and Wildlife Commissioner, I came back to the department, retired getting worse for twenty years, and came back around late July, and among the issues that the department brought to me was some confusion around 10 BSA five thousand two hundred and one and a mirrored commissioner's rule, I believe it's rule of 14, in the appendix that governs a person's ability to post, and a line in there that says dated each year, which which you're probably all familiar with now, and kind of confusing that, confusing that dated each year clause to you name the individual, think often to including me and wardens, town clerks, landowners, and attorneys of the prosecutorial side and the defense side. Made it easier if you think about that line, can mean a lot of things, and it would be confusing if you drill into those three words. And also keeping in mind that signs must be registered this year, or registered annually, so two different terms there. So dated each year, let's say you posted your land on October 1, and I'm mixing him around in my head, jumping around, so hopefully you can follow and please ask questions. You posted your land on 10/01/2025, come 01/01/2026, looking at the words dated each year can cause some folks to scratch their head, and so invariably we get a lot of questions each year, and to include, and I don't mind giving you some insight of baseball, wardens like to be sure when they enforce, right, they like to be sure when they enforce the law, and if they're not 100% sure of what a statute or a law says, they will ask questions and they will see things through to the end obviously and come to a resolution, but they may not prosecute. They're anti glove, they're prosecuting attorneys and they may not prosecute, and prosecuting attorneys may not prosecute, defense attorneys may find a leak in that cup that says dated each year, that science is 2025, this is 2026, it is no longer this year, you did not date this year, so they wouldn't prosecute, right? We've looked for how many cases that we've had, they're hard to find since they don't exist if we didn't prosecute, but they're out there, and this the colonel brought this to me and I worked with counsel on whether or

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: not we should come up

[Jason Batchelder (Commissioner, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department)]: with a solution to this, and we decided we would. I feel now that I should have thought harder about what we were about to do, because it's caused a lot of consternation across the hunting, private land community and others, and I'm sorry for all the work that it's caused you through your constituents, but I think my effort, which is my effort, fell on space, there's no doubt about it. What we did was causing people a lot of angst around a time when they had to post their land, which we said was going to be January 1 through December 31, and backing up again, when we thought to solve this problem, we wanted to give landowners three sixty five days of unfettered posted land, so if they needed prosecution that we could give it to them, Understanding that clerks are closed on January 1 and probably the second and the third depending on where you live, some town clerks are open very sporadically, we took all that into consideration, but understanding people's right to post and to keep people off their land that they don't want there, was still not a good time of the year for me to choose. So what we have done has been open about honoring posted signs. I guess there's another thought I want to add, as many problems as there were with this language, there were times when we were able to prosecute given the situation that I told you about, right? And so and of our 9,000, roughly 9,000 calls last year, 49, 51, there's someone in this room that could certainly tell you exactly how many calls we have, it's around 50 calls per posted land, half one half of 1% of our calls are related to post peak, It's a non issue, it's a non issue when people call and complain, the frequency with which people call and complain, and there may be other calls that aren't captured if they're if they're just a phone call to a warden, but prosecuting cases of post land when I checked it's 49 out of 8,500, and we closed the year with more than that, so that's why I'm rounding it for 9,050. So, and it is a good time to say that there's a reason for that, Vermonters respect postal science and private land. 99.9 times that, that is something that I will defend and stand up for. As much as we want access to land, we want over land and depend on private landowners for the access to their land, we do depend on private land, ordinance do it whenever they're asked to. So when we tried to solve this issue, we wanted to give these folks, these private landowners, three sixty five days of posting. When that sign says 2026, it had to mean it, right? Date of each year without any ambiguity had to be three sixty five days within that year, but it did fall on the space, right? So we come back, we have looked internally, we told folks that we're going to honor their signs and certainly investigate at least, which we never said we wouldn't do, and for the record we didn't change any laws, we made an administrative decision, we changed no laws, no rules, we sent a letter to comp clerk, and here we are. Backing up, have agreed to enter into commissioner's rulemaking. I have said so to many important people including you, chair of House Environment, and others, we feel we have the authority through rule to fix this and put a definition into the rule, into Rule 14, of what data these tributes. And we plan to have a public process, at least a couple meetings, where we'll meet with some of these affected landowners north and south, or north and middle, or middle and south, or part of the state where the colonel and I will meet with these private landowners and ask what date of each year would best mean to them. I hypothesize it's going to mean from the time that they choose to post their land until that day the following year, that's what I'm guessing most people will land on. If they land on October 1 to September 30, that might work too. I certainly want to respect what we have grown to know as a right to unsafe, and shouldn't be an easy thing to keep someone from hunting a public trust resource, but I've said many times we are beholden to the private landowner, we would be nothing without them, and we respect all private land, so I want to make this very clear and very tight for people who want, who do want to post. So let's say we're here next year, ideally we will have a rule that says data each year means from the time you post, let's say it's January 17, 01/17/2027, that would be encapsulated in that rule. I don't feel like we are being any less stringent than the statute, I feel like we're being more stringent than the statute, and an initial rating will certainly have thoughts about this, and our council will too, but I feel as though this will solve it and will give people the ability to post three sixty five days, still have to register, which will be a factor as to when that registration date, what that registration date means to their post date, but that's fixable also. And I feel like we can do it by the time that the meaningful hunting seasons arrive, if we consider around September 1, big game seasons. Thank you. Well, I

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: just want to thank you for recognizing there was a problem and then moving on into the process that you're going to do in terms of having meetings, getting public feedback, I think that's really important and fabulous. Comment or question?

[Sen. Scott Beck (Clerk)]: Just, know, the problem that that one word year causes because we have different fiscal dates that begin and end on and then we have some entities that operate on a calendar year so you know if we can all we can all get on the same calendar then everything would be so much simpler legislatively too.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: I want to briefly go to our legislative council Mr. Brady about your thoughts on whether or not the commission has or the right, the commissioner has the authority to amend this rule. So

[Michael O’Grady (Legislative Counsel, VT Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this is Mike Grady with website of council. There is already an existing rule. That rule cites for its authority 10 BSA rule five two zero one b, and five two zero one b says that the commissioner shall have the authority to establish the standard size and design of the signs for posting. In that same subsection, there is the language at issue about shall be dated each year. I admit that is open to interpretation. And so I believe for the signs, the commissioner has the authority by a rule to specify what that means. With that said, the last time the rule was amended or actually enacted in 1996, after 1996, you passed a law that said if the rules were not published in the Vermont Code of Rules by 2018, if they were automatically repealed. I checked on all these old rules to see if they were published. Some of them have not been published, not from the Fish and Wildlife Board or the Commissioner, but this rule was at question. I went to Lexis to see if it had been published. Lexis couldn't confirm that right away. Our publisher did some work and ultimately confirmed that the rule had been published by 2018 in Vermont Code of Rules, so it wasn't repealed automatically. With that all said, you are the supreme policymaker. If you wanna change the what mean it means to be dated each year, that's your policy. That's your authority, and you can do it much quicker than rulemaking, and it will be in place by hunting season. So I would note that the authority that the commissioner is exercising is delegated legislative authority, which is your authority.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Any other thoughts or questions on post? I think, all right. Thank you, appreciate your coming in today. You want to ask any questions? Yeah, I think so. Mean, I think it's just a question of whether if we want to allow them to do it by rule or whether we want to do it by statutes. There are bills on the wall. I have one that I could introduce that would be vehicle, but I

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: think it's just, I mean, is faster.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: It is faster. That's true. Okay. Well, let's continue to talk about that. Thank you so much. Okay. So we are, let's take, we take like a one minute break. Know, I know what to call it. Just chat. Hadn't really heard anything. Okay. Sure. You're gonna take a one minute break. Great, thank you. Thank you for that. Can you pause? That was helpful. All right, so sticking with 24, and 223, if you want to talk about that. We have Ms. Sargent here with us today from BC, welcome. Thank you

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: so much. For the record, my name is Bethany Sargent. I am the manager of the Monitoring and Assessment Program in the Department of Environmental Conservation, and I'm going to be talking about S-two 23. And just so I'm aware of time, there's a hard stop at 11:30. Thirty. We're like,

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: well, fourteen minutes. Okay. Looking

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: over at my colleague Laura, who has scheduled the test for Oh gosh. You may have. Yeah, it's been, This is an incredibly rich topic that could be spoken about for hours. I am going to try to do a very brief flyover and give you the fundamentals of the elements of S-two 23. So the water quality standards, classification, anti degradation, and the work that the agency has done over the last several years on those topics. So first of all, the Vermont Water Quality Standards. So I was here on Wednesday talking about what happens when waters don't meet the minimum criteria when we spoke about chloride. And now I'm going be talking about what happens when waters exceed those or are better than those minimum criteria. So the Vermont Water Quality Standards have primary components. So our designated uses, those are the uses, the values that we must protect in our water. So biota, habitat, static, swimming, fishing, boating, as a public water source, irrigation. So those are the what of what we're protecting about our water. We also have management objectives, which drill down a little bit further, and then minimum water quality criteria. So what is it about the water that supports that use that we are protecting? The other element of the standards is the anti degradation policy, which Legis Council O'Grady spoke about earlier this morning. And that is essentially how the agency evaluates how much water quality can be limited or degraded through our permitting processes above the minimum criteria. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment. So S-two 23 also addresses classification. And so each designated NEWS is classified independently, And 10 BSA twelve fifty three establishes the classifications for Vermont water. So A1 are our highest quality waters. They need to have the best water quality. B1 is a step below that, and then B2 is essentially good water quality. A1, B1, and B2 are all termed high quality waters. So that is sort of a term of art. That means they're not impaired. They meet the minimum water quality criteria. So the legislature classified through 10 BSA twelve fifty three all waters above 2,500 feet as Class A, and all waters below 2,500 feet as B2. So we consider B2 as our default class of waters. And I should point out as well that that same statutory language said that the agency, either of its own initiative or by petition, should reclassify water as in the public interest. And that is a piece that's important because that raises the question, what is in the public interest? So a little bit more about anti degradation before we get back to that. So as I mentioned, the purpose of anti degradation is to limit that incremental water quality degradation above the minimum criteria to protect those uses. It is considered, do you think about the designated uses as the what, anti degradation is the how, the when, and the why. So the when is during the analysis of a new or increased discharge, when we have a permit that requires compliance with the water quality standards, or when we are developing a permit that requires compliance with the water quality standards. The anti degradation decision requires public notice, so that happens when we notice a permit, a draft permit, and any permitted lowering of water quality above that minimum criteria needs to be justified. That justification is to avoid substantial adverse socioeconomic harm. So that is called the, essentially that test that needs to be passed in order to allow that incremental degradation or in order to maintain uses. Otherwise, we would be permitting to that minimum water quality criteria. So it is a lot more complicated than that, but that is, in essence, the purpose of anti degradation. So in October 2021, the agency convened a stakeholder group with municipal representatives, environmental advocates, representatives from the regulated community to develop a proposed anti degradation goal. As O'Grady mentioned this morning, we are functioning under a 2010 interim anti degradation implementation procedure. We reviewed that procedure and developed a draft rule. We filed that in December 2022, and we initiated during the start of the twenty twenty three-twenty twenty four session a legislative initiative and conducted rulemaking for the anti day implementation rule. That resulted in S146 from that session, which I can talk a little bit more about. We didn't make it all the way through, obviously, we're here today, but the bill did pass out of the Senate. We refiled the ANSD degradation implementation rule again in 2023, and went through part of the rulemaking process pending that legislative initiative. So all of this work was around three elements. So we have the ability to reclassify, as I mentioned, when waters are in the public interest. And so right now in 10 BSA 12 '59, there is a prohibition against on-site systems, state wastewater systems, greater than 1,000 gallons per day of phosphate waters. And so the initiative was to limit that prohibition to those waters that are currently Class A. So all of those waters above 2,500 feet, or the handful of waters that we have reclassified since then. It would require a site specific analysis for those highest quality waters, our Class A and our Class B1 waters, through the anti degradation implementation goal, whereby we would consider that higher quality when evaluating the proposed impact from an activity authorized by a permit. And it also required the agency to reclassify waters based exclusively upon our existing water quality. As O'Grady mentioned this morning, we have data that supports or would support reclassification of more than 100 surface waters, so ablaze and streams, Class A1, Class B1. And so these three things together would, in essence, define the public interest as being reclassification and through our anti degradation analysis, rather than what is essentially determining what someone in a Class A watershed could do with their land, we would be better protecting our service waters. Right now, none of our B2 waters have that prohibition. And in order to be able to really consider through anti degradation, that higher water quality, we need to have an efficient and comprehensive reclassification process. And so that's where we landed in terms of the work of that group and the agency's work. We still have the draft rule, that rulemaking lasts because of the legislative initiatives didn't make it through the House. So I wanted to just provide some of that background and context. I know, Chair Watson, this is somewhat familiar territory for you, but wanted to share that with the rest of the committee, and I'm happy to take any questions. I know we've got a very short period of time.

[Sen. Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes, just a quick question. I've missed the walkthrough of this bill. So is that what S-two 23 would do? It was

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: the It that you need would create a study group that would evaluate how to better protect our lakes. And that included, as I understand in the bill, documenting where the agency had data to support reclassification, evaluating what tools we have to better protect surface waters, including through anti degradation. And then to provide a report on recommendations, whether they're rule making or legislative initiatives. The work that we had done several years ago with the stakeholder group outlined a potential path forward. But I really think that that crops is what is in the public interest. And it gets more complicated when you have a prohibition that affects what someone can do with their land. And that's something that we experienced when we reclassified three streams that was initiated by a petition. And there were landowners within those watersheds that, while they supported reclassification overall, felt like it was unfair. That without a clear nexus to water quality, why should they be restricted in what they can do with their land? They've been good stewards of that land, stewards to the extent that it supported excellent water quality. And so that was where, at that point, the stakeholder group landed, and we had worked with a few legislators, but we were not successful at that point.

[Sen. Anne Watson (Chair)]: And importantly, think we do need to go. Yeah. But thank you, and we're done on this.

[Bethany Sargent (Monitoring & Assessment Program Manager, VT DEC)]: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, for having me.