 to get to the right program, making sure they get to the one that has the best fit so they can, you know, be in the right program that helps them in terms of most of the major practices. So, the figure I remember from another report somewhere along the line was, I think, something like 30,000 in years in covered jobs. Does that sound okay? Well, keep going. We'll get in there. Yeah. Why don't we skip to those pages? So, can I ask you a quick question? Well, I'll be back. That's a different one before we leave this chart. Yeah. These are the meetings, you know, and asking about the FAP. These, I think, the limit, the amount you can get as a grant, I think, is 5,000. 5,000. So, and that's an internal agency policy that we made, and we've had some feedback. We actually just had some discussions of the nutrient management commission on that. We did that intentionally. We wanted to make sure that multiple farmers got access to stuff, because it's a very small, it's 150,000 milliliters. It's a very small amount of money. And we tend to roll over any monies that we can into that and expand it. But originally, that program was a year and a half a million dollars, and over the years has kind of dwindled. So we put that restriction in to make sure that there was some equity, and one or two farms shouldn't just handle it up. So the farmers that were at the meeting were saying, well, it's been that figure for something like 15 years. We haven't had the program for that long, but sure. That's why I was here. And so it never went up. And then, well, the price of everything went up. When you check in with the agency manager about moving that limit, so I'm guessing here, this is a big complaint, but you're not inclined to do that because the pot of money's got small. Well, and mostly where the future goes. I mean, everything changes so quickly year to year. And right now we're in a phase where there's some additional federal resources coming through, Senator Layton was able to, there was appropriation that went through the basic program through the EC to us. So we all worked to write all this paperwork to move this money to give us additional funds to put in this program this year. That could be one year program. It could be two years. It could be over, I don't know. So to change the entire program right now, it's not a stable source of money, but it is allowing us to at least give more grants out to folks. Because there is more demand than we actually have resources for in that matter. My question's more about the next page of a book before we skip ahead. I'd like to address some just, this one right here. Inspection enforcement. Yeah, the inspection enforcement. I've noticed that the percentage of enforcement actions for your inspections has almost doubled three years from 10% of inspections where giving enforcement actions is now about 18%. Can you one speak to that? And then I'll have a follow up question as well. Sure. So one easy thing to think about is, so we have a lot more staff. We have four people, now we have 10. Really 11. That's a big change. So there are more police on the road paying attention. And some of the changes, so a large farm, if you consider a large farm could be anywhere from five farmsteads to like nine farmsteads. I think it's the largest one that we have as far as the number of farmsteads. What we had in the past was one person managing that program and the charge and statutes to annually inspect. It wasn't more detailed than that and what we had capacity for was to go to a farmstead a year. So if you had nine farmsteads and we only went to one. That's a farmstead. It's a farm. So how can a farm be five farmsteads and then five other locations? So what is a farmstead? It is a place where there's definition. So how do you distinguish between a farm that has five farmsteads? Because globally we permit all of these farms, which I'm calling farmsteads. That's a term we've had to use so that we can have good nomenclature internally to be able to speak about things. But it is essentially, if you think about, if you were to pick all these farms and have them under one ownership, and so halfers may be here, a manure pit may be just there, and the actual home farm where the milking herd may be in another space, right? So collectively all of the different farms. I got 10,000 and Senator Franklin has beat 1,000. You were two separate farmsteads, not a farm together. And we're two farms. But my own farm in St. Louis is an American farm in Ennisburg. So you have two farms. Senator from Franklin asked you what your inspections were. Do you get the number? Senator? No, I'm just wondering why I get you pad inspections, but I would assume that you'd have the same percentage of enforcement actions. So the changes is now we're going to have these connections under? Yeah, so we're both dead. Inspections. There's also more farms. Farms like yours? Farms like mine. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter where they are? No, no, no. Let me, can I? May I please? Sure. So the large farms is, for example, annually we're there. Now we are at every single farmstead. So the ability of what you're going to see, for example, if you just go to one a year versus 90 a year for that particular farm, the number of inspections. And so, but we will call that one inspection for one farm, right? Even though it's really not. So at some level, the amount of visual and on-site work is increased significantly. In addition, what also happened was the MFO medium farm, it used to be five-year inspection cycles, and that changed to three-year inspection cycles. So that is up to. So not only are we also going to every facility that might be associated with one medium farm, which we weren't doing before because we didn't have capacity, we are doing that and doing them more often. And then the other pieces is because we have capacity, we are doing more follow-up and other inspections because if you find problems, then you need to go back to make sure that they've been resolved. So just having more people means we're out there more. And so we have more inspections. There are also a lot more farms under the jurisdiction. Now the small farms are registered. But I get the number of increased inspections, but the percentage of enforcement is double. And enforcement goes up because you're out there more. So the other question I have, too, and I heard this a lot, talking to most of my farmers this summer and fall. And this might be part of a larger conversation. A lot of times they feel that these folks aren't there to help them. They know sometimes when they have practices that need help. But they feel sometimes if they were to reach out to this team or you guys that they are more afraid that they're going to get a fine instead of a helping hand saying, hey, thank you for coming to us with these complaints or these issues. How do we work together to improve this for everybody? Because we're all in this together. And we shouldn't discourage folks from reaching out to the ag department or to your teams and saying, hey, I know I have this problem. What can I do? How do we build a plan together to fix this over the next three months, six months, a year and a half? How would you speak to those concerns? Sure. It all depends on who and what the farm is. But the reality is, is the way we used to operate is we used to try and visit you. We try and hold your hand through everything to get you to the end. You get completely sucked into that as far as time to be able to get to the next farm and do the inspection and statutory requirements that we have to do. So we have relied not only, we built our engineering team up. We used to have one engineer, now we've got seven. That's a big difference as far as resource capacity to be able to have help. So there is help for the ag community when they reach out and they get it. But our capacity, we also didn't have an enforcement team. Now we have three people who are working on enforcement. We used to have one. And they did all the enforcement or carried to Gariside as well. But I think their concern is if they reach out for help, they flag the enforcer to come in and hit them with an inspection. Most people are getting their inspections already, right? So that's helpful because it does make their, you know, there's partners in this room, too, that are working with farmers. And when we've already been there at the top, we've already identified it. So the partner can come in more easily and work on it. And so all of these resources that we've provided are part of that help package. We also did Northlake contractors. So we put out an RFP and hired people locally in the Northlake, which is basically Franklin County, to work directly with farmers. So, and we really did try and focus more on some of these small farms because we did a Northlake farm survey. So we went to every single livestock farm in Franklin County. We stopped doing additional inspections. We just did the corn inspections that we needed to do and did the survey so that we would understand, this is in like, I think, 2015, 2016, what was going on in Franklin County as far as in Sisquoia so that we could address the gap large and understand everything. And from that, we then hired these contractors. And so we would inspect and then call a contractor and say, can you take this person to the finish line? Because we've got to move on to the next farm. And so that's, that program has been going on for a couple of years now and it works. And, you know, I hear farmers saying, I feel like I might get fine, but they're sort of, we've categorized how we deal with them. Medium and large farms have been permitted for a number of years now. If we show up and there's a concern, they're likely to go on enforcement. Small farms were likely to try and educate them more about what they need and get them into the place, see if they take the steps, come back, and if they're not, then they might end up in enforcement. One thing when I was able to take over enforcement a couple of years ago, I started with trying to level it in terms of anyone who had not been notified and has a problem gets a correct action letter, so the warning letter. And then if they don't fix it from there, then it will ramp up. So if they're getting something akin to like a penalty, they've already gotten a warning letter. They've already gotten another notice potentially and have it there. So it's good to understand the whole picture about how it works, but our goal is obviously we wanna fix the problem, right? That's all we're there to do is make sure that the farm has the resources to fix the problem. If we need to use enforcement, we use enforcement because that's our role, right? And then the partnership is there and the resources are there and we're required, if we send them an enforcement action to tell them all the great things that they should go and find out about as far as resources. But I can tell you, it's been a tough year for the staff. I mean, to show up on a farm and ask them to do things, it's very difficult and yet at the same time, the farms have actually done more than they've ever done. So it's pretty phenomenal. Right. Yeah, and I guess my point too is, I think, and even in your testimony here, I wanna see less of you guys being in the cop and to a word that Senator McDowell does a lot of building more of a partnership. Because I mean, they're critical to my part of the state and the whole state. I'll argue they're the most critical industry in the state of Vermont and they've had four tough years and we need to work with them as they're working toward water quality. To meet their needs. Well, yeah, it's all my fault. I'm an expert and I want to be on the board before I can call the state police to get help to the fact that I know 85 miles of our industry and we're gonna go drive around the world. How many calls do we get? Say 800 numbers exactly. Some pollution incidents are so bad that it is important, there's no question. But when a farm has challenges, say buffers or other things, we tend to get to a space where we come up with a plan with them and then they have to implement it and it's a regular plan. It's called an assurance of discontinuance. And if they follow it, they're good. So we try to work with them. Again, we don't need their money. We need their money invested in their farm. And so that is our big picture goal but it doesn't mean that they can't. They have to be held accountable. I mean, for a billion dollar industry, they have the technology. Well, yeah, it's a four or three and there's a lot of ways to spin it. I would just say billion plus or whatever. They have $69,000 for the panel pieces. I would say a very modest total number of dollars that were going to the penalty phase. And at the same meeting, I was talking to people at FAPs, they actually were wishing there were more penalties brought and more sort of regulation because the LFOs and MFOs that have most invested the most and stepped up the most felt like there were still, you know, sort of the bad actor model out there and that they were getting a black eyes in the street for, and they felt like they were actually hoping that there would be some very public high-level enforcement that would encourage those who are maybe not pursuing water quality rules as aggressively as they ought to decide if it was time to change practice. So I hear it both ways, like both yet that they would want to have you as partners. And also, but they also would like to be cops sometimes because they feel like there are trouble makers in their neighborhood and they wouldn't like that trouble to stop. And I would say that I would agree in part, but some trouble makers are just thumb of their nose in regulation and some trouble makers, even though they need to address the problem, are not able to address the problem because they have no money. And so there is a difference there. If you're unable to do something that you're trying and want to do because of financial situation or if you're just, you don't like regulation and your thumb goes out, and that's, I think, kind of what you're getting at. If they're people that are trying their best, we wouldn't bother them along. And sometimes when a police officer pulls you over and gives somebody a warning, it has more of an effect on them behaving than if you gave them a ticket and you leave them all pissed off at all the cops. And so I think it's a fine balance. It's a balance. And I think we do a really good job at it. And we've been public record requested of the Wazooks and you can ask the partners what they think of what we're doing. But we've referred cases to the Attorney General. We've referred cases to ANRR. Those cases take time. A lot of those cases that are in this list have not gone through those processes. So there is a ramp that's still continuing back behind this report that you will see. But I do, I want to be mindful, you had us on until 9.30 and it's 9.33. Yeah, so we'll stop having questions. So I just, you know, whatever you want out of us, we've got, I don't know what highlight you want us to get to as far as, you know, we, we're doing everything we said we do, the EPA said in our interim report we're doing everything we should be doing. You know, like I said, in this document, we did strategic planning to restructure ourselves and think about what our goals need to be. In this one, it's on page 11. There's five-year non-point source ag goals, which is the other document that starts. 2018, yeah, one of the questions was the three- to five-year plan, and this was a five-year plan that was submitted, so. And I would argue, you know, sort of big picture where we are right now, we've got really good rules. We've got some of the most stringent rules in the country for non-point source pollution. ANR does point source pollution, and they've got their rules pretty well structured as well. Where we're at right now, and with the ag community, you've changed the RIPs twice since we started this process with Lake Champlain and NAC64. We're probably gonna end up doing it again because we've gotta deal with some other things that came up with like the technical service provider certification and those kinds of things. So it's gonna be overload for folks. Where we're at right now is we gotta focus on the other programs and initiatives that couple along with the regulatory side. And that's where, like for instance, if you're signing up to get a conservation development easement for your farm, you now get an inspection. That's a big shift in the process of how the partnership has operated. And we're looking at farms and thinking, you know, how can we redo silage management in an engineering mindset? How can we reduce the volume of water? And there's a bigger picture thinking about the problem in the source and trying to restructure how we do this on farms. And so we're moving in those directions and working with folks like Nutrient, I think Trey Martin has been talking about in various committees, I'm not sure if he's been here, but we've been working with Stone Environmental for a couple of years and trying to develop models for farms so the farm can go, okay, I need to get to four pounds per acre. What do I gotta do? Plug it all in. Okay, that's my plan. If I follow that, I should do it and then we can look at the lake and get there. So we've been developing a lot of this, the partner database, all these tools that are sort of coming together. And we've got this plan of getting to a space where the ACT community has clarity. We really focus and dig in to make sure that the accountability is there and everybody else starts working on the other incentive opportunities that really get to like payments for ecosystem services and start pushing above and beyond. Can I just add two of your last slides here? Cover prop is 265.20 and slightly not to be 27.20 and the screen rejection acres is fine. So I don't know if it's a realistic expectation. I would think that we would want to see those numbers keep on going up and maybe that's not a realistic expectation or maybe there's a substantive practice. There's also another storyline as to why it has declined. So these charts are in here, pages 12 through 15 to describe this. These are solely practices that the seed of agriculture and RCS have cost shared. So that these are the only acres that we have direct record of payment for installation. And they're meant to show an example of cover crop, conservation crop rotation and reducing no-till, the significant uptut in adoption since access to forest 2015. So resources are there, farmers are implementing it. Maneuver injection, and RCS no longer really pays the manure injection. So that's one of the reasons for the decrease through the capital equipment assistance program and funding manure injection technologies. We're going to like this and that increasing and then in some watersheds where you get an extension is doing research as he was shared last Friday, we're seeing significant rates of adoption up to 38%, I believe is what he was saying with some conservation farmers in that watershed. So that's when we were mentioned to partner database that's how we really want to get to accountability for what farms are implementing with out financial assistance. So we can tell that story and show all the work that's happening outside of the financial assistance. So are you, and make sure I'm hearing this. Are you saying for instance, the decline in manure injection acres isn't actual, I mean, because those are the decline in funded acres, but the total acres, people doing it on their own without funding, the line would be high. Especially with custom operators. And I don't believe we've taken, these are strictly payments for this practice, but we probably need to, we shouldn't need to, we've done the equipment program, we've purchased inject, not the full system, because it hits the cap, but where that is, they have to report. And so they report at the end of the year. So we would have just gotten the report to see how many acres they did. The trouble is, if I put it on this chart, I don't know how many of the acres actually went through across your program. So you could be adding things together, they shouldn't be added together, but certainly custom applicators, a lot of them are using injection, and they're doing more acres than farmers getting just these payments already done. More acres than what? Then just accounts for. So my understanding, the money that's flowed into that kind of work, I covered about the injection, is that we were sort of priming the pump, right? That they're actually cost effective practices. And so they would be adopted by farmers because they're actually getting cost effective practice. So if we, but helps them on the transition or experiment with it or get started, that was why we're putting money in. So is that played out that way? That people said, now that I've, I gotta help to get started, now that I see it, I'm only putting my own money in because it's a cost effective practice. Well, a good example is no-tome, right? You're seeing a new rejection on a lot of that land. Because they're trying not to disturb the soil. So farmers, you've gone to an agreement to hear them say like, we just had this piece of equipment in our community or this technical assistance. And you've watched extension and all of those folks work with everyone. That is the change that is happening. And the farmers are actually the ones doing more of the demonstration and site testing and then being able to share with each other and adopt it. Again, it's a social change. The government can help where we can, but it is the farmers and they are driving it right now. And we are providing and trying to figure out the right places to put the resources that are available to be able to continue on that launch. But it's happening. I think you'll see an increase. And seeing these investments in the time of very low prices and farm pay prices just speaks to the, I think, the commitment where these are good practices and financial assistance does help. But many folks are, from hearing it, adopting and implementing more than the caps for either the state program or that they may have through the NRCSE program. That's a new area we definitely are digging into is how do we make sure that they did it well enough that it should count towards, like it meets the same standards as the cost share programs. And that's where we're working on with the ECE Quality Assurance Plan and then the partners to be able to get that data into this database so that if a partner is working with a farmer and the farmer tells them what they did, they can put it into this database and check it and make sure that it meets the quality assurance that we're looking for. So if we're looking at another two, three, four, five years, whatever, you all took on more staff a few years back to help pick up a piece. You, is it your sense that and could or should have additional staff still in order to continue that development of those kinds of practices? I would say at this point, so I've had two more positions that I'm trying to get through joint fiscal through having federal money, no state money involved in those positions so they're interim positions. One's an engineer and one's a prep position so they're working on the buffers. I think that we're in a good space. However, if for instance the legislature came out and said we're gonna increase a lot more money, right? You've gotta try and pair that with the staffing resources that it takes to move that money. So where we're at today with the budget that we have, I think we're in a really nice space and I think we did a really good job. We could have gone bigger certainly but each year we came in with a little bit more instead of going all at once and I think it's been really helpful to train the staff and get the partnership and get to a space where we are today. So I feel pretty comfortable. The nice part too is the people we hired are relatively productive and they're so dedicated working more than they probably should. I don't wanna burn them out but very fortunate at this moment for what we've been able to build in our agency. I think for this, the legislature in general in the last week we've talked about a maintenance of effort so we all picked up the pace and now the goal is to at least maintain that level of effort year to year. Probably actually to be realistic we should be adjusting for inflation as well. So we have to slip back over time. Yeah, there's always costs of living each year so the budget has to always be up and down. Senator McDonnell, last question to you. Practically what percentage of your injection takes place after dark with the headlights on? I do not know the answer to that. Sorry. You heard of any? No. I have heard of folks working past dark and spreading manure. But what's my question? Injecting. I'm not sure if they were broadcasting or injecting but they were working long days to get it done. I'm talking about getting it done. Or casting and spraying and start injecting. So for injection and the equipment one of the things that's required with it is a flow meter and a data logger so that you can know how much manure went in. I just visited what they go to during planting season. Their tractors are out until 24 hours a day because they want to get used to their equipment and the timing of injection. Whether injecting, which is preferred methods, be using all the time or it's just a daylight activity. I think that there's windows of opportunity and what I've seen is especially if there's good weather and there's staff and resources, farmers will work late. They will. So I don't think you can assume anything about that other than making the best of the opportunity that they have. Between the North Dakota and what I see here for the longest night and day. Well thank you. Thank you very much. We have a lot of stuff we can share with you over time and James go through this one. Great session. Thank you. I would like to invite Mr. Ace. Enjoy. We'll probably do it in person. Oh you want it? Well, there you go. Sorry. Yeah, however, if you want to come up together. Yeah, I think it's better to come up and put it on. That's good work. All right. Good morning. Good morning. I'm going to ask you to talk to me and get that name. I'm going to ask you to name these people who want to. There's three. Thank you. Thank you. So my check. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Jill Lerajian. I'm the executive director of the Vermont Association of Conservation District. I'm Carrie O'Brien. I'm the district manager for the Caledonia County Conservation District. And I serve as administrator of the State Natural Resources Conservation Council. Do we still have half an hour? Yeah. If you can. Yes. Okay. You can go a little shorter. That'll be good. We can come back. We can come back a little time. Just a little window in this. Yeah. So I think I'd like to give you five minutes history for those of you who are new to conservation districts. We're going to focus primarily on the, our block brand experience and our thoughts about this whole proposed reorganization. We can do a whole morning on agriculture with the Fabbas to have actually all the partners come in and share. We have Fabbas on one of those Friday mornings and things. We're all the, yeah. We're all the partnership. Comes in and shares the work that we do collectively. Because there's all the group of organizations that work together. So to some degree, go through this memo and highlights. There's a one pager that are reflections on the past year, some of our needs. Another page that highlights the block grants where we're giving several awards to conservation districts that are managed either by NRCC or VECB. And the last page is comments, most of the questions actually on the reorganization proposed by ANR. And then this is our annual report which highlights some of our accomplishments in 2002. That's a really lovely pie chart. And I'd like to kind of look back. So quick history. Conservation districts were created in the 1930s and 40s after the Dust Bowl to be the link between private landowners and the federal government in addressing soil quality issues. So we've been around a long time. Conservation districts are a subdivisions of state government. There's over 3,000 of them in the United States. And there's a framework that's modeled also in Vermont. Where there's a state council, state natural resources conservation council in Vermont, which carries some of the contracting and administrator of. And that council is actually the mechanism through which conservation districts came into a distance. And on that council, they're representatives of the agency of agriculture, Vermont department of environmental conservation, UVM extension, representatives of the conservation districts. And then the feds and the ACB as non voting members on the council. So that's basically the governance structure of conservation districts. Conservation districts in Vermont is a map in here or organized based on either watershed or county boundaries or a combination of the two. The boards of districts are elected by landowners. Originally, there was a formal election process. Often it ends up being appointments as their retirement, selecting people with the appropriate skills that the district needs. Every district has a district manager. Some of them are still not yet full time positions. And some districts have several district staff. VACD also has a technical staff primarily working with funding from both the feds and the state agencies to enable farmers to participate in federal farm bill programs. So our staff do land treatment planning, conservation planning, and land treatment planning. So that's sort of broad sweep. Conservation districts now. So I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Chair, there's some talk about the conservation districts maybe overseeing water quality programs or if there's a possibility of that, as we move forward with water quality and how managing grants and all those kinds. So we will speak to that. You will. So you'll let us know. I think that's a good idea, something you're comfortable with. We have lots of questions at this point. We will speak to that. Generally, we work in the programmatic areas of agricultural and natural resources restoration. And some water mitigation. We have grants speaking. We now have an umbrella grant from the agency of agriculture through council that supports districts to do education and outreach, nutrient management, and preparation. And then VACD has a federal grant that pays farmers to get their nutrient management plans. Our focus has been primarily on small farms throughout the state of Vermont. And we should go on about the agriculture, but I don't want to dwell there too much. Generally, the Kingwater Fund has been great for us. There's a regulatory framework that supports sort of driving people to implementation. We're there as the soft pan that can provide the technical support and assistance, both knowledge exchange and assisting farmers and towns who access wide range programs that are available through state and federal partners. So we play this sort of technical advisor case manager role. Would you, Senator Parent, was asking about this or the regulator and police sort of policing kind of a role. But you don't ever have that kind of role. That's right. We were founded in the SOA's NRCS on the principle for the agricultural sector, voluntary land delivery implementation of conservation practices on the assumption and on the understanding that it's in farmers' interest to protect their land. It proves their bottom line. So we may be asked to go speak to a farmer who's received the letter from the agency bag and offer assistance. So we definitely do do that. But we may say, when you get a visit, you're going to be in trouble. So you might as well start working on this now. We definitely do that. But we don't do inspections. We don't formally report violations to the agencies. But we definitely do pre-assessments. Sure. We're going to focus primarily the rest of my five minutes on block grants. So we've really appreciated the block grant that's come through the Agency of Agriculture, which is four-year grants. As Laura explained, it has some flexibility. We've established a wide set of deliverables and goals. What it's enabled districts to do is to staff up. We've had mostly one or two-year grants and it's not great for staff retention and training. And it's really to the feds to give us five-year grants, but it's really fabulous to get a four-year grant from the Agency of Agriculture where districts can develop a longer-term vision. And we have a significant period of time to think about that and try to develop a program that's really based on following up on nutrient management, plant implementation, and doing education and outreach to get farmers into the, excuse me, to support more water, the nutrient management planning system. So that, to one, there's no water here. Block grant. Oh yeah, no water. I thought it brought some water. Probably on my kitchen counter. So we have been, conservation districts have been working in basin planning forever, really on a voluntary basis. And through the Clean Water Act, we now receive a small amount of funding for basin planning. We think of basin planning as the foundation from which program implementation arises. Our role is to really engage local citizens in the basin planning process and to bring technical expertise and natural resources to the basin planning process. We receive a small amount of funding through council, $80,000 to pay staff to assist the CDC with basin planning. It's not enough. You know, it's about $5,000 a district. So it involves organizing public meetings, attending technical sessions, doing education and outreach, doing monitoring, but it's just a good thing to think from the Clean Water Act. We manage a block grant for extreme sets for natural resource project and storm water mitigation projects. What we like about that model is that conservation districts basically can apply to council. They submit a project concept. They do approval of subcontract, track form, DEC, and when that's approved, we can get a grant agreement in a week. It really enhances the efficiency both for districts in terms of implementing projects and for the person on the ground who's running the project implemented. So right now, what DEC has done a number of block grants that fund the different segments of the project development implementation process. We have basin planning. This year we have a new project development grant. It's actually not on our list yet. We have a block grant for implementation. We'd like to have a little more fluidity between those, but it's great that we have all of them because it enables us to do the whole process rather than districts having to write a grant for the study and write another grant for the public process and then write another grant for the 30% design and write another. So there's quite a bit of improvement in the system. We think it could be expanded and built upon. I can't remember the, it wasn't quite a core story, but I think last year you talked about... 124 grants. 124 grants and it was like $800,000. It was very small money. It was a lot of grant writing and management overhead for a relatively small dollar. That's right. So the role that the House was playing, this is sort of central contractors, really helping districts in that regard. We do a lot of collaboration with the districts to determine what is feasible for you to do. How much can you do? That goes into our proposals, but then we establish the structure and we really value that structure that supports really quality control, training, consistency in programming, consistency in reporting. It gives us a funder. Some want a body to talk to rather than 14 bodies. I think our funders are very much appreciated that we have wanted to note the issue around staffings. So the agency of agriculture has been called the staff of. Department of Environmental Conservation has it and I think part of their proposal is an attempt to address that. We would favor staffing on as DDC further rather than creating a complete structure that basically is shifting that staffing to a different level. For us, the basin planning process is a foundation and those staff are the technical experts that have pulled the big picture locally. So we would support additional, we'd love to have a basin planner every basin. You know, bigger port, of course, you know, the state budget is limited. How many basin planners don't have a full-time basin planner? There's full-time basin planners but they cover multiple basins. So there's five basin planners. And just like two or three folks managing millions of dollars that DDC is trying to pass down. So we support the Strengthen Your DDC staffing. As the agency of agriculture has done, it's worked really well. It's very smooth as Laura has noted. And we also support the empowerment of the basin planning process. That's to be the sort of foundation of this local initiative. And so when you say we're DDC staff, you're talking specifically about support for basin planning. Yes, and if you've heard it from all of us, we need longer-term funding. We appreciate the initiatives that are happening to try to find a stable source of funding for Clean Water Act. We appreciate longer-term grant agreements. And we also need a balance of capital and non-capital funds. We need the non-capital funds for the education outreach, the assessment, the capacity building within the organization, the infrastructure that ensures quality and consistency, the reporting of the states moving towards a standardized reporting framework so that they can plug it into the TMVL, basically. We need time for that. There's a lot of time involved. Still, our district staff and our council staff have to glue together their jobs by, like, a little 10% of this agreement and 15% of that agreement. Can we hire a whole person? If we don't actually have a whole people right now, we have shared people with technical expertise because of that challenge. We'd like to see some more whole people that are fully funded to support the management of all these programs. Are you bringing forward anywhere a budget proposal that reflects your assessment that you could use higher level of staffing? We asked through the agency of agriculture, and that's actually my last bullet. Thank you. For $68,700 is an increase for the infrastructure of council. And then for every project, you know, we have to debate with our funder how much it can be put into project development and administration versus implementation. And it's great by grant. It's going to be fabulous to have a staff, conservation district staff who are worried about, like, can I afford to go to this meeting? Who's going to be? We still have that in some districts. It's really unfortunate because they have a lot of local knowledge and expertise. So we would love to beef up council. So right now, council and VACB have a partnership where we have jointly funded staff. Basically, council is a state agency, but they have no state positions. So VACB is the employer, contracted through council, and we also have some staff who work directly on the contract, and council has a contract with the Caledonia district for carrying its position. So, again, it's not ideal. We're putting it together. We've got some fabulous people, as Laura mentioned, and we'd like to, we'd really like to beef up that infrastructure. So in general, I'm going to sort of hand off to Kerry here. Kerry's going to discuss this question. I mean, generally, we're liking the block grant concept and we're liking this centralized concept. We've tended toward centralization for a reason, basically, which is that we're a small state. There's limited resources. There's limited expertise. We feel that with a block grant model, there can be consistency of service delivery and the product that you're living through that, if it's a well managed block transfer. Well, in that circle on the whiteboard, there is a table of sorts, and those are all the partners that we've identified as part of that whole system of doing water quality work throughout the state. One of our questions is, how do we try to make sure that tables run fairly so that it would seem natural that depending on where you are in the state to be somewhat direct about it, our PC might be better positioned in one part of the state or a council in another part of the state. So we're trying to explore how to do more of that empowerment and block granting, but make sure that the pathway we move down is helpful and supportive to everyone out there so that in the end we get the best results for the money invested that's entertaining. And I guess this is for you and for the community just to make sure I'm on the same page. So we're looking really at two things. We're looking, trying to find a funding source, and we're also looking at a governance structure, right? And so right now we're talking about is there a way to rework the governance structure so that there's more closer proximity to projects, project management, all those kinds of things. Because one of the things that sounds like it's on the table is the possibility is making one of these, each of these conservation districts responsible for clean water funding or implementing clean water funding locally, which would also mean, correct me if I'm wrong, giving them greater authority for whoever gets this. So actual, you know, you being able to say, you're not getting the job done and that sort of thing. So I just want to kind of key it up in my own mind just so I'm understanding a little bit about it. I'm still exploring this with you guys. I'm just seeing the new legislation and so we're still asking a lot of questions and trying to get our heads around it. But I just want to say, because I serve two roles, I have a perspective of being the administrator for our state council. So I'm at the policy level. I'm managing the statewide programs that we have in the block grants. But I'm also a district manager and so I'm actually doing the work on the ground. I'm implementing the water quality projects. I work in all sectors. I work with small farms on nutrient management. I work with towns on stormwater. Master planning. I work with road crews on river erosion inventory. So I've got a perspective from, you know, being the boots on the ground but then also at the policy level. And I think what's really important to me is that we're supporting the people who are doing the work on the ground. And I can say from my own experience that when there is a funding policy on RFP that comes out that's out of step with how things are done or how they work or it doesn't make my job smoother or it doesn't help me accelerate water quality implementation. It kind of feels like a knife in this side sometimes because I feel like we need to be listening to the people that do the work on the ground and I kind of want to remind everybody that we're probably not going to care from them very much because they really don't have the resources to be in here. I'm sorry, wait back up and tell me. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. What makes you feel like you have a knife in your side when what happens? When, so, you know, when an RFP comes out of funding policy or legislation that makes my job on the ground talking about the Caledonia County budget when it makes it tougher when it slows it down, when it doesn't accelerate it, when it doesn't smooth the gears. And I feel like that's really what we should be trying to do. And so we need to be listening, I think, to the people on the ground doing this work. And so when policy is developed behind closed doors without, you know, consulting, it's a little odd for me. And so that's sort of why I'm trying to absorb this. I do, sorry. Well, that's exactly why we're happy you're here. And I think, well, as we look at the table up there, wherever all those partners are, we're really looking for the most productive cost-effective way of doing your work. And I would also add on top, you know, a respectful relationship between all the partners so that people feel value and get to do their best work. Yeah, absolutely. But can you say a little bit about that? Sorry, the knife in the side, I think. Well, I think it was a lot of journey. No, but our attention is good. No, legislators often think they're doing right and put cogs in the wheels. Yeah, on a concrete level. So what's an example of someone and Senator Rogers was saying, thinking we're doing the right thing, but it actually turned out to be a hassle for you and slowing you down to make your job harder? Well, I mean, I'll probably try to take a bit more of a positive spin on this and to say that, you know, when we, our agreement with the agency of agriculture it's a four-year agreement, four-year block grant, statewide single agreement. We get the work out to 14 districts. It's a performance-based agreement. We're working very closely with the agency to set up a tracking structure. That works really well. So with DEC, we're getting there. It's a little bit more piecemeal. Like, so we've got, we still have some, council still has small agreements for work that takes us through the beginning to the end. So it kind of starts with basin planning. That's a very, in my opinion, you know, pretty robust regional structure that we already have is the basin planning. But in my opinion, it's under-resourced and under-supported. Watershed groups don't have the money. And what is the implication of under-resourced, under-supported, that the plan is not updated enough? Or are they going to work out? It's slow. It's slow. Yeah. I mean, that's the foundation of it. But then we have project development and then we have project implementation. And we have programs along the way, like buffers and things that we try to fund along the way. So, you know, I see this as a pipeline before. And it's an under-resourced pipeline. The pieces aren't always fitting together. But we just restructured and retooled and we do have these block grants now from DEC. This is why I'm not trying to say that it's, you know, it's not working. I think we're just getting there. We've had one season, one field season, with our implementation block grant. So it hasn't had time, in my opinion, to work. And so when I see legislation that talks about restructuring, I'm hearing the phrase, throwing the baby out with a bathwater. I haven't used that expression a lot, but I would really be supportive of collaboratively trying to, you know, really give the resources that the existing structure needs to work better, look at basic planning as our existing regional model and kind of go from there. Sorry, you're responding just enough. So this is responding to your bill. Right. Or I just want to get a sense of what you're saying. And it's premature. I'm just preliminary thoughts here. So there's a proposal. Yeah. The lead developers have been using natural resources. That is not the bill we have in this committee. The bill of committee is basically status quo with, and we're thinking about, and we've talked some about block ranking is working well. Could we do more on it? Yes. And then the question is, how do you do that well? I'd say more radical reorganization. Reorganization, creating a store of utility districts around the state, whatever they would be called. That's another whole conversation that we have outside will get to it, but that's not front and center for what we're doing at the moment. What are we doing at the moment? Yeah, so my sense is that we're picking up maybe a more conservative approach as in building on, we hope that the movement to block ranking is going to be helpful to all partners last year. So you're not doing 24 grants right here, $100,000, all that kind of stuff. And so my sense is there's maybe an opportunity to build on what we started last year, to fund more block grants, and it empowers more partners outside of main link government to take on more work. Which is great, but that's not really us, is it? It's corporations. I'm just trying to get a sense of what we're going to be deciding. So my shorthand for finance is going to raise money, most is going to send the money out, but those committees are looking for this committee. What's the most robust, well-structured program that we can put together? So because they're not going to have the time to dig into all the things that we're looking at here. So we're really recommending a program. The funding decisions for sure are made in finance and the appropriations decisions for sure are made in institutions and in appropriations. So we know that, but they're looking to us to vet a program. And I'm hoping that what we're doing, that what we've been learning yesterday and today will let us say, are we on the right path? Can we do more of it? And where are we facing what we have now and how have we strengthened that? So thanks for that question, I don't know. No, it's just helpful. And again, I'm just raising these questions because they're just questions in my mind in terms of what some of the decisions we're going to have to make are. Well, we suggest strategies. Right. In the corner, they fund programs. They fund something different than we do. Right. In our strategy, then the funding's running. Right. That's right. Yeah. So that's the, that's the, I'm not going to use the word, that's the coordination that we need in order to get results that works. Yeah, and I think for me what I thought, we were having a little bit of a conversation about is whether or not we're going to, and again, I could be ahead of myself, you know, are we taking your structure? Are we considering your structure and expanding it in a way? Are we going to be giving you more to actually do all sorts of things that you haven't done in the past around, you know, clean water? So. Yeah. And I. Which could be exciting. Yes. And great. It could be also, you could come back and say that knife is just. Well, yeah, I think, you know, this is, again, it's very preliminary. Yeah. You're trying to keep an open mind, but I really open to the collaboration. I'd like to dialogue. I think what I, what I saw initially felt to me like it was kind of creating something new. Okay. When we hadn't, but I realized we're not there yet. Right. We should pause. We're all talking about this. And you say what I saw initially. Yes. You're referring to one document. What I saw for a minute, I guess. Okay. So that's not a bill that's created. Okay. Yeah. And that's, but that is why we need folks like you to come in here as it goes through the process because we need, no matter what program it is, to hear from the people that are on the ground implementing it. Yeah. Make sure we're not putting those cocks in the wheel. Right. If they are going to expand, we do it in a way that's going to work for all of you so that, you know, you can get things done because as I looked at this map, I mean, it really is exciting to think about, you know, having somebody closer to projects in each of these districts running and managing these kinds of things. But without, you know, certainly you're going to have to play a big role in that. So our third page is really reflections on that proposal for me and our, it's a lot of it is questions. That's another one. I think we're, I'm sensing that we probably have time. If you wanted to, that's the scheme. We haven't been allowing those proposals. Yes. Right. And so I think we, So this is responding to the proposal, the one that we don't have yet and committed. The one that we, but that's good to have. Clarity, you know, asking for, you know, questions, clarity, preliminary thoughts about, you know, what I shared about existing structures, supporting base and planning. You know, these are just some very kind of broad sweep. There's a couple specifics in there, but they may be, if they don't come to fruition, but these are just some of the initial thoughts that we have had. So we just thought we'd share, again, it's very pulmonary. And what could you, and could you also give some thought to what structure, you know, again, if we're going to be putting out all these projects throughout the state, and, you know, the EPA is watching us, you know, we want to make, put our best foot forward, you know, this is really important to all of us. What kind of structure would work would be another way to also think about this from your end? Does your structure, does, you know, the system that we have now, and what would the expansion look like? And that's another conversation. Yeah, and we could say broad sweep, strength and base and planning. Yeah. And that, sure, we can absorb this, council and districts more. We're not saying we're the only players in the state. Right. We do want to acknowledge the role of the other players. We're not saying, give it all to us and we'll manage it for you. Okay. We're saying, we're one of the players that could do a lot more, and it's in our mandate. It's already written in law that this is a role. Well, and I think, you know, that, as you say, we're trying to find the right framework so that the strongest partners, my sense is that the strongest partners will vary by where we're talking about in the state. We're moving the conservation district somewhere I might be allowed to see somewhere else. I don't know who the 30 hours are now. I mean, I don't know if we start mixing it. But I'm just wondering, Kerry, are you full-time? Yes. As for Caledonia? Yes. You are. Okay. He doesn't really listen to me. I have to share. I have, I have, I have, we're two hats. So I'm basically doing two jobs. But are most of these folks full-time? In other words, again, are we talking about people who are full-time employees that, working nine to five, or would we be expanding people's jobs if we were to to give them? There's a, there's a lot of opportunity for experience. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Great. So thank you for coming in. It was really helpful. And we're happy to come in. Anytime you see a knife coming in. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you for waiting until the other side. Great. Well, lots of coffee this morning. So you've heard the conversation this morning. You know, we're sorting our way through how to continue with this complicated set of state and non-state partners. We've got a new water quality work. And, you know, we're looking for opportunities to do more work better in most effective ways. And so, part of why we're hearing from so many people the last two days is to have a better sense of what each partner is contributing. So, there is not just to reiterate a formal governance re-order bill in this room. We'll take it from there. Very good. Yeah. So, for the record, I'm Charlie Baker. I'm the executive director of the committee, as the chair of the natural resources committee chair for our state association of RPCs, which is BAPTA, the association of planning development agencies. So, you're a little bit familiar with the regional planning commissions and our board is made up of the municipalities. And so, I was going to kind of tell you a little bit about what we did in FY18. So, this page kind of tells you the money you're flowing through that we, you know, help manage in the different grant programs that are currently set up. And then get to how to improve the system, because we very much share deeper interest in making a more effective, efficient system for delivering clean water. Can I have one extra think on that lift? The other thing is I think we're all aware that once how many clean waters changed a lot in the last three years so, part of what we want to do is try to anticipate that change so whatever structures we're settling on they're also adaptable. Yeah, and it is evolving and you know we're all learning more as we get into it and I think we're still in the forming stages. We have some pretty good sense of the challenges trying to be the best way to tackle it. And a lot of our role in water quality really stemmed from the initial clean water three years ago that made sure that municipalities and regional planning commissions had a role in the basin planning program so I'll get into that but thank you for your work on supporting an effective system to date. So that was a punchline at the top of about $9 million was the grants and aid program which was a program that we really developed cooperatively with DEC to get funding really pretty quickly through the RPCs but and we really were just kind of facilitators and monitors kind of what does it look like before what does it look like after DEC came up with a formula to allocate erosion projects we had 173 municipalities participate last fiscal year over 44 miles of roadway were improved that is probably if you want to talk about a grant block grant program grant program where it was really efficient with overhead it was kept as low as it the process was efficient it was just about accountability and getting money out into the ground so examples that's the best one and how that's run is there's a contract between DEC and Northwest Regional Planning Commission on behalf of VACTA so they're and then they farm it out to the other 10 of us there's 11 RPCs and then we and then they pay the towns too after we documented the work was completed so it's just VACTA pays the town whatever and it wasn't big amounts per town but it adds up and how is it that the town knows what kind of projects to bring forward yeah so and further down I talk about the road erosion inventories but the RPCs and then conservation districts some towns themselves are doing the road erosion inventories in my region we happen that comes and working with DC and Jim Ryan there's some prioritization of which segments are the worst and then negotiation really with the highway which project do they want to do first and what do they want to use that month before so it's really you know negotiated with the town but it was also one of their priority projects can you ballpark then you know so roughly 45 miles yeah but how many miles are out there to do where are we in some sort of progress well I'm going to guess that you know that isn't even 1% but what needs to get done but that's that's only judging from my region seeing what was done so I'm not sure exactly of that I haven't seen that the state has gotten all of the road erosion inventories aggregated to know what the need is yet well I would just like to say they've already on some of the steep hills had to start redoing some of the ditches they've already ripped-wrapped which is a huge expense because there's no good way to re-process the rip-wrapped so they're like hauling it out and bringing in new stuff it's extremely expensive so they haven't even got around the town once and they're redoing some of the bad sections of road so it's a huge issue getting off to a good start there's a lot of road work to be done the second program the ecosystem restoration program that's really the called kind of generic program the DEC runs it's got large and small projects and that's kind of the dollar amount that we work with town almost all these were town projects the RPC is really a facilitator we're not the implementer we're trying to help those projects get done the basin planning I think Jill did a good job talking about the basin planning last year we had $13,000 for that statewide this year $250,000 so we got a 20% cut or something in that as did the conservation districts this is a big challenge the basin plans have gotten a ton better than they were five years ago lots of progress has been made they're doing a good job now of kind of identifying where there are needs but the basin planning I'll come back to this the basin planning process does need to be expanded and improved to be able to say hey there's a problem over there somewhere we need to have some resources to figure out what exactly should get done there that part of it whether it's called assessment or project identification but that really identifying what should be done work there isn't enough funding going in there the second piece of the basin planning that needs to be improved is really allowing everybody at the table in that basin to look at the needs and prioritize what should be done more together right now it's a little ad hoc what's ready for that program that could be brought together a little better and the the lack of the things brought together so far is based on what you know necessarily have literally are you going to move at the same time to look at a common list or that is partly happening we each of the RPCs have some sort of whether it's a Clean Water Advisory Committee or I think the Northeast Kingdom I think they call the we each have committees now where we have all the municipalities and the conservation districts and watershed associations and we're inviting people to the table I would say we don't have enough data coming out of the basin planning process to really identify what projects to do so we're identifying high priority strategies but not the individual projects so I've read these complaints helpful and actionable from your point of view can you say something about what additional basin planning work looks like can help you and your colleagues get more projects done yeah and I would broaden that out I need to help everybody I think it's more when we identify the basin plan identifies a problem area it says it looks like there's some high pollution loads coming off of this part of the basin is being able to go in there and spend some time analyzing what should get done and then that would give us doing enough of that work would give us a good set of projects that should or could be done so it's really the more analytic following up to find out the high priority projects last year we had a database and I think it had something like 4,600 projects is this is this I don't actually remember it was a chapter it was this there's a database there's a PC I believe Bird yeah and it's all the projects and how those basically aggregate of all the projects in all the basin plans there is not part of the point I think I'm trying to make is not all the projects the big done have been identified yet so that's the database of projects that have been identified by one part or another so that they aggregate stuff from the districts from the RPCs from towns and I don't know to what extent they have ag projects I don't know how you're admittedly yeah maybe after they're completed but so that's what's been identified so far and I think one of the challenges with what's happening right now is it's more about the project ready as opposed to is it the best project and that was there was kind of a backlog of demand to do clean water projects that has been getting met the last few years we're now I think starting to get into a phase of okay we address kind of the backlog now what and how do we make sure it's effective and efficient okay and that's great thanks for bringing that I mean with John for getting something was as we talked about really stepping up in the last couple of years we have an adequate pipeline of projects and could we refill it at the rate that we were going to complete stuff so that we don't boom and bust which is disruptive to everybody I think that that's a challenge in front of us okay so refilling the pipeline at adequate rate is part of what's stepping up our basic work is exactly right the next few like the conservation districts DC also contacted with the RBCs with the block grant more focus on implementation we have 11 projects committed right now for implementation a good chunk of that money got spent in FY 18 they will be finishing up in this fiscal year then municipal highway storm mitigation that's a program run through B-trans about two million dollars there can you say a little something about block grants what kind of projects are those compared to other projects I think they tended from the projects that we got they tended to be larger storm water projects the municipalities wanted to work on yep the municipal highway storm mitigation that was run through B-trans also tended to be larger projects that had transportation nexus so it would run off from a bunch of streets that also might have been storm water retrofit so that last year we were talking about you know if we're carrying up a road to do some transportation work are we also looking at while we're turning things apart and we also water quality at the same time so that's what nexus you're talking about sure yeah and a lot of this I think is retrofit you know the roads are already there they have run off but it's run off being damaged it's already kind of talked about but we've been doing a lot of work with our municipalities on doing the inventory to prioritize those and then there is also supplemental funding that we seek out through other grant programs which I'm from the Basin Program High Meto Fund my organization they will do some of that as well and so those have helped with a range of different things more on probably the education outreach and so maybe I'll spend just a few more minutes on these last bullets so one big change I think the conservation district started started this conversation and sorry I won't say mic in the side but I think one of the challenges we've had with the I guess I said it but I think one of the challenges that I know about math to take on the it would be great for the committee and the legislature to give more direction to A&R about their relationship with the partners because I think we have the if there wasn't mic in the side it would be there's a grant program that comes out that the partners weren't consulted about how it might work and so we're kind of like geez I'm not sure that is working best but I know we have to respond to time and then we're negotiating there's a lot of time lost because we don't have a cooperative relationship if I think we know who the players are it would be good to just say and would you work with the partners to get money out for this purpose and so there's more of a cooperative agreement and I think they're trying to be good and comply with procurement laws but in this case so how do you fix that? by providing direction that they work with the partners in a cooperative agreement fashion so we want to get to cooperative agreements rather than competitive agreements so that seems like a silly one but it actually has been adding a lot of process unnecessary process and not making the process more efficient or more effective the second bullet really identifying projects more investments needed there I think the districts brought up the need to have the watershed association at the table as part of the basin planning we made a request from the clean water board for more funding for basin planning for that purpose so it's important that all partners be at the table for those conversations the third bullet I think maybe it's a follow up to the basin planning question is there needs to be and I think the agency is committed to developing a tool a better estimating tool so that we can say oh there's a there's a problem out there it's draining this x amount of square feet here's kind of what might get done there so we can get some estimate would that be a more cost effective solution than some other project right now the estimating kind of happens at the back end you know when they're reporting to you how many pounds of pollution got reduced it's because the project's done we need some estimating tool at the beginning so we can say what makes more sensitive should we replace that rip wrap or is there something more cost effective to get the pollution reduction so I think my sense is in the ag world we have those tools like people will look at there's not so much I think that's a global need across sectors is to have better predictive models for the record match and you know council agency and attributes and I think there's a lot of improvement and that's not to say that we don't have some estimations and that we have the model things in the context of the TMDL but when you actually start getting down to individual projects and what type of reductions you see from them our precision sometimes is not as refined I know that there are actually projects going on like as Defitra said nutrient is looking at the contractor with the agency bag is looking at trying to come up with a tool focused on ag projects and we're developing tools on the non-ag side of the equation the next bullet this is more about the clean water implementation report that I think you get from the agency that by you ask them to report what state funding accomplished and so this is maybe more personal suggestion but it would be I think you get a better sense of what was happening if you ask them to report what was done with federal dollars state dollars municipal dollars and even on private property but you're only seeing part of the picture when you see the state funding picture and there's obviously a lot more effort is going on across the state than I think what you're seeing can't report and then in terms of project implementation natural resource projects and then just a point about municipal project cost share obviously what the state is unable to match you know turns into budgetary pressures on the municipality and potential property tax increases so that's the way it is so just something to keep in mind as you think about this and I know there's a lot of pressure on how to raise more money and I should have said I didn't start out but more money is needed to address the clean water needs across the board so happy to answer more questions I think that the preliminary budget we got yesterday from A&R shows a step down about $10 billion from over the last year so spending I would say to be direct about it you know all the conversations leading here to Florida about maintenance of effort maybe even actually in the last year 260 was maintenance of effort plus adjustments for inflation so we would slip backwards over 20 years yeah so but in terms of being able to hold to that I think we one question that will come to us is okay if we do see maintenance of effort if we do find the full funding can we spend those dollars well so that gets back to a capacity pipeline daily and I guess that's a real question for me to use like we've picked up the pace if we stuck to funding at the same level as last year do you is it your sense that we would still be spending those dollars well because we have enough capacity to spend that amount of money well I think as well as we can right now I think some of that money needs to go into the pipeline you know identifying projects and doing those early assessments to get better projects you know in the second year third year because we encounter the backlog to be able to launch I think we had an over reliance on capital at the front end you know and now we need a little bit more non-capital money at the front end to feed the pipeline again you know I don't know what the proper mix is I think probably if you looked at v-trans budget or maybe even your own capital program there's always like 20% of everything and planning good projects and then the conceptual design stage the non-capital part I don't know if that number is exactly right but it might even be as high as 30% so I've always had that number doing capital program work there's always you know it's a good chunk of money that needs to go in to figure out what to do you want to do the right thing before you start spending capital you know the way you have great time lines so that you have the block grant or whatever it comes to you and you have four years of support not just one year so are you seeing are your grant covering longer periods of time yet like no I think we were on the one year cycle I think you know that gets back to me to this cooperative agreement probably you know we're right now we're spending a lot of time just in the responding to RFPs and negotiating and that we should just get into the negotiating up front and it would be nice if it was a two or three year commitment or a four year five year sounds great but I think if we know we're going to have this work to do let's do it and let's have you know annual check-ins to adjust the scope or something without having to reboot like a four year commitment how does that work you get four years worth of money in year one or you get a commitment that you're going to receive a hundred thousand times four and it keeps coming out in chunks I think more of the latter you know it's we have a four year agreement so you're not negotiating the agreement every year and the money is contingent on the ledge yeah and the money is contingent on the legislature approving the money so you know there might be someone the money goes up or down but and we do this with our our own consultants you know we have kind of a shallow agreement we'll do for multi years and we'll update it or as we have tasks that happen I think something like that could definitely work so I can imagine from a fiscal responsibility side some people like all of us would say well we hear about bidding most project done for the dollar and that should definitely happen at the the construction stage and even if we're procuring like engineering services but in terms of the partners that are working on this with the districts or the RPCs and like we're going to be engaged in this no matter what all the time and try to facilitate whichever pieces so I think we could have a different cooperative relationship water quality obligations the work moment so why why are there so many of these just why has it been up to this point just one year of grants rather than multi-year is there something that it's just the decision that's the legislative decision kind of thing why we yeah I don't think there's a direction to do anything else and right now it's all dependent on the annual budget cycles before the agency at the same point they wouldn't have any security about doing any more and the last thing I'll say is that the RPCs are you know very willing and you know interested in supporting if there is a more effective model to get money you know out like that grants an aid where it gives money out quicker very willing to have you know the supporting the idea of everybody in that basin sit around the table and decide you know who should support that and also to flex how we support our our regions you know maybe that you know a few of my towns should be going to a meeting at a different region because they're part of that basin we're not stuck on our boundaries to facilitate this work I guess just a quick question you said 20 to 30 spent on Monday how much of resources are you guys spending commitment anybody like how much of our spend is going you guys paying you back for trying to get grants from us or organizations like you're just it seems like we're very inefficient process that's typically not a reimbursable expense but it's an expense somewhere you got to pay some for the time yeah try not to look at that something you don't want to ask a question you're responding to an RFP you're negotiating with DC before agreements get put in place and that's part of I think you hear is like that's a fiscal strain organizations that are you know we're also governmental entities so we're by definition non-profit we're not supposed to make money and so we're it's a strain but do you have any idea just I don't I really have not somebody should have an idea do you guys do you guys have lobbyists in the building that's actually the association does the association does yeah that's I thought they did yeah I think that's I think it's a valid point I think that's the number that you should somebody in your organization should be able to put a finger on yeah we'll come back with that next time yeah this thing of a cooperative competitive and I'm just trying to make sure I have the right flavor and what that is in mind so within the water quality division they would be bidding competitively to stay funded as a department or division there would be an expectation that they would do that work then the money they received would be awarded who grants competitively like you're saying but the engineering or something like that yeah and I'll speak to the RPC relationships with other agencies so for instance for we have a transportation planning initiative program with them they know they're going to contract with the RPCs every year to assist them doing transportation planning it's a cooperative agreement we they say hey let's adjust the scope of work next year with you know by doing X and Y but the legislature and staff just said you're going to work obviously but it's it's a different relationship than responding to an RFP and figuring out things responding and how to do it so I have a chemistry class any other question so no chemistry is required when you have a whole chain reaction going on there's always some element in that chain of reactions that determines the rate overall reaction rate limiting reagent so if we're looking at water quality work from your point of view where is that what's the rate limiting of all the sentencing all this needs something unrelated to clean water how do you protect that we're raising same movement right you don't separate those it's just transportation fun and the stuff that's coming through institutions that's set aside for municipal wastewater it's that goes for municipal wastewater the same transportation we do Senator Rogers we have formulas for municipal wastewater which are supported throughout the state that's been necessary and then we prioritize who gets municipal wastewater facilities to a degree and everybody supports that and as each entity gets its municipal wastewater facility built and there are others remaining on the list the enthusiasm for supporting municipal wastewater statewide diminishes towns that were waiting their turn on the list of priorities to get things find the critical mass of support for those things no longer exists and the legislature and the state is off to different priorities that's what happens and when small towns who wish to to be supported in wastewater find out that the state's priorities have waned they're told to do it on their own and it is not and this happens over and over again because there's not enough money to go around no, there's enough there was enough money to go around when the plan was made but once people have gotten what many people have gotten what they need the notion perhaps you're correct what are you phrasing for the the notion that there's not enough money to do the rest of the things and then you get on to the next priority for the most part the list that are brought into us in committee are funded I'm not saying that people don't drop off that list but and I think the only thing I would want to build around you know the reason you know is so what if how do you what if DEC were to come and say okay we want to have five projects this year I just want to make sure that you know the work is actually getting done that needs to be straight or straight don't trust man no we don't trust sir if I may I mean we trust somebody good and it says you know we trust ourselves but you trust yourself you trust ourselves so what 15 years from now a different group of legislators going to be here and they're going to say well those were good fellows 15 years ago but our priorities are so you're still here yeah exactly this isn't really a good interesting conversation though no it is it is interesting but important I think the projects coming into institutions the wasteful projects are usually a dozen 15 20 year choosing you're going through you're not necessarily going through 4600 projects that can be there's a lot of them on their list transportation is going too prime on them 4600 they're not they're saying 4600 wouldn't come in the first year anyhow you know I mean it would be whatever the biggest priority so they might have this is going to be 300 the real 31's go first 350 well and if there are 4600 maybe we are able to fund the first 300 and then we know what's coming for next year so maybe we need to raise more money next year that's my perspective and I'm not saying no it's just the direction we're going to go I'm just saying it seems like a better way to plan to me so I'm here in amongst all the conversations that want on the projects one we need to prioritize better prioritization to everybody the data collection goes along with projects because it will provide feedback people monitoring them and it will also help with the models that are underneath prioritizing projects better data made to improve the model and then you'll you'll have a more accurate predictive prioritization process so I'm writing all those three down it's not a crazy idea that's okay I wanted to make a comment about what prioritization means you know it's easy to just like go identify much projects based on their potential phosphorus reduction but whether you're actually going to be able to do that project depends on soil conditions it depends on the landowner it depends on the community cost share you know there's a lot so getting from priority to shovel ready there's a gap there for that phase and that's part of the reason why we have 4600 projects on the list and we're not clear which one is really shovel ready I said there hasn't been enough money put into that pre-assessment scoping we're calling the project development right now whatever you want to call it there hasn't been adequate funding for that so that you know the shovel ready that the town's already agreed to make its part the landowners already agreed to you know because you can just say yeah this is a big bang for your bucket of phosphorus so what's your bottom line in that as it relates to it there needs to be a more up front funding when you talk about prioritization you need to get to its priority and its shovel ready all the conditions are in place that when they're you know to actually be implemented those other committees they are that's what we're saying there are other processes in state government that preliminary work has been done and it's moved up through the chain and it is shovel ready and it's ready for money and I'm basically saying we need more funding to do that work and I agree and you and the RPCs you're the people on the ground that are that would right that would funnel those projects up right I think that's fair for the agencies even to say show me that this is ready make a squad witness to what's happened 20 months well I think it's worth not forgetting I think two points one is that the type of money that we're dealing with is incredibly important here because capital funding for the most part is not the type of funding you use for this pre-design conceptual planning phase work so generally speaking when we go to the institutions we do not want us it's not related to the brick-and-mortar project they don't want us using bonded money for that that work so the color of the money I think we agree that is a particular situation and we have been primarily capital heavy for the past series of years that is proposed to change right and I think the other thing just to be clear about unlike most capital or transportation projects municipalities and other institutional partners have a role and a desire to do this pre-planning work before it ever comes in for design and being shell-ready that doesn't exist with this this sort of set of projects we're trying to drive interests amongst the world both finding problems and solutions to those projects so it's it's different than what we're used to in the capital planning process whether that's a building capital planning or a transportation capital planning process so this has been a very capital discussion interesting we need to go on to our next witness so I would just ask also because to circle back around we'd also talked about which would be the state playing a role the state is ultimately accountable to the EPA so the state playing a role in what the regional goals are hitting those nutrient reduction levels and setting those barriers and that's going to play in to your projects prioritization and development of bank for the buck is what are the goals of each region in nutrient reduction and how does that weigh into projects so just sort of circling it back around to where we initially started Mathenauer or so ago so thank you Mr. Sander thank you very much someone from discussion we talked about partners here all day long and we never we never talked about what happens when one partner wants to walk away from their previous partner or the other partner wants to walk away and we behave as if it's a partnership but it's not unless there's a pre-natural agreement amongst these partners it's a meaningless word it's meaningless I said the word shall in this but any legislature in the future can change shall be un can remove shall and figure and then Vermont Yankees thing the one request that Vermont had was if the money runs out who's going to pay if it's left over and the choices were all the rate payers in New England benefited from Vermont Yankees or just the rate payers in Vermont and we would not get an answer from them they can regulate us so we're going to head down there with I'm talking about partnerships and money being in the bank with no with no prenup on who's left hold in the bag if Vernon and Prattler all the money and it runs out so that's thank you keep our eye on make sure we own the loose track of that thank you for coming in thank you for having me thank you visited with us before this is my first time visiting with you guys if you could introduce yourself for the record that'd be great absolutely I'm Lynn Manow and I'm the director of watersheds united Vermont base where watersheds united base where oh base where I'm based in Montpelier Montpelier absolutely I just wanted to wait before I I've prepared some remarks to you based on what I thought you guys were doing and one thing just based on the conversation that we were just having you're a psychologist by any chance what was that a psychologist no we need one in this row it's just thinking about you guys were saying in terms of those priority projects and can't we just have that list to be able to choose from and the thing that I think is so challenging for all of us working in this field is it's a juggling act to get to meet our goals and there's that list of however watershed health and water quality it's figuring out how we can choose those projects that will get us there and it's not always going to be a certain prescribed projects because often we're working with landowners it's uncertain funding sources there's so many pieces to put together but I think of it as like this big group of projects that then we need to choose from and it might be this selection that ends up being a priority to get to so we definitely need more assistance and guidance in terms of prioritization but I feel like there's always that kind of built in with this type of work it's a complicated juggling act that's all I'm going to say but then I'll start from the beginning so thank you so much so here I only brought one copy but I'm happy to send this to all of you guys it's okay because if you hand it out I'm going to go but thank you Senator Bray and the Committee Networks and Energy for Giving Waterships United Vermont on behalf of Watership Groups an opportunity to speak with you today as I mentioned my name is Lynn Monow and I'm the director of Waterships United Vermont and we call ourselves WAV so that's how we'll be referring to the development of Watership Groups work and then I think I was asked to talk about some successes and challenges with how the Clean Water Initiative is working right now and then maybe some thoughts on the proposed funding distribution model that I've heard about and some criteria that I feel like is important as we move forward but Waterships United Vermont is an association of Watership Groups to protect and restore Vermont waters and WAV supports groups in three different ways we provide information resources and training to Watership Groups throughout the state we provide opportunities for collaboration and partnership among Watership Groups and also with partner organizations and we also act as a representative and a voice at the statewide level after Tropical Storm came Watership Groups that were working on really similar kinds of efforts and projects across the state began having conversations across Watership boundaries and realizing that they had a lot to learn from each other about best practices and how to solve common challenges and so groups got together to form Watership United Vermont as a statewide agency to help support that process who supports your work financially Foundations and profit were yes okay yes and then we also received some funding recently through the DEC to provide through the Clean Water Initiative and I'll describe that in a minute so we provide weekly information to groups on funding opportunities events trainings to keep everyone connected with what's happening at the state level and then we host two conferences a year to provide training on both technical topics and also on organizational topics and then some standalone trainings as needed throughout the year so who are these community-based Watership groups and why are they so important to Clean Water so we have roughly 40 member organizations across the state including some conservation districts these groups vary in size and in focus so we work with some really small groups that are all organizations and they may focus on just a couple of key activities in their watershed for watershed protection and restoration maybe a group just focuses around water quality monitoring or on river cleanups or in a very specific area but most of the groups we work with are small staffed non-profit organizations and they're really working on a full suite of watershed protection activities and they're also key partners for the state in reaching our clean water goals so just to give you a sense so maybe you've heard of some of these groups before I'll just list a few of the groups maybe there's one in your one in your area but so the friends of the Winooski River the White River Partnership Connecticut River Conservancy Franklin Watership Committee friends of the Mad River friends of Lake Champlain the Lewis Creek Association the Memphromagog Watership Association the Missus Goy Basin River Basin Association and others across the state any embedded in county? we have some volunteer groups there and we work closely with so there's you're reaching go ahead so first of all Connecticut River Conservancy works across the state and then we have the southeast Vermont we'll continue the conversation about he only focuses on he's really worried about the rest of the state that's not true so you're thinking of like the Hudson yeah the Hudson River okay yeah sorry I guess my county is in county assistance it's okay because I'm thinking and you're talking about yeah yeah yeah so we have the Batten Hill Conservancy which works across Vermont and New York and and then we we also have the Hussein River Watershed Association down in that area so yeah sorry no thanks that's okay and then we also work and then that's so that you got just actually to a really interesting question which is like oh wait is there a watershed group here and here and the answer is there are not consistent watershed groups across the state we have as I said we have some areas where we have more volunteer groups and some really staff groups and we rely really heavily on working with the conservation districts are really acting as the watershed group in their area so for instance the Poltny Meadowee Conservation District there isn't a watershed group partner in that area I work really closely with Hillary Solomon in that area who's really working on that full suite of watershed protection and restoration activities and in cases where we may have a conservation district and the watershed groups then those groups end up really complimenting the watershed or on working in certain sectors so the conservation district may work more on agriculture in a given area where the watershed group may work on storm water management with the landowners so there's great partnerships and collaborations going across those two groups just a quick question so for the ever groups do you have any guesstimate as to how many people that are their talent here or actual just trying to have some sort of scale oh gosh well I think it depends so I'll just give an example so friends at the Moonewski river face right here they have two part-time staff working and then when they're doing projects they'll bring in they'll engage other partners they'll engage when they're doing water plantings they may have 100 to 200 volunteers in a season working to help them so even for our staffed groups the power of volunteer support is huge yeah and some rely more it varies a lot group to group a lot of these groups so many of these groups have started really organically with concerns in their local watersheds for their rivers and streams and so they've grown in different ways so some end up relying more on staffed and paid work crews say to do repair and buffer plantings others may use more volunteers and one of the things that we've seen which is really important is that those organizations with more capacity are able to be project managers and project partners with the state in order to accomplish our clean water goals kind of hit everything that I was going to hear but I want to think the legislature I know you guys have been I've been hearing some of the grappling today that you've been really working I know throughout the last couple of years to find appropriate levels for funding clean water and I really appreciate also the significant efforts of Treasurer Beth Pierce in developing the clean water report and agree that we need a substantial investment in clean water and we feel strongly that we need a dedicated long term funding source providing sufficient funding to meet all of our obligations under the Clean Water Act I'll share just a few of my thoughts on how the Clean Water Initiative is working and areas that we feel there could be improvements to increase our effectiveness in accomplishing clean water goals so as we've all talked about and I'm sure it takes time to develop and scope priority projects it takes time to do education in communities and outreach to specific land owners to design different stages of projects to implement projects on the ground and to monitor and maintain projects in the future it can take several years and these projects are not possible without a commitment of state funds and a consistency of state funding programs not only are state dollars through the Clean Water Act to conduct on the ground projects but watershed groups also utilize these funds to leverage significant private dollars from businesses, foundations and individuals as well as federal dollars to accomplish this work I was talking to one of the watershed groups yesterday and she was saying that they are able to leverage usually 100% on the on the state dollars and so the work to be able to to raise those private and federal dollars as well and it's always a Herculean task to piece together those different funding sources in order to do those projects and another reason that I think that it's really important that groups know ahead of time that they have a commitment of these Clean Water dollars to be able to then leverage those funds to do these projects DEC staff are key partners to support the development and implementation of the Clean Water projects and watershed groups work closely with watershed planners and river scientists and of course other staff permitting partners etc. as needed and working and communicating with these with DEC technical staff makes these projects smoother and more efficient there are areas of the state where watershed planners have more time to engage at the community and watershed level and this level of engagement would be beneficial in all parts of the state I know that it's a challenge to find sufficient funds and right now what we're finding as groups is that there are not sufficient funds to support the development and implementation of projects that are ready to be implemented for example there are not sufficient funds for the projects that groups are ready to engage in both for the project so Justin as an example apparently there were applications for over $850,000 worth of river corridor easements this year and only $350,000 $325,000 of funds available so those are projects where the land owner is ready to go for a conservation easement on a river corridor which is an excellent way of protecting our resource instead of having to do restoration in the future not available the same is true for riparian buffer plantings for the restoration work additionally there's often as I've heard you guys talking about earlier of non-capital dollars for important projects for this year's March ERP round for the ecosystem restoration project round we've been told that DC does not have additional FY19 funds available for the non-capital projects so that just limits the type of projects that could be done and not only are there not enough funds for these clean water projects but one of the other challenges is that DC is understaffed in terms of grants administration and the DC grants program and business office partners are capable hard working and responsive but they are understaffed and this is challenging because there are timing issues that impact water groups ability to develop, design and implement projects efficiently and effectively in the next months to receive grant agreements and these delays can mean missing key windows for field seasons and create challenges for non-profits unable to plan when funds will be available we believe a more fully staffed DC grants program would go a long way to improving efficiency and getting our projects completed on the ground in addition as I heard mentioned already project development is really key and sometimes the that stage of a project fund they have time it's time intensive and hard to measure which makes linking funding to outcomes a challenge but without project development priority projects will never get to the design and implementation phase and we appreciate that DC has started to recognize the importance of this work and has developed two new block grants this year where we'll be able well has applied directly to watershed groups and the districts have a similar grant for conservation districts but we hope that this will expand in the future so we can get to the scale needed to be able to have the projects ready to implement I just want to be aware of your time it's 12 o'clock you guys walk out the door at 12 that's the goal so I just want to be aware of that so I guess I will just say that that so part of the challenge has been uncertainty in of continued dollars and types of funding available year to year which has not allowed for consistent grant programs or timing of grant rounds but we feel that reconsidering funding mechanisms and funding project timelines could address all of these issues well guaranteeing more on the ground outcomes so I just wanted to mention we've talked about tactical basin planning I see that you guys have it up there and so watershed groups have been important partners in developing and implementing tactical basin plans watershed groups work directly with conservation districts and with regional planning commissions and are often primary implementers of tactical basin plans as the structure currently stands conservation districts and regional planning commissions receive funding to develop and implement tactical basin plans and often rely heavily on efforts and actions of watershed groups while the NRCDs and RTCs are in state statute watershed groups are still a key partner in this work we have seen the benefits in watersheds where there is a strong robust watershed group and tactical basin planners are strong with their input in the development and engagement and meeting goals there has been discussion recently at the Clean Water Board to designate some tactical basin planning funds to watershed groups and I would encourage the legislature funding for watershed groups efforts in this area and even beyond tactical basin planning we believe that an investment in local capacity and local partners doing the work will go a long way towards accomplishing more on the ground work I want to make sure you guys have time for questions I also was going to provide at least some thoughts on the distribution model moving forward I have submitted some comments as part of the Water Caucus on some key issues that I feel would be really important for you guys to make sure our present and any funding mechanism moving forward I would just highlight a few of those if that would be helpful if you send Jude please your great testimony we'll make sure everyone gets it so just you know in looking at the model that has been proposed and I know that you guys have not actually come up with there hasn't been a bill as far as I know there is a water bill but it does not include that proposal so that is still circling sort of out in the water world yeah but it's not a there's no legislation okay well I would just mention a few key points and one is to make sure that whatever model is looking at the protection of natural resources and the importance of anti-degradation that we want to make sure that we aren't only focusing our dollars where we have impaired waters but also preventing the waters of the state from getting to that impaired point and so I feel like that's one of my concerns if you focus only on looking at dollars per pound of phosphorus removed yeah I think we're on I think okay yeah and then I'm just going to emphasize that all in and the need to protect all waters of the state looking at the Hudson as well and the Connecticut of course and Lake Memphermegog and the Champlain Basin and just emphasizing that by sector and by region that's been the message of the last few years and we want to continue to see that and that just thinking about health of our waters and our watersheds and that while it's important to focus on our TMDLs and our reducing our nutrient it's also critical that the state protect other functions of our rivers and that includes aquatic organism passage flood resiliency healthy riparian and in stream habitat and flood plain restoration and protection and so it's just it feeling like it's really important that we think about things holistically and that often when these are often achieving mutual goals but we need to be thinking about it holistically and then just also as we're talking about as we're making decisions watersheds cross municipal and regional boundaries as you all know and so any regional efforts would be more effective and efficient focused on watersheds and aligned with basin plans and that overall while we encourage regional collaboration efforts and can see the benefits in a regional approach to manage some clean water dollars we believe that DEC has the technical expertise and that clean water funds that some clean water funds certainly be managed at the statewide level many partners have worked over the years to coordinate and align work at the state level because there is value and efficiency in coordinating efforts across the state but regardless of the delivery system we will be most successful at the groups working in their communities developing and implementing projects at the capacity needed to engage in a full suite of watersheds protection and restoration activities so just some of those things to think about and I can provide the full remarks but thank you so much for inviting me to speak and I'd also be happy if you ever wanted to hear I know that we haven't really had watershed groups ever come in and talk to your committee if you're ever interested in hearing more about what these projects look like and they can share better than anyone on the complexity of some of those projects I have a new meeting so I can so thank you committee thank you all our guests today that's very a mental healthy conversation