Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And that's what we're- We're live. And we're gonna discuss the set of natural resources and energy. And it is May 22. And we're gonna very briefly look at amendments to H948. And again, we are going to hear about how the CAFO transition is going, the courts, and we'd love to get an update about that. And recognizing that we don't have a forum in the room right now and that's okay because we're not making any decisions. There we are. You're Director of Legislative Council, welcome.

[Reggie Cohen (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Reggie Cohen, Office Legislative Council. We're looking at draft 7.1 amendments to H 928. And this amendment familiar to the committee. The first, second, third, and fourth instances of amendment update the hunting points violations and then the fifth instance of amendment amends some information related to the champion lands. And that has been the intent of this committee the entire time. This amendment takes out the amendments to the PFAS. And one thing that might not be obvious from this, but it's worth mentioning is that the entire bill including its amendment will be effective on 07/01/2026. So the whole piece will be effective on that date and that's the amendment.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Okay.

[Reggie Cohen (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Any questions?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Again. I don't know. Which

[Reggie Cohen (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I won 2026. Okay.

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: I'll do

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: that in

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Florida. Is something we can talk about later, but I did get a question from some other people about auto loading rights.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yep, I heard you on the answer.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: You are so on top of it, that's great. Okay, never mind. Fantastic. Thank you so much.

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: Thank you very much.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Okay. See you on the court. See you. Okay. And all right. So we are going to, now to talking about, CAFOs and the court. Would you all want to come up at once? Do you want to go one at a time? How would you

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: like to start up there? I

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: was just going to provide a brief introduction and then I was going to let Vera talk about the stakeholder. How are doing? Oh, yeah. So, hi, I'm Abby Naja, the program manager.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: Kevin Burke, director of the Large and Nudge

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: and Women. Nice to meet you. Please, let me go meet you.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: And we're going with, maybe we can let Mira introduce herself.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Hi, Mira Downey with the Consensus Building Institute.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Wonderful. Thank you for being here.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Thank you for having me.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So I'll just give a brief intro. So the report was submitted in response to the chart in Act 67. And I can go over briefly what we are sort of discussed more in detail about the ask for stakeholder input on five main issues that were outlined as establishment of the CAFO program compliant with Clean Water Act, how to align the CAFO program most effectively with existing water quality programs administered at the Arctic Agriculture, how to create long term regulatory clarity, including options to remain split between both agencies where it consolidate to ANR, the identification of technical and financial resources needed to support the farm compliance, and also the ask to consider other regulatory approaches used in other states, such as state law. So, and I coordinated with the Agency of Agriculture and contracted with Consensus Building Institute, CBI, to facilitate the state law meetings and represent the stakeholders in reporting their recommendations. I do want to acknowledge the immense amount of time and effort that went into coordinating these meetings and attending these meetings by all parties, especially stakeholders who participated openly and honestly, it was honestly a great experience to be a part of. So I'm going to let Mira outline the stakeholder and public input, because that was the point of view that the legislature made it very clear that they wanted to hear from. So I think we should emphasize that part of the report. After she talks about the stakeholder arrangements, I'll be happy to talk to you about ANR's portion of the report or answer some questions on a status of the FAPEL program at this time.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Great.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So,

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: it over to, that right? Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Fabulous. I am in part standing in for my colleague, Pat Fields, who is the main facilitator from the Consensus Building Institute. We helped both in the group and then also facilitate the meetings. Over the course of about three months, we had around 10 meetings, including additional side meetings with environmental petitioners, the planning team, which consisted of the Department

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: of Ag

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: and Department of Natural Resources. On the group, we had about 18 or so farmers initially invited, 10 technical service providers, and around five environmental petitioners. We decided to start the process primarily just with agency representatives and farmer representatives to give farmers a bit of a chance to understand the issue at hand, the scope of what they're being asked to do, and then time for them to speak amongst themselves about what they might like to get out of the process and recommend. Then over the course of the process, we invited in the environmental petitioners to participate and incorporate their perspective. I'm gonna go a little bit into what resulted from those long and well planned meetings. So, the typical format of the meetings had time for presentation, usually from the Department of Natural Resources or from a state that we had asked to do a guest presentation about their program. And then we held time for discussion between farmers by themselves and then farmers with representatives. So I think of abundant importance was the emphasis from the group on an ongoing stakeholder group to advise the implementation of the program. They suggested having a limited side that was representative of different perspectives, but also effective and able to give contribution

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: that helped move the process along.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: There was interest in the group primarily because they felt like it was an important place to have touchstones, milestones, check-in on the progress of implementation and provide feedback. Along with that, there was a lot of emphasis from farmers about the technical and financial assistance required to implement the program. There was a feeling that in order to have a robust program that protected clean water in the state of Vermont, that would require support for capital funding, flexibility on compliance schedules, support with nutrient management plans, and engineering assistance that they felt was not adequate at the moment. I think of particular interest is where they came to on the long term regulatory structure of the program. They did not reach an overall consensus, but agreed to this five year timeline that would have milestones and checkpoints about how the that was going. So actual wording from the final report, but some stakeholders felt like

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: we're not in a

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: place to fully say that all responses

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: go to the

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Agency of Natural Resources and wanted to evaluate the process at the end of the five year timeline they had outlined. Other stakeholders felt strongly that the two parent program would cause redundancy and duplicate efforts and felt that it continued a lack of clarity between the two entities. And and then I think there's another cohort that just kind of wanted to have more information and make a determination once they had more information on how the program was going.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Think we have a question in the room. Go ahead.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Is there a written report or something we can refer back to for this meeting? And how many people are by stakeholders in farming who are actually in attendance?

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Typically in attendance at the meeting, farmers and environmental managers are around around 20 or so. 20?

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah. Different different farms, obviously.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: Yes. And we have concise meeting notes and summaries from each of the meetings we held that I believe are available on the CAFO website. The full report, I think, has also been submitted.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: Yeah.

[Mira Downey (Consensus Building Institute)]: No, just one other thing I think is important to emphasize is I think there was a strong sentiment amongst farmers that the lack of clarity and roles between the two departments made it incredibly challenging to know how they were or were not in compliance. And they really were seeking more guidance on what it meant to be in compliance, how to be in good standing with the state, and consistent communication about what to expect from inspections and how to know that an inspection had gone well or what they need to do in order to be in compliance.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: In addition to this, thank you, Mara. In addition to the stakeholder report that Mara just outlined, ANR provided a portion of the report that was required. And I think I'll kind of just briefly run through. It starts about page eight, if you're looking at physical copy, recommended statutory amendments or other changes related to the implementation of the CAEPo program. We structured our proposed changes in our overall approach around stakeholder recommendations and feedback wherever possible, recognizing that the regulatory structure will need to evolve to meet the federal Clean Water Act expectations, including the fall through of the satellite and our tea delegation petition and our conversations with EPA submitted in our corrective action plan. And I also just want to acknowledge that Vermont farmers made significant efforts to, and investments to comply with the regulations in Vermont. And this is an overarching indication that the regulatory structure needs to be tweaked a little, not that, you know, farmers are, you know, the goal is to help farmers successfully achieve compliance with these new standards as their regulatory system. So I just want to say, ANR is looking at our own lane and what we can do to build this program and support farms and have the people with they. So the first item that ANR put in the report was funding for production area improvements. Nara talked about that. To meet the Clean Water Act requirement for production area standard, it will require significant capital investment for the superiors. So I'm looking at the report. What page are you on? There are pages 40. But I would say, I think it's, from remembering, it's a page 80. Oh, know, I've got a picture of No, thank you. So it's like Anne's portion of the report, section one funding for Darkenaria and for events. Okay. And so there are some specific To issue a discharge permit, you can come to ensure that everything is done to prevent the discharge up until a storm event. And so sizing on your infrastructure, collection of all the waste, these are federal requirements to look for. You can build above and beyond that, but that is a requirement. And when we brought in other states to look at how they manage that, there were differences, and we started to work on some analysis of the costs. A lot of these items are in LFO MFO rule already. However, there is work still to get to compliant production areas, and so the stakeholders mentioned strongly their report, and we're saying, again, work funding is going to be, sorry.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So we're working get into EPA.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Sorry, say that again.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: To the federal level standard.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Yeah, so the federal provides like a floor, but to issue a discharge permit, you have to meet an effluent limitation. So for a PFO, it's designed to a storm event. So it's a containment of all waste. So if water passes through production area and is dirty, it's not diverted, that would need to be collected also. And so know, and our notes, that we have to figure out, and Vermont is going The regulatory structure is going have to figure out what does that mean? What are some innovative practices we can bring in? How can we divert water? What does it mean to collect all this water? But the federal floor is very clear that it's collection and treatment to a specific standard. And so for instance, if have Bongartz sitting in a state that don't have collection under the federal rule, they would need to be collected. And so that's just what the federal rule says. And so that is part of what we're working on, but it will cost money. And so we're just trying to, again, this was the process for the stakeholders to advocate what they needed and to emulate that say yes.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So was ANR going to expand the bond standard of federal law or?

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: I don't think our intent is to go beyond, and that was expressed by the agricultural community is to not go beyond, but it's worth noting that the agency of ag LFO, MFO programs has some things in place that are beyond the federal standard already, such as winter spreading ban, expenditure, but we're looking to be innovative and flexible with farmers, but maintain consistency with that starting point

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: in the federal rules.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Yeah, the federal rule does not require a non discharging farm to obtain the department coverage. It requires discharging farms, but then the onus on that farm to operate and manage provided records, maintain freeboard or storage capacity, those are very clear in the federal register. So we realize that it's going to take money, and that is something that we heard as part of stakeholder groups and proposed as what we imagine might be some changes for either statutory or other. Another item that ANR proposed is permit fee reciprocity. So if an MFO or LFO is subject to a permit fee, that that would be mirrored for PO. And I think that there is language also maybe similar to that or different than that that is being proposed right now. But that was the proposal, was that the fees would be.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: They wouldn't say if they're an MFO and LFO that they would have been paying the fee if they're subject to people because they have a discharge they wouldn't be paying a fee twice. It wouldn't change anything for the farm. It would decrease it if it was just essentially allowed for one or the other.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So I wanna understand the reciprocity here. So it's reciprocity between what? Is it between AFM and no?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So I think it's changed since the report was submitted. So the report was submitted for us. So AFM's permit fees were not being collected, that CABO would propose this. That was And I also believe last night, there was some language that is going, and I'm not entirely sure what it says, and it might speak more to what Kevin said, that you would pay more credit. What is in the medium capo general permit right now, which has been finalized, is if you have a medium capo general permit, you would not also be a medium MFO, sorry. It's hard to say. Oh, okay. But you would also need an MFO permit and you wouldn't pay both. It's a question that's already, at least with a medium farm.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So, but then, so that's if you had a,

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: if you were paying

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: a CACO fee, is that right?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: If you were required to get it, if you got a medium CACO general permit, you would not also need a farm.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: Right, okay. You would

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So just save one. But this is in addition to that. If the fees were waived for agriculture permits, they could be considered to

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: be waived for people. Forgive me for This is just me exposing my ignorance here. But to be, I mean, if you're a meeting papo, I would imagine that that fee would be more than the regular meeting papo, or if you think they'd

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: be sick. I think right now they're right now. Okay.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So who has the enforcement authority? Is it MNR or is it AFF?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: For the discharge permit, it would bring out it's with MNR and non discharge permits set at the agency. Agency arm.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So what's the feedback I mean if a firm has a problem or question totally get that information so everybody understands it's a problem.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: A problem meaning they think they have

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: a discharge or? Well, the problem with a systemic problem or a flumming problem. Sure.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Well, I mean, I hope that that is significant. That's a really good indication that an ongoing stakeholder group is important. I think that farmers can give that enrich, at least in the stakeholder group that we participated in, there was a lot of open discussion and sort of advocating for needs. I often tell farmers, You can always call me if you have an issue. They don't allow to call the regulator, so I don't often get my phone to ring. There are, you know, we do provide, even so agriculture has a lot of technical assistance, we can provide, you know, links and concepts for that. So depending on who, they get sent via to our shop or we need

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: to get that in, get routed. Who are the stakeholders?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Who participated in the stakeholder group? It was a group of farmers, it was technical service providers, it was environmental groups, the agencies, and then a lot of public and other partners in Vermont's other natural resources. There's a listing. There is a link. Oh yeah, actually it does that back. Okay. Yes. Thank you.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: I mean, just to add what Addison, even since the stakeholder process concluded, we've been meeting with the agency of Ag to work on board meeting and scheduling joint inspections, training, making sure that we're all on the same page so that there's a flow of information and coordination from the partners challenge for those interested.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Let's keep going. Okay. So the next item that we discussed was good standing and access to funding. It was that we would try to align that as best we could. The agency of agriculture has some great language when it comes to how a farm is defined as we proposed that that language could also be extended to kepo farms. And so we provided some sort of parameters around that. We also said the proposal that we heard from farms is that they need time and that there needs to be education and outreach as a component of this. So we're, ANR's proposing right now, we're working internally to re sort of develop our enforcement framework, working more towards compliance and coming into terms of the permit rather than emphasizing the compliance. So that is something we're working on. We're increasing our internal processes and working with the agency of to figure out some of that. But we heard that from the stakeholders, any week break, you know,

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: the state's going the states. So what's the time frame of compliance? Because, you know, getting into planning and then parties thing.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: Well, it's not a single game. So we're not gonna bump into crop season. And it's gonna I mean, honestly, I imagine the compliance schedules being five to ten years for some of these farms based on the amount of funding that we have available. It really depends on the actual fix for this farm. Each farm is every farm.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So have you prioritized the the farms as depending upon the home they have?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So right now, what we're doing, what we heard from the stakeholders that we really need to, while we've seen up the program, focus on individual fixes. And so although we may require a fix to meet that equivalent standard, so a structural fix would require potentially an engineering sign off rather than, oh, well, probably could sign and point of discharge. So we're basically saying, we develop the parts of the program that weren't ongoing already, so the permitting and the rulemaking, that we would work with farmers one by one to figure out what their individual needs are. I'm not sure if I totally understood that, but we're not going to be requiring right after that before to get compliant.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: I'm just concerned about penalties or

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: fines if they don't meet the That's primarily not going to be the focus. We're really, know, I mean, there might, if there is discharge discovered, for example, if there's, you know, there's an opportunity to work with the partner and address the issue, because we're going to also be standing up rulemaking and different things that will establish those standards so this will give us time to work with them and not go directly to the heavy hand. Might be instances, think we have to always have to reserve the option of going through a portion if we don't have a particular operation being receptive to what it is that needs to be done with correct large volume insurance.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: I didn't forget one other thing in the federal rule, to be defined as a CAFO, a small farm would need to be designated as a significant contributor. So we don't have that defined for Vermont right now. And so in this interim period, and our CAFO program is not proposing to go out and start small farms, nor would we require a people permit for small farms at this point. That's something that we're trying to figure out right now with our internal structure. How would we, if there is a discharge on a small farm, what can we do? How do we balance everything that people is now looking at? Because when we looked at other states, 300, we took dairy and above, is very clear CAFO. For some states, it's self reporting. If you're at 300 or certainly 700, you need to report and get a CAFO, yes, PFO, and PBS permit. That's

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: not

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: where Vermont is right now. It's, you can put medium and large firms. It's easier to define a PFO, or small firms, you need that significant, and we don't have that yet. Or So- we bought. We're not going to be inspecting small farms right now. Small farms are regulated in excess of the federal rule already under the RIPs. And so we're not proposing additional.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: I think it's worth noting though, if there was a problematic discharge or somebody either reported a discharge from a small farm, we would respond. Yes. Investigate and plan. We should find out what needs to be done correctly.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: So if I can clarify, so if I am hearing you correctly, in other states an automatic CAFO permit is necessary depending on like the number of analysts, let's say that you have. But we don't, we're not, Vermont is not defining it that way.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: We need to not.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: And there's not motion to go in that direction. It's really just about like, is it discharge or no?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: It depends on how you define point source. There's some case law that it defeats even a large farm would need a discharge in order to be required of the federal to get it. However, state statute and state rule and other areas that we looked at have a duty to comply or a duty to comply for a marital residence. That's not how they're not. It's all in here. Yeah. Interesting. Yep. Okay. Yeah. There is a section in this report that talks about what we learned from the other states. We looked at two non discharge programs, New York and Maine, and then we looked at two BNPDES, Wisconsin and Oh, gosh. Minnesota. Minnesota. And yeah, so it was very interesting how they were all structured. And we learned a lot about setting up our own certificate, the compliance program brochure. It was really interesting. Extra rethink. And again, as Nira pointed out, the stakeholders sort of reserved their decision on the regulatory structure and stuff. They really want to see what the cable program looks like. There's a lot of technical standards for its design that will be required, and those are the items that we need some flexibility around and need consensus on. And they wanted to see what obtaining a CAFO permit would look like Then he said, Yes, let's all go over to a CAFO permit, which is totally understandable. So we are setting forth our rigorous timeline for a legal rule of program development. We are working on the individual permit template and application, and we're going to have that provisional line first deadline. It's a little cart for the course because we don't have the rule and all these technical standards figured out, but it is our best attempt to have what an individual permit would look like. We also have the BNK public dental permit that's already available, I think, 2023 it was finalized. So we do have some examples of that, but people really want to know what is my farm, my production area, what do I need to do to make a storage facility, and what's it going to cost and how am I going to fund. So what we're doing right now, the growth of this program is the procurement development, the rulemaking, and then hiring a lot of people. So that's what we're doing. Also, just real quick, we agree that continued stakeholder involvement is imperative. And we also agree that we need to continue to work on user agency coordination and inspection training. And I can speak to that a little if you want. We also were asked to propose an inspection timeline. I think the legislature was wondering, similar to the agency that what ANR would propose for maybe statutory requirements at this point. Given the growth and the trajectory and the needs of the program, we need to propose a stat schedule right now. Rather than through rulemaking, we would propose a schedule for permanent farms. So once farms are coming into BPDS we would propose a schedule as much as how other states would to them. So happy to.

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: It's just one thing I wanted to add that we might, think, you know, we did, Abby did talk about sort of cross training with the agency of but I think it's important to recognize that Abby as program manager from CABO has twenty years experience from working with the agency of Ag. So we're thrilled to have her leading the programs. She brings a lot of experience training for her staff.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: That's great.

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: So any funding for grants required?

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: There is funding. There's capital funding. There's funding through the NRCS. There's state funding through the best management practice for capital investment. There's a lot of really great funding for crop management equipment. There's so many good funding sources. I think something that is going to be talked about more and more is how do we fund these expense accountable for events? And that is you know, above me. But yeah, it's- Can you give me a second? Yes. Before you leave Senator, put in a plug.

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: Chair of Carbon Relations Committee. So Blake Champlain Committee, myself, Conservation Law Foundation and Rutland National Resources Council were stakeholders.

[Unknown Stakeholder Participant]: And so I participated in the stakeholder process. It was a

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: great process. We had great discussions with the farmers, particularly when the agencies weren't there. The farmers

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: opened up a little bit

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: more and we had some great discussions. I think it's the agencies, but it We was, were good have not lived with all of this, haven't had a chance to really digest the report per se. We're gonna do a letter at some point on the record. I've been talking about with CLF, but S-three 23 is coming back to you. It is on the notice calendar in the house today. It has language in it to extend the CAFO stakeholder group. And it also has language in it to, for A and R, giving A and R authority to hire this third party consultant to conduct the inspector trainings. These are both things that the farmers should want to do. One for it, so there's consistency, like I've been saying, consistency among inspectors, but the stakeholder group is really important going forward. It was important to hash out some of these details to get to some common areas between the Enviros and the farmers. And the plan is to keep eating quarterly, hopefully starting fall. It is, if you look at the makeup of it, it is very farmer heavy, that is deliberate. We had some virus there, even amounts of virus farms. So the point is to keep talking to the same group of farmers going forward. So we meet quarterly hash out, hear about the problems, this, that, and next thing I worked on the language with representative Nelson closely, who's also a stakeholder. So if got questions for him as well, the Senator, it was a great process, looking forward to keep working with the agencies as we go forward. So I just wanted to put in a quick plug that when you see that language come back to

[Kevin Burke (Agency of Natural Resources)]: you, well, God knows when.

[Unknown Environmental Stakeholder]: Maybe this afternoon if they start taking things up off the nose. So I'm trying to put in my gloves

[Seth Bongartz (Member)]: as quickly as I can for that language.

[Anne Watson (Chair)]: That's great. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I'm sorry we didn't have more folks here. This is very helpful. And thank you for all the work that you're doing on us.

[Abby Naja (ANR CAFO Program Manager)]: So, yeah, thank you.