Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right, we are live. Okay, good morning. This is Center of Natural Resources and Energy, and it is Wednesday, February 18. We have a variety of topics to chat with you today. So we are going to start with S224. We have a few folks from the City Of Barrie joining us this morning. I think we're just going to go right down the list. So again, just the context for this. This is related to the fishing tournament portion of the bill, that issue. And so we're going to start with Mr. Duke Brady. He's the principal in charge of design and construction management for the city of Berry. Welcome.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Good to be here. Good morning, everybody.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Good morning. Actually, maybe let's take a quick second to introduce ourselves. And then if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself and then tell us what you'd like us to know. Sure.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay, good morning, Mr. Dufresne. I'm Senator Ruth Hardy from the Addison District.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: And I'm Senator Terry Williams from the Rollins District.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anne Watson from the Washington District.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: And Seth Bongartz from the Bennington Setup District.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And I'm sure we'll be joined soon by Senator Beck from Caledonia. And so go ahead.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Good. I assume everybody has my letter of February 8, my email.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, so it's been it was posted last week when you sent it. So it is available

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to us. Under the bill.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Okay. I don't think I should read it into the record unless you would like me to do that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I suppose that is not necessarily needed, but anything you would like to highlight for us from that letter?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Sure. My experience is briefly described in the letter, but I've been a waterworks engineer probably fifty years in Vermont, in New Hampshire and Mass, but mostly Vermont. And I have design experience for the Barrie Water Treatment Facility, as well as Barrie and Montpelier, Waterbury and other facilities around the state. The recreational use of the raw water supply is rather a new issue in the last, I don't know, fifteen years with Berlin Pond being opened up for recreational use maybe ten years ago. And so that was a that was a new twist to the waterworks industry. It's very odd. I was a director of the New England Waterworks, the Vermont director, and the other directors were incredulous that we were allowing recreational use of raw water thinking that Vermont was a very progressive environmentally safe state, usually erring on the side of human health. So if we look at the other states, we find that Vermont is less protected than other states and that affects the design of water treatment plants. This was something that wasn't envisioned during the design of the Berry Water Treatment Plant, as well as Montpelier. Those are conventional treatment plants and not high-tech treatment plants. They they meet the regulations, but that's all they do. So they all water treatment facilities are subject to things that we really can't test for as water comes into the front door of the water treatment plant. So we're we're basically designing facilities that we think will encounter in the raw water. So a large scale fishing tournament was something we didn't envision. The thing that concerns me most, and and I testified in on the Montpelier situation for Berlin Pond, when they were contemplating shanties on the ice. That was that was a particular problem that anything that happens in a shanty is well hidden from water operators and and water professionals. So all water supply and impound impoundments are subject to willful contamination by terrorists, other disgruntled individuals. And so that's something we can't really well protect for and we air on the side of overprotection by limiting recreational use. So most water systems in New England have a thousand foot isolation around the intakes where they don't allow any use. So that's that's the concern. That's probably why there's no fishing tournaments in New Hampshire or Massachusetts on their raw water supply impoundments. St. John's Prairie was in a similar situation when the state allowed recreational use of their raw water source, Stiles Pond, and they were in the midst of considering alternatives to upgrade their conventional water treatment plant. And they opted to spend much more money for an advanced water treatment plant using membrane filtration. And so under the conventional treatment system, we have to remove or inactivate 99.9% of the pathogens. In St. Johnsbury with recreational use, they opted to remove ninety nine point nine nine nine. So it's a much it's a it's called a four or five log removal operation. Much more money, but much more safety involved. Both Barry and Montpelier only remove or inactivate 99.9 of certain pathogens that we test that we have assumed are in the raw water supply. So either but Barry, I guess we're since we're talking Barry, there's no opportunity to remove gasoline derivatives that may show up in the water from ice augers and use of the reservoir snowmobile type things. So, you know, if if the city is too conservative protecting their drinking water from a fishing tournament, it means that they'll have to find another place to hold a fishing tournament. However, if there was a contamination event and it did occur, the health effect could be catastrophic. So I would encourage you folks to on the side of being over conservative in protecting drinking water for the city of Barrie.

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

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Yes, go ahead. Thank

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Dufresne. I was scanning through your your written testimony again, And I understand that contamination from gasoline or oil derivatives, but are there other potential contaminants that might occur because of fishing in a water source?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Well, we're not really sure. If if if ice fishermen are out there for a day, not sure where they have their toilet facilities. Fair. Fair. Yeah. And definitely not sure what happens inside shanties. And so there's been a lot of studies on this. It's accidental or intentional fecal release. The organisms involved are giardia lamblia and cryptosporidium. Those two are the most difficult for us to remove or inactivate in water treatment plan. And somebody with geodesis during the fishing tournament could be not good.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: That's a fair point. So is it, is ice fishing more of a concern than

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: fishing? Ice

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: fishing, think ice fishing is more of a concern because of the augers. I'm not sure what Montpelier did, whether they eliminated use of gasoline powered augurs, but they should. And the other thing is if if there are shanties allowed, which they are allowed on Montpelier and they could be positioned right above the intake. And that scares the heck out of me. I'm not sure who's in the shanty and I'm not sure what's going on because I can't see it.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Uh-huh. And if there were a contamination to a drinking water source because of a shanty or either fecal debris or gasoline, what would you have to do as a water operator?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Well, we can't see and sense either one that's coming into the plant. To us visually, it looks like normal water from the Dix Reservoir that flows into the upper orange and then lower orange and then to the then into the water treatment plant.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: So so there's no red flags that are going on. No alarms are going off. We just we just get this contamination event going through the facility. And our treatment is conducted as if that was normal water coming in. We see Jarea takes place in certain counts per 100 milliliters and a fecal event could increase that by several orders of magnitude. And so that's that's something the plants not designed to deal with. We can remove 99.9% and we're inactivate Jerdia Lamblia. However, if it's a thousand times higher than we expected, even though we removed 99.9%, we may not get all of it.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Right. Is there a contaminant from setting aside the gasoline issue and the potential bathroom issues? Are there contaminants from fishing itself, or is it just the people and the motors that may be there?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Yeah. I don't know of any contamination that would be related to normal fishing activities. We can't the water works operators and and officials can't really discern whether it's a real fisherman out there or somebody intent on willful contamination.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I hadn't thought of it. Wow. Okay. All right. Well, thank you.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes, go ahead.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So I'm not familiar, know Giardia, I'm not sure the other part of that. Is that only from human feces or would that Giardia be present with beaver and other animals that live around the ponds and lakes?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: No, they're they're the normal source of giardia is from other warm blooded animals, especially beaver. Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And cryptosporidium?

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Crypto is maybe from I don't know enough about it, whether whether it's contributed by other warm blooded animals, but it's mostly from infected individuals with cryptosporid spirited doses.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So so migratory birds, they could contribute to that. Also, fish pool at all, whether that would be involved in or not. That's all present in the in the water. You you have to test for that to make sure it's it's not above the limits.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: I'm sorry. My hearing is not that good. I I missed most of that.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: No. I said that you they're all they're already present in water anyway from the other warm blood animals. Yes. So you would would have to test for it anyway.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: Well, the tests are very expensive and and it may may be tested at the beginning of the design of the facility but very rarely tested after that, except unless there's an outbreak of both, well, Algeria or

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: crypto.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So they wait until somebody got sick before they test for?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yep. Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Oh, okay. Thank you.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Well, thank you very much. Really appreciate your testimony this morning.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Sure.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: We're going to move on to Chief Veil.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: First, welcome.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: All right. Good luck in your decision.

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

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Please don't ask me to spell any of the terms. No worries. I am here to offer a law enforcement perspective for your decision that you're making. And a little bit about what he had spoken to with FISHEN.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, and sorry, if you could just introduce yourself for the record.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Sorry, apologize.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, no worries. My

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: name is Braden Bail, I go by Brad, I'm the Berry City Police Chief. Okay, super, thanks. So what I'm, again, I'm offering a law enforcement perspective on this. The most recent issue we encountered was that the state had issued a permit for a fishing burgee and they expected about, I think it was 50 to 60 individuals that were registered for the burgee. Currently, the city has a policy which I brought on my shirt if anybody's familiar with it, it is on their website. They do allow fishing. However, they only allow fishing from the shoreline in designated areas. They do not want watercraft the Nevada Reservoir. They do not want bait fish. I'm not sure if that must have something to do with what he spoke of. I'm not really sure there. And they do not want ice fishing. Again, it's for the augers, the gasoline contaminants. And as with the watercraft, you could have the gasoline contaminants as well as mud flowing water coming into the dirt. So what happened is because the state issued a permit, had no recourse because under the conservation from the public water use rules, they couldn't deny the permit because they controlled surface water, but the city controls all the land around the water. And in an effort to try to protect that, stop that, they said, well, we're gonna trespass people. So it put us in an ambiguous situation by, know, people have permits to be there and then we're gonna be called up there to say, sorry, you got a permit for your trespassing, you need leave. That's not a situation that we like to be in. So for those reasons, support this bill. And again, the city is not trying to totally do away with fishing there. They just want those prohibitions to control the surface.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Yes, go ahead.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Do we know whether this application that scored all this, it's just go fishing from the shoreline or does it involve both the sort of boats?

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Well, first tournament was February 8.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: That was ice fishing. Okay.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: That was ice fishing. So again, it goes back to the previous testimony about the shanties. Yep. And however, the ice augers, whatever they're gonna utilize for that. Okay. The next one, there's already a permit for another one in June. I'm not sure the exact date. I can look at it. And that will obviously be with water.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: That will, okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Say obviously. I would imagine.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: I don't know for a 100% serving, but if they're opening it, people will be putting boats in. Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Or the alternative is that if you had a similar sort of uptake, you're to fit 50 or 60 people on the limited shoreline to fish. Yes.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Do know how many acres the pond is? Without looking, I'm not certain. I think there's a state law that says if it's less than 40 acres, there's no motorized watercraft allowed. Well, we can

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Yeah. I believe it's it's somewhere in there. I know that I I know the depth is 13 feet, and I'm not sure the the acreage. But they currently they have the the little orange and the big orange that they don't allow any fishing on, just the new books. Yeah,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: that's good. And from a shoreline security perspective, if there were, when there is a fishing tournament at the reservoir,

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: would your department have to put people there to So the city would have folks there to make sure that folks were using the designated areas and not putting boats in. Quite frequently, the water treatment folks that do monitor that, they have called us when there's like they've seen folks out in there. And when we go up there, it's hard to communicate with somebody in the boat and we can't stand there and wait for them to come back. Right. So again that causes situation for us. Yeah. We can obviously look at a registration plate and determine that potentially maybe the individual that's out there, but again, from a probable cause standpoint, you can't say that registered owner is the person in that place. Right, right. So it puts us

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: in those situations. And do you have a watercraft that you use for Okay. First Do you

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: have a bactere? No, sorry.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm just wondering if you have, because one of the concerns that's been brought up is the expense to the city for sort of policing and cleaning up from an event. And just wondering if you have an idea of what it might cost you.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: I can't give an exact amount, but you have obviously, we have staff that are on in the city, so we can't have them leave the city to be there.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Far outside of the city? Correct. It's in Orange,

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: which is actually state police territory where it is.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: But we

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: own the property, so when these events happen, the

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: city has to I'm trying

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: to visualize all of this.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Those would be what we call outside details. So just the manpower. For instance, this event was, I believe, from eight to four, the February 8 event was supposed to be from eight to four. So we would have to have officers on outside detail at a cost of $100 per hour up there just to be there if anything came out.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: And things they would be looking at as well, if there was, you know, just everybody was in fishing from the shoreline, is any litter, any other contaminants that, you know, spillage or what people are doing in the shoreline that could also leak into the pumps. Mhmm.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So you have to have very city police up there or can anybody get there?

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Technically, you can hire a sheriff's department to go up there if they wanted to or the state police, but they're not, I'll be the state police and things say, yeah, they're

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: gonna

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: go, they've got, you know, the large area to cover. They're not just gonna go stand by much efficient.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes, any other questions? Okay. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Yeah.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: I appreciate all you guys do.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Yeah, thank you. Well,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a good job.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's a Especially in today's class. I'm appreciating that pointed out the difficulty with the state had no way to say no.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Yeah, that's because the Fish

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: and Wildlife Department obviously follows the Department of Environment and Conservation, the public use water rules.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: And you got a swoosh?

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Correct. Yes. Can't forget that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right. Thank you so much.

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: Thank you very much.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Please at my end. Okay, that's fine. So it appears that we have a little bit of time. Before we, I do want to have some conversation about this bill and where we're going through probably now is not the time to do that, but I'm anticipating that we'll have some more conversation about this

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Friday, if we'll give you the time.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Okay, Friday eleven?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, Friday we'll talk through the, I'd like to

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: talk through all the parts of this still, but

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: especially the stickiest, trickiest parts. And then from that we'll have a new draft and we'll be able to move forward. So with that, think we can take a quick break while we wait for Brisey to test. Okay. All right, we're live. Morning again. This is Evan Natural Resources and Energy coming back from a quick break. And so we are jumping back into talking about I-two 50, the OG. I'm CQ. This is round two. Round two. Round two. Just learning how it works. So welcome, Ms. Chickenspeak. Thank you. I'm hoping to turn it over to you.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Alex Chickenspeak, Office of Legislative Counsel. So yes, Act two fifty, Introduction, Round two. I have a few slides. It's a little bit of a grab bag. Great. But what I can tell you is that I went back and reread Acts two fifty of nineteen seventy last night. It is only 14 pages. It is now around two fifty pages. And so, which is a nice easy number to remember.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Is it two fifty? Yes. Wow. So, it's quite

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a bit longer than it used to be. And so there's a lot of different things within it. And so here are just a couple of topics within it, if I can.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: All right, we're doing this.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So first, I think we'll talk about the board a little bit more tomorrow, but here's some history of the land use review board. I have a strong suspicion that someone has a better written history somewhere. If anyone has it, I would love to, and would like to send it to me, I would love to read it. And there's even more detail here that I missed, but this is sort of a quick history of what the board structure was since 1970. So, when Act two fifty was set up, there was a strong interest in having it be a local control administered program. And so there have always been district commissions made up of people from the community, and they are the ones who issued the permits. But when it was set up in 1970, there was also this board created, the Environmental Board, and they served as the administration body for the act, but they also were the appellate body for district commission decisions. So when it was created in 1970, it was nine members, they had four year terms, and the chair had a two year term. These members were appointed by the governor. A fun little fact I found was the original members of the board included a natural science professor, an architect, a realtor, a community leader and poll maker, a county extension agent, a sea air operator, an engineer, a businessman, I don't love that phrase, and a county sheriff. So there has always been this interest, yes, and it is a board with diverse expertise, but not fully professional. They were per diem paid, they were not a full time board. They had jobs with various skills.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: The same $50 they get today.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And nine is a lot of people on board that needs to make decisions where they come to somewhat of a consensus. So sometime else around there, I found back to 1980, but I'm not entirely sure when they were created, the Water Resources Board was created and they heard appeals of water related permits, wetlands, storm water, wastewater. And so there was this sort of process outside of the example resources with the water resources board. I know very little about this, I'll look into it further because it seems interesting, but I don't know a ton about how they functioned. What I do know is that in 2004, the Environmental Board from Act two fifty and the Water Resources Board were combined into the Natural Resources Board. And at that time, the Environmental Board, their ability to hear appeals was removed, and that was sent to the Environmental Division of the Superior Court. At that time, it was called the Environmental Court. Up until that time, the Environmental Court had existed that they were not doing water appeals or land use appeals. They were doing mostly ladies' permits for municipalities, and I think some enforcement. So it was a much smaller docket. But in 2004, the legislature combined these two boards and then transferred appeals of permits away from the board member to the. At the time, there was still a full time chair with the Natural Resources Board. The members received per diem payments, and it was described in the statutes that the skills required to be a board member were just skills or expertise related to environment and land use. It was pretty vague. Within the Natural Resources Board, however, they created these two panels, the water resource panel and the land use panel. So of the nine members, four went to the water resource panel, four served on the land use review panel, and then there was also the chair. The water resources panel had rule making authority over water law, and then the land use panel had authority over the actual permitting

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: process. You said in the beginning, at the top of this bullet point, that they were combined into one board, but then there were two separate panels from that board? Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sort of like subcommittees? Okay.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: There are people who frequent this building who can tell you exactly how that worked. I cannot. And it does seem like it was an interesting structure. I think there was also a waste panel at some point too. A few different structures, but there was this effort to sort of consolidate things a bit. I

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: appeared in front of the resources for three times.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Wait what?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I appeared in front of

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: the old water resources for

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: three times. First for the first class on the 100 and the first second class a stream in the first.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, man.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: But you were never on?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So they say. So then in 2012, the panels were dissolved, and it was just the NAFTA Resources Board, and there was only five of them. So they remained in charge of Act two fifty, and authority over rules and permits went to the Agency of Natural Resources. That- Water rules, just- Yes, water. Okay. Yes, Yes. Land use remained with Act two fifty, water went to ANR. Then what you all may be familiar with is that the Land Use Review Board was, the Natural Resources Board was renamed to the Land Use Review Board. For a side note, I know sometimes people don't love this name because we call it the LERB, which is just a funny word, but it is, I think, more reflective of the work that they're doing. Act two fifty can be considered an environmental statute, but the community input and community protection aspects and community planning is a significant part of what Act two fifty actually does. It's not just about environmental resources. It is about community planning and planning for how towns and municipalities actually look. So now is the Land Use Review Board, and it is a five full time member board. They're full time members, they're a professional board, they have still the full time chair. And you put more detail in the statute for what is required as relevant experience, environmental science, land use law, policy and planning, and development, and community planning, and a commitment to environmental justice. And then also what was created in Act 181 was a slightly different process for how they're appointed. There's now this Land Use Review Board Nominating Committee, which is very similar

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: to how

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: judges are nominated and how members of the Public Utility Commission are nominated. A group of mixture of legislators and members of the administration receive applications for people to join the board. They do initial review of the resumes and full interviews, and they compile a list of qualified candidates to send to the governor. And then the governor appoints members from that list. They serve to staggered five year terms, and there's an advice and consent of the Senate, which is always largely true with Governor appointees. A distinction though that was added was that they're removable only for cause by the other board members. So this is a further sort of installation from political oversight, and they still have administrative authority over the Act 50 program, but you gave them additional authority to review and approve regional plan maps and tier 1A areas. So that's a little bit about the board. Some other things about Act 50 that we didn't touch on the other day. So last week I was describing Act two fifty jurisdiction, and that centers around the definition of development and definition of subdivision. Because the statute says you cannot commence construction of a subdivision or development without a permit, but you have to meet the definition of development of which there are different types of projects that would trigger that. There is some other types of jurisdiction to describe to you that you may have heard a little bit about recently. So there is amendment jurisdiction under Act two fifty, and that is because originally, Act two fifty permits, when they were issued, had expiration dates, but there was a decision in 1984, and I'm not sure if anything started before then, but there's a case in 1984 that said actually, active 50 jurisdiction, the permits are perpetual because the jurisdiction as described in the statute covered not only the construction phase of the project, but its operation and use of the improvements that are constructed, and so once a permit is issued for a parcel, it remains in perpetuity and will need to be amended if the site changes. And so, there's amendment jurisdiction. If a project, if a parcel has a project on it that received an Act two fifty permit, if ever there is a material change to that project, there needs to be an amendment to

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: the existing Act two fifty permit.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So, and that can happen for a variety of reasons. If they want to do additional, have additional things on the site that weren't originally contemplated by the permit, or the site gets sold to someone new and they want to completely change what is happening on the site, they need to go through the active 50 abandonment process, and the trigger for that is whether there has been a material change to the land use. So the analysis for that is, there must be a cognizable change that will have a significant impact on a finding or condition, or may result in a significant adverse impact on the applicable F250 criteria. Yes.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Do you have the second bullet, material change and substantial change? Are they different things?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: At least if I include the quote. They are largely the same type of analysis. Okay.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And I'm going

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: get a substantial change in a moment. So material change is the trigger for an amendment, whether something needs an amendment. On the next slide though, there is a slightly different context that is very similar. There's something called pre existing development. So last week you heard from the Agency of Transportation. They have some pre existing development. When Act 15 was enacted in 1970, this provision 8,000, 6,081, a B was added that said, some existing types of development as of this date are exempt from Act two fifty because they started construction and planning before this new law was passed. And so if it was exempted through the regulations of the Department of Health by 01/21/1970, or had a permit from the Board of Health, or had a bona fide pending application. All of these are nineteen seventy days. And then also they're specifically called out State highways that had a hearing held before 06/01/1970. All this was considered pre existing development that probably would trigger the need for an Active 50 permit, but they are considered pre existing development and are exempt there.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I have a question for you. Because I've heard a lot of people say grandfathered over Act 15 because they're preexisting.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure. I don't think we love that phrase a little bit, for sure.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So is that still the case or so that 181 hasn't changed over that? Correct. Okay. However,

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: this is where I'm going in this and it applies to a bunch of different types of development And you also added another one in 1970, which is pre existing, a telecommunications facility that had been constructed prior to 1997. The last sentence of this paragraph, subsection B, I'm not great at making slides, I'm sorry. Subsection A shall not apply to any, shall apply to any substantial change to any of these pre existing developments. So this provision was included that said, okay, things that were in the planning process prior to Act

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: two fifty

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: are exempt as pre existing development. They do not need a permit, however, and they will, if there is a substantial change to that project, that may trigger the need for act to fit a permit. And so pre existing development are evaluated under the substantial change analysis, and it is very similar to material change. So a substantial change is defined as any change in the development or subdivision, which may result in a significant impact to respect to any of the 10 criteria. You can hear a lot more about how this has been interpreted over the years, and I would love to do more research about it, but this is sort of, in addition to the definitions of development, if something already has a permit in the future, if there's a material change, they might need a permit amendment. The permit amendment could be as quick as an administrative amendment, which would just say, oh we repave the driveway or we send the driveway shortly. Like it's a small change, an amendment, grant us this quickly. Rule 34 in Act two fifty governs that process of when someone needs a permanent amendment or when someone is allowed to request a permanent amendment because the opposite is true. You don't want people constantly requesting to amend their permit in order to get out of conditions they don't like. So there is a threshold under that process of when someone is allowed to request an amendment. But then there's this other type of development, which is the preexisting development that happened before 1970. And again, just because they were exempt then, they may continue to be exempt unless there is a substantial change that would be insufficient development and would have a significant impact under the criteria.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So two questions. So one, something that we've talked about is that this building has an Act two

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: fifty permit. Oh yeah, does.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So even though it pre existed 1970, there were changes and so it had to get an active 50 permit. It did, yes.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I pulled it a few years ago.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Yeah, yeah.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Okay, and

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: the second thing, I wonder if you could go back a slide. Sure. I just wanted, Like the word a cognizable change, it's just very curious. Like, is that a cognizable change like, we knew it was happening. Like, we got, like, is that? Or like, opposed to incognizable chain, like something that you didn't know about? I don't

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: know. Yes,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: if I'm just curious if there's nothing really there.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I have a strong suspicion, oh this leads me to another plug I have. So I suspect strongly that that has been debated and there's precedent. I cannot remember off the top of my head. I think though the way that it's actually been interpreted is as more of like a change you can see. Okay. Did you do something on the site that we see is now different? Or did you just like change the air filters in the building? That you wouldn't have noticed. Okay. But did you put up a new sign right in front of the building and it's got lighting, now it's very distracting or did you add security lights all around the perimeter and now all the neighbors can see?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Like we all know, we can all,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: we can

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: all sell it half and

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: But I'm going to say that's probably, that is an incomplete answer and someone out there knows that there is probably some interpretation of this and the way I would check and you can see that this is my desktop, I don't love that you don't see this, but on my toolbar, the first link, if I can get over there, is eNotes. So under Act two fifty, there is a requirement in statute that the board maintain an annotation of precedent from all the cases on Act two fifty since it started. And it's called the eNotes. It is updated regularly. It was updated in January. The attorneys in the office maintain it. Sometimes when they have interns, the interns do the updating, like I did twelve years ago. But they maintain this 800 page document of precedent on Act two fifty on how it's been interpreted, not only by the board, but by the courts. And so it is a really great document that has a lot of information in it that I consult regularly. And so like, if we clicked on it right now, what I did last night is I went in there and I searched for material change, and

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I looked up to see if

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: there was any discussion about the difference between material and substantial change. It is a resource, I think, for lawyers, but ACTU50 was envisioned as supposed to be a process for lay citizens, citizen friendly process for people to participate without a lawyer, and so you can just go on their website, click on eNotes, and do some research that if you see, if anything, you could find anything related to your case. Now, everything under Act two fifty is very site specific. It is not a perfect document because you need to see what they have written about it and then you can go search for the actual case and read it. So it's not just the most, it's not, let me take this to the back. It's great. It's an 800 page document though, and that indicates that there is a lot of information on Act two fifty. That's because everything was very site specific, case specific, and there have been changes over the years. But anyways, that's

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a fun way you can

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: do some research on it. I did not even know that existed. Existed. Yes.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Which one,

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It's on the land use review board's website. It's called eNotes. And yeah, it's a searchable document. I think it's under the resources page. Yeah. Thank you. All right, so preview so. And then, and then just another so when we talk about exemptions and when I'm drafting exemptions, often under 6,001 there are exemptions that are phrased as things that are not considered development. So that's one way something can

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: be exempted from Act two

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: fifty is that it's not considered development. 6,081 has 28 other exemptions, but they're phrased differently. They're phrased here as no permit or permit amendment is required for the following activity. And so over the years you have created these dozens of exemptions and they specify that not only would this project not need a permit, if something else already has a permit and they want to change to one

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: of these

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: exempt uses, if it says in the statute they don't need a permanent amendment, they also don't need a permanent amendment. So that's the full exemption from Act two fifty. So then I have some information on what is a major versus a minor permit. So, I will say the Land Institute Board has a much better chart on this than I do, but the statute allows district commissions to determine whether or not an application for a project is a major or a minor permit. I think the data that has come out of the board recently is that there are few major permits per year, but the distinction really is just whether or not there will be a hearing on the project. So when someone submits an application, the district commission shall determine whether the application is a major application, which with a required public hearing, or is a minor application, which does not automatically have a hearing. The rule 51 says that if the district commission determines that there's a demonstrable likelihood that the project will not present significant adverse impacts under the criteria, then it could be a minor. So they look at whether or not any of the plans for the site will have a significant adverse impact, whether there will be controversy over any of the aspects of the Acting 15 criteria. If there is a major, if there will be some, if there's a risk of impact under the criteria, there's fourteen day notice for a scheduled hearing and a hearing shall be held within forty days of receipt of the complete application. After the hearing, the district commission shall deliberate, and they must issue a permit within twenty days of the close of deliberation. So there are all of these dates and statutes that the district commissions have to follow. There are, it doesn't usually play out exactly on this timeline because the parties who participate can request additional time or may wish to present additional evidence. The statute says that the district commission shall not close the hearing until all parties have had a chance to prevent their evidence. So there may need to be multiple hearings in order to accommodate that. And then the district commission has time to deliberate and then they have to issue it within twenty days after that. For minor permits, there's a statute in here that describes who needs to get notice for any type of permit application. Anyone who got notice of an application can request that there be a hearing. And so things that the District Commission view as a minor permit application, someone who got notice may request that they hold a hearing, or the District Commission itself can decide after they've reviewed the petition like, oh, maybe this is actually going to be

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: a major and we need

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: to hold a permit hearing. If they do, they have twenty days within the end of the comment period to do that. And if not, they have to issue the permit within sixty days of it being submitted. So if there's no hearing, it needs to be issued within sixty days since it was submitted. And so that's a shorter timeline than the majors. Then I'll just also throw in, there is a specific statute, sixty eight four gs, that specifies that small sawmill and logging operations have an automatic minor permit process.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Even if, so, but someone could still request a hearing?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. Even though it's minor? Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: It's just automatic. And that's interesting that they got that designation.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, and the latest review board just did report on wood products manufacturers and reviewed how it was going. So that is something you could hear more about from them. It's sort of an odd thing, but over the years have been a lot of requests on how can we support the forestry industry? And that was one idea that was enacted about a decade ago. Interesting.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, interesting. Senator Lewis?

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: So is that there because I know there are two different applications for our customers, a short form long form. Does that have anything to do with the minor or major application?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know. So there is another, we have majors and minors, we also have administrative amendments, which are those sort of very short, small things that can be applied for quickly and issued immediately. I am not super familiar with the actual applications. And I know that they're in the process of updating your application process. So you may wanna hear about that with them.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. Any other questions?

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So that was a little bit of

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: a grab bag of

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: stuff too.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: No, did not know technically what was the difference between a minor and a major. It's all part of the learning.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And they do, the board does have a nicer chart that lays it out. So, if you'd like to look at either their support, or they can talk to you about it. But the primary distinction is whether or not a hearing is going to be held, and if there are going to be multiple parties participating in that hearing.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so we're going to take a break until 11:30, but before we do, just want to preview. 10:30. I'm sorry, 10:30.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Sorry,

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: 10:30. And before we do, just want to preview tomorrow. So we have a short day tomorrow. There's a joint assembly starting at 10:30. So we're going to have you back to talk about the law of 01/1981, sort of what was passed. And then we're going to hear from Charlie Baker from BAFTA about some suggested changes for 03/25, The update to 01/1981. And things that are not currently in that draft. So, we'll give you the SSA tomorrow. Okay, so let's take a break until 10:30. Oh dear, okay, good morning again. This is Center of Natural Resources Energy and it is still Wednesday, February 18. So we are moving now to S S138 about commercial PACE. I'm sure you're staying alone. We're joined by Mr. Grapiaki, who's a board member of SeaPace Alliance. And thank you for joining us.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Thank you.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And just to, so we have your recommended edits, which are being passed out right now. And just to confirm, it's okay for us to post those online? Sure.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, go

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: ahead. I took out all my initial swear words, I think we're pretty good. Super.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, thank you so much. And if you would go ahead and introduce yourself and then tell us about changes that you are proposing.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Sure, thank you very much. I want to thank Senator Crittenden for sponsoring this legislation and being open to some of the changes that we'd like to see in this bill. My name is Michael Yaki, Y A K I. I am the senior vice president for policy and senior counsel for Petro's PACE Finance. We are a C PACE capital provider, one of largest in the country. I am also a board member of the C PACE Alliance and the trade industry group for CPAs and I am testifying on their behalf today. By way of introduction, I have had the pleasure of writing, a good number of the CPA statutes that exist in the country today. One of the most recent ones was your next door neighbor, New Hampshire, where I was invited to, rewrite, their statute, as I'm hoping to help you rewrite your existing one here because it did not meet they tried rewriting it and it did not meet the needs of how CPAs works and now they have a program that is up and running and we look forward to doing business in New Hampshire. Should I just go through the bill as I marked it up through here and then we can, either entertain questions as I go along or at the end whatever the committee would prefer.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sure, well thank you I think that sounds good to just jump right in and I'm sure we'll have questions as we go.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Okay, well I mean the first thing that sort of struck me was about the requirement of having a voter approval of the creation of the PACE District. This would be except for New Hampshire, the only place in the country that has that and New Hampshire has now figured out that at least some parts of New Hampshire, it's interesting, some parts did not do it, some parts thought they needed to do it. The New Hampshire legislature is now trying to clarify that local governments have the ability to, without submitting it to the voters, have this be done and there are couple reasons why. One, this is not a bond initiative. There is no public money at risk. There is no legal liability or financial liability, no full faith in credit as being pledged by a local government as a result of creating this type of program. It is purely a private financing program that utilizes the governmental power of the assessment to secure repayment and that's important because the way this works is because it is, because it does have that governmental super security lien on title, we are able, in the industry, able to access money at lower rates and over longer terms. So in some ways it behaves like public financing, it behaves like a bond, it doesn't accelerate, it can go for twenty, twenty five, thirty years, and issues that we can talk about later, but the key is that because of that you can land low and long and that's sort of been the missing piece to promote energy, energy efficiency, water efficiency, and others in this country. So I would ask you if you could please review whether you actually need to have this be a voter approval requirement or to have these done directly by local governments. Now we just add one more thing about that. C PACE is a creature of essentially private financing where CPASE is often the last link that gets in. What that means is that all the other people banks, funds, equities, really sort of ready to go to get something done. C PACE comes in and when C PACE comes in, it has a salutary effect on the project. It's got to meet certain economic, certain energy, water, conservation, whatever the requirements are in the statute. So usually funding for any type of project has a deadline. If there is going to be a wait or a long, especially a long wait for something to go through a process and get submitted to the voters, chances are that project goes away, they'll go ahead and do it with a different kind of money if they can get it, in which case the environmental benefits are kind of lost. So I would just note that that that we always tell communities and act C PACE when you can. We will that way when we come up with a project, we can close it rather than have to wait to see whether a local government can get it done. So that's my first comment and I'm going to be basically talking about some of my comments and edits as we go along. On the second page, just technical things regarding the fact that we're expanding beyond energy efficiency, so some of the references to only energy efficiency need to be knocked out in favor of sort of the general broader definitions that in statute. There's a clarification about residential buildings of four or less units, that's to differentiate this from residential but to clearly qualify multifamily buildings or other types of residential commercial facilities like assisted care, memory care, which is very much a big part of CPACE projects to date. Let's see, so that's pages one and two. Page three is some more cleanup along the definitional aspect. Okay, page four, page three, just a little thing. We've heard some communities say, well we don't know how to deal with resiliency, what does that mean? We have the technical standards to do it and we understand that they may not. That's sort of where the program administrator comes in to sort of draw on the sort of national standards that are out there, whether it's the FEMA has a fortify system for wind resistance. We know that, various northern communities, have snow load requirements, things like that. They are out there. I don't think people should be concerned that there won't be a standard by which to measure something by when it comes to resilience, but we all know that you for like for grid resilience and storms and other things, there are pretty clear standards that people want to have backup power, etc. When things get bad.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can I interrupt? Thank you. I just want to make sure that I am following. So the par that you were just talking about is the deletion that runs across from page two to page three, is that right?

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Sorry, I just scooped ahead to page four. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. So just to clarify, and then I want to go back a minute because we're going a little bit quick. Back on page two, Where we're talking about your comments on lines six and seven. Does commercial and industrial buildings means any building other than a residential building with four or less units? It's just removing doubt that oh, so you're suggesting that we add four or less units to

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: To make sure that buildings larger than that would be, which are multi family, yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right, would count as commercial.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Apartment buildings, yeah, okay. Thank you, I'm feeling good about that. Okay, so, and then the rest of page two and three, you're calling cleanup. Yes. Just clarification.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Can I ask about that though?

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes. On the bottom of page two over to the top of three, you're suggesting to get rid of the quantification of energy savings?

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is that B is the introductory sentence to one, two, and three, and two and three have nothing to do with energy. So if you'd like to put some of that back, it would be in subsection one rather than in the generic introductory paragraph of the first sentence of B. B introduces the notion of the analyses that are in one, two, and three, but then it goes on to say energy savings and you're not going to be doing energy savings when you're talking about water or something. Anyway, it's a clarification.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yep, that's helpful, thank you. Yes, that makes more sense. And then anything, want to speed read your comment number five, but anything you can tell us about on page three, line thirteen, fourteen?

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yeah, it's just that sometimes people get a little jittery going, well, we implemented resilience standards, but there are out there, you kind of know it when you see it, it can go toward car parks with hardened roofing to do a snow load, it can be ensuring that people who want emergency generation systems to deal with grid resilience in case of major storms. Like I said, it's not immediately sort of, oh, what is Missouri State in Vermont? It's sort of you will know it as you define it and that's going to be part of the role of local governments and program admins deciding these are the kinds of things we'd like to see and it means that they may not have to engage in a long and expensive process of attempting to try and define their own code or wait for the state to do theirs, but they can move forward in a way that will reduce emergency costs, rapid response costs, have you, in commercial buildings by making them more insulated, more tougher, more resilient.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think that makes sense, in terms of pegging resilience to some kind of standards and creating, making sure that there's like a broad set of things that could be pointed at.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Right, and because, and it's not, you know, a popular can't come in and say, I'm gonna put, you know, sweaters on my heaters, that's resilience and they're cashmere and they cost a lot of No, it's it's something that the local government will have to decide, and approve. So it's not no one is usurping a local government's role, but it's something where they can decide to as it goes along or or or or granted on a case by case basis. It's not an open season that anyone claiming that having sheep in their lawn is a resilience measure. I

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: guess I'm thinking of like an example here might be know, that you have to lift your electric utilities or your buildings utilities out above the floodplain levels.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Exactly. Right.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That would be like a local. Right. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. I'm now ready to go to page four.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Okay, so page four, this is an important change. Said What in a conversation earlier with Amy and to the committee is that there are there are any number of examples in this country where pay statutes went to die for lack of good writing and it's one of those things where we in the industry have to understand that the clarification of how CPASE works is important, not just for local governments, not just for us, but for the capital markets and the rating agencies that enable us to access lower capital at longer terms. And these two additions, A1, A sub one and A sub two are the sort of two critical principles of C PACE that are enunciated in every statute in this country. That it's a first and prior lien and that it runs with the land and that it does not accelerate nor extinguished in the case of for in of a foreclosure, whether it's foreclosure, by local government or foreclosure by, someone holding the security interest on the property. But those two things are kinda key. What I crossed out are kinda the knock on effects of one and two that are understood legally by all lawyers who practice in this industry, which is you're going transfer balances, everything like that, rather than try and do a descriptive that then leads you to have to parse out what it really means in terms of the legalities, and two, A sub one and A sub two are sort of the key principles of what makes a CPA statute a CPA statute, and everything involving foreclosures, balances, things like that kind of follow from that. So I left some of that in B about the about the the impact of what non acceleration and non extinguishing means, B is a more descriptive way of saying that when you foreclose whatever whatever was billed and due and not paid is delinquent and subject to foreclosure, but unlike any other type of loan, you know, it may be a $5,000,000 c PACE, but if there's only $200,000 in arrears from two payments or one payment, that's the only thing that's eligible for foreclosure. It doesn't accelerate it all forward, which by the way banks like because it means that when they consent to this, they understand that their secured interest in the property is only, like the word, insecure to the amount that they don't pay their annual balance, the whole shebang doesn't come and jump in front of them, and and jeopardize their their interest in the property. So B is a descriptive nature of what essentially how one and two work in real life.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so just to follow-up on that, so are you saying that as long as you have one and two as you're suggesting, that you could actually get rid of B and it would function the same way? Yeah. Okay, but it was already here, so I have to keep it.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yeah, I put, let's put it this way, I didn't want to be the red ink guy, so.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Questions about that portion so far. I'm still absorbing it. Okay, that's fair.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Actually, was thinking, let's make sure B actually doesn't confuse A. Right? Does B still make sense?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Like that it's not interfering with A?

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: No, if you were to do a court action, sir, in the prayer for relief, what is described in B, in other words, the date that a judgment is filed, if another payment comes along and is not paid, that would be included and that's kind of what B talks about.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I do have a question about lines 11 through 13 that you're suggesting get deleted. So if there's a foreclosure, this is as it currently stands, the past due balance would be. Would be due no future payments is that is that implied in how this would work or is that or is that?

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yeah, and in fact, B kind of spells that out even more, which is that actually A is almost too limiting past due balances shall be due for payment, but if one becomes due during the time of a foreclosure, that would get folded in, which is kind of what B is talking about. So B is actually a better way of stating A in some ways, which is why I wanted to left left someone be in there because it made it made sense to me that a court to give some clarity to the court or or that would be adjudicating their foreclosure

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Mhmm.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: That if another payment came due during the pendency litigation, you know, up until the date that the court order is issued, foreclosure is taken and title is transferred, part of that includes this, and that's actually also important to local governments because you want to make sure that everything is paid off before any title is as part of any governmental assessment whether it's a property tax, it would be the same thing with property taxes. If property taxes became due and were not paid during a foreclosure proceeding before that person could take title, they would have to make sure that the local governments remain whole at the same time. So this is just consistent with that.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. I can already tell that we're going to run out of time. We'll get through as much as we get through before 11:00, and then we could potentially have you back. So let's just talk about,

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: you know, there's a lot of comments that that go toward the back and let me just start off by saying that it's really important to understand that commercial PACE is a very different creature than what people may have heard about residential pace in in in the background of your mind. Commercial pace is very much a commercial financing transaction. It is between two parties. It is not it is usually not just someone going in and and getting a loan to set up a cheeseburger stand. It's much more complicated than that. The numbers are much higher. People are represented by counsel and and tax and tax advisers and what have you on each side. In addition to that, because the statute will require, as all of them do, lender consent, you're adding a whole another layer of outside review on a transaction, to ensure that and it's in the it's in a secured lender's interest to make sure that whatever it what the what is jumping in front of them, would be the PACE assessment, doesn't unduly jeopardize their ability to have a sec have their security interest jeopardized by that. So there's there's within a c PACE transaction, almost every a requirement of outside review by third party secured lenders already on the property to make sure that they're not gonna get in trouble from the PACE assessment going in there. So there's really a very, very rigorous thing in there. What a lot of these changes are or proposals or deletions that I have or comments deal with the fact of you don't need to make it the governmental role to do a lot of these things. And I'd say that for two reasons. One, the more the governmental gets involved, the more local governments are gonna be less less willing to really get involved because it increases their duties to do it. Number one. Number number two, when you increase local government local government roles in that way, you're kind of increasing whether you whether you really mean it or not. They're kind of liability, in these decisions because now since they're making determinations, they're making these they're these requiring X and Y, the number of trip balls that people look at in terms of analysis come up. C PACE is a private transaction with the imprimatur of a governmental lien provided that it satisfies the requirements under the statute. But because it's not governmental money and the government has no risk with regard to that lien. All the risk in terms of it not being paid is on the private sector and on the property owner. Their need to be involved in every single document and every single review I think is lessened and quite frankly makes it a lot easier for them to want to be involved. I used to be I used to be a county elected official myself and and for many years and and the the these are written partly from my own experience of wanting to do these things, wanting to make, create this kind of incentive for people to do things that we want them to do with their buildings, but not necessarily have such a heavy hand of government in there that that kind of friction makes them walk away. So that's that's behind a lot of the comments later on in this is let's we can have the principles in there. We can make it a duty between the capital provider and and the property owner because it's a private financing transaction that's generally where all the duties and obligations should lie anyway. Forcing, not forcing, but placing government in there a lot of the times starts to make things a little more create a little more friction, and and that friction is what is what deters people from wanting to do these sorts of things. So it's it's that's what's behind a lot of the other comments that you see, in here about removing some of the disclosure requirements that the government wants for you can have the disclosure requirements, but make them between the private parties, not make it the government has to be involved in creating, doing, formulating, and signing all of these things. They don't need to do that. They don't do it anywhere else in the country. And and but you can still have those kinds of duties in there. Just make them bilateral between the property owner and the capital provider as a requirement and if they screw up then they get to go out each other and not end up bringing the government in as a third party.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Thank

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: you, I'm appreciating that. Okay, do you have a question?

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Makes sense, the war

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: minister. Yes.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So do you have thoughts? I just

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: have to absorb all this. This is a lot And I feel like we should have passed testimony earlier.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: But now we're going to have

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: to have everyone back in. It depends on these changes if we decide to go with them.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's totally fair. One thought is that, because I think it would still be valuable to continue to have you walk us through your recommendations. Though we are running out of time for that today, so perhaps we can have you back another time.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Great, and I would also say that for each of the senators, if their staff wants to reach out and talk to me and walk through it as well, I'd be glad to give private briefings to any staff members as well.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: We don't have staff.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I was gonna say, it's just us.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Okay. That's

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: true. Could have our legislative council connect with you, but she'll probably get it. Okay, so to be continued, thank you so much and onward. Okay, thank

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: you so much. Look forward to helping you in any way I can. There's one gap in the entire country in the Northeast and that's Vermont. Everyone in the industry is saying, Michael, come on, help us close that gap. So love love to see love to see that happen and we'll do anything I can to help you move it forward. It's not, I have like two one minute left. I'm gonna use it. Excuse me. It's It is a lot, but what I'm trying to do is not make it a lot for local governments. Yes. And to show how it can be done in a way that can do it. Some of the cleanup involves letting local governments and program administrators help figure this out. There are professional third party program admins, that will work with local governments to help get this done. You may or may not want a state agency involved. This gives you flexibility to either work with a state agency or work with a private third party or let's let the local government do it themselves. We have lots of local governments that are doing the admin themselves because ultimately the way it's set up, when they have the appropriate protections and and, delegation of responsibilities, to the third parties so that they are more almost ministerial in nature, to help approve these things getting through, the faster and easier it gets done. And I would just say that in the last few years, some of the smaller states with the newer statutes are doing better than the bigger states, in this country. Idaho, for example, which your head may spin at this, but Idaho has done more C PACE financing since their statute passed in 2024. It was and was implemented this year. And then the state of New York has done in the past three years. Wow. And and and that's that's just the that's just Idaho, not known as a, environmentally cutting edge, state, but this is, this is used by property owners, as a, as a critical financing tool in order to do it. They have to meet certain environmental requirements, you know, engineering, energy, or other requirements, and this is in addition to being an energy and climate change tool, it's an economic development tool for many communities as well. So I appreciate the time, thank you so much, thank you Amy for reaching out, and I'll be glad to continue to help you walk this through and close that gap.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah, thank you so much. Awesome. All right, well we're gonna move on. Thank Thank you for joining us, Shwedhaki. And so we're gonna move on now to, is Joey here? She's off taking a phone call,

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: I think. So yes, there's a bunch of us who are from energy committees, and I think three of us are on your list to see. Yes. And I think I flipped around, I'm going to go first.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay. Super. I'll introduce myself. Sure.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Joey, do you want to give a little turn to Do you want to introduce yourself or say anything to frame this up first? For context for the committee, There were a number of energy committee folks in the building today and I wanted the opportunity to come speak to us and so I just love to hear anything that you all have to say to us. Anything else that you want to add?

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Well, just for

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the record, Joanna Miller, the Vermont Natural Resources Council, but a big part of my job and probably the greatest privilege is to help support the network of town energy committees.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: You probably know about half

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the communities in the state of Vermont have these mostly municipally appointed grassroots groups. They've been working for about two decades now, although is an offshoot, energy committees are an offshoot of what was statutorily enabled in the early '70s when there was the oil embargo and the energy crisis, to help appoint energy coordinators and committees to help municipalities cut costs. And now these groups have been doing a lot in partnership with the state and their communities to help their neighbors and their municipalities cut energy costs, transition to more affordable renewables. And a handful of them, of the 120

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: plus groups in

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the state, are here today just to share

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a little bit about what they've

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: been working on because of

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: the partnership between communities in

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the state to meet our climate commitments, which from where we sit is also

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: a massive economic opportunity. And so some

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: of them are going to speak to what they've been doing and how it relates to your work, and potentially to a couple

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of the bills in front of

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: your committee, or soon to be potentially

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: in front of your committee.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: So thank you so much for

[Joanna Miller (Vermont Natural Resources Council)]: the chance to frame it out a little bit, and for these fine folks to have

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: a few minutes of your very valuable time.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Super, thank you. You're welcome. And maybe we should do a quick round of introductions to your Hi,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I'm Senator Ruth Hardy from the Addison District.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Senator Terry Williams from Broadland.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, Anne Watson from the Washington District. So, Anne Watson from

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: the Addison District. Scott Beck from Caledonia.

[Linda Gray (Norwich Energy Committee)]: Yeah, nice to meet you all and see you again. So, my name is Linda Gray and I'm here, I've been active in my town's energy committee, which is Norwich, since 2008. That has given me eighteen years. Today, I'd like to do is sketch out and give you an idea of the stuff that we do, and then highlight policies, private individual energy choices, and then comment on some of the current legislation you have. So, what we do, we focus on both municipal energy use and residential energy use. We've done all kinds of different campaigns, so Residential solar, we've done that since 2012. At this stage, more than half of our households in town have gone solar. We have done campaigns on residential weatherization since 2014. We do all kinds of promotions to try to get people's attention, so that's outreach at our transfer station, at our general store, on Halloween and Fire station, free ice cream, free LED bulbs. We have done pirate meters on the sitco pole that's outside the general store, and that's include knitted panels to count weatherization projects or numbered rings to count solar installations. We've done Climate Strike yarn bombs around town, displays as a library. We have done the window inserts community build. You guys may have heard of that in your community. We've done that for five years. We have an Ask a Neighbor roster, so that residents with experience can help those who are just starting. We've been involved with eBuy program programs and EB Show and House. So, and I do want to note, much of our work has been in collaboration with other Upper LA town committees. So with the Solarize and Weatherize campaigns, the EVAC loans and the window inserts, the network part of BCAM, so Vermont Energy and Climate Action Network, that network part is real, and we readily copy each other's ideas and successes and promote each other's programs, organize multi time events. So also Norwich is part of a seven town group that shares an energy coordinator staff position, and that position is housed at our regional planning commission. The seven towns are Norwich, Bradford, Fairley, Stafford, Thumperchair, and Woodstock, so we put in prorated funds and get prorated hours, and the RPC covers overhead. Now, to policy. So, I think it's worth noting how all the various initiatives that we energy committees promote, Georgetown and Irvinces, are warm workers supported by the scaffolding of policy. So Residential solar by net metering and the whole structure of the renewable energy standard, weatherization by the very existence of efficiency from that, by the incentives funded by the energy efficiency charge in our electric bill, their residential building energy code, which couldn't do more on. EVs were supported by various subsidy programs targeted to low and middle income households. EBIES have been subsidized by a state incentive program. All of those policies, in turn, are supported by the framework of the Global Garmin Solutions Act and the Climate Council and the Climate Action Plan. My observation is that the hurdles for people are time and money. The solutions are complex enough that people need guidance to avoid mistakes, and then there's an energy navigators program that you've talked about. Home Energy Acting is not everybody's top

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: of heart, so if you need

[Linda Gray (Norwich Energy Committee)]: help on that, and the structures have to be in place consistently to channel people to the types of solutions. And I want to say, don't have to care about global warming to want to switch to clean energy. If you care about affordability and health, you'll want to make the switch. The affordability is faster, it's because of this fundamental fact. Once you make an investment in energy efficiency and clean energy, you save money and you stabilize expenses. It's true for individual households, for businesses, for governments. And this is simply because you cut ongoing fuel costs. Fossil fuels are like single use disposable cups, and solar and wind are like ceramic most. I want to take a minute to be an energy nerd, and I want to quote from somebody named James Mill Bond. That's a great James Bond sounding name, but he has worked as a financial market analyst and strategist for over thirty years, including for Deutsche Bank and Citibank in London, Hong Kong, and Moscow. So I'm just going to poke him. I can't say it any better than he has. The first reason behind our clean tech revolution is is physics. Just a simple point that electro tech is more efficient than fossil fuels. You can get two or three times as much useful energy from electro tech solutions as you can from fossil solutions. Electro tech t means renewable energy like solar and wind combined with electric appliances and devices. At the moment, we have this remarkably inefficient system. You put into the factory as it were at one end, 600 or six fifty exajoules, and you get a round of primary energy, and you burn it. As you burn it, you have these enormous, inevitable thermodynamic losses of between 40%, if you're a coal fired power station, or 50%, or if you're a car, about 75% or 80%. You can't avoid this stuff. We're pouring, from our calculations, two thirds of the primary energy into the air and wasting it. Moving to electro tech doesn't eliminate waste, but it radically reduces it if your waste levels are going to be around 10%. For decades, had no other solutions. We couldn't come up with anything better than fossil fuels. Now we can. That is the exciting point. For the health part, I'll just direct you, there's a November 2025 report from Physicians for Social Responsibility, along with 11 other public health organizations, that's hyperfueling sickness, the hidden health costs of fossil fuel pollution. Its top key finding was fossil fuel pollution directly threatens the health of every American. Now on to current proposals, as policymakers, your job is to keep your eye on both premier and long term problems for your constituents, develop the practical, workable and necessary policies that will, maybe, head them off or at least make them manageable. So right now, energy, durably affordable and common sense is being shortsightedly abandoned by our federal government, so we folks volunteering at our communities say to you, please do what you can to keep the ball rolling, don't let things stall out. On to particular topics, want to say thank you very much for your work on portable solar. That's little, but I hope mighty. On the Greenhouse Gas emissions reporting and inventory bill, as one of the top 10 recommendations in the 2025 Climate Action Plan, if I may speak bluntly, it would be crazy for the legislature to not follow through. It's data collection, the agency that would do the work supports it, and I urge you all to support it and support ultimately the funding for that program and the staffing. As a citizen who's worked in my town on enhanced energy plans, I would welcome solid place to base data over broad data that is extrapolated to town levels. The RPCs and the Public Service Department do the best they can, but it's so obvious that while there's real data for electricity sector, there's only estimates for transportation and thermal. The net metering rate freeze, I think this is a simple and easy way for the state to at least partially offset the loss of the federal tax credit. There would be no impact on the state budget, and there would be absolutely minimal impact on the ratepayers, on the order of 10 to 20¢ a month. The energy navigators, I strongly support that. I've seen the need for this in my outreach to people of my town for at least ten years, and I've been among the many volunteers around the state who have bombarded our Addison County colleagues with pleas to figure out how to extend our program statewide. As I

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: said

[Linda Gray (Norwich Energy Committee)]: earlier, improving home energy use is complex enough that people do need guidance to avoid mistakes. And then on land use policies, I want to thank you for your work on Act 181. I think it will help us on the ground to build housing in the right places and in the right ways, and I just want to note that in my town, it's just last week, our planning commission voted to recommend to our select board to opt in to tier 1B, and I hope the select board will vote on that and approve it next week.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So thank you very much. I've heard a lot. Yes.

[Linda Gray (Norwich Energy Committee)]: Then I'm gonna be at Dave's Martin and Smith.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. And welcome.

[Mr. Dufresne (Waterworks Engineer)]: I followed that up. Yes,

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: so I'm Dana Barney. I'm chair of the RAND Energy Committee. Appreciate your inviting us to speak to you today. This is my first time speaking to the committee, so I won't be as elegant as Linda. On

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: our near term thorough,

[Dana Barney (Chair, Brandon/Randolph Energy Committee)]: but I do have a few things to share. Take these off to read my notes. So I've been chair of the committee for about two years, been on the committee maybe as a volunteer for five, and have lived and ran it for twenty five years. I'm a seventh generation proponent. Energy efficiency has been one of the major focuses of our committee, both for the town, the municipality, and for the residents. Recently we've done a number of things to address that. Linda mentioned the energy navigators programs, which I'm actually a volunteer with them because our town got an EECBG grant to hire them to establish the program they granted even though we're in Addison County. No one's jealous of Addison County. And that has been going on now since this fall, I guess, and we've done 12 navigations. I've been at half of those. And we have a goal of doing 60 navigations over the rest of this year, I mean for the cycle of the grants, which ends the end of this year. And at least three of those navigations have already resulted in people doing things to address their energy costs and comfort, you know, concern, including someone who's already put in heat pumps, which is pretty fantastic. I'd say the other thing of note, which is very recent, I got a grant through the press release fund, a small grant to distribute weatherization materials at our library. Our library has a really active library of things and provides food and other things that are ancillary to their primary purpose. And this grant is able to fund purchasing things like insulating foam and caulk and weather stripping, all those kinds of incidental items that as a person doing DIY would need. And so those are available at the library for free. We also provided as part of the grant an infrared camera and indoor air quality monitor, which people can borrow just like a book, and those have been popular. The other thing that came before the weatherization material that's also connected to the library, and I see the library as one of our biggest allies in all of our

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: work. First Library!

[Dana Barney (Chair, Brandon/Randolph Energy Committee)]: We've got some grants including climate catalyst grants. I think one of our mini mercs went to this. We started what's called the tool ship program, which is a lending program for electric lawn equipment. It gives a chance to people who might want to try, you know, thinking about buying it, or they might have a lawn like I used to have, which I was on a tenth of an acre in the village, and I mowed my lawn with a real spore, but we've had lawnmowers, still we've ordered two stream trimmers available to the public to borrow through the library, but part of that program also included creating a mobile shed and we now have two because they didn't want to fit in one. And it is solar powered so that the batteries for the tools are charged by the sun and it can be parked anywhere. It doesn't have to be located as a library. Has access through the cell phone app. And that's been really popular. Prior to that, we also got a grant to give the library at the bulk e bikes, which are extremely popular in the summer when tourists are around. So the library is my number one ally. I think, you know, the energy navigator card, getting back to that, I know that I really appreciate your support with that bill, and hope to see that pass. I know that there's concerns about costs, but I think it's addressing many concerns that homeowners have that have to do, you know, cost is one of the biggest ones that you hear when you go and meet with people in their homes. Comfort's another one, we have a lot of really old leaky houses, and so memorization comes up almost every time, but also upgrading equipment for more efficient heating. And then some people, if they're some kind, have talked to us about getting alternative energy sources or solar panels. And I think all of those things are much easier to consider for a resident if they're meeting one on one with somebody who lives in their town, knows, you know, ins and outs of all of these organizations that work on these things, which is pretty complex sometimes, how many different organizations you have to go through to figure out what you need. And then might have the connections to local contractors or local suppliers for what the person is looking for. One of the things that I'm hoping to do in the next year is kind of expand on the weatherization materials that we're offering at the library and develop a volunteer force of weatherization volunteers to help people use that material. Plenty of people, elderly, fixed income, they're not going to get up on a ladder and work on and seal them in their basement cell. They're not going to do a lot of things, but if we had a volunteer force, we could help them do that. So that's another thing on our agenda. I think, you know, of the other bills that you will be looking at, the net metering rate freeze bill, I think is another one that I'd like to see passed. I got my first solar PV system in 2008. It was just a small six pound system on a really old, it was a 200 year old house. There wasn't much options, but I was very proud to have put that on my roof. And then in 2017, I ended up building a new efficient house, and went net zero, so all of this power is coming through the solar to supply that house. And, you know, I may be an early adopter, obviously at him, I'm kind of an enthusiast when it comes to this stuff, but I think when you look at the bottom line, solar and renewable energy sources are the cheapest form of energy generation, and having a distributed energy source is much better than plunking it all down in one gigantic power plant. And so I think helping people to make that move as much as we can is really helpful. Everyone looks at the long term costs, the upfront costs is now going to be harder for people because of what the federal government is doing, cutting a British tax credit. And so the incentives of the rate for net metering is the one last thing that people can look at to help them consider going solar. So I'd like to see that continue, have the rate freeze for the next two years so that they can take advantage of that. Last one on appliance efficiency, S-one 191. I work in manufacturing, I work for Bird and Forge in lighting design, and I've been there for twenty five years, and I know as a person in the technical side of that business, know how it has been revolutionized by LEDs, and efficiency is a big part of that, and you know, Energy Star, UL, all those regulatory things have made a big difference in what the industry has done, and it also has caused, you know, some headaches along the way, but what the federal government is contemplating, rolling that back, taking the same minimum efficiencies, I can only imagine that the appliance manufacturers and others are just shaking in the boots at what kind of chaos that might create, bringing in competition of really cheap products from outside the country that they can't compete with because they're making them super inefficient and cheap, or users getting product that doesn't last or is not efficient in the end, not saving money but costing them an hour. So I would definitely support that bill in protecting manufacturers like myself or end users who are looking shopping around for appliances to society needs. Then lastly, I would love to commend you on passing the portable solar bill. I think that's a fantastic thing. And we're probably going to do a demonstration project in Brandon with a small system to help people know about that one. We're about that.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: You. Fabulous.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you so much.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: You're welcome.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And anyone else from your group meeting? Yeah. Hey, yes. Wonderful, welcome.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Good morning. My name is Jim Yan, and I'm from the Doris of Manchester area. Wanna thank you for the opportunity to really speak to you. I would, of course, ask for your support, and I know you have passed part of the s one seventy already, but I was escorted for H seven one six, so that was a bit complementary. So that you know where I'm coming from, and a solution to those who feel burdened, I'm not off of the following.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: My brother and I started from scratch and ran a Chevrolet dealership. He managed a Chevrolet 43. I am a financially conservative at heart person. I certainly understand the pressures, banks, and taxes, fees, and regulations. However, I also recognize good financial investment in the use of efficient, clean energy. My two sons and I built solar array on our building at the dealership over thirteen years ago. It covered our entire bill. I looked at that effort, this early expense control. As we all know, the residential solar market payback method for nonprofits, 30% tax credits for individuals have been rescinded. I question if this is really the time to further reducing the credit. Are you willing to add 5,000 or 6,000 workers off a road off to the unemployment line? And are you willing to forego the efforts of many of the small business owners who have provided clean 100% renewable power to the grid. On 06/24/2025, helped with the installation of solar and battery installations. Vermont customers saved over $3,000,000 in one day to their veterans. I would also remind us that we need the income tax revenue from these companies and their employees desperately. For those ratepayers who are so grieved by the thought of a possible 10 to 20¢ increase a month, that's not proven fact. Offer a possible solution that I feel is a win win for all. I asked and I I think I already heard the answer, but I'll say, are you familiar with window dusters? That's if I heard the answer. Not, please Google it. Windowinvestors.org and read through their frequently asked questions. Simple but highly efficient products is a window insert created by an array of volunteers. Over 9,200 inserts were built this past year in the Remain Vermont, New Hampshire region. According to a University of Vermont Maine study test process, that will save over seven and sixty thousand gallons of fuel for risk in your life. My solution, people over the Vermont, if every rate payer bought one insert at an average price of $50 let's say for a thirty year, by thirty year, they would receive the following benefits. A $100 check from the efficiency Vermont under their DIY program. They would save up to $80 to $22 in fuel savings. I'm doing a return of investment of $3.50 a gallon fuel oil in one year. And obviously they get greater comfort in their home and the fun of a community building experience. If they cannot afford the $50 most fields provide free inserts for those who are financially distressed. The Northshire build from Wilshire over the last five years, Bennington County provided over 80 free inserts just this past year to those customers, and they still say it's $22 a year per instance. So I say rather than destroying an industry, residential solar, let's support a known concept that saves money for the customers, reduces fuel consumption, and makes for a more livable home. Window Dressers is an easy, non destructive solution that uses common sense to add tangible values to the wall. I would be glad to try and answer any questions that are out. Thank you so much.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Any questions? Yes. Thank you, sir. Can you just describe what a window dresser is? Is it something you put in your existing window to make it more energy efficient? Do you have

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: you know, windows. Yeah. I don't It's know to do not. It's Basically, it's a a wooden frame plastic or a wooden frame that is probably the two layers of plastics. The idea is when they set it into the windows from the inside Mhmm. You create an airspace between the pane of glass. It's an r one or r three or whatever it is. There's that airspace. And then between the two layers of plastic, you'd have another for probably three quarter inch layer. So you add a minimum of r two to any window that is put in the Got it. And that's how they come up with building.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Can you put it on a sliding glass door?

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: It is not done on your sliding glass. Can you use it? Stick it up to the winter? You know that, that's what I mean. Yeah. They go in during the cold months and they come out. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question. A few are in airplane conditioning. Yeah. Absolutely. People, it works just as well on saving for. How

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: do you have one question about them? How how durable are because you take them out and or I I

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: would imagine taking them out in the summer months, but

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: and then people store them in their basements.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Yeah, do it, they put it behind furniture, beds, that

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: kind of. How durable, I mean it's plastic, So do they last from one year to the next?

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: The normal lifespan that they say is five to ten years. I had some in my house for seven and eight years.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: The only thing that I advise people, if you are a family of cats, you would not do. Clothes don't seem to have a problem. And if you take an item like a tennis ball and threw it against it, it it'll withstand that kind

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: of Sure.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: But a short claw

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: or Yeah. Like that.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That makes sense.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Then we do every year, we offer at $15 if somebody has that kind of problem, what they call bogie brass. Sure.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Because you're using the same frame.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Use the same frames.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I don't even know. I've constructed this. Think probably five to ten years.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: A big volunteer effort.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Well, is. It definitely the voluntary effort, but I guess in my 20¢, for those who are worrying about if it is 10.1%, Alright. Let's call it one inch. $2.40 a year. You buy the one inch of it, you're $50 ahead, just another fifty month program, which is one inch of it. So this whole discussion will be

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I must have missed it, but I don't I'm not sure I get the connection between the solar industry and window dressers, which is thermal efficient.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Well, where I'm going with that is I hear the objection. I I do solar installs. Okay. For for fun. I don't They're fun. They're fun. I don't need to take them. I told them for half pound.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Yeah.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: So I've done three in Bennington. I just had a moment of where I know to know it's a stretch. I have a relative who is in solo business at a much different level than I am, and I learned under him with his brother and we did our person's inflation. So my point is everybody keeps focusing on this charge that it's costing those who don't have a solar system of 10 or 20¢. Let's stop worrying about 10 or 20¢ a month and go out and show somebody how to be more efficient and make money. I put it here, I used to make financial decisions all day long. I say, put it in insert, save $50 in the first year just from the check you get, and then you save $22 every year thereafter. Why are we worrying about a 10 or 20¢ when you're going to put five or 6,000 people out of this? That's just where this goes. We keep chipping away from 17, knock another 1 or 2¢ off or whatever they come up with as a credit, you will have no business customers and as a solar installer.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Mhmm.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: You know? With all the small businesses, we're not talking about commercial megawatt size. You're talking about the some modern pop solar installers of which there are about five or 6,000 we have in Yeah.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: I guess it's just understanding how to finance the window customers.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: It's a way to offset cost. Everybody's talking about cost, guess. I don't come here very often. Yeah. All I hear about is the cost, affordability. Let's show people how to make money.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: So this, I think the point is that a way to This is all these, this reduces your heating costs to offset whatever small increase there might be on your electric costs if the solar.

[Jim Yan (Manchester/Dorset area community member)]: Okay. You would end up- So there's no affordability discussion anymore, unless you want to get five or 6,000 people out of work.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. And thanks for the flyers. Okay. I just want to thank the committee for your flexibility. We're jumping around to a lot of topics today. So we're going to transition to two to three. Yep, that's fair. We Do we have Mason is telling me this

[Chief Brad Vail (Barre City Police Department)]: is. Think we

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: tried it.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Is there anyone who's put this

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: one in? He's not here? Okay. So one, so we did have some new language, Mason, based on the discussions we've had. And I think my wires got crossed here. Actually, maybe let's take a one minute break to check-in as to how. Hey, Mason. We're taking a quick break. We'll be right back.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Oh, excellent. Thanks so much, Jude.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So, you, Mr. Overstreet, for joining us again, even remotely. Appreciate it. We know that you did us the service of coming up with some new language based on our conversation the last time we talked about this. So wondering if you can just tell us about the changes that you have proposed, and then we'd like to combine that with a committee discussion, or maybe we can have a quick committee discussion afterwards about where to go next. We have our legislative council here so that hopefully we can be ready for a new draft in short order. I guess I should say honestly probably next week. There we go. All right, thank you. I'm going to turn it over to you.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Okay, well, good morning, Chair Watson and members of the committee. Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify again on this. For the record, my name is Mason Overstreet. I'm an attorney with Conservation Law Foundation. I apologize in advance for not being able to be there in person. Our six year old son has a wicked high fever, and so I'm at home. But really quickly, so based on the committee's discussion and testimony last Friday on S-two 23, here are the four major buckets of what I would characterize as minor revisions. I think number one and I'm hoping Mr. O'Grady, he's there in person, it sounds like he'll be able to walk through the specific language. Happy to share, too, if that's helpful. But the first priority in that bucket or minor revision would be the agency respectfully requested or made the suggestion that the bill's creation section could be tightened, basically so that it better mirrored the study group's duties. My understanding is I have been in touch with the other kind of key stakeholders who've worked on this for quite some time that the committee heard from. Everyone is supportive of that. I sent along some suggested tightening language based on those duties for the creation to Mr. O'Grady. The second bucket, which is not necessary I wouldn't characterize it as overly complicated, but it was Senator Hardy's suggestion and recommendation to consider striking any references to federal law and the Clean Water Act. And I really look to I have some suggestions that I'm prepared to make, which really revolve around pretty basic strike throughs. I'm very

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: just want to clarify. Wasn't you. I wasn't suggesting we strike the references, but rather that we reference the freeze in where they are right now or where they were last year. That was something we had talked about last session as kind of any time or when we are referencing federal law that we do it as a point in time. I guess I would defer to Michael and lawyers about whether that's the right thing to do, but I was worried about federal law being dismantled.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Senator Hardy, that's extremely helpful. And I apologize for I think I may have misunderstood your first suggestion last week. So that's very helpful, and I will defer to Mr. O'Grady. And given that, I actually think that the language in the bill with a few minor tweaks may suffice. But I defer to Mr. O'Grady. The final remaining two minor edits are the agency sent along some suggested revisions to duty number four, focusing and tightening kind of that that duty towards looking at the classification system for lakes and ponds. I also have suggested language that I've sent along to Mr. O'Grady, so happy to share screen if that's helpful. And then finally was senator Hardy's suggested recommendation to consider changing the study group report submission date to December 15 instead of December 30, which is a relatively easy fix. And I feel comfortable saying that all of the kind of core stakeholders involved in this are all supportive of that, as well as the other changes.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Okay.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: So I think I'll stop there and look forward to hearing what Mr. O'Grady has to say and on standby to help her share screen in any way.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Super helpful. Yes.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at. Okay. Fair enough. Because I have Mason's markup, but it's not the same as what was handed out to you either.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: I think we should look at Mason's mark. Oh, Seth? That's okay. So I do have Mason's which I can send to you. So, oh, and okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Maybe you can share us with you.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Yes. But on the point of

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: substance, I think the only thing where I would differ from what Mason's markup has is the point that Senator Hardy just made about in the reference to the Clean Water Act. He would say something like, has it existed on the effective date of the sack? And so you'd be freezing it in time as Senator Hardy referenced. There's actually other language that you passed last year and other language that's moving in the House potentially that would also address the issue, but it doesn't hurt to be clear. And other than that, I don't have any points on the substance. It's really depending on what you heard from the agency. I didn't hear from the agency, but I did see their markup, and I understand their points.

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: Yes. Go ahead.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: One one thing is we have the act taking effect on passage. And so one question is, if that happens, is it possible that we could have the first meeting be on July 1 with the successful prior call rather than August 1 so that

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we could get it? I wouldn't recommend it. I would not recommend that. Because? Because say even this has to go through the other body, it also has to go through both appropriations committees because you're both allowed for compensation. You're looking at this non passing, even effective on passage, until, I don't know, late April at the earliest. And you also need to understand when you pass it out of your two bodies, that's not when it's effective. It's effective when the governor comes and picks it up, and the governor doesn't have to come pick it up. He can involve you, he can wait. It's just once he picks it up, he's got four days effectively. So when you consider all of that, you're talking probably June before it's effective, and now you have a month. And it's a lot harder to appoint people than you think it is.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Well, as I'm looking at it, currently says, she'll call the first meeting of the study group to occur on or before August 1, so it could be sooner than that,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: depending on how quickly the Well, editing

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: that's good.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And if you want more time,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you could bump the December 15 to January 15 if that would be helpful.

[Michael Yaki (Board Member, C-PACE Alliance)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: To be fair, the group existence of February is 26, and so nobody's going to enforce the deadline against you. So you will have time to complete it.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I do have the digital written. I'm happy to forward it to the committee if that is useful. Maybe can you share your screen with that?

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: I'm more than am I back? I'm more than happy to share my screen or since Mike's right there in the room and has the draft. Mike, are you saying the reason why I placed these edits on that draft is that was the draft that ANR had put suggested edits on duty number four. You're saying that's not the revised draft that you circulated. Correct?

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So the Yeah. The non markup draft I have is different from the markup draft that I have.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. That's and, Mason, when you sent it to me, I I gave Jude the long the long version because there were a couple floating around, and I said that's what happened.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Okay. Okay.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Well, I think the

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: good thing is tell me if you agree. There's not a lot of substantive difference between the two drafts. So these suggested edits can be made on the latest version. And we can still share screen so you can see the language.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah, let's do the first.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Mike in the room could just walk through them since he's got the physical copy. Whatever is easiest and most efficient for the committee.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: That would be fine. I guess I do want to say I want to reserve a little bit of time during committee because we have an edit or amendment to two eighteen that we need to look at as well. So we have a little bit more to do. I don't think that that's going to take very long, but I'm just, I'm conscious of the time. So, but yeah, if you're able to share your screen and we can walk through that very quickly, then I think we're hopefully My goal is to be walking out of here, ready to have a new draft, like direction to have a new draft for next week.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Beautiful. So can everyone see my screen right now? Yep. Okay. So bucket number one or revision number one would be the tightening of section 1A, the creation section. And here is kind of a quick recommendation, is you can see where I've struck through this language in the previous draft. And then I inserted, know, there is created the water quality, lake classification, and anti degradation study group, which shall conduct evaluations set forth in subsection c, including review of existing classified waters of the state and candidate waters with water quality data supporting reclassification, assessment of antidequidation requirements, examination of the regulatory framework for Class A waters, and examination of the adequacy of the current water classification system for lights and ponds. Based on these evaluations, the study group shall recommend to the general assembly any legislative or policy changes to strengthen environmental protection, provide regulatory certainty, and support public uses of state water. That would be recommendation number one. Moving down really quickly.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Before we any questions on that from the committee? Nope. Okay. All right, let's keep going.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Okay, so moving down really quickly. No changes to membership. This is where I'd look to Mr. O'Grady, given what Senator Hardy just said. So I apologize for kind of crossed wires there. In my opinion, I now think that personally I would avoid this suggested strike through, which I placed right here, and actually keep the original language. But curious to hear what Mr. O'Grady thinks and recommends.

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think keep the cross reference to the Clean Water Act. Make sure following the legislative council drafting manual, if you want to freeze it, you use the appropriate language for freezing it, which we can do. Okay. I think Senator Hardy's concern is addressed.

[Alex "Chickenspeak" (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: If they

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: would freeze it, I'm very good with that. I think that makes sense to do. Thank you.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Okay. Really quickly, this was the suggested edit by the agency. You can see their language in blue and my suggested tightening in red, which does not change the substance here. And so this would be duty number four. It would read, evaluate whether the existing water classification system and the related statutory and regulatory frameworks address current and potential threats to lake and pond water quality and ecological integrity and provide regulatory certainty. This ecological integrity was a suggestion that senator Bongartz made, moving it up in the list of this sentence. So that would be that language. I realize there's a one and that should be struck through.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yeah. That also seems fine to me with the stretching out of the extra and. Any other, Senator Bongartz, you're okay with that?

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Great. Other comments? Really quickly, in like ten seconds, one suggestion not to derail this conversation that Mr. Coleman, Warren Coleman, made just this morning, which is not a must, just a consideration for the committee, is the committee could insert recreational uses after water quality here, and that's a consideration. I recognize that that may tread into things related to S224, but it's just a suggestion.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, my initial take on that is let the house figure that one out, and then it continues to be a suggestion.

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: Okay, and Mr. Coleman, feel comfortable saying that he was not married to that language or suggestion, it was just an idea. Sure. Okay. And then finally, is the date change December 15, which we did discuss?

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I am okay with all of those changes, understanding that we're keeping the reference to the federal clean water act, freezing it in time. Any other comments on these recommended edits?

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: No, so we'll see one final draft.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, so we'll see, we'll schedule Mr. Grady for a final draft this next week and a vote. Okay, any other comments,

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Simpson? No.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Thank you so much and all of you Thank for your little

[Mason Overstreet (Conservation Law Foundation)]: you, take care.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, you too. Okay, so now we're moving to an amendment that Senator Hardy got agreed for 02/18. So moved.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Senator Lee.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. Here. Thank you.

[Senator Terry Williams (Vice Chair)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: And if you can invite Mr. A gradient to get a chair here. So just for some context, as I was comparing the floor report, in section three, there was the very last sentence. So section three is about the report that we're asking DEC to do on storage of salt. And so it actually includes the old language instances amended. As it stands, it's asking them to also include a proposed amount, an annual amount of funding that would be required to meet the timelines for covering our movement. I thought that implied that we were somehow requiring that SALT files be covered and that is not in this bill. So it changed it to some new language that I think makes it clearer that we're not intending to require coverage of salt piles, at least at this time. Then Senator Hardy, do want to explain the second one? Sure.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: The second one is on

[Unidentified (committee asides/transitions)]: the fee report, and it

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: would just add that they would have to, in consultation with agency of transportation, recommend fees for both the private contractor portion of the program and the municipal portion of the program. And this, we actually officially voted on yesterday and financed, and everybody goes around to put it, because this is in the finance section.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: Anything you want to add, Mr. Baker? No. Okay. Any questions from the committee about this? I think it's just clarifying and making sure we're thorough. Okay. Would love to get a vote from the committee on this. We need to struggle. Thank you. Thank you. Struffle. Yeah, we took an official vote yesterday and my mom's like, no,

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you don't need to do that. In fact, if you don't have the bill, you can't do that. Interesting. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Member)]: These were amendments you've

[Michael O’Grady (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: already made and they're on the calendar.

[Senator Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah. So we'd be bringing that as amendments to today.

[Unidentified (multiple short interjections)]: Okay.

[Senator Anne Watson (Chair)]: All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed? Okay. Great. Thank you everybody, Stephen was all of that.