Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: Hey, we're Alright.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Good morning. This is Sinai Natural Resources and Energy and it is Tuesday, '87 and I'm going to keep talking. Sure, oh, and things gone, great, okay. So we are starting with H778 this morning about dam safety. Referred by Representative Chaffin, welcome.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thank you for having me. I'm Elle Cheegan, I represent Scott Beck and Middleton, so I sit on the Advisory And then I'm here to tell you a little bit about the scale that I helped co sponsor. It really flows from a lot of work that has happened over the last eight to ten years in this building. So I'm going give a little bit of background to Anna's initiatives of how we got to the health care.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you, Ruth. That makes it very So

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: this bill focuses on dam safety. We have a three dream set of dams across the state for a thousand of various tables, purposes, and conditions, from small private dams, those that generate power, to those that are state owned and designed for flood control. We've been working in recent years to improve our ability to regulate dams to better protect public safety of communities downstream, and this bill takes to the next logical step in that direction. You will probably recall, your committee and body as a whole has been working on this over the last two years ago in particular. Some of this hopefully will be reminding you of some of things we've heard over the last two years. Over 900 dams are state regulated primarily by the Dam Safety Program, Department of Environmental Conservation, and about 21 dams that generate electricity are currently regulated by our Public Utility Commission. And a small remainder are regulated at the federal level, primarily by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Army Corps, and Chiefs. In 2018, we passed Act 161, which established a definition for dams and required the Department of Environmental Conservation to establish safety standards for the safety and regulation of dams. Required an inventory of dams and a hazard classification system to be developed and to undertake rule making relating to standards for registration, siting, design, maintenance, inspections, as well as emergency action plans. And the program has done significant work over the past few years to further develop the dam safety program and its regulatory structure. Some of that will be underway. It's expected to be completed at the end of this calendar year is my understanding. Sure you'll hear more about that in front of me. And then in 2024, we'll all remember a little bit better that we passed Act 121, the Florida Safety Act, which further addressed dam safety, particularly after flooding in 2023, making clear that there's a lot more work to be done. The act set up a process to transfer a public safety jurisdiction of 21 electric generating dams regulated by the Public Utility Commission to the Dam Safety Program, or potentially to FERC, centralizing all dam safety state regulations from one office, so it's staffed with engineers, and we also added several positions to that program. It restructured the dam safety revolving loan funds to support proactive repairs, not just emergency projects, and most important to the development for you today, it established a study committee on the dam emergency operations plan. That was meant to recommend to us how to improve the regional emergency action planning for hazards from dam failure or the possibility of dam failure, and how to shift the responsibility for emergency planning from individual municipalities to more regional efforts and authorities. So the Dam Safety Program did develop that classification system. I'm sure you're hearing more about this, but we have about how to, so I'll just explain briefly the classification system. Right now it's all up to speed. Ben Green will correct me, I'm sure, if I get anything wrong. So the classification system includes high hazard dams, significant hazard dams, little hazard dams. High hazard dams are those with downstream population at risk of a probable loss of life if the dam were to fail. A significant high hazard dam is one in which there's probable economic or environmental impacts, roads or bridges that would be damaged, but no probable loss of life. And a low hazard dam is not expected to cause significant impacts if the dam were to fail. So this bill focuses on the high hazard dams, there's probable loss of life. And we have at least 77 high hazard dams in Vermont, meaning they have at least one person at risk downstream. And 50 of those are state regulated by DEC. 22 of these help between 100 to nine ninety nine persons at risk, and 11 have 1,000 on Marches of rest. There is a graphic available in the study report that you can look at with the actual dams in each of those citations. And just as a reminder to everyone in this room and the general public who could be listening, high hazard does not mean that there's high risk of dam failure. It does not consider the condition or the management of a dam fall. The failure of a high hazard dam is considered a low probability, high consequence event. And the Dam Safety Program does site visits and develops risk assessments to identify dams and cost of risk of failure, provides guidance and improvements, offers financing for repairs, is unavailable to regulate and oversee dam safety. That's really separate from what this bill is focused on today. So in 2025, that summer study committee from Act 121 met over the summer and fall on dam emergency operations planning, I and considered how the state and support municipalities to develop coordinated emergency operations plans for all municipalities below a high hazard dam. And you might ask, what's an emergency operations plan? You might vaguely remember emergency and action plans and emergency operations plans. So there are two different kinds of plans. And again, probably your nonspecific status later, action plans are developed by the dam owner and include information about the dam and the areas that was eaten and dandy downstream if the dam were to fail, or if there was emergency release of water to avoid a dam failure. And action plans are now required of dam owners and are shared with municipalities downstream of the dam. Now that's different from emergency operations plans, which is the focus of this bill. Emergency operations plans are those that are really guidance for the downstream municipalities that would be impacted by such failure or an emergency release. And these plans really provide guidance and coordination for authorities and emergency responders. These plans naturally include how responders would notify and work to evacuate people at risk in inundation areas. They are somewhat unique from existing emergency operations plans or other kinds of hazards in that municipalities and emergency responders, in a release of failure from a dam, it creates a really large fast moving wave of water that can flood many roadways and municipal buildings and cut off typically utilized evacuation routes. So this is, and shelters and other municipal buildings fire guards, in other cases, that's going to be available for evacuations and emergency response. So it really does line to a very particular ability for many municipalities who are all needing the same backup support. So there really is a need for work. So they're looking sort of town by town, how they would respond and evacuate people and different than how they would evacuate people from other kinds of hazards. This is like a regional, a meaningful, really a regional approach with, while each town will still have its own plan, we really need to be regionally coordinated and consider very specific cognitive hazard that a dam failure or inundation emergency release can be appropriate. So this bill would require, oh, the study committee did come out a report for you to ensure air permit and you can give them access to it. It identified a variety of challenges and several options to support municipalities for these dam emergency operations plans and recommend starting with a pilot project to develop two sets of emergency operations plans for the communities below two different state owned high hazard dams. So this bill would do that. It sets up, it will require the Vermont Emergency Management, the division within the Department of Public Safety, to carry out a pilot project, the Overseed Project, in collaboration with the D and A Safety Program team at DEC. The pilot project would undertake those two projects to set up emergency operations plans for the municipalities below two different dams chosen for the pilot, would really oversee that those are well coordinated at the regional level. It's been, for both of that project, I would probably take probably twelve to eighteen months to complete. So they'll also add just a little bit more detail on that, and I'm sure in the locker room, it is certainly anticipated that the Regional Planning Commission might be that an entity would support the Vermont Emergency Management in coordinating and carrying out that part of the project, and in the future, might be a critical entity to support other regions that might be looking at these. So it allows the EM to hire an outside contractor, building an RPC to undertake the pilot project, and the bill has lots to do too well and what should be included. The bill also clarifies that the governor and the state director of emergency management are authorized to order evacuations where there's a dam failure or imminent risk of a dam failure because there was some difference of opinion apparently about whether this is clear in statute. So some people thought maybe it would really, the municipality had to be the one to order those, to make that call, and this bill articulated that the governor and the NPDM also had that.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Who are the sumsiever? I that,

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I don't remember. I believe that our naval counsel, Michael Grady, was involved in those conversations just trying to understand who had what opinion, and nobody really seemed to be concerned if the governor had that authority. It just wasn't clear in statute for everyone. So there's significant opinions. So this is really clarifying what people generally already agree should be the case, that the governor and the director of emergency management have that authority. And then the third thing that the bill does is ends up with a result, sorry, a report back with a lot of results from the federal project that would inform the legislature about how we could support municipalities below the rest of the state's high hazard dams to develop ELPs. And it it reflects a recommendation of how we would do that by 2035. So it's not fast, but this work takes time. It takes engaging all the different entities within the municipality, within the region. We're involved in management, and we need to buy in at the local level to be involved in such regional projects so that it will take time on the streets.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great. So just so I'm clear, so there is a report at the end with recommendations for,

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: well,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: on what to do with these other towns, but also based on what you've learned from the pilot?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. Yeah. There's an extensive list from the bill.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: We can walk through the other information that we want to hear as a result of having a country to all of our own kind of things.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Thank you. Any other questions for Ruth Hardy? Okay.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: All

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: right, well, you so much. Thank you. Yeah. Oh, I do have one more question. It came out of committee on what vote?

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It was a union. Okay. And I believe it was also the union's vote. And

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: this at one point has some money in it, but it doesn't have money. It carries the money in. Was in the budget.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It's a pretty modest investment to have a project, 375,000 underneath the total to support the two agencies involved. Great,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Okay, Mr. Rutland, welcome.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Good morning. Brad Chapin did a lot of what I planned to start off with, giving you the context and the definitions and the terms. But I think I'll skip that, but I really wanna point to the report which is online. It does have a definition section. It does have all the data about the number of days. It does have that. Just

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: post it. It's gonna be buried together.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It does have the cable showing which are high hazard and PAR.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: What is the name of that report?

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's the site committee on dam emergency operations planning report for the general center of the business. It's a really job. Very helpful. When did that and they came down? This was published on the eighteenth twenty twenty five. So I won't go into the the definitions and the context. Did a great job last. So just looking at eight seven seven eight as passed by the house, the first section is that clarification of the the governor and the director of the purchasing henchmen authority to order evacuation. I I I was not one of the one of the persons that said that the governor didn't have the authority. I've I've always thought that the governor did have the authority. The other main house member who was involved in drafting the bill other than Rutland, he was talking to municipal emergency service providers. He was also trying to talk to somebody at a regional planning commission who believed that municipalities had to exercise their all hazards event authority under 20 VSA section 10 before an evacuation could be ordered. I don't agree with that, but a sentence was added to that all hazards authority that provides that that all hazard authorities shall not be construed to consent to governor and the director of emergency management without municipal approval for requiring evacuation of an area of southern identification with land failure when there is a day of failure and imminent risk of failure. So I always believe that the governor had it. There are other people that were questioning that and asserting that the US Congress had to exercise its all hazards of that authority first. That is no longer an argument because this sentence specifically clarifies that authority. On page one, line 17, you have set two. This is the creation of the pilot project as Brett Chaffin noted. This is one of the recommendations in the report, basically to do these two pilots or two emergency operations plans for the dams in order to get context for how long it takes and what it would cost and how to distribute them and then. So you will see that the division of emergency management, which I will sometimes refer to as VEM, Vermont Emergency Management. So VEM, in coordination with the Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, conducts a pilot project under which VEM develops a set of emergency operations plans. It's a set because you need a plan for each municipality that's in that immunization zone, and so there are different specifics for each of those municipalities in the immunization zone. So it's a set of EOBs, And it's going to be for two state owned lands that have been classified as high hazard potential. Again, those lands where if they fail, if there's probable loss of life. One child population at risk of 1,000 or more persons, and the other child population at risk of between 101,000 persons. Each municipality in the inundation zone will get a copy of the EOPs in preparing EOPs. You're now on page two one hundred seventy two-sixteen. The Edwards contractor shall coordinate with and collect input from all of those interested expert entities that are stakeholders in emergency management and the management of dams. Page two, line 17 through 20, VEM a hired contractor, including a regional planning commission to complete the requirements of the section, preparation of the EOPs.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is it EEM or DEC to

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: hire some contractors?

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's the EEM, Division of Emergency Management. Hire Oh, okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Sorry.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Did I

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: say You said, well, you division, Vermont emergency, forget it.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: My brain and I was continuing department, so anyway.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: On on page three, there's the list of what each EOB shall have or what follows will be completed. It shall be coordinated with each dam's emergency action plans of what the dam owner produces, which shall utilize each dam's emergency action plan inundation maps that will identify evacuations and evacuation routes based on possible inundation scenarios, including how to evacuate vulnerable populations. It will identify where individuals shall evacuate to and shall need to facilities that house vulnerable populations such schools and senior living communities and the plan development to a plan for the use of mutual aids, municipalities, and other governmental entities helping each other. And to coordinate that use, 'll address how to implement the use of pre event communication such as early warning systems. It will include any additional provisions deemed useful in developing the EOP. Then on page four, on report, 07/01/2028, it's really two years, not probably eighteen months, say, basically, two years to report back to you the results of the pilot, copies of the EOPs for the two dams, a summary of the process that was used to develop the EOPs, including whether the division did them themselves or contracted for it, a summary of how the division coordinated with municipal officials and other interested parties, the cost of the EOPs, a summary of any early warning and communication system municipalities may use to communicate, recommendations or requests for evacuation, the scope and timeline and budget for the division to develop an EOP template or templates and training for municipalities. And then page five is part of the report. This is ongoing in the future, how to do EOPs. The report will recommend how EOPs should be completed for all state or federal dams in Vermont that are high hazard potential dams and that have a population of 100,000,000 more persons, including whether and how to prioritize completion of those EOPs, whether the division of emergency management can complete a contract for them, their completion by 2035, Whether the division can complete an EOP for a federal dam, I don't think they can because federal jurisdiction is usually preemptive by state regulation of federal dams. Page five, line 15, what it will cost for the division to complete the EOPs for dams with population at risk of 100 or more, and what it would cost for the division to contract with the qualified consultants to complete EOPs. To recommend how EOPs should be be completed for high hazard damage with a population of risk of fever. Recommended funding source that the division or individual units municipalities have access to complete EOPs, recommend how to best educate municipalities, regional planning commissions, and emergency service providers about the need for the importance of EOPs, recommend whether and how an EOP should identify structures where a person would reasonably be expected to occupy, to have a geotagged structure for purposes of inclusion of the commodity alert system, and then recommend how often the division, regional planning, missions, or municipalities should conduct practice emergency response for the EOPs, and ultimately for all EOPs prepared for damage and safety. Then you get a bunch of appropriations. This number five,

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: structures that persons would reasonably be expected to occupy.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So that is moving beyond homes.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It is.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: It would be a business, a bar.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's, it was, there were members of the house that were interested in being able, for emergency responders, to be able to identify where they need to go if there is a failure. Don't spend time responding to structures where people are not reasonably expected to be, identify where the need is, identify where the resources should be prioritized, that's what they're going to do. Okay. Yeah. But it's also being added to the alert system so that, you know, potentially somebody that's in a structure could be part of the alert system that could receive an alert failure, etcetera.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So it's your you run oh my gosh.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: You should. Think that's your.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: A business. You might be added to it because your business is.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah. And it's it's a recommendation, you know, if it initiated as a requirement that the EOP had this Uh-huh. But there was concerns about whether it can

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: be done, how it could be done. Yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And then geotag whether we can, you know, require somebody to geo tag their building. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: And then page six, line 15, this is the appropriation $2.50 to the division of emergency management in fiscal year twenty twenty seven to complete section two, the creation of those EOPs, and then 125 to DEC for their role in consulting with the division in the preparation of the EOP submission of the. And then I think it's about on the past.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Glenn? That was live? I don't think I have any questions. Yes?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So that funding, you know, typically, like, I was emergency management coordinator from the municipality. Doesn't the money doesn't get down for the municipal level if they have something reported. To allocate that, we at the state level, is there any possibility of grants to get down to municipalities? So they have to get because they it's mostly volunteer. Mhmm. The over the top manager ends up being the dog catcher and the health officer and the emergency management coordinator.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Well, that that question is actually how this at least one of the sponsors got involved and was issued because they lived in a town where there was during the flooding, there was potential dam failure, and the municipality felt like the responsibility was on them. There were things like their equipment and how to respond. And so that member really kind of dove deep into what was necessary, determined that the EOPs are like kind of the core of how municipality responds and that the burden at that time was on the municipality to develop the EOP, and there's obviously varied capacities of equipment and personnel from town to town, and that's why he's he was involved in giving that one twenty one study and why he wants more review in Fort Sanford so that everyone is every municipality is operating at a common level. And then once you have that, I think he's gonna be visit the funding for the municipal level for the things. But because equipment needs to be refreshed or, you know, replaced. Do you need things in some places like an early warning system? One of the members of the house is very, very interested in having sirens. Why wouldn't every damn have a siren? Well, maybe there isn't a PAR, you know, of need if there's a damn failure for a siren, so maybe you don't need it for every day or Sorry. PAR?

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Person's address. Oh, person's address.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yep. I have one in my district, and I actually work with the board name. So I know that they have an alarm system set up. I

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: wonder if that is the kind

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: of thing that could come

[Unidentified Committee Member]: out in the report. Mean, they're already going to

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: be making recommendations about funding sources.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And so thinking about future, because this is just a pilot for now. And so thinking about for the future moving forward, what are the sources of money that could

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: This

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: report again it's a really good report. Its recommendation is to do the pilot so that you have context for for how long it takes, what it's going to require, what it's going to cost, and how to to plan for doing that for all of the items.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And we have that posted now. Yeah.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: It's it's on it's on the website. Thank you. Super. Bennington for that work. Our

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: team worked

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: on it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm proud we're still listed as in there's a negative report by just referring to it.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Yeah, it was an integrated team, was dancing with the personnel, the personnel that we had representation from local emergency management focus on the committee.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well I'd love to invite you up to come tell us your thoughts

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: on this.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Welcome.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Thank you. For the record my name is Ben Green, I'm the section chief of the demonstration program at the State of Vermont, Department of Brownmouth Conservation. We're talking about H778. Think we've left, but I'd like to thank Rep Chapin for allowing us to provide input on the development of this bill. So we've seen there's further versions of this. We've provided input that was largely taken so we're thankful for that ability. The bill now really focuses on the pilot project which we feel is really a wise starting point. There's recommendation of that emergency operation planning report that's been discussed and really wise spot to start. While this is happening in a few isolated pockets within the state across the whole, it really isn't happening. And if you look across the nation, I think it's pretty limited places that are taking plans at this level. It's a very productive thing to be doing. We work with the

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: dance safety programs, we focus

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: on regulation of the dam itself and emergency documents associated with that is the emergency action plan, that's the dam owner document that's developed that those are singulated with dam burden fail provides inundation mapping to show where we're flood and where we're not quite often those they have to play a flood match they exceed what the FEMA 100 flood maps may show or FEMA 500 maps show. So it's not a sort of a unique case but the owner's responsibility to have those plans in place to alert the local entities that they exist this is the sort of the next step downstream if you will which is going to these individual communities and making sure that they have the resources necessary to do the planning to react to that EAP because at end of the day the Dam Corner does not have the authority to go into a town and start evacuating people or making those kinds of emergency management decisions to sign over us. So again the bill focuses on division emergency management really taking the lead on this which is appropriate since it really is an emergency planning exercise. Feel like it was subject matter of damage it makes sense to have a strategic program involved. Developing EOPs on two state owned dams we feel is wise because it allows the process to hopefully be fairly efficient as such we sort of say if you own

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: the dams we can take

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: the time to kind of dig into these things without interrupting a non state of the orders operations and then sort of figuring out how to best do this and then apply it outside of of hopefully taking you know get this pilot understand how to better do this and apply it with wide variety of dams. One of the dams that's recommended for being on study is one with a population at risk of a thousand or more. Again population risk is just an estimate of the number of people that would be located within a flooded patient zone Not to be confused with loss of life, population risk could be something as simple as you know the water is this deep where someone may be impacted all the way up to potential loss of life but that's why those numbers are quite high usually potential loss of life is a significantly smaller number. But one of the recommendations is a population risk of a thousand or more if you look at our state inventory there's only three state owned dams that meet that criteria that's our three flood control dams Waterbury, Wrightsville, and East Barrie. Taking Wrightsville is a good example just up the road here that in addition map extends through 17 downstream communities. So an emergency operation plan set for that dam would be 17 separate emergency operation plans that separate yet still coordinated amongst themselves basically from here all the way to Lake Chaplin.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Could you just slow down, you're speaking really fast. My So

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: the exercise of developing EOPs for a dam with a population that's over a thousand is a pretty substantial undertaking because it does require communicating and interacting extensively with 17 separate communities and still making sure that those communities are interacting with amongst themselves so they're not going after the same limited resources to react to these kinds of events. So I anticipate one of those three dams would be one of the three selected for that and we think that makes sense because DEC is the owner representative for those three dams so it makes a lot of sense. For the next set of batches recommends a dam with a population of risk between 100 and a thousand and from a state owned standpoint we have two to choose from in that bracket certainly this needs to be figured out during the study but DC does not actually own a dam in that bracket. The two state owned dams in that bracket are Lake Perron Dam down in Bennington which is owned by the agency of transportation and Johnson State Lower Dam which is a fairly small dam on the state college campus but it's a little bit upstream of a what we'll get for dormitory and also an elementary school. Know again I think it would be some preference to keep the dam DEC owned and we don't have one in that slot so we do have one in the zero to 100 slots over like Dam and Barnard. I think the advantage of having that would be know us owning the dam allows us to use our emergency action plans to just kind of eliminates the outside disruptions of trying to do this pilot focusing on whatever we're trying to get done. That would be one thing

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: I want to

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: ask, thank you for slowing down. So are you concerned that the two that are in the 100 to 1,000 are not owned by DEC?

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: I think we could work through that but I think it'd be preferable to have them owned by DEC. Was it's a pilot study, we're going to be studying through this process trying to like test things out and figure out what works to kind of drag a dam owner that's not, that it's you know we'll have a defined process so I feel like we're going be dragging another gamer kind of through a process that it might be time consuming for them and then that's a little unfortunate. Mean it's a 100 to a thousand range makes sense just we don't have the 10 in that. Yeah

[Unidentified Committee Member]: and it's Lake Perron and is it Johnson State?

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Johnson State. Okay. Oh, the two of the state owned dams that are in that in that range. It's sort of nuanced thing. This is probably if you figure out what's the thing is rolling. It's good.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Could actually ironically make a case that it's a good idea to use one of those dams because that's one of the things we're gonna have to know how to do.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: Just work without the dam owners. Yeah. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Well, understand your point. And and I'll I'll send it to ask, why does it matter that much whether the pandemic is owned or who they have sold by because it's really about what happens in this failure.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: It's going to integrate very heavily with emergency action plan so the day one is going be involved in probably meeting with all the downstream communities as part of the team to explain the EAP, plan inundation maps work and be part of you know well they're not being part of the emergency planning discussion and decision making they're going be part of presenting a lot of the information of voice that information. So that document is took out

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm doing this to be honest because I don't I don't really wanna understand why. Why would they be involved in that? Because there's

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: an emergency action plan, they're the order of the invitation maps. If there's back and forth that needs to happen in regards to the invitation maps how to read the maps what the results are if there needs to be a continual run fade all those things are a damnable responsibility tasks so while it's not appropriate for dam owners to be responsible for developing the BOPs, do need to have a level of involvement because they are the owner of the asset that's creating the hazard.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: That part I've got.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But just to also follow-up, today here that for example, like parents coming by AOT. Okay, so different owner, not DEC, but still within state government.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: So theoretically,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: they would hopefully still be willing to participate

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in play

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: ball. Theoretically. Yeah. Okay.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: All right. Thank you.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: We think the dates proposed in the bill are reasonable. We actually have to focus on completing our technical standard rules which are are good to go over the high bar and the bar this fall and that's really our main priority. The way that this is the way the dates work for this work we feel like it was the opportunity to complete that initiative and then be able to participate in this initiative in a reasonable way. And yeah those are the main points I think it's a good bill that Ruth Hardy had a bit more in it and I think it's been wisely pared down to a study that's going be beneficial. It's a reasonable light to take one one's true and was going to make much more informed, allowed for much more informed extent than the pathologic had a bit more at this stage. We think it's a wise part of change.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I would love to also ask about the money that's in this. So you feel that the money, particularly for DEC, is appropriate or that this is the right amount?

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Yeah, I think, yeah, I- Or maybe you can't comment on that.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Yeah, I don't really entirely comment

[Unidentified Committee Member]: on that.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, that's fine.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Think that's true to that.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Great. Super. Any other follow-up questions about this? Only not related. Do you

[Unidentified Committee Member]: have a second? Sure. Yes. We gave you the letter which we gave you another person or two last period who might have called back correctly.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: We have authority to have nine people on

[Unidentified Committee Member]: our program. It was, so you went up by and you got up to it all? We were at twenty seventeen we were

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: at two, at twenty twenty one we were at four, we've got authority to

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: go to nine, we're at seven right now,

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: I still have have a management position that was recently vacated, the gentleman actually did a lot of drafting of this report Michael Linus of course has moved on to a local government job and we have an engineering position where I say a difficult billing. We've been at it for quite a while now, and we're continuing to press for that position, that's where we are right now.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: What does that answer those new positions of obviously manager ones for you, is that?

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Yeah. Yeah. We brought on a you you're an engineer at a UBM and a technician position that they're actually out right right now. To see where we're very well today for example we have some minor construction work going on in Wrightsville, went and checked on that and then we are starting our spring our refill process a few of our reservoirs are going putting slop logs back in with the water dams and they do cover a variety of different things and we're training them there there's a young engineer who's you know is an investment we're training them and they're heavily involved in our inspection program which will be starting at the very end of this month and we'll be going through the entirety of the weather season. They're heavily involved in planning that and being in the field for that, a company getting a more experienced engineer. Hopefully we're targeting I think about 90 something inspections this year.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Super. Yes. Go ahead. But then involved a little bit with the the federation of the modalies and ponds. A lot of people have competing interests for for dams, keeping them up, summer, fall, and others. Do you see a need for municipalities to get involved in the ownership of those things? I mean, what complications could that

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: bring? Mean, this would be municipality, you know, what's currently filed on on ban, you mean?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Is there within the boundaries of that town? Mhmm. Because I know the private owners that affects a small lake or pond. Mhmm. They they have an interest to fix that, and they typically don't have money. Correct. They do have the interest because they wanna keep that body of water and then buy it. But don't know. I guess it's you have a problem. Do you see any benefit of the municipality of owning a kind of a chain or for Florida?

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: Yes, so examples of municipalities taking over privately owned dams are key resources in a town kind of for the reasons you use the state. It's pros and cons to both, certainly in many cases it's difficult for a private owner to go with the new rules coming in, they're more onerous although consistent with kind of what the state of the practice is, it's difficult for every private owner to afford that and keep their dam in shape and in reality there's a lot of people benefiting from that, it's like one income source is supporting it and that's not always realistic. The municipality often has more capability than the private owner would. Certainly, municipality needs to kind of weigh the pros and cons themselves but now that once they get into the damn owner business now all the weight is on their shoulders and they need to be beating their requirements and investing in money. An example of the municipalities, small ones in particular who own dams that struggle very much so some of the similar challenges that you know are resource you know challenged by owners too. So these are all expensive piece of infrastructure unfortunately many of them are close to the end of their service life from the beginning they were built you know many of our games were built fifty or one hundred years ago and they're really due for that due for an upgrade if the intent is to keep them reliably serviced for the next fifty to one hundred

[Unidentified Committee Member]: years and that's a major undertaking. So the original intent of having a dam that there's a specific purpose for that dam being built, not just to build bottled water, people are Right. Fish and sea and swim in the mud. Mhmm. So do we have that information about why that dam was originally put in and if that's not a viable reason to keep the thing operating from Gotta

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: be removed? Is that what you're gonna go? Yeah. I mean yeah really it's a it's a what the you know these dams are sort of that point in their service life where the owner's kind of at a crossroads where they need to either invest the money and rehabilitate the dam and then buy this all another fifty or one hundred years or if that's not viable the dam has provided the use that it did or there's more benefits to removal that's the other route they can take so that's sort of a drop those of course the name of our dams are getting to and those are hard decisions that need to be made in the earliest. It's an owner decision, it can obviously be augmented by community and other people with bad or best interest, we don't have get more interested in the owner in cases.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you. You.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So grateful for this and all the work that you're doing and just really grateful to pass along our gratitude to everyone on your team.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you very much. Thank you.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay, and it's Sarah. Sarah and Jean. Okay. Interesting. So notice we don't have Sarah.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: So Sarah is my colleague, Dance Safety Program. She was also involved in the development of that report. We had her here to support.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Do you want to add anything? Okay, no worries. Okay, super. Well, welcome. Great, so we are running ahead of schedule, which is fabulous. Any thoughts or questions on 778 at this point?

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Are we going hear from the EM?

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Let me check my list.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I it doesn't look like, oh, we did invite Eric Perran. He can't come. Oh, he come today? No. He did not. Okay. So he was on my Yeah. He can't come. All right, but I'm sorry, you saying like ever?

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: No, not ever, but it's

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: all good. Okay, so BEM, we do have a need to hear from them. I I was also planning on hearing from folks from the mutual planning commissions, folks from the Citizens Advisory Committee on Lake Champlain, someone in the house testified from Green Mountain Power, Drew Henson from Rescue Inc. So anyway, there's quite a few votes still on my list for this. Anyone else that is coming to mind for you all?

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Are you leaving me now?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I don't know.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I mean, I don't know

[Unidentified Committee Member]: that we need to overdo it. Actually, have people who are

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: rapidly named in the Belts. That's good. Great. Well, my hope is that this is not controversial. It seems great.

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: I think it's what happened. Yeah. It's another good to be supporting me.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yeah. Right.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Well, especially since we're running early, we are not scheduled to have our next appointments until 11:30, but I think I'd love to give you a

[Unidentified Committee Member]: little bit more time if possible. Anytime. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: if we can meet back at 11:15, so that gives us a little

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: bit of time. Great. Okay.

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

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Here you go.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, all right, good morning. This is Center of National Resources and Energy coming back from a break and we are in the chat about budgetary issues, budget related things. I'm going turn it over to Mr. Carpenter. Welcome.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: Morning, thank you, Madam Chair. I'll be the Director here at Barbador Relations and Planning Committee here to talk about on the budget. Thank you for the extra time, but I'll still be on the briefer side because I know there's some folks behind me who probably like some time as well. So I wanted to touch base on five priorities that are in the budget. Three of them are currently in the house draft and two of them are additional.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: I'll just go through both of

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: them quickly. This memo is on your website. If you have more questions about some of them, I can certainly provide it. Some you are

[Unidentified Committee Member]: familiar with already.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I interrupt So you I did create an updated version of the budget letter. So there's just, again, there's no intended,

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: know, yeah,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: exactly. Not trying to imply any decisions yet, but just trying to capture the scope. So fill things a little

[Unidentified Committee Member]: bit more completely in here. Sounds

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

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yeah, was gonna interrupt. Sorry, Jared, you make the time, but I want to introduce three of my constituents.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: They're from Mary Hogan School and they are the junior iron chef, half of the junior iron chef chef's Champion. Good to see

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: you. They

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: were upstairs in the cafeteria, so I brought them down to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: see what it's like to be in They a mini

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: can cook. Yeah. Good.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Risotto and maple cream.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: And what was the lab record?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Black currant combo. Oh my god. No.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: We did a lot of trapping and pretty much weird. Cool.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Very cool. Thank you. So glad you all are here. Okay.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: So I'll just run through the five relatively quickly. The first one you're obviously very familiar with, this is the $200,000 to DEC for implementation of S-two 18. This will go, as you can see, there's the timeline for implementation in the bill. The fee report is coming due on January 15, but that's not funding dependent. But then the next two, you know, it's gonna solicit a third party vendor to put together the training and the certification program and adopt the best management practices by rule. They are going to, obviously, third party hire somebody out to do this. It's likely that they will know, largely mimic the New Hampshire program. This is sort of a three year, if you remember from the bill, it's a baby year one, it's $200,000 And then it gets into two FTEs and money for V Trans to help stand it up too, but those are year two and year three discussions. So right now it's just the $200,000 to stand it up. Then once it gets to the fee report, which will come back next year, and it'll be down the hall, Hopefully the fee will help offset some of this as well. So we're not looking at hopefully as much long term funding, it's just sort of the initiative to get it going. Number two, I think you discussed this a little bit last time you talked about the budget. In the House bill, there's $300,000 in base funding for two FTEs for the DEC Rivers program. If you recall under Act 121, the Flood Safety Act, they needed an additional capacity in order to implement it. So the FY twenty five budget authorized 15 positions within DEC, within the Office of Water Programs, but only had funding for 11 of them.

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: They provided $1,620,000

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: which is mathematically a little less than 11 FTEs. They are behind, Rivers program is behind in implementation all across the board. This extra staff would be very helpful, also very helpful if when we get additional flooding, which of course takes the staff out into the field. Your support for this would be great. And again, it's already in the budget. This is a new one for y'all as well, and something you are familiar with. So as you recall, the Act 67 has a CAFO stakeholder working group for the implementation of the CAFO permitting at ANR. The stakeholder groups discussions were with ourselves, the environmental advocates and the people of farmers and technical service providers, others. Were very productive, especially when the agencies were having. And we were able to sort of talk through the implementation of the AFL program and shift from AFM to ANR over the course of the next couple of years. From those conversations, there was a request by the farmers, the community of wholehearted support, what was to keep the KFO working group going? So we'll start meeting quarterly in the fall and just regular check ins to talk about the implementation process, what's working, what isn't, where we can make tweaks along the way, keep the communication lines open all the way through. The second was a request from the farmers, which makes sense, was to hire a third party consultant to look at the current inspection program at both ANR and AAF and to create a new inspection program. There are some concerns expressed by some of the farmers that the inspection process was from AFM and from ANR, both agencies, was inconsistent from person to person. They were looking for different things. They were frustrated that there wasn't, and I hope I'm representing this accurately, that

[Unidentified Committee Member]: there was

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: frustration that they didn't have consistency in the program. So the thought is 125,000 to DEC to hire a third party to come in, look at the inspection program, and then conduct training for both agencies so everybody is trained from the same page, so to speak. There's also an interest for, if they would like, the farmers to voluntarily attend at no cost to them. So they know what to look for as well, that everybody's being trained in the same area. So this is not in the house budget. It's not something that just came up a few weeks ago. The language for this and for the CABO extension is probably gonna go into S-three 23, which is up in outside agriculture right now. But that would be an important, it's not a ton of money,

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: but of course having a little bit helps.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: This one, won't send it almost any time on, but we're very supportive. This you just heard about, it's the $3.75 for the Dance Safety Program, three seventy eight. But we think this is a great program as well. And I think it's a good start for doing these pilot programs for the judge, the risk of all this. And last, this is actually AFM language, but we're supportive of it as well. Oops, I missed a zero on my memo. Dollars 300,000 in one time funding for the National Institutes of Food and Conservation District. This is already in the House budget proposal. The reason we bring it up is conservation districts do a lot of water quality programs and fill the boards reaching our goals for TMBLs. This allows them to have extra capacity, extra grant programs, get out and work and do more of these clean water projects and programs. So we're very supportive of this as well. So those are the five points very quickly, and I'll go all the back to

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: the top and draw the stairs. Thank

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: you,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I appreciate that concise rundown. I think we have this posted on our website, so we can go back and revisit it. But some of this is in the letter that I've got, some of it is not.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So again- Numbers one

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: and three are not currently in the house version, and two, four

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: and five are in the

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: R and D well. One is the

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: core

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: ICS-twenty '18 funding. Number three is

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: the funding for the consultants

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: and training programs for Caitlin seconds.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Are these on your list, Anne? They are not. So they're not all different lists.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: The boride is on here. Yeah. This one is,

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: it's up under my name. Think I've got one.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: I just added three, number four and I do have five in there. Oh, it's not listed as 778, but I would check it. So the 375 is on the list for HM-seventy 8, but it's just listed as Dan's safety bill. Okay. I did not have the CAFO thing in there.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: That is brand shiny, it was not too long ago.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And did you say that that one is supposed to be in a bill?

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: Yeah, we're gonna put, so there's two parts to the language. One is the extension of the capo stakeholder group. That is going to be,

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: it's almost identical language to what

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: was in 'seventy five, 'seventy six said last year. And that and the third party inspector, we are going to,

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: I think the thought is to

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: put them into three twenty three, which is the miscellaneous AFM bill. Did you note that some of the, it's got all the municipal regulation bad on both sides. So they're not figuring that

[Unidentified Committee Member]: would leave their home.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: And are, But the money is not anywhere.

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: The money is not anywhere. So the budget is down here.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Are you going into Senna Ag to talk to them about it as well?

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: At some point. They're working on the representative, I was also on the state. So we're going but I think they're gonna discuss some of the people discussions tomorrow morning, but I don't need to No. Yes. Call.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Okay,

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: any

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: questions at this point? Okay, super, thank you so much. Thank you so much for the time. Yes. We really appreciate it. Absolutely. Hey, and we do have,

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Rec, oh my gosh, forgot your line. No.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Oh, no. Okay, that's it.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Welcome. From ServeLearn Earth. Yes.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Welcome. So it's not on our agenda otherwise, but we do have a letter from them posted on our website. But we'd love to get an update and hear about Servlearner. Great.

[Serve, Learn, Earn coalition representative (name not stated)]: Great. Well, thank you

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: for the invitation, Sherry Watson to be back. It's nice to see everyone. I will say that I'm disappointed our younger guests just left because of an opportunity for recruitment. So I am here to talk about Serve, Learn, Earn and answer questions that people might have. Just to jog our memories from the testimony that we provided last year. Serve Learn Earn is a workforce development coalition that really accomplishes multiple things. We invest in Vermont by giving them paid service opportunities to better also training opportunities. So it's really a service to career pathways investment. It's also a strategy to support Vermont ecosystems, the natural resources that we all care so much about, There are a variety of different ways, there's a working lands piece in terms of forestry, in terms of agriculture, in terms of water quality. There's an outdoor recreation focus, to the trails and the work that we do in Vermont State Parks, as well as with the US border service. And then there's an energy conservation piece in terms of the HVAC and weatherization programs that resource and Vermont with employment in particular offer. And all of this, I think is really an important strategy to invest in Vermont's economy. We know that there's a labor shortage in Vermont. And one of the things that certain learn does is it helps people who might not otherwise have access to these training programs come into our organizations often move through our organizations. And then when they graduate, they're really great at being fantastic employees. One of the things that's been fun to see over the last several years is the way in which participants are not just going from an organization to an employer, but going from say resource will help take a four or six week intensive and then going to BYCC for a longer training period. And I think with that, and then going to work for an employer. And I think one of the things

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: that this shows is the way in which a circle

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: and our partners have been nimble and gotten better at creating programs together. When we first started, we were really doing what we think of as parallel play, four organizations, four different sets of programs that were not necessarily integrated. One of the really philosophical tenants that brought us together was that we see Vermont as a place that's program rich but systems poor. And we really wanted to be thinking about what's a coherent comprehensive way in which Vermont can be investing in training programs. And so the fact that our participants are moving to our organizations to get all the training that they need to be really effective when they show up at a job on day one and over the place is I think evidence that our programs are thinking systematically, not just in isolated silos. I have some material for you that I'm former teacher, so I'm breaking cardinal rule of asking you to pay attention while I'm at the same time. Senator Watkorek, so

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: I have

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: stacks of them if you

[Serve, Learn, Earn coalition representative (name not stated)]: need one.

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: Here to ask for your support, I think it'd be helpful just to do a quick recap of funding over the last five years. First four years of serve, learn, earn, receive funding, the amount covered around the $2,000,000 mark, 1.85, 1.8, 2.3 and $2,000,000 of funding. All of that funding was one time funding. Last year we received significantly less than received $750,000 but the silver lining within that reduction was that $500,000 of that was put into the base. Historically, we've come

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: out of house

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: appropriations not having been recommended to be funded. And then the Senate has looked at this and all the great wisdom of the Senate has said, this is a really important program. This is a really important program and has really made sure that the investment was there. We're really encouraged that this year we come out of the house, the house appropriations committee has recommended funding server learn at $800,000 some 500 at base and $300,000 at one time. Our request of you is to consider having that full $800,000 amount, maybe follow-up base fund. And then the last thing

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: that I would say is if you look

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: at the back page of this pamphlet that I've provided,

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: you really see the way in

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: which we're a statewide force. We're really trying to be present in as many communities as possible. And that map on the back it's just a quick visual that can be set. So Senator Watson, I know we're relatively short on time. So I've tried to be brief and

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: make

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: time for questions that people might want.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thank you so much, real questions.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Yes, I do have a question

[Serve, Learn, Earn coalition representative (name not stated)]: for you.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: What is the age group of the participants?

[Jared Carpenter (Government Relations, Agency of Natural Resources)]: 15 and up. Okay.

[Unidentified attendee/committee member]: Most of our participants are between that 15 or actually really between the 18 to 25 girls cohort, if you will. And I think that's the age when most folks are making that transition from education institutions to the workplace. That's where the focus is. We also, particularly with resource from our work to women and all older participants who are thinking about a mid career change.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, cool. Thanks. Okay, and so just to make sure that I've got it, 500 is already in base.

[Serve, Learn, Earn coalition representative (name not stated)]: Yep.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: 300 is one time. Okay, for that 300 to

[Unidentified Committee Member]: be moved to base. What? 501 time. Yeah.

[Serve, Learn, Earn coalition representative (name not stated)]: Okay, great.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Great, thank you so much. Okay. All right, super. Okay, Great. Okay. And so next, I don't know if Maddie is here. She's here in a minute, but maybe the description's okay. Let's go to the dates. Yes, welcome. Yes, I'm sorry.

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: It's all right. Yeah. So for the record, my name is Ellen Taylor. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Single Jobs Fund. Based on my portfolio, I'm gonna do what Rex did and pass this out and hand out while I'm talking so that he's distracted. So I'm here actually today representing the Working Lands Coalition. The Vermont Single Jobs Fund is a member of the Working Lands Coalition. So I'm speaking on behalf of trying to support more funding going to the Working Lands Enterprise Funds. Working The Lands Coalition exists solely for the purpose of advocating every year for funding support for the Working Lands Enterprise Fund, which as you probably all know, was created in 2012 by an act of the legislature and is funded through state funds every year. Each year there's an appropriation that is made. This past year, while our request to the governor was to add $5,000,000 to the governor's recommended budget, 1.5 in base, 1,500,000.0 in base and 3.5 in one time funds. The governor level funded at $1,000,000 that passed, that level was passed by the house. The organized coalition has been advocating to try to increase the amount of funding up from that level of funding from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000. At the very least, it would be so fantastic if we could at least get 500,000 more to the base to get to 1,500,000.0. We recognize that funding is really tight. You all have very tough choices to make. I will say that in these tough times, it's really important to be working on backfilling and on providing relief and meeting immediate needs. But I would argue it's also really important to be investing in our future. And what the Working Lands Enterprise funds are businesses in the farm, food, and forest industries who are in our rural communities, who are contributing to rural economic development, rural jobs, and are, in the case of our farmers and food businesses, literally feeding us. In the case of loggers and foresters, literally in many cases, heating our houses because so many Vermonters keep with wood, for instance. And these grants, which range in any given year can range from 20,000 up to 150,000 depending on how much money we have to work with, how much money the board has to work with are so critical because they are really investing in new equipment, new infrastructure, getting into new markets, expanding their operations at the home farm or putting in a farm store because more of their neighbors want to buy from their neighbor farmer. So these investments are really, really key. And I would say, you all have a very, very difficult job as public servants of having to come up with public policy that meets and finds a balance between private interests and public interests and public good. And that's a really difficult thing that you guys have to deal with every day and the laws that you pass. I would say oftentimes, I know that oftentimes those public interests and private interests are in conflict.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: And I would say that with

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: the Working Lands Enterprise Fund, what we found over the last thirteen years, fourteen years, is that private interests and public interests are totally aligned because we are all in this together in terms of preserving the working landscape, but also really preserving the businesses that make the working landscape work. I mean, through their thriving as businesses that we're able to keep land open, that we're able

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: to keep food on tables,

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: that we're able to keep homes heated with wood, or wood going over to Maine in order to be processed into other products that then come back to Vermont, is that keeping those lands working. And I think between current use with the lands enterprise fund and the clean water fund, those are like critical, critical public investments in our future and our working landscape. And so I would just probably ask that you consider supporting an increase to the Working Lands Enterprise Fund this year. The Senate Agriculture Committee has requested an additional 500,000 in their budget by mail to the Senate appropriations. We would really appreciate it if you would support that as well, recognizing epinex for 5,000,000 for many years. And we're kind of stuck in a million. We really want to try to increase this because the demand is there. The second page of the standout that I gave you shows what the level of funding has gone out in terms of grants and then what the requests have been. So you can see year over year requests fully outweigh what we have to work with. And given the situation with tariffs and all the uncertainties that have been going on, and fertilizer prices that are expected to be increasing because of what's going on in Iran, for instance, there's just so many pressures on our working lands enterprises, and an increase in funding would go a long way this year. Thank you so much for listening and for your support and I'm happy

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: to answer any questions. Thank

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: you so much. Yeah, questions, yes, I'm

[Unidentified Committee Member]: still not clear what you're actively asking for. I know you're asking the employer to increase the base from 1,000,000.

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Our original request and what's on the handout is to increase the base from 1,000,000 to 1,500,000.0 and to add 3,500,000.0 in one time in fiscal twenty seventh, which is up from the current base of 1,000,000. That's in the government's recommend. So

[Unidentified Committee Member]: for the 1,000,000, that was total funding you had last year.

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: 1,000,000. Okay. There's level funding in the governor's recommended and level funded in the house.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay, but you're asking for to go from 1,000,000 last year to 5,000,000? Correct. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And if I can also just clarify, so the 3,500,000.0 is not in the house's version at one time.

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: Nor is the extra 500,000 in base. They level funded at

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: 1,000,000. At the very least you're asking for 500,000 for a base. Do

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: you want to go for Gusto and go for the whole

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Yes. It will be put

[Ellen Kahler (Executive Director, Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund)]: to very, very good use in our rural communities.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay, super. Any other questions? Great, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Yes. Okay, all right. And so we're going move to Ms. Kinnicker. Milka, welcome. Hi everyone, it's nice to be in the field.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: First for me. I'm going to get my slides And you should have these on your website in addition to my SOB. So much for having me. It's nice to meet you all for the record, my name is Matti Kneffner. I'm the policy and organizing director at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont. Really appreciate your work and your hearing from me today. I'm here to speak with you about the need to appropriate funding in the FY27 budget for the Farm and Forestry Operations Security Special Fund created by F78.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I really want to particularly thank you,

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: Senator Hardy, for introducing this bill S60 last session, and thank each of you on the committee for your votes and support bill as it moves through the legislature. As a reminder, this fund will provide rapid response relief payments to farmers and loggers impacted by extreme weather, and it will be administered by the Agency of

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Agriculture, Food and Markets in collaboration with the Review Board.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: Immediately following the second year of catastrophic flooding in 2024, North Of Vermont began working closely with a broad and diverse group of farming and food security organizations to develop and advocate for this legislation, which we believe is essential to the future of Vermont's rural economies, our collective food security, and our state's climate resiliency. We are thrilled that the bill was passed with unanimous support by both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by Governor Scott on March 26. However, without funding in the budget this year, the agency of Agriculture will not be able to roll out the program to be ready for an emergency. Based on the formula in the bill and the data available, we are requesting an appropriation of $15,600,000 in FY twenty twenty seven to support the FEMA's implementation. This chart shows that over the last three years, Vermont's Department of Forests, Parks, and Rec and the Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets have gathered data on the economic impacts to farms and forestry operations from floods, untimely freeze events, and last year's historic drought. Altogether, these events have resulted in just over $94,000,000 in reported losses from 2023 to 2022. These are real losses that our working men's business are facing year after year from climate change induced weather events. These losses were reported to the state in survey responses or as part of applications for the GAP funding. Also, as you all know, Vermont's farms,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: unfortunately,

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: we know that climate change and extreme weather conditions are here to stay, but so are working lands businesses. As operations that depend on the land and that are most consistently and directly impacted by weather events, farmers and loggers need state based, rapidly available financial support to recover when they inevitably experience losses. As you might remember, the House added language to the bill that says the agency can't stand up the program unless there is appropriation. Senate Agriculture Committee has already included a recommendation of $1,000,000 for FY27 in their budget letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee. This amount would be enough to allow the agency to implement the fund and be prepared to provide some relief for farmers and farmers in the year ahead.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Here is where I

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: was going. Investing in the viability of Vermont's working lands businesses is an investment in significant economic activity in our state, as I presume you've also just heard from Ellen. In 2022, the sale of Vermont Farm Products alone totaled just over $1,000,000,000 and that $1,000,000,000 in farm to date sales was the foundation for an additional $11,500,000,000 in total economic output across the food system. Ensuring our farms can rebound when extreme weather hits is one thing we

[Unidentified Committee Member]: can do to protect not only the heart

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: and culture of our state, but to undergo a substantial economic engine that creates jobs, supports tourism, circulates dollars in our local economy, and then inspires young people to move here or to stay, to make their living on land. Thankfully, the Senate or the states who may understand that protecting Vermont's working landscape and supporting those businesses' ability to recover from extreme weather impacts is key to our climate resilience as well. The latest update from Vermont's climate Action Plan released last year specifically calls for the creation of a dedicated Climate Impact Recovery Fund for farms and forestry operations. That is one important part of ensuring they can effectively and reliably recover from climate induced disasters. All right, similarly, Farm and Forestry Operations Security Special Fund is included as its tier one, meaning high urgency and high readiness action in the state's resilience implementation strategy released in September. And there are links on each of these slides to those particular places in the plans. Finally, we really want to be clear that state funding is needed in order for the Farm and Forestry Aberrations Security Special Fund to achieve its goals. The fact that the state is still waiting on millions appropriated by Congress in December 2024 to provide relief from disasters that happened during the two years prior is evidence of this. Farmers and loggers cannot afford to wait a full three years to receive relief when catastrophic weather hits. Farmers are always responding to their environment, often immediately, and with great innovation. The state needs to respond to farmers who suffer loss in the same way to ensure our farms can continue to produce the food we hauled. Our official request, based on the formula and the data available, is 15,600,000.0. However, right now, we want to ask you to include and recommend at least 1,000,000 to the Senate Appropriations Committee to ensure that this fund can get off throughout this year.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: Thank you again for your time, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: 1,000,000 is in the

[Michael O'Grady (Legislative Counsel)]: House version?

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: It's not in the House version.

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: It's not

[Unidentified Committee Member]: in the House version.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: No, that's being not recommended by the Senate ad committee.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So if we were to recommend a million, it would be in with the Senate Act? Yes. Okay. Okay.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yes. So no governor, no governors recommend, governor recommended?

[Unidentified Committee Member]: No, it was not the governor's director.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: But he did have a note when he signed the

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: bill that said, Hey, you guys, you didn't pay

[Unidentified Committee Member]: money in this bill. So he noticed.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: And it was still moving through the lunch. Yeah, it kind of passed by the time he introduced his budget. Or by the time

[Ruth Hardy (Member)]: the mouse finished their work

[Ben Green (Section Chief, Dam Safety Program, Vermont DEC)]: with the budget.

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: Correct. So that was passed just after that. Okay.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your work. Okay. So we do have a little bit of time. I just want to check. So we are moving into tomorrow. We have some more budget discussions. Actually, the budget is on the agenda every day this week. And the goal is

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: to get something to the appropriations on Friday? Yes. They said they want it by Friday. So

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we are going be hearing, based on the conversation we had last time, I thought we ought to hear about the PUC budget. They're in an interesting place. Well, we can hear from PUC about that. But otherwise, I don't know if we're going to hear anything particularly new. Any thoughts that folks would like to share at this point on the letter drafts? If not, that's okay. All right. We can have that conversation later. Okay. Sounds good. So with that, we will adjourn the floor for the day. Did we hear from

[Maddi (Maddie) Kempner (Policy & Organizing Director, NOFA-VT)]: slowly