 This meeting is being reported and or transcribed. All right. I think we're recording now. So my name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Cannabis Control Board in Vermont. Today is Thursday, July 15th. It's 9.30 and I'm calling this meeting to order. I have a few administrative comments before we move to the agenda. There was some federal news yesterday. Senator Schumer Booker and Wyden released the Cannabis Administration Opportunity Act yesterday. From a very broad perspective, this bill proposes to reschedule cannabis federally, ensure that interstate commerce can be achieved, and importantly would allow for automatic expungement of cannabis convictions, and it also has a number of grant programs to promote social equity. We'll get this up on our website later today. If anyone is interested in any of the details of that. We have two positions posted. We have an administrative services coordinator position, and we have a general counsel position. Our administrative services manager position closed on Tuesday, and we have a number of good applicants there that we're going to start scheduling interviews with. And later today on the agenda, we will see that we are going to be taking a vote on our consulting services contract. So we'll be announcing the names of the people that are the founders for those. And yesterday also, I believe it was public, but the full advisory committee of the Cannabis Control Board has now been appointed. And so we'll get those names up on our website soon. So today we're going to continue our fact finding into the priorities that we've identified in Act 164 and Act 62. Today's meeting is dedicated to some of the energy and environmental concerns related to cannabis cultivation. We know that indoor cannabis cultivation is the most intensive agricultural crop in the United States. And we've done a lot of good work in this state to reduce our carbon footprint, electrify the grid, build out our renewable energy sources, and promote efficiency. And so we really don't want to drop the ball and undo some of that good work by taking indoor cannabis cultivation. And figuring out how we can kind of do that safely and effectively. So under Act 164, both the Public Utility Commission and the Department of Public Service were asked to provide the Cannabis Board with some recommendations around best practices with energy consumption and cannabis cultivation. We have a number of great witnesses today. We're going to hear first from the Public Service Department to walk us through some of those recommendations and really orient us to energy concerns as they relate to cannabis. Before we do that, I think we should approve the minutes from our meeting on July 13th. I'll move to approve the minutes from July 13th. I'll say it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So we have a packed agenda. I'm just going to start moving directly to our witnesses. Our first two witnesses are T.J. Poor and Barry Murphy, both from the Vermont Public Service Department. This is my first kind of hybrid online and in-person meeting. So I think it looks pretty good so far. So great. Great job. Don't do it. Yeah, right. So and congratulations on you all getting established pretty quickly after getting appointed and moving pretty quickly. It's great. And I look forward to be one of your early witnesses here. So for the record, I'm T.J. Poor. I'm the Director of Efficiency and Energy Resources at the Department of Public Service. And with me today is Barry Murphy, Energy Programs Manager here. And we submitted some recommendations to you on the energy standards for cannabis establishments. And we will look to talk about that today. I am going to pull up a presentation. I think we sent this to you, but I can just slide from here if that works. Okay. Can you all see my screen? We can. Yep. Okay. So, so I just wanted to, I'll run through a couple of high level things, give you a sense of our approach and then leave it to Barry to really talk about the technical details of the recommendations. So, I wanted to first orient you to who we are and what we really do. I'm not sure how familiar you are to the Department of Public Service, but really we're the rate payer advocate and what that. What that means is we represent the public interest in matters regarding energy, telecommunications, water, wastewater, and that really including the cost planning oversight for electric distribution and efficiency utilities. So there's a lot of jargon in there, but least cost planning is really making sure that our energy services are provided with an eye towards cost effectiveness that includes both economic and environmental concerns. So our charges are littered all over statute, but we have affordability, reliability of the electric system, greenhouse gas requirements that we need to plan for renewable energy requirements, etc. And the breadth of our utility regulation and planning. To that end, we also develop the comprehensive energy plan. We're in the midst of that process now. It's distinct from the climate council's climate action plan. The energy plan sets a vision for Vermont. Right now it's 90% renewable by 2050 and has actions to kind of to get there and we're we're developing that and looking at it as a strategic plan this year. We also serve as the state energy office partnering with the Department of Energy, you know, focus on innovation and new programs make sure we're implementing best practices in the state. And then we maybe most relevant for today is that we update and promulgate rules for commercial building energy standards and residential energy standards. And in that we run a large stakeholder process where we get a lot of input on on what the code should be and then we issue rules and rulemaking. And we do a lot more, but that kind of just I just wanted to give you a sense of, you know, our perspective of really looking for cost effectiveness, best available technology at the least cost and kind of trying to balance upfront costs with long term feedback plus environmental concerns while ensuring everybody is served by energy. So just just a few few tasks there. Moving into the today's presentation what I really will cover is the go over quickly what the department's charge was were specifically called out in X 164 and then talk about a few specific statutory considerations and how we approach the community to briefly just talk about what we did in developing the code and then as I said before when we get into the recommendations that purple box there will really be Barry's area to dive into what our recommendations actually are. So as I said at six 164 called out specifically the public service department and asked us to provide recommendations to you all that include the statutory language is up here on the screen. They include recommended building energy standards recommended energy audits and then energy efficiency and conservation measures for cannabis establishments. Specifically, we wanted to call this one out because the language on the previous slide said we should make recommendations whether there should be building energy standards, if those recommendations should be different from commercial buildings standards standards. And so we we take that as it implying that commercial building energy standards at a minimum would would apply and as we do that we found that hey there's no definitions or requirements for greenhouses in the CBs if I use or Barry uses CBs that CBES is just the acronym for commercial building energy standards. And because greenhouses are typically exempt through an exemption of farm structures within the CBs statue, but then also in statue. It's clear that cannabis growing establishments are not not supposed to be regulated as farming or considered an agricultural or rural crop. And so that means then they don't fall into that exemptions for CBs that's in the rule. And so that means CBs needs to apply. And so that's the kind of minimum standard. And with that we what Barry will present is that there are our recommendations include both recommendations for you know commercial buildings, normal buildings and then also for greenhouses. And this this slide just shows really a group of the folks that we reached out to and engaged with as we as we developed our standards. So, I'm on state agencies, the public utilities commission specifically called out in statue agency of agriculture, public safety fire safety. We also worked with the energy efficiency utilities efficiency Vermont who I know is on the schedule later on today and Burlington Electric Vermont gas, because they really are the ones that implement our efficiency measures we do oversight of them but they're actually program designers and so they have a lot of good input and in particular efficiency Vermont also has program key account managers and program managers that can connect us with the folks on the ground and we asked them and they they did actually connect us and get to get input from from growers and people who'd do this. These rules. We also, in the bottom right National Buildings Institute was our contractor they do code work across the country and have been involved in in writing energy standards on cannabis growing establishments elsewhere. We also interacted with Massachusetts who just recently promulgated their rules for for energy standards for cannabis growing establishments and the resource innovation Institute who is a nonprofit who advocates for really efficient growing practices essentially if I sum that up correctly. And then there is kind of is our process I realized I left something out in the slide but you know we had initial meetings with folks, you know, small groups of one or two or three of these organizations, so that we could develop a straw proposal. And we left out as we put that straw proposal out for comment and and got got a lot of great feedback. We revised that proposal and then gave another opportunity for written comments and you know throughout this time we also engaged stakeholders and meetings as well. And, and then we ultimately leading to the final proposal that you see you have before you to our knowledge or to my knowledge and very can correct me if I'm wrong. But we are not aware of any objection to these standards. And I think that is a result of the process that we went through. So with that, I'll give Barry a little better introduction. He's a energy programs manager at the Department of Public Service. He is. He's been at the department for over a decade now. He does a lot of oversight of our commercial programs, commercial efficiency programs in terms of value and vacation and it's really our technical expert. He he's the one that runs the process for the commercial building energy stand standards update and make sure that we're we're putting in that we're we're We're requiring the best available cost effective technology that that that we can. And so probably still didn't do you justice Barry, but I'm going to turn it over to you now. Good morning. As you said, we went through a compressed but fairly extensive process in order to arrive at these recommendations. And obviously you've read them all. Your understanding, obviously not being experts in this particular area is not perfect. So what I was thinking I would do is rather than read back to your recommendations is trying to provide some color to them and some explanation, etc. So as to know why we got there and what that actually practically means in terms of what has to be done within a building. So if we can go to the next slide please. TJ. Is it not showing up on your screen. It went on my there we go. There we go. It just took a little bit of time. So as TJ said, Mr poor, I forgot. Sorry. As I was commenting previously, when we looked at this we realized that we're going to have to look at greenhouses as well as normal buildings and greenhouses is very much a different beast for us as it were to look at because it's something that we've never considered or had to regulate or think about regulating previously. So that took a fair amount of review, which is why we bifurcated the recommendations of the greenhouses and normal buildings. You might hear me refer to them as opaque buildings. But these recommendations will apply to obviously opaque buildings and mixed light buildings as well equally and greenhouses obviously are a separate track again, depending upon obviously the amount of mixed light building you're talking about. They might technically slide into the greenhouse category, but that's a definition that is yet to be decided by yourselves. So we're concentrating on basically five, six main areas. As you as you can see from this table, the majority of what we recommend for the big buildings is basically just CBs, maybe with a few minor modifications. But for the most part, the recommendations within the commercial building energy standards are entirely applicable to this process except for specific areas such as the growing areas, etc. Where we obviously have to have slightly different considerations due to the conditions within that space. Greenhouses, again, is a is a new thing for us. So I had to do a lot of learning as far as this went. But as we get into the specifics, if you have any questions on anything or you're looking for any additional clarification on things, please do let me know. I'll just be more than happy to delve a little bit deeper than I might have done otherwise. The next slide, please. When on mind. So for indoor buildings or opaque wall buildings, basically we're recommending that the envelope just be CBs. There's no need to change that. Same for the lighting requirements apart from the growing areas. For those areas, obviously, we needed to consider a whole new metric and measure, which was photosynthetic photon efficacy, which until we started these I'd never heard of. And as a result, it took a little bit of digging to understand what it actually meant. Now lighting in these spaces is very intensive. You know, they use an awful lot of energy, which is why we done research and we eventually decided to go with the 1.9 for these buildings. Now the photo, the PPE, because I don't want to say photosynthetic photon efficacy too often, because I'll just trip over it. The PPE is basically it's a measure of input energy versus output that you're looking for. So the higher the number, the better. Once you get above two, basically you're locking in using only LED lights. One of the major comments that we got from a lot of them, the stakeholders that we talked to was that while LEDs are efficient, a lot of the growers aren't convinced that they produced the same results as metal halide lights. Which is why ultimately when we decided on the 1.9, we decided that that brings us to the threshold for LED, but it still allows for double-ended metal halide, which is that most high efficient metal halide lights you can get, to be used to allow comfort level, shall we say, for growers and others in Vermont. It's still an efficient light, but it's not quite as efficient as the LED, but as I said, it does allow for that choice for the growers, et cetera, within Vermont. It was the same issue with CVs as far as the HVAC or heating and ventilation systems go. What we discovered through our research was that four species that are used for growing generally it's high heat, high humidity. And a lot of our standard requirements such as heat recovery and economizers on the system would be counter-intuitive as far as serving those species. For instance, heat recovery could promote mold within the space. And economizers would never actually run particularly well when serving those species. And they would just basically use a whole lot of energy and not actually deliver much benefit. So that's part of the reason why our recommendation would be that we would be exempting that portion of the building, not the entire building, but the growing portion from the building from being served by heat recovery and economizers as well. And obviously, there's different ways that they do growing within these buildings such as the carbon dioxide enrichment, which I frankly had never heard of before until now, which is going to require different standards as far as the ventilation go. But I believe that fire safety, et cetera, will be addressing that particular issue as far as their own recommendations and requirements go for growing within these spaces. If we can go to the next slide please. So as I said, greenhouses, totally new environment for us and obviously far different from a normal commercial building. There have been some standards developed around greenhouses within the IECC, which 2021. Currently our code is based on the 2018 version of the international energy conservation code, which is what the IECC stands for. But those requirements are slightly different from what we are going to be recommending here. For example, we're recommending an envelope with a U-value of 0.7. What that practically means is a double poly wall with an air gap or double greenhouse glass, et cetera, just to improve the thermal resilience of a greenhouse, especially if that greenhouse is going to be used for year-round growing. Because obviously if you're going to be heating those spaces to high temperatures in order to promote growth, especially over the winter, you're going to have an awful lot of energy lost as a result of growing it within a greenhouse. Well or not, that's ultimately a path that is chosen by the grower. It's something obviously that they would have to be aware of as far as their overall energy costs were going to be. Moving on to lighting, you'll notice that we recommend a lighting PPE of 1.7, which is less than that, which we looked at within opaque wall buildings. The reason for that is basically we received comments regarding having the same standard for greenhouses as opaque wall buildings. And when we done a little bit more review and research, et cetera, on the issue, we discovered that in terms of the errors of use associated with lighting, additional lighting within a greenhouse versus the actual cost of it, you never actually would make back the energy costs. You'd never save this much money, sorry, in the energy costs as you would if you had put in the higher requirement of the lamp, the 1.9 lamp, you would never make that money back. So as a result, we felt it was reasonable to require a 1.7, a slightly lower standard, which is coincidentally also the same standard that is required in many other places as far as greenhouses go. HVAC equipment, not necessarily something you would traditionally see in a greenhouse, but obviously what you're going to see there is mostly fans, et cetera, in order to move the air around. But obviously, should they decide to install an HVAC system, it would be having to meet CB's requirements, et cetera. We do have some outs as far as greenhouses go, as you're probably aware. So the uses that only use a relatively low amount of energy annually for heating would be exempt. I forget exactly what that number is at this point, I am afraid, but it's fairly low. So they would be exempt from the requirements for HVAC, et cetera, as well as the envelope. Basically, because all they're doing is using a small amount of energy in order to extend the growing season into the shoulder months, rather than year round cultivation. And the other piece is that lighting associated with growing as well, if the total load is less than 40 kW, again, the intent there is that it would only be used for extending the growing period and the shoulder seasons. And that is all reasonably consistent with what other jurisdictions have done. And also reflected a lot of the comments that we had received initially when we had proposed something a little bit more stricter. If there's no additional questions, I can certainly move on to the next page. I have a question, Barry. First of all, thank you to you and TJ for getting us these recommendations so early in the process. I had a question about, I guess, the envelope portion of this conversation, and maybe it's better suited for colleagues at Efficiency Vermont or colleagues at the Agency of Agriculture. Coming from the Agency of Ag, I used to be in the room when farm structure determinations were made from time to time. I recognize that the greenhouses in state kind of run the gamut of what kind of condition they're in, what age they are, so on and so forth. So how attainable is that minimum standard for, from a broad stroke view, 30,000-foot view of the greenhouses that are currently in existence in the state and what kind of cost would be associated with getting them up to these standards, recognizing that a lot of these folks with these greenhouses may not have had to really make sure that they're up to commercial business code? As I understand it, Efficiency Vermont actually does run programs around greenhouses and the U of 0.7 is actually one of the factors that they try and attain. As to the actual cost effectiveness, et cetera, all of it, I can't state categorically what that is, but I would say that if Efficiency Vermont is running a program, then it has to be cost effective. That is one of the statutory requirements that EBT have when it comes to deploying measures, et cetera, within the state. One of the things I didn't necessarily address when I was talking about envelope was air barrier testing and air barrier requirements. We aren't recommending, obviously, that there be an air barrier requirement, but we would obviously encourage it, which obviously would minimize large air leakages and thus heat, et cetera. But as I understand it, the program that Efficiency Vermont runs is basically attaining this value of 0.7. And as I said earlier, it is attainable through air gaps, double poly walls. So theoretically, I guess it would maybe double the cost of material and probably a little bit additional labour time. But much beyond that, I would defer to my colleague Lauren when she is going to be presenting a little bit later. I'm sure she would be more than happy to address the issue of cost effectiveness as far as that requirement goes. Yeah, I can jump in now, Barry, so I don't forget to address this. But yeah, you're absolutely right. Right now, we require a double poly for polyethylene covered greenhouses, and that would get folks, the double poly with an air barrier would get folks to this U value of 0.7. So this requirement would basically require folks to use a double poly on their greenhouses. That's becoming more common. So we didn't feel like it was that difficult for folks to meet, particularly if they're growing year round and heating the greenhouse. That's very reasonable in a Vermont climate. And I think on glass greenhouses, the 0.7 U value requires them to have some kind of efficient coding associated with the glass greenhouses. So we didn't feel like this was particularly difficult if folks were going to be growing cannabis year round. If you were growing produce or other types of greens or plants, you may not need this level of poly on your greenhouses, and it's not required for them right now as other agricultural crops, but this seems totally reasonable. It is because we currently run a program from an existing single poly to a double poly. If this becomes the energy code requirement, we wouldn't be running probably that program around a double poly because that would be the baseline. So just something to note, we do currently do that program. If this were to be the energy code, we would probably stop doing that for cost effectiveness reasons, as Barry mentioned. Thanks, Lauren. Look forward to hearing more from you later. Barry, I didn't mean to detract from your presentation, but as as Lauren indicated, I know, you know, depending on your operation, if you're diversified, if you're doing other things with produce in greenhouses, some of this may be new to folks that are, you know, looking to jump into this space and just wanted to make sure that everybody who's listening understands where the standards are going, not just here, this is what we go with, but where standards are going in other jurisdictions as we look at growing in greenhouses year round. Of course, yes, that's perfectly understandable. I mean, as was mentioned earlier, the growth of cannabis is extremely energy intensive. I think it's something along the lines of like 300% more energy intensive than growing tomatoes in a greenhouse. So obviously everything you can do to minimize energy use and heat loss, etc. When you're doing that is something that should be encouraged and required. When you're dealing with such a high energy use industry. So if there's nothing else, I'll move on to our next slide. Okay, so obviously the next part that we were kind of like charged with looking at were recommendations around energy audits. We had a lot of discussions around this internally. We will not be something that would be required as far as, you know, annual third party audits looking at energy use and buildings and analysis, etc. What we ultimately ended up with is the summer model to many other jurisdictions that deployed, which basically results any self reporting. Methodology, where they would basically report to yourselves their annual energy use along with their production numbers. Which would allow us to obviously, you know, debating one by the other give us a kind of either grams per kilowatt hour or kilograms per megawatt hour. Whatever ratio it is that ultimately we decided upon that would allow us to basically track the energy intensive nature of that building over time and allow us to see if there's any like large increases in energy use or decreases in energy use. Which would allow us to obviously flag areas of concern as far as large upswings in energy use, but not a similarly large increase in production. As being indicative that there is something changed within that facility that would be worthwhile having investigated to make sure that there is nothing wrong or there's still following the recommendations or requirements by the Cannabis Control Board as to their energy efficiency. There's a number of different tools that can be done with that in order to establish those baselines. Obviously there's a portfolio manager. It doesn't allow tracking of production within that, but that should be straightforward enough in order to do a comparison from the energy use information that would be contained within portfolio manager and any production information that they would provide. Also one of the stakeholders that we consulted with, RII, they have a proprietary software tool which does allow both tracking of energy and production within it. I believe Massachusetts uses that or uses the version of that for their growers within the state. So I mean both these tools obviously they exist and there is likely more other options out there as far as being able to track both energy and production. Very quick question. Yes. Yeah. So that proprietary software through RII just curious is that and you might not know the answer. I think you said Massachusetts operates on that platform. Is that something the state operates and folks kind of update their numbers in accordance with their license or is that proprietary software that each individual license holder would seek themselves? As I understand it, it's an individual, each grower, the state requires them to use that tool and the state is given limited access into each of the grower's accounts so that they can view the information that's presented within there. And obviously as far as establishing what a particular baseline would be for any building, I would probably think that you're looking at the energy use and cultivation production of year two rather than year one. Mostly because it would take time for the buildings to kind of get their processes etc. in order and so basically trying to establish a baseline on the year one production and energy use is probably going to result in a lot of issues. As far as knowing whether or not they're actually on track and meeting the energy efficiency requirements and they're producing as effectively and efficiently as they could. If we move on to the next slide please. So one of our recommendations was that all of these buildings be required to be solar ready. Within the CBs we have Appendix CA which basically determines how that can be done. In most cases it involves looking at orientation of a building in terms of sun exposure, shading etc. Also requires no identification of pathways for conduit etc. and keeping space within an electrical panel for the appropriate size breaker in order to have the solar on that roof. For greenhouses obviously it's a little bit different but if they are in an appropriate space for solar then they should identify an area where that could be done and have space within a breaker. So all relatively high level and relatively cost free as far as that requirement goes. Within CBs we do have a building type specific requirement for the amount of solar they would have to put on a roof. Obviously facilities such as this is not, wasn't considered when we developed that list. So we have looked at those requirements and we would recommend that if a building were to decide to install solar, I don't know why that was so hard, they would require to do a minimum of 0.5 watts per square foot of the floor area of their building or greenhouse. That number is actually rather conservative. The intent when we were setting these numbers within CBs and this number is to set a minimum threshold but hope that when people look at it in terms of overall cost effectiveness they would realize that they could actually install a whole lot more solar. But there's a vast difference between requiring people to put something in and encouraging them to do more. And we're trying to encourage them to do more rather than require because what we would find is that people would just put in the bare minimum rather than look beyond what was available to them to actually do in terms of cost effectiveness. Another piece that's in here is something that's near and dear to my heart. That ventilation systems having a filter capable of removing or reducing the order from plant drying if it's within a mile or so of the premises. The reason I brought that up is that I live very close to a farm that is growing hemp. And while the smell of the drying plant isn't terrible it is intrusive and is very noticeable. So obviously if you have a large facilities etc that are doing this and they're doing it year round I can imagine that if they're close to any kind of residential area etc. This would be a welcome addition to their systems on behalf of their neighbors. And the final recommendation was the use of thermal curtains for greenhouses that operate year round again to try and minimize that heat loss over the winter period. We have had great success with programs similar to this within the tier three world which is a program that we run in concert with the disputing utilities or the electric utilities. And efficiency Vermont that we've used for tomato growers etc. And it's really been successful in reducing overall energy costs especially during the winter months. And I believe if we go to the next slide it's thank you. So is there any clarifications any additional questions any comments thoughts that you might wish to bring up at this point. I don't think at this point I have a few questions for the end. Why don't we get through the presentation. Is that essentially it. So that was the end. I have some questions on licensing conditions. Sure. You might don't mind jumping back. So this ability to serve letter from a DU. You know I imagine that being kind of part of the application process. But I'm curious you know from a not in this industry but other regulated industries from a commercial perspective. Our processes with the use to kind of demonstrate that they have this capacity is that is that infrastructure for lack of a better way to describe it already in place. Or is that something that we've got to work with the use potentially to kind of set up so folks that would be reaching out to these views know where to start. You know so on and so forth. What I mean you just speak a little bit more about about how that process with would look. Yeah I can certainly do that. I also will apologize because I realize I skipped this slide. So that's entirely that's entirely on me. But I seen the Mr. Pearl looks very eager to answer that question. Well you may be able to chime into here Barry but I your ability to serve letters are a normal thing for anybody who establishes a new connection. Or has kind of a major renovation and so utilities have to have to provide that and know that they have an ability to serve. You know think about a ski resort who wants to expand snow making operations or something or build a new lodge. They'll need to get an ability to serve letter because you know that could require new lines or a substation. And in part of the reason for that is so that the utility can do the analysis and ensure that you know the goal is to not have all ratepayers subsidize one business. And so if the answer is no then there's there's a number of options you could add you know other distributed technologies to kind of limit the the amount of demand you could be interruptible. Or you could pay for upgrades whether it's going to three phase or or you know an extreme scenario a substation I don't know that that would be the case here but the ski resort example that's that's a case sometimes. Yes. Assuming that we're not in those extreme settings. What's the typical timeline from from engagement with the EU to getting that official ability to serve letter. It's relatively quickly I can't remember the exact timeline but it's something we can get back to and I think it's within a month or two. Yeah. And obviously to that point. Part of what would be required is that the grower or corporation or whoever it is is seeking this ability to serve letter would have to have a reasonably firm understanding of what their electrical load was going to be. And at the time that they would being applying for it which is which brings us to the piece that and as I said I apologize for skipping this because it is rather key that the completion of an energy management plan which would include like doing some analysis around what their expected electrical load energy load would actually be. So that they could as I said no provide that information to any of the utilities to make sure that they would be able to supply that load on any particular on the particular circuit. Because as DJ said it could very well be that where they're planning to put it there's only two phase power and they might have to run the three phase line or they would have to be transformer upgrades etc. And obviously the issue there is that if you're going to do that then we are should the burden of that cost necessarily fall. No our general viewpoint is that the the person that is creating the burden should be the one that's mostly responsible for paying for those upgrades rather than the repair as a whole. But within that energy management plan. Not only would you be looking at terms of not how much energy you're using but how you would be meeting the requirements as required by the the board. What kind of envelope you're doing including your air ceiling you know how you're leading is going to be set up you know your age back your controls etc. All of these things would be identified within a plan which would allow when it's been reviewed know a good understanding of what's been planned along with giving you a reference for how that building should be operating into the future. Which means that if any changes etc happen you have a good reference to as to what the baseline building was originally. And I would probably recommend that if there's any major updates or changes to a building that the energy management plan be updated every time they come in for real licensing assuming there is going to be a real licensing process which obviously I don't think you've decided to. Yeah. I've got to just quick follow up on that and maybe you've answered it already and I missed it. Can the ability to serve happen remotely in the utility company kind of just look at you know internally or they have to do a site visit. As I understand it the ability to serve is entirely based upon the circuit that the building is going to be placed on and the loads and demands are currently there. And then with the projected additional loads and demands of the new building. We are not it that circuit would remain within tolerance and for capacity etc meaning that is still able to serve all the loads that are currently on it as well as the new load and still have additional capacity within that in order to make sure that those if there's any. Large events such as no weather etc where no people are running lots of air conditioning. On that circuit as well as the the growing facility that there was going to be enough. Room I guess within the wire to run that additional power without no causing any issues. And it's the process just one more thing on the process. It is a little different for each utility but you know for example Green Mountain Power there's there's a web page where there's a form you can just you know it opens to an email address that you can submit the relevant information. And if everything's all good you'll just get a letter mailed to you basically. And you know the information just like Barry said just info on the facility whether it's new construction expansion the type of use the motors the air conditioning the lighting etc and and then they can they can do an analysis of the circuit. Is there any hesitation from your office and I recognize you might not be well suited to answer this question it might be better suited for the utilities but I would imagine there's going to be a lot of interest in the more rural corners of the state. Is there any hesitation that the utilities that service our more rural areas in northern Vermont so on and so forth won't have enough capacity to potentially need energy demand or or. No at this point no you know at the high level at the transmission level there's there's head room in the system and then for the some of the for now and then some of the smaller utilities especially in the north actually load is a really good thing because there's more generation in the northern part of the state than there is load right now and so it actually would help to soak up soak up some of the renewable energy generation in the area as opposed to right now some of its curtailed at cost of repairs so. Actually those are good places to to put into the. I just didn't want the more rural areas to feel like they're up against another barrier. You know. It actually it's the other way I think there's an advantage to the sighting it in Vermont electrics territory or elsewhere I've been part of the state especially. Thank you. I just have a clarifying question and forgive me if I missed or misunderstood something your recommendations apply regardless of the size of the greenhouse. That right so somebody has a small greenhouse versus a very large greenhouse or very large building the same recommendations apply. Well again that's where the overall load of the building would come in for instance a small greenhouse would likely not use the same amount of energy. So it could very well be exempt from some of these requirements simply due to the total energy use same with the lighting piece simply due to the size of it it might not have. Such a large overall energy footprint which would mean it would fit underneath the low load building exemptions that currently exist within CBs and we would be recommending be applied to greenhouses as well. Overall though I mean I don't know what the threshold necessarily is but I would say that these would apply across the board from like. Reasonably moderate size to larger we wouldn't necessarily differentiate that it is something we could do but it would obviously require an awful lot more work in order to determine where those thresholds should be. In a fair and equitable manner and generally with codes unfortunately codes are really designed to be best fit for most not perfect fit for all the way we write them because simply within commercial buildings etc. There's so many different options of things that could actually be done going in a very prescriptive manner in terms of overall requirements would be very difficult to do for every single industry that are covered by these codes. And the public comment that you took or the written comment that you took in this process is that on your website somewhere or is that somewhere available for reading? I want to educate myself a little bit more about the various different options and comments that you got. I do not know if they're on our website but we can certainly talk to the stakeholders and have them provided to you assuming that they would give us permission to do so. Actually I think they're public comment so we can do that anyway but we'll let them know that we're going to share them with you. I had a quick question. I heard that using kind of smart controls to maybe flatten the load demands or the load you know by having kind of alternating lights turning on and off having sections and also maybe doing lighting off peak. Other than just cost savings for the consumer or the grower are there benefits to kind of those smart control measures and trying to kind of either flatten the load or to kind of go off peak? Yeah you want me to take that one Barry? Yeah okay on you go. So it depends on the rate structure but yes there can be benefits to all rate payers so if you were on a rate structure where you just have a say 12 cents a kilowatt hour or 10 cents a kilowatt hour rate flat and you were a grower and you installed smart controls to avoid all the utility peaks. That would provide a benefit to all customers because that's how the utilities get to get charged by the regional grid operator but often there will be rate designs that pass all those benefits just onto the consumer. So the avoidance of needing to kind of build more infrastructure the avoidance of regional charges that are allocated based on kind of single hours of a month. Those provide benefits to the utility and then the rate payers but there's rate structures and designs that are often set up especially for large users to pass those benefits just most if not all of those benefits to the customer. And so it depends a little bit on who gets those benefits but certainly the utilities want that kind of controls those controls to happen and the avoidance of those charges so they're encouraged to kind of pass as many as they as much as they can to that customer. I would also just highlight the fact that as I understand it for the cannabis growth especially within buildings it's a very controlled environment and it has reasonably tight margins so for HVAC etc. That's a large almost constant load so that's going to be there as long as they're growing it's going to be there 24-7. The real controllable load within those buildings or at least within that section of the building would definitely be the lighting and as I understand the lighting schedules could be as much as 18 hours on and 6 hours off as far to encourage growth. That could certainly not being a cultivator myself and not knowing if that's just has to be cumulative or if it has to be consistent or not. There is the possibility obviously of installing control so that at times of system peak etc those lights could be turned off so that they're turned on again. But what I don't know is what that would necessarily do in terms of impact on like scheduling for no staff that have to be in the building etc. Would that mean they would have to have like people in over the building overnight etc. So there are obviously other concerns etc. Beyond simply controlling the loads as far as the growers are concerned. But all of that is definitely possible and that is something that we are kind of looking at actively within other industries as flexible load management programs which would do some of things to that turn down the HVAC systems that would reduce lighting power etc. At times of high demand. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you really for adhering to the timelines in Act 164. I think you might be the only agency to actually do that. So thank you. And you're not on our advisory committee but I feel like we're going to have a pretty close working relationship moving forward. So thanks for joining us and we'll be in touch as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for having us. So our next witnesses are from Efficiency Vermont. Lauren and David are you with us? Great. We are. Great. I don't know if you have some information for us to start thinking about. Yeah, Lauren, let me know if you have trouble sharing your screen. We do. Thank you very much for having us. By way of introductions, my name and for the record, my name is David Westman. I am the regulatory director for Efficiency Vermont and with us today is Lauren Morlino. She is a technical expert on many things related to lighting and indoor agriculture. And so she will be giving a technical presentation for you all about how we anticipate being able to support the cannabis growing community in Vermont. I wanted to just start by just applauding the department for who you just heard from for a very thorough and open process for collecting information and soliciting feedback. We were part of that process that TJ and Barry were referring to. And so we had a lot of engagement with them and a lot of opportunities to provide our input. And by and large, we support the proposal that that is before you from from the department. And so we applaud them for their great work there. I wanted to just give a short introduction to what Efficiency Vermont is before handed over to Lauren. Efficiency Vermont is the regulated utility providing efficiency services statewide across all of Vermont, with the exception of Burlington Burlington Electric Department handles the efficiency program there. And yes, handles the efficiency programs for its own gas customers. So Efficiency Vermont is really focused on providing efficiency services for all electric customers outside of that Burlington Territory and users of unregulated fuel. And that certainly encompasses a lot of farms and a lot of growers who are contemplating a transition from, you know, an agricultural crop to this new cannabis crop. So one of the things that we've really been thinking about is what how will some of these transitions look how will growers be impacted by the either the purchase of new equipment or the requirements that are are put on them by, you know, this new licensing requirements. So one thing that I think is just important to say is that we help customers go above code we help customers basically achieve the highest level of efficiency that is cost effective to achieve. We provide incentives and technical support, as well as just generally general guidance. And that can be in the case of onsite visits to prescriptive rebates, meaning you just show up at the hardware store and the and the and the discount is available for you either at the cash register, or through a convenient online rebate form. So our real purpose here is to make it easy for Vermonters to achieve the highest level of efficiency possible. And that is how our performance is based. And so that's part of what we thought about in the context of how will these transitions work for farmers is how can we help them become more efficient. And I think with that is probably the best transition over to Lauren who's really going to be the technical expert and showing us how to do it. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Dave. And thanks to the cannabis control board for asking me to speak today. I'm really grateful for the opportunity. And I just want to give you a heads up to I have contractors of course coming during this time slot today. So just in case I have to take a quick 10 second call, or if you hear other things happening. Sorry about that. So, yeah, my name is Lauren Marlino, and I am the emerging technologies and services manager at efficiency Vermont. Today I'll be covering who efficiency Vermont is and Dave gave a great introduction of why we care about cannabis energy use and then what we're currently doing to support this industry. Hopefully you can see my screen. Yeah, great. So yeah, we are the statewide energy efficiency utility. Our goal is to reduce the cost of energy for all Vermonters by helping families businesses and institutions understand and make better use of their energy and reduce greenhouse gases. We provide direct support for Vermonters through incentives training and technical advice. We also achieve market transformation through supply chain engagement and partnership with energy service providers, also known as distribution utilities or de use. And over the life of efficiency Vermont, we've saved over $2.8 billion for the state, 12.5 million metric tons of CO and 12.5 million metric tons of CO2. Equivalent of 2.7 million cars on the road. Today, Vermonters are 38% Vermonters electric bills are 38% lower. Thanks to our work. And we've touched over 10,000 efficient energy efficiency jobs. And we have 400 businesses that participate in our efficiency excellence network. The efficiency comprises over 16% of Vermont's electric portfolio delivered at half the cost of purchasing new power. And our customers really consist of anyone who pays an electric bill in the state of Vermont, with the exception of the city of Burlington who has their own energy efficiency utility under the Burlington Electric Department. And we work closely with BED to make sure that our services and incentives are seamless to Vermonters as much as possible. So now I'll dive into the work we've been doing in this emerging market, which we usually call controlled environment agriculture. Over the last several years, we've been providing the services I just mentioned to a wide variety of CEA customers from small residential home growers to greenhouses of all shapes and sizes, even large commercial indoor grow rooms and processing facilities. We help all types of growers, including fruits, flowers, veggies, mushrooms, herbs, and of course cannabis. Efficiency Vermont is already leading the industry in our support to cannabis and other growers, despite the fact that our largest volume of customers is still to come. And that's a lot of you on this call. And so since this is an emerging market, and that is my specialty at Efficiency Vermont, I've been presenting about this work for several years, and I love showing these maps demonstrating the large influx of cannabis markets, even just considering the last three years of legalization. So black shows fully legalized recreational cannabis, and the lighter lightest green shows fully illegal canvas with medical and decriminalized in medium greens, respectively. So you can see as I moved from 2019 to 2020 to 2021, there is massive legalization of cannabis across the US and so utilities like us have been hearing about and preparing for this market, while Vermont legislators have done the difficult work of planning the legalization logistics. This next graph shows the energy use intensity of historically high users of energy by sector. Cannabis is at the bottom in red, and this shows that on a per square foot basis cannabis businesses use more energy than any other industrial process we've ever seen. Cannabis businesses also have some of the highest energy burden, also known as the amount of income spent on energy costs. So most of these customers are using a majority of their margins to then plug back into the business in energy costs in states and territories where cannabis has been legalized. The addition of electric load associated with cannabis is significant in Vermont. We've seen we have had very few new industries and new construction coming to the state. So this marks a large potential opportunity. We were recently talking to Sacramento Municipal Utility District in California, and to give you a sense of what they're seeing the majority of their new construction projects in their territory are large cannabis grows. This graph shows that alongside other emerging industries like electric vehicles and data centers nationally cannabis cultivation has a similar growth rate. The lighting, moisture and HVAC required to provide the most favorable growing conditions are estimated to be equivalent of the energy required for 3 million additional cars nationally. And again nationally the cannabis industry spends $6 billion in energy, the same amount as all federal government buildings combined. Lighting load, even though it's only shown at 38% here drives the majority of these other loads, especially air conditioning and dehumidification. If you if you can spend more of your energy getting the light to the plants, instead of energy escaping via heat inside your growth space, you can reduce this entire energy pie. This is an aggregate of many different girl operations from about 10 years ago and while loads vary by facility and technology type this breakdown of energy use is generally still applicable today. Inefficient girl operation of medium size can easily use $20,000 in energy per month. That's what we're seeing with our current customers. So now I'll jump into kind of what we have been doing in the space so far. Quickly, I'll just mention that we do have an online prescriptive cashback rebate for qualified LED grow lights for residential customers. We were the first in the US to offer this type of incentive. They get $100 off an LED grow light that qualifies for the DLC quarter culture list. These products are ultimately designed for high quality commercial growing, hence the large $100 rebate. We also steer customers who are growing easier plants like microgreens or vegetable starts to lower wattage and intensity lights like LED shop lights, which are incentivized at the point of purchase through efficiency Vermont. We wrote a blog post clarifying which type of light you might use for which type of plant. And it was the most popular efficiency Vermont blog post ever. So we know that lots of folks, especially since COVID-19 are growing all kinds of different plants, including cannabis at home. This graph shows the lighting and cooling savings associated with replacing incumbent technology lights with LED grow lights. You can see there are significant savings on the wattage reduction from something like a high pressure sodium light to an LED. That provides similar photons to the plant canopy. And you can see that there's also cooling savings associated due to the fact that the LEDs run less hot than high pressure sodium or fluorescent technologies. These are some examples of the greenhouse rebates that we currently offer. You'll notice that some of the rebates are prescriptive like variable frequency drives when you get a certain amount of dollars off, depending on the horsepower of your pump or motor. In that case, customers can determine their rebate upfront. In most cases, though, customers will need to call us to enroll their project with us. We'll need to do an analysis to determine how much the proposed project would save over the baseline technology and therefore how much of a rebate the customer would receive. We've tried to include as much information as possible, like up to 50 cents per square foot for thermal and shade curtains so that customers can understand upfront the maximum incentive that they might receive. However, I'll get to this later, but these projects are so complicated that we really need customers to call us and provide us with information about their business in order to receive accurate savings and a rebate estimate. Note that these rebates are subject to change and depend on where we land for final energy code decisions. Efficiency remote is only able to provide incentives on products and facilities that are performing above and beyond energy code baseline as Dave mentioned. And you'll notice we do have the polyethylene upgrades and thermal curtain upgrades in here currently. And again, that depends on where we land on the energy codes and whether those would continue. So when you call and provide us with your information, we actually create a custom greenhouse model representing the different systems and schedules happening in your space for the controlled environment agriculture projects. This is crucial to getting the analysis accurate because as I mentioned in previous slides, the interactive effects between the lighting and HVAC are very important and significant. When you reduce lighting load, the HVAC load, watering rates, dehumidification, etc., is all affected. The energy model allows us to accurately report the potential energy savings to you and the state. And I'll mention too, this energy model is actually being looked at by other states. It's extremely advanced and we're leading the industry here in accuracy. This is an example of a very cold day in a heated greenhouse at this farm. We helped them outfit their greenhouses with controllers for heating systems, which automatically shuts off the heat when the greenhouse reaches a certain temperature. This action is shown in dark blue. Before the controller, the farmers were needing to go into the greenhouse and manually turn the heat off themselves demonstrated in the light blue line. The greenhouse model allows us to understand what each day of the year might look like while trying to maintain certain conditions in the greenhouse and also incorporating Vermont's extreme weather outside of the greenhouse. We also provide incentives and technical assistance for indoor grow rooms. You'll notice most of these incentives are custom. Again, that's because these are some of the most complicated systems and conditions we've ever dealt with, and the energy models must be run in order for us to calculate the most accurate savings. In a custom project, you will be paired with or customers will be paired with an energy consultant who will do in-depth modeling of the space. And just to set expectations, we will ask customers a lot of questions to get to that accurate savings analysis. VFDs will be prescriptive. So those, again, you can calculate yourself based on the information here and what types and type of pumps and motors that you have. Here's what a model of a grow facility might look like, including flower rooms, bedrooms, employee break rooms, corridors, mother rooms, offices, storage, trimming and processing rooms. So we modeled the entire business to figure out kind of what's being used where and what different schedules are happening. So to review, custom rebates are available for cannabis cultivation spaces, including greenhouses and indoor grow rooms. We also provide incentives and technical support on drying. And even last year we did a webinar in partnership with UVM Extension, distribution utilities, resource innovation institute, and the division of Vermont division of fire and safety. That can be found on YouTube at this link. And on the last slide of this deck has a lot of resources I mentioned within the presentation. And hopefully folks will be able to access that so that you can dig into our services a little bit more. Additionally, in processing facilities, we can meter things like concentrator machines for customers to determine how much energy those are using. We can also provide support on laboratory or processing room ventilation and finally refrigeration for industrial process and cold storage, like ultra low temp freezers or walk-in coolers. So if you're a customer, you might be asking yourself, what do I do next or how do I get started? And the answer is really to call Efficiency Vermont to enroll your project. In fact, we prefer that you call us early and often. We cannot provide retroactive rebates on custom measures because they are unique to each facility. We want to make sure that you're choosing a product that's going to work for you and your plant needs. And customers really drive this process. We're just here to help. Make sure that you're following up with relevant information and keep in touch regularly to ensure that you'll receive a rebate and the support that you need. Things that we might want to know include the location of your facility, equipment you're thinking of purchasing and the price or quotes that you've received. Schedules of lights on, lights off, HVAC on, HVAC off, watering the number of cycles per year that you're growing, number of grow rooms, processing rooms, other spaces, square footage of each. Hours of operation, like when are you running your facility and how long can you avoid certain peak times of day, for example, 5 to 9 p.m. Are you working with engineers, HVAC and lighting specialists? Do you have a system design or drying or photosynthetic photon flux density layouts that you can share with us? I highly recommend working with engineers and specialists as these grow rooms are not easy to design. And it makes it much easier if we have things like mechanical drawings or lighting layouts to work with you to make sure that we're giving the plants exactly the energy and nutrients that they need. And of course, you know, customer schedule availability is really important because we'll probably want to do site visits in a lot of these cases, so matching up our schedules is really important. Also, we suggest that you contact your distribution utilities. They will want to work with you. They will want to make sure that you have the right setup so that you're not creating negative downstream effects like brownouts in your area. You will need to make sure that they have the infrastructure set up for appropriate power for the size of your facility, and you may want to ask them things like which rate will I be on? What will my demand charges be? What time of day should I try to avoid running my lights? Do I have enough power nearby for my proposed facility? And if not, is it possible to get three phase or a line extension to my site? Finally, I encourage you to participate in the public energy code conversations. This is how you will determine what your, that your facility meets state requirements. And so I'll quickly cover an important area in the energy codes on the next slide that we worked with the Department of Public Service and the Public Utility Commission on. So as is mentioned in the previous presentation, the current energy code recommendations to the Canvas control board include a lighting PPE of 1.9 for indoor gross spaces and 1.7 for greenhouse spaces. Efficiency Vermont supports the Department of Public Service and Public Utility Commission proposal. They've done a thorough and fantastic job choosing these cost effective minimum standards that will allow for both affordability and efficiency in this emerging market. The highest standard which you can see by this top bar here would be the DLC horticulture specification and that requires all LED with additional requirements including but not limited to a five year warranty and 36,000 hours of lifetime. Depending on your design, LEDs may or may not be right for your facility. We provide support for customers that will be going above and beyond energy code. Our incentives will be aligned with the DLC specification. And if the energy code recommendations as currently written become reality, Efficiency Vermont will be supporting the DLC specified fixtures through financial incentives for those who choose to outfit their facility with LEDs. We also currently provide incentives on thermal curtains and I would love to continue the conversation around the cost of thermal curtains. Right now our energy model does the analysis on each of those greenhouses to figure out which are cost effective in which we're finding that the thermal curtains are extremely expensive. So I'd love to continue to talk about that and whether it makes sense to require that from the outset, or whether that's something that we should, you know, continue to provide cost effective incentives for. Finally, I've included a list of resources here for customers to check out or for the cannabis control board. And thanks again for your time today. I'm happy to answer any questions about what I've covered in this presentation and just generally our doors are open and we're ready to hear from folks. Thank you. Any questions for Laura or David? I just have one quick question. Lauren, could you say that statistic that you mentioned earlier about you said the energy for growing cannabis, I didn't quite catch all of that statistic. Oh, sure. Yeah, so let me go back to the correct slide. I think it was this one. So, yeah, I said that in states where cannabis has been legalized on the majority of their new load or new construction projects in their efficiency utilities are our cannabis customers. So lighting, moisture and HVAC required to provide the most favorable growing conditions are estimated to be the equivalent of the energy required for 3 million additional cars. And that's on a national basis. Yeah, and then I also mentioned that the cannabis industry spends around $6 billion in energy annually. And that's about the same as the federal government's buildings combined. Thank you. I've got a quick follow up on that. It's probably hard to isolate this, but did we see an increase in load when Vermont legalized homebroke two years ago? Oh, that's a good question. I don't have visibility into that with the distribution utilities might. Yeah, I mean, it's noticeable. Yeah, it's noticeable definitely on like a home by home basis. I'm not sure if in aggregate you would see much of an uptick, particularly if folks are growing under the legal limit. But it is, yeah, it you can definitely tell on kind of a home by home basis, especially if they're cooling. So if they're not using LEDs and they're using high pressure sodium, it's possible that their tents are getting so hot that they're needing to add a lot of fan power and a lot of cooling. And that adds a significant amount of load for for home. And I would add to that, only that those are sort of theoretical load growth that I completely agree with Lauren's assessment that maybe an individual home may see that kind of uptake. But I follow the sort of the system wide impacts pretty closely. And at this point, there's no special consideration really being given for like a wide scale growth due to home growing operations. It's going to be very isolated to those, you know, one off, you know, growers who choose to do that in their homes. When we think about load growth, we're thinking about penetration of, you know, like every other home installing a heat pump or an electric vehicle. So, you know, you're talking about tens of thousands of applications in those situations. And I do think that, you know, depending on what that home grower would decide would be a very localized event and probably not visible from like a statewide or even a substation level. Yeah, Lauren, and I jumped on during Barry and TJ's presentation to just talk about, you know, envelope. I'm going to get all the terminology wrong. And full of thickness, I guess is a reliable better way to describe it. I didn't know if you had anything further to say there. I would imagine that there's some folks that have older greenhouses that they've run produce in that might be interested here. I know David had kind of mentioned efficiency. Vermont tries to help people get above and beyond codes or standards. So if, let's say, for instance, I had a greenhouse in my backyard, it's dated. It wouldn't pass muster if these are the recommendations that the board goes with, you know, it's still still a good idea to give you guys a call and kind of see how we could work together. You know, so to speak on, you know, getting to a place that works. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely give us a call. You know, the current program really is designed for folks who have existing greenhouses with a single layer of poly that are upgrading to a double layer of poly with an infrared film. And so that is kind of the cost effective option for those folks. That being said, you know, a lot of our customers aren't growing cannabis year round in those greenhouses. In a lot of cases, their season extension right now. So if you were growing cannabis year round in a greenhouse, it would absolutely be, it would absolutely make sense for you to have a double layer of poly with some kind of anti condensation and infrared film. And so that's why we felt like that was really reasonable. And as Barry mentioned as well, that came from other states who have already implemented that for their cannabis customers. So yes, absolutely give us a call if you have an existing greenhouse that you need to outfit. But I think it's totally reasonable to ask folks to use double layer poly for new construction greenhouses. Yeah, so so by the diversified operation and I'm just trying to add this to my portfolio. Maybe you're not welcome to answer this question. Heat in. So I think, you know, it would it would be helpful, normally on those really cold days. You could also end up with like more moisture in your space. But again, you can always add other each back or fans to circulate air to avoid kind of moisture concerns. It's a good question though about kind of we see a lot of existing buildings being proposed for kind of new cannabis operations. And so I think that's a good conversation to keep having is, you know, are there different requirements for barns that are being fit up as compared to new newly built steel buildings. I think it's a it's a great conversation to have with the public. There's lots of folks who are kind of converting their, their businesses. Great. Last question and I had to put the two of you on the spot and feel free to define answering this question but as mentioned in, you know, the last presentation. Yeah, so I think there's, I think it is difficult greenhouses have always been exempt from code zoning permitting in Vermont and in a lot of cases it's actually really difficult to figure out where they are or how many we have even they pop up a lot. You know, in some ways I think regulating them and understanding how many there there are and how much energy they use is really important. That being said, it's going to be difficult for those folks who have never had to deal with energy codes to come up to speed. And I think it's also a slippery slope with greenhouses because if you make, if you make really intense regulations associated with greenhouses you could end up moving folks inside into indoor spaces to cultivate their, their cannabis and that uses even more energy. So it really depends. I think they've done a really great job understanding the needs of growers and putting a reasonable amount of requirements in place. But that is something that we've heard from from cannabis growers is, if it becomes too hard, I may just have to build an indoor grow. And that, that has bigger energy implications than the greenhouse. Thanks Lauren, providing space to comment as well, but don't, don't feel the need to. No, I think Lauren said it very well. I think that for someone who's been around the commercial energy codes for a while now. They really do go quite deep and I think the department and the Public Utility Commission, along with the assistance from Lauren and others on their consultant team really did a good job of understanding the needs of growers and identifying that there are parts of the commercial building energy code that really aren't applicable or shouldn't be put into place and they made certain exceptions there and I think Barry identified a handful of those locations. So I think it's, I think it's a very reasonable approach based on what, based on what was presented and what we saw in the draft. The, the, you know, the thing that Lauren mentioned about the need to calling us and approaching efficiency Vermont for a, you know, a custom conversion of, you know, the existing unregulated greenhouses into this new codes really can't be understated because certainly there will be some code requirements put into place for those types of applications. Certainly there will be new codes for in a fully indoor non greenhouse application and they're going to be very energy intensive and Lauren and her team will be able to run those energy models we have as she mentioned a best in all to help people identify which technologies, which lighting which economizers which dehumidifiers, you know, which energy equipment is going to be best suited and where in your facility because it's equally important that, you know, not every room in that in that building or not every room in your in your growing operation is going to be treated the same way. We saw that reflected in the energy code and so I think that's fair. The really the next step for for growers looking for that conversion is to call Lauren and her team and go through that custom approach to really find where the energy savings can be for them. That's going to be unique to their, their building their, their, you know, their structure, all of those, all of those opportunities. Lauren and David were joined today by two of our advisory committee members from the agency of agriculture and they're going to be working very closely with us in this space and I'm just curious if you're okay with it. If you have any questions for our witnesses while we have them here. It's Carrie and Stephanie, by the way. Yeah, we'll take questions from anyone. I did have a question and I haven't, can you hear me okay? I think. Yeah. Lauren, I appreciate all the work you put into the model and I had to think about this myself a little bit over time. Stephanie and I created the hemp program and have been eating around the cannabis space for a while. If you went back one slide where you're measuring the sort of yep, that was it. The PPE output of the lights, sort of some of the research that I looked at and it was granted a year ago. I don't know if things have changed had suggested that if you're measuring outcomes and the outcome being the amount of cannabis produced per watt, the HPS was still sort of doubling the outcomes, the production amount of the LEDs. So if we're going to be using twice as many watts of LED as we are in HPS as our efficiency lost and how would that affect the modeling that you've done? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. And I think in a lot of cases these are not one for one replacements. We see sometimes there's one LED to two high pressure sodium. Sometimes we see two LEDs to one high pressure sodium. So when we do the modeling, we actually do a photosynthetic photon flux density mapping exercise. We make sure that the plant canopy is receiving the same amount of photons pre and post putting in LED. And so that allows the growers to basically maintain the same conditions, regardless of how many fixtures are installed. We also use this DLC specification because there are a lot of, I would say, lower quality LEDs out there. We point to this DLC specification because they provide things like the PPE right on the website. They also provide spectral content. And so all these questions that have historically been challenges for growers are answered in a lot of these kind of high quality third party tested products. Historically, you're right. The Watts program of high pressure sodium has been hired. That's starting to change with these high quality LEDs. And the trick is really getting the right LED replacement for your high pressure sodium. And that being said, that's one of the reasons why we worked with the department to the Department of Public Service to make sure that LEDs weren't the required, you know, the minimum standard. Because we know that a lot of growers are going to have trouble moving from high pressure sodium to LED. That's why we're here and that's why we want to incentivize these higher quality LEDs. And so, yeah, it takes a lot of work to get that right. And that's one of the reasons we wanted to allow some high pressure sodium double ended, you know, very efficient high pressure sodium in the state to begin with. So that people could grow with what they feel comfortable with, and then get incentives for going above and beyond that, that code requirement. Does that answer the question. It does. Thank you very much. Yeah. Any other questions? I just have a comment. It's really basic. Can you guys hear me? I'm kind of far away from this. I just think it's important to define what we mean by greenhouse. Yeah, I was going to ask something about that. Like, I don't know that we don't have to talk about it now, but so people understand when these rules apply to specific buildings in the envelope is a high level structure, like a structure that cannot be taken down permanent on the landscape. And then the other item that I was thinking, which I think you touched on a little bit is diversified farm operations and when you use that building. We're both farming and for cannabis cultivation. When do these codes apply? Like is it like, how do you tease that out in a landscape where many, but we want to strive for efficiency in all farming practices across the state. But when does the code actually apply? I started to crack that can of worms, but now it's going to be a lot of fun. What are you going to be doing over the course of the next, you know, in the same building? Well, another caveat and Lauren and David, if you have a comment in Stephanie and Kerry, too, I know that even in the PSD racks, they do signal that a greenhouse is only considered a greenhouse if it's in if it's standing for 180 days or more. So depending on your operation, depending on when you're planning to plan cannabis in that greenhouse there. We got me to figure out a lot of them when these standards do apply. But I don't know if you have any comments to Stephanie's question or my caveat to Stephanie's comment. No, absolutely. I have the same questions. We hear that a lot from customers, you know, they're integrating their existing farming practices, whether it be greens and tomatoes with their plan cannabis operation. So I think it's definitely something that, um, yeah, we should address. I don't have any answers. I have similar questions. Yeah. And one more on how this crossover is into the tax so that we're not developing. Yeah. Anything else for our two witnesses? Quickly, Lauren, if you wouldn't mind sending me a PDF of this presentation, I can get it on our website. Sure. Yeah. And would an email with I just want to make sure that the resources that I linked are available for folks as well. So PDF won't have that probably. But, um, yeah, happiness. Yeah. Whatever information you want me to, or you want us to throw out there, feel free to up to my way. We can, I think we can find a way to have the PDF, um, display the links at the same time. It's a, it's a, we can, we can work that out. But no problem. And thank you for the offer because that's what we were hoping to hear is, um, you know, putting this in the hands of people who are interested in these resources. And I would again, the next slide that Lauren had was a was a list of resources that we were hoping members of the community thinking about this conversion would think about and a lot of resources that efficiency Vermont has put up on its website. And Lauren, was there anything you wanted to highlight there? Um, we have a new cannabis and indoor grow page for rebates. It's very similar to the slide I showed here. That shows kind of what we currently cover. But yeah, I just wanted to mention, you know, we've, we've done some marketing specific to this industry, knowing that we'll have a lot of projects in the next couple years. So, um, yeah, all of this should be really relevant and helpful for folks. And yeah, always, you know, feel free to call us at this number to enroll your project or just to ask questions. Happy to help and thanks again for the opportunity today. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, obviously the kind of performance measures or, you know, statistics you showed us are just incredibly impressive about what the work you've been doing. And clearly, we're a little bit ahead of the game on the cannabis area, at least you all are. And, you know, it's that establishing incentives in this business, which I think is always kind of a great approach. So thank you for your work. Thanks for being here today. On our agenda is public comment. We're going to do this in two phases. We're going to start with the folks that have joined via the link. And so if you'd like to make a public comment, please raise your virtual hands. Once we finish with those folks, we're going to move to the people that are on the phone. So we'll start with the folks. I see some hands going up. Ram, do you want to unmute yourself? Hi, folks. Let me know you can hear me. I'm having some trouble with connection today. We hear you. We hear you. Great. This is Graham Unang Srufnacht. I'm the policy director at rural Vermont. I'm also a member of the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition, which includes rural Vermont, the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, Vermont Growers Association, Northeast Organic Farmers Association of Vermont, Association of Vermont, and Trace Vermont, as well as Justice for All. I just want to say thanks to the Department of Public Service and efficiency Vermont for clearly what was a lot of time and effort and a lot of diligence put into this work. And also a lot of assistance that was just brought to light, you know, especially for those who want to grow cannabis indoors. I think, you know, what I'd like to bring up and I think it was getting you is starting to be discussed at the end. What I see as particularly glaring sort of a mission in the recommendations and the presentation, in which I'd also frame as a request for both the department event of the post department and efficiency Vermont, is that everything we just heard is specifically related towards indoor growing cannabis. You know, our coalition fully supports those who would like to participate in growing indoors. We feel that Vermont regs should encourage and facilitate and preference outdoor production for reasons related to quality, equity, the environment, water use, land use, etc. Outdoor production should be considered agricultural as a matter of rationality, access, equity, environment, climate justice, etc. Instructures such as greenhouses or high tunnels used for outdoor production should be exempt as agricultural structures. The best in class energy model for cannabis is outdoor production and that's hands down we feel and we really like to see that in the recommendations that were just brought forth. There was a suggestion that if if regs go too far with greenhouses that people might go indoors and the other options that people would just stay in the existing illicit economy as well. We've seen in surveys that the majority of the existing illicit economy grows outdoors. They'd like to continue growing that way. We need the most environmentally sound accessible equitable industry in Vermont. We need outdoor production. We need to protect it is agricultural. We need scale appropriate regs including tiered licenses and production caps. So I would like to ask the public service board and efficiency Vermont and others working on energy efficiency to recognize and incorporate into their recommendations that outdoor production is the most efficient and environmentally chromatically sound method of production. For the recommendations of our coalition related to agricultural use for outdoor production, including to season extension with high tunnels and school at scale appropriate regs including production caps. For example, our coalition recommends a maximum indoor grow license of 10,000 square foot. We're currently seeing multi-state operators investing in 80,000 square foot facilities in the state. I think we can all recognize based on the data we just seen that those are going to be very costly in terms of energy, etc. The maximum outdoors be 40,000. That means about a one to four ratio, which is about an equitable ratio based on seasonality crop loss, etc. You know these plants cannabis does not have to displace commercially zone land does not have to live in buildings doesn't have to live under lights or in intensive HVAC. That's a choice. And unfortunately the legislature has put deep structural barriers to achieving the outcomes at states in terms of small farm access elicit economy coming into the daylight and in terms of energy efficiency. So we asked again at those making these recommendations specifically to differentiate between indoor and outdoor and address scale appropriate regs. Hopefully we'll hear more from the next two guests because we know that they're members of the climate council subcommittee and ag and ecosystems and role Vermont has specifically recommended that the climate council specifically pay attention to the issue of cannabis and backup our recommendations. I'm glad you all got in a discussion of what a greenhouse is it's very important I was going to go there but I don't think I need to. I think that considering the impact of plastics you know which carry can speak to well in thinking about some of this important as well as energy use. And lastly I think in specifically related to some of what was brought up. I have some concerns around the self reporting especially for operations of scale. I think smaller operations they know that makes sense. But we're talking about large operations with large footprints self reporting becomes a different type of question odor was brought up. And I think you know we began this is where outdoor and indoor could be highly varied and we're zoning really comes in. We need varied ventilation requirements for outdoor production and drawing and really the importance of season. We've got a few other folks their hands raised and we're going to have a public comment period after our next witness again. You want to finish up. Yep. Last bit here you know production caps and outdoor production will limit smell without costly measures. Current zoning clearly pushes growth towards more people with commercial zoning versus other. And lastly you know rate payers the concern about rate payers. Another is just another reason to incentivize outdoor production and implement production caps. And that's it. Thank you. All right. Thanks Graham. Next I see that Alice with your name is Alice you can unmute yourself. Yeah so my name is Alice Stewart and I'm a longtime member of the Thetford Energy Committee. And that is a select board appointed position. So I just wanted to clarify that I'm not speaking on behalf of the town of Thetford right now. So one question I had was what the impact of the proposed standards are on the state's comprehensive energy plan. Specifically there's a goal to reduce total energy consumption in the state by 15% by 2025 and more than one third by 2050. Is you know is cannabis cultivation going to create an increase in energy consumption even if those standards are implemented. And if yes, has anyone looked at what the impact is going to be on municipalities and the targets that are imposed on them through their enhanced energy plans. So in other words is this going to result in some sort of essentially burden shift. So I just wanted to bring that issue up. And then I also wanted to just highlight the light pollution issue with greenhouses. Thetford is very fortunate to have long wind tomato farm which is a great, you know, community business and they turn off their lights at the end of the day. So I just wanted to bring that issue up. And then I also wanted to just highlight the light pollution issue with greenhouses. Thetford is very fortunate to have long wind tomato farm which is a great, you know, community business and they turn off their lights at night so that it doesn't bother the neighbors. And so I just wanted to raise that issue is something to be thinking about especially with some of the conversations that were happening about off peak load and things like that you know thinking about some of these greenhouses might literally be in a neighborhood. And then I wanted to ask about whether anybody has looked at some of the innovative programs that are being done in other states like in Colorado where they have this program that incentivizes breweries to capture their co2 and then provide it to the cannabis cultivators, because it's a way that, you know, industries that we have within Vermont can help keep lowering the carbon footprint and not just through some of the more traditional methods so I'd encourage the board to look at those. And then also with the exemptions for smaller greenhouses and indoor grows, you know, has there any been thought been given to providing low or no cost loans to those smaller cultivators so that they could have energy efficient operations even though they're exempt. So that you know once again we're sort of looking at this bigger picture of the state's comprehensive energy plan and the state's goals to try to reduce energy use and you know how can we maximize the opportunities now to try to make those opportunities available for everybody. Thank you. Sorry, I forgot one thing. The idea of putting assessing a fee on cannabis establishments electric bills kind of like we have the efficiency fee for efficiency Vermont. And so, and scaling those based on for instance if a facility was net zero, they wouldn't pay a fee. So the more inefficient a cannabis establishment is the greater fee that they would pay into programs that would help increase energy efficiency for the state. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have, you know, you know, you can unmute yourself. Hi there. So I wanted to just talk quickly about the CO2 enrichment and the recommendations from the first speaker. It sounded as though he was recommending that there had to be exhaust when there was CO2 enrichment. But I just want to point out there's, you know, there's so many ways to grow indoors. I choose to grow in a sealed room. I think that's the, the most efficient and safest way to grow indoors. But requiring ventilation with my CO2 enrichment would completely defeat the purpose and also make it much harder for me to control the smell. So I just wanted to point that out. And also, the second speaker, just to clarify, lighting does have to be constant. It can be on 18 hours a day and off fixed during veg. But that has to happen every single day. It has to come on at the exact same time and turn off at the exact same time. And then when it switches to flowering, it can be on 12 hours on 12 hours off. And that's it. Thank you. Thank you. So anyone else who joined by the link that wants to raise their hand for a public comment, please do. Okay, we're going to move to this. I think two folks are maybe just one that is joined by phone. If you'd like to make a public comment and you can unmute yourself by hitting star six. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. My name is Barry and I just want to talk real quick. LEDs, I believe they work. I may or may not have been an HPS grower for a long time. And I got my first LED through efficient fever month. And yeah, they work as long as you get the right one. HLG, next light, fluence, mammoth lighting, they definitely do the job. I'd like to talk real quick about the ability to serve letter as it relates to the cost of upgrades. I'm just going to touch back a few meetings to I forget her name. She was the social equity 2.0 speaker. She was awesome. The last thing she said was don't be afraid to make things up and think out of the box. She was talking about plan counts but if we think out of the box and subjects like this climate change is the challenge of our society, not just our time but our society and you guys are right. This industry is going to be an energy intense industry like we've never seen before. Right. The small growers, the people, and I come at this as a point of view from a small growers. We're doing it now in our basements in our garages in our spare bedrooms. We're already on the load. If we figure out a way to include all of the people, you know, who don't have the money and can't build a thousands where for facility. Then we're, we're including a huge influx of incredible products. That will already be on the grid. And back to the ability to serve cost of upgrades. You know, like Crest meds going to build a 50,000 square foot expansion. Yeah, they're going to definitely have to do ability to serve. You know, cost of upgrades. Right. So when we talk about the big facilities versus small growers, you know, that that's back to the touchdown that we talked about in one of our first meetings. Always thinking about that small girl and how that affects everything. And this is probably in my opinion, one of one of the most important meetings you guys are having right how to figure out how not to add to the load. You know, and still meet the energy efficient guidelines that our status before it is going to be a very, very, very huge challenge. And once again, I appreciate your work. I really do. And I really appreciate the video recording. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. Any other public comment. Okay. Well, I did see Billy joins Billy cost or if you're willing to jump on and so you're the director of planning at the agency of natural resources. I'm an advisory committee member for the cannabis advisory board. And we're happy that you're here to join us talking about kind of some of at least an initial conversation about some of the land use and water considerations. The board needs to grapple with as we think about our regulations. Well, thank you very much for having me. I don't know if you're keeping a record but for the record I'm Billy cost or I'm the director of planning for the agency natural resources. And I do have a brief PowerPoint to kind of run through to manage my presentation. Is it all right if I share my screen. Yeah, absolutely. Great. Are you seeing that. Yeah, we do that. Okay. And is it showing as like a full thing that you can read. Okay. All right. So just to orient folks briefly on the agency and natural resources. We are a state agency charge with a broad range of environmental environmental natural resource protection and management duties. We are structured under the agency secretary who is Julie Moore. And she has an office of business staff litigation and legal staff and planning and policy folks and on the head of the office of planning and policy within her within her office under the secretary are three departments. The Department of Environmental Conservation, which is the traditional environmental regulating agency and probably has the most relevance to what I'll be discussing with you all today. The Department of Fish and Wildlife that manages fish and wildlife species as well as non game and natural heritage species and habitats in Vermont. And then the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation that manages significant amounts of state lands and focuses on recreation and forest based economies. So I'm, you know, James thanks for kind of framing my comments is kind of initial and high level and I think I want to start off by saying. This is a space that we as an agency are very interested in. We're very interested in supporting the emergence of this market and the work of the kind of this control board. So this is really a first and what I hope are many conversations with you all in how we can share information and best support everyone's work to make sure that this market is both successful and is grown in a way that is protective of Vermont's environment. So I met with a number of our different regulatory programs to discuss what we anticipate being issues emerging out of recreational cannabis market in Vermont. This list is not inclusive. It's not, you know, I know that other things will come up as we learn more about the type scale location nature of facilities but these are kind of the high points that folks suggested I focus on based on their experience already with kind of hemp and CBD markets what they're hearing in other states and what we just anticipate as being that the top line issues that that will want to dig into. And I'll run through each one of these but briefly it's the air emissions associated with growing and processing cannabis waste management solid waste wastewater hazardous waste that may come from the process. Water supply for both cultivation and processing stormwater management. And then I want to talk with you about some kind of observations and concerns we have about just the overlay between different jurisdictions given that this is traditionally very much an agricultural practice that is not treated as one under this regulatory schema and some of the questions and challenges that may raise for our agency and others. And then just speak to how we hope to engage with you all and the industry in the future to provide more and better technical assistance. And stop me at any point if you have questions or want me to slow down or speed up. So from an air emissions perspective. There's there's four main areas that we're focused on. First is that we've had a number of inquiries over the years as the hemp and CBD markets have stood up about whether those materials can be burnt when you know post post harvest and the burning of those sorts of organic materials is is not allowed in Vermont since those are largely compostable materials. They're excluded from the open open burning law so that so they can't be burnt. So that's just something I want to be clear about. The one issue that's been really tricky for us to manage is nuisance odors we do regulate under our air regs nuisance odors and that's typically in the context of landfills and sludge applications. But we have gotten some complaints over over the past few years from municipal cannabis and CBD operations where folks have had some concerns about odor. That's a very subjective and difficult to kind of define improved space. So this is something that we need to dig into a little bit more on how we may approach this as these facilities become more common across the landscape but it is an area that is regulated and could be relevant to this industry. The last the third one is air pollution permits and you know this is really only going to be applicable to larger drying facilities where there may be equipment that is using fossil fuels to create heat to dry and other traditional air emissions and we have a fact sheet on all these that I can share with you at the end of my presentation that has the different triggers for the air pollution control permits. And then the last piece is the kind of restrictions against hydrofluorocarbons. We understand that in some processing techniques hydrofluorocarbons have been used to extract cannabis and other materials from the organic material and that is largely not permitted in Vermont at this point in time. So I'll pause quickly there and as I said I'll get you more information on the specifics of the air pollution control permits and what the triggers are for that but those are the anticipated issues related to air pollution and air emissions. Really quick question. I see you've got nuisance odors listed just because we got a question or a comment and a lot of public comment portion right before you joined somebody had mentioned light pollution. I'm not sure if that's written anywhere in statute that's enforceable from an agency of natural resources perspective or that's something that would be pursued more on the civil, you know, side of things. But I'm curious if you have experience in, you know, light pollution issues. Yep. Generally that's handled either through municipal bylaws or if Act 250 is triggered, it would come under the aesthetics criteria of Act 250. Our agency has addressed that issue in fairly rare circumstances where light pollution may have an impact on our like our rarethrender endangered species or, you know, some sort of habitat necessary wildlife habitat. You know, it's very uncommon but you know there are some instances where a significant light light emitter near an important habitat could raise some issues but it's unlikely that would be the case with with these sorts of facilities where they were they will typically. Thank you. Okay, so moving on. Solid waste is, you know, the waste stream is probably the waste stream and the water water issues are probably the biggest ones that we flag so far. You know, we anticipate there being organic waste coming from these cultivation operations after the plants have been harvested, you know, stems, roots, etc. So sort of typical organic matter is required cannot be landfill at this point under our has our solid waste rules. The expectation is that that sort of organic material will be composted or managed outside of landfills otherwise. There's no provision to landfill those materials if they have certain, you know, attributes like invasive species or diseased plants or have other substances that would impact the ability to compost those successfully. Generally speaking, you know, we expect that all the organics coming out of these operations can't go into landfills and likely will want to be composted. There are other alternatives. They potentially could go into anaerobic digesters. There may be some potential for land application, but in all likelihood, you know, composting is going to be the best option for them. Our solid waste program has been very active in trying to grow the food residual and compost markets and capacity in the state and are very interested in working with you all and this market and integrating their waste streams into that process. So I'll move on from solid waste to wastewater. Again, this is somewhat speculative, but we expect that there will be a fair amount of liquid waste developed from cultivation and processing. We anticipate that likely there will be some significant indoor hydroponic cultivation component to this market. And, you know, if that changes, these issues may be less significant, but we anticipate that that's going to be a big part of what happens in the state. One way to treat wastewater is through a municipal system. This is where you're within a municipal service area, your drains are hooked up to pipes that go to a wastewater treatment facility. These are largely in our more densely populated parts of the state, larger cities and towns. The capacity of those systems are managed by the system operator. And, you know, that that is something that growers are going to want to explore when they are looking for sites to operate a business to make sure that there's sufficient wastewater capacity within a municipal system to accept their discharges. The other issue that may come up with municipal systems is that of high strength waste. It's very likely that some of the cultivation operations may be high in phosphorus and potentially other metals and constituents based on the mix of fertilizers they use that may require pre-treatment before they are accepted by a municipal system. So this would require investments in equipment and infrastructure at that site or as part of the municipal system to knock down the strength of that waste before it goes into the municipal plant. The specifics of that are really driven by kind of what's in the wastewater stream, the specific constituents coming out of that operation, and then the constraints on the system. Are there already high levels of phosphorus in the receiving waters? Are the municipal wastewater plants operating under other sorts of constraints that pre-treatment may be necessary to mitigate? If pre-treatment is required, that's done through a permit that our agency issues, I put the reference there. So this is again just a place where it's not an insurmountable challenge by any means. It's common for kind of manufacturing and commercial enterprises that discharge wastewater into municipal systems to do pre-treatment. It's pretty ubiquitous within the kind of brewery space, but just flagging this now and this is certainly a place that we would provide a lot more assistance and guidance to you all in the market as things move forward. Another strategy to manage wastewater is on-site. So this is the traditional septic system model in some ways. This is where you're not within the service radius of a municipal system and you need to treat your wastewater on your site. And there's a couple of approaches there. One is considered indirect discharge to groundwater, and this is your traditional septic system where you pump water into a leach field or something else, and it percolates through and that percolation down to groundwater filters out all the pollutants. For higher volume, higher strength systems that some of these may represent, we would jump from an on-site septic system to more of an underground injection control system, which is just a more advanced, more highly engineered, more highly monitored means of discharging to groundwater. And those approaches must comply with the state's groundwater protection rule and we issue permits at different scales depending on the volume, complexity, and constituents associated with those discharges. There may be the ability to land-apply wastewater from these sorts of facilities. That is also managed through the UIC program. That is not uncommon. We see kind of land application of certain wastewaters on agricultural fields. That's one of those funky places where how this interfaces with agriculture is something we're going to need to dig into a little bit more, but that is another alternative. And then the final kind of opportunity for wastewater management on-site is what's called direct discharge, and this is effectively where you have a pipe flowing directly into a surface water, like a lake or a stream or a river. This is probably the most difficult approach to pursue and require a significant treatment of that waste stream at the facility. Those discharges need to comply with the Vermont Water Quality Standards and obtain permits from our agency, but that is certainly an option as well. And then on the sanitary wastewater side, this is what an operation might use for their staff and visitors to use the bathroom, use a kitchen, etc. Those are all just permitted like any other business would be. So that's the wastewater side. Then the last waste stream that we see as potential for this industry is hazardous waste. And based on some of our experience with CBD, some of the solvents used to extract CBD does trigger the hazardous waste rules. And basically, if you are a facility that has a certain volume of hazardous waste on-site for your processing, there's different tiers of oversight from our agency and different tiers of permitting. At the low level, it's just a notification approach and an openness to be inspected as needed. And as you go up through the volume and intensity of hazardous waste, the oversight is more significant. And if you're generating hazardous waste, then that all needs to be disposed of through permitted haulers to licensed facilities. So again, this is an area where we can and will produce additional technical assistance guidance and work directly with the industry to kind of help them navigate this. But it's something we anticipate on the processing side. Some potential during cultivation, depending if there's going to be pesticides use, but that seemed like a lesser likelihood based on our experience. So moving on from waste to water supply. So again, this is largely a cultivation based market. But we anticipate there's going to be water needed to grow cannabis and likely some water needed to process it, depending on what the end products look like in Vermont. There's different ways to get that water. One is from groundwater. And groundwater withdrawals need to comply with the state's groundwater withdrawal and permitting rule. And at the low end of that rule, we just need yearly at the low volume of withdrawal, you know, up to 20,000 gallons a day or 20,000 gallons a day or greater. We need a yearly report of the daily withdrawals. We need some track record of how much water is coming out at anyone given location. When you trip above 57,600 gallons per day, then a permit is required. And my understanding is that we've only issued one of these permits in Vermont so far. It was for a bottled water facility. This is a fairly difficult process. And I can't imagine that these facilities would be extracting that much water on a daily basis for their cultivation needs. This is 40 gallons a minute, every minute of every day. So it's possible. And if so, then, you know, there is a permitting framework to protect groundwater at that level withdrawal. But as I said, I doubt that's likely. I don't even know if they'll hit the 20,000 gallons a day trigger. These volumes would be inclusive of any other groundwater needs that the facility had. So for drinking water, etc. So, you know, again, if there's a facility that's going to have high groundwater withdrawal needs, you know, we would want to just connect with them directly and talk through what their options are. And this will be another place where we provide more specific technical guidance catered to this industry, you know, in the coming weeks and months. Another source of water is from surface water. This is withdrawing from lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, etc. Last legislative session, the General Assembly passed AC173, which charged ANR and other stakeholders to come up with recommendations on how best to regulate and manage surface water use. That work is under, you know, with a particular focus on irrigation for agriculture. That work is underway right now. We expect recommendations to come back in advance of the next legislative session, and I can provide you all a briefing on that at a later date. Currently, the agency maintains a minimum flow procedure, which basically requires that any surface withdrawal maintain certain conditions in that surface water to maintain habitat, public safety, and whatever recreational other values that those waters provide. And we implement that through our DEC Rivers program, and those become requirements of AC250 permits and are, you know, applied broadly for surface water withdrawals. And I've got a link there to that program and the procedure itself. But again, this would be part of any sort of future technical assistance we develop for you all. And then the other source of water could be from a municipal system. Again, this is where you hook up to a city or towns water supply. And again, the allocation of that water is going to be dictated by the system operator. So that's water supply. Another permit that may be necessary or a place where we've got a little bit of ambiguity is stormwater. Understanding that there may be some larger kind of warehouse scale cultivation operations. I just wanted to note that any facility generating an acre or more of new impervious surface will require an operational stormwater permit. And impervious surfaces are, you know, surfaces that water can't percolate through. So it's everything from roofs to pavement to packed gravel, etc. So if you're building a new facility at this scale, you're going to need to get an operational stormwater permit. We also require construction stormwater permits for construction activities that involve an acre or more of earth disturbance. Our current thinking and analysis of the law is that this wouldn't necessarily apply to cultivation of cannabis. Even though there may be some tilling and planting, it's not in the context of construction or site preparation. So we don't believe that if you're cultivating more than an acre of soil for this purpose, you would need a construction stormwater permit. But that's something we're going to continue to research. And if anything changes on that front, we'll certainly let you all know. And then I'll just pause there to say, you know, any of the other traditional agency media permits would be required if you were going to build a new facility. You know, you would need to avoid well ins, you know, deal with all the kind of things you would need to deal with if you're going to build any sort of business anywhere. And, you know, we can provide a full list of those permits, but those there was nothing exceptional about those as it relates to the cannabis industry. So that that's basically the kind of high end water and land use concerns that we flagged. And I want to just take a moment to talk about some kind of questions and concerns we have around jurisdictional overlap and as that relates to active 50. You know, as you know, your act defines cannabis as a non agricultural activity for the purposes of all relevant state laws. And that's fine in the indoor context, you know, I think there's some raises some questions for us as far as like how you dispose of some of the organic waste but I think we've got some good clarity around that. But the real question for us is, if there's a cannabis grow in the context of a larger farm, you know, how are those boundaries drawn if you're a 300 acre dairy farm, and you've got a couple acres of cannabis. You know, and you're using the same equipment to grow everything you're, you know, composting your stocks and stems from your cannabis grow with, you know, the composting of your manure and other agricultural products. You know, what kind of kind of regulatory and jurisdictional drift or Merck may evolve from from those sorts of scenarios so that's not something I've done a ton of thinking or legal research into but I think that's a space that will all benefit from some clarity around going forward. Similarly, you know how active 50 may apply to these operations, generally in towns without municipal zoning and subdivision bylaws active 50 is triggered for any commercial activity on a parcel in acre or greater. So if you're having cannabis being grown on a portion of a farm in almost all cases farms are going to be bigger than an acre. Is that cannabis cultivation going to pull that farm into active 50 or is the farm operation going to need to go through the exercise to kind of shrink jurisdiction to just a cannabis operation which is called the Stowe Highlands test or excuse me the Stoneybrook test and you know it just it just creates complexity and questions about how and where active 50 is going to exert jurisdiction over these sorts of operations and the remainders of the land that they may be on. So again, nothing specific just a question that I think would warrant some input from the Natural Resources Board who administers active 50 and some further thinking by us all. Billy very very quickly not a question just to comment this is one of the many things that keeps me up at night is figuring out this relationship with 250 and, you know, depending on what you choose to do with your land, if it is in current use and let's say that you aren't a cannabis cultivator and want to go back to cultivating whatever you were before what what does it all mean and I think, you know, whether it's working with the board or the Natural Resources Board or through our working groups on environmental and energy issues. This has got to be one of the primary things that's talked about and really, you know, figuring out the ambiguity of what this implies and what this means. Good. I'm glad you're thinking that way and, you know, just, you know, there are good examples already in active 50, I believe for kind of Earth extraction operations like quarries and gravel pits. That's one of the few land uses where active 50 jurisdiction can apply for a limited duration. Active 50 jurisdiction can actually go away on a gravel pit site after the pits been extracted and decommissioned and you can go back to just having an unencumbered land again. So there may be, and I don't know, I don't know if that's an active 50 rule or if that's in statute, but that's, at least there's an example of a land use that is kind of regulated by active 50 for the tenure of its use and then when it reverts back to its previous condition, active 50 potentially can go away. And then the last, go ahead. At least there's a starting point for trying to figure out that unique situation. Yes. And then the last thing I'll just leave you with is kind of where I started that we're really committed as an agency to kind of supporting you all and this market. We have begun discussions with our environmental assistance office around developing kind of a program for outreach and technical assistance to cannabis cultivators and processors. We had a very successful effort for breweries a number of years ago when craft beer was really blowing up in Vermont and really well intentioned folks were growing businesses to a capacity that required a whole new suite of permits that they just didn't know how to navigate. And I think we got some really positive feedback from the brewing cohort on that outreach. So I think that's something we're very interested in replicating in this space and would welcome your thoughts on the timing of that and who to engage with to develop those sorts of materials and programs. That's great. And then lastly just my contact info. Right, so that was a, and I'll stop sharing right now, but I'm going to do that. So that was a pretty high level presentation. I hope I apologize if that didn't hit the kind of level of detail you're hoping for but at this initial conversation I thought I'd just keep it at that scale and there's a lot of detail that underpins what I presented. And certainly, you know, if there's more you're looking for we can get that to you. No, it's really helpful, especially just in these kind of early backfinding orientation meetings that we're doing of course you're going to be on our advisory council, and going to be, you know, heavily involved in helping us develop a licensing structure and kind of a permanent process. We appreciate you joining us today to kind of help us understand these initial considerations. Any questions for Billy. Thank you. I appreciate the education. Billy, I have a question for you. We saw recommendation earlier from the public service department about getting free approval from the utilities that be used around when, you know, before kind of hooking up a new cultivation site because of the kind of energy concerns that might arise in the capacity. You know, I see both from the kind of wastewater perspective in the water supply that there might be capacity concerns there. You know, is this something, you know, leads to the larger cultivators that you would we should consider thinking about a kind of free approval from the municipalities. If they're not going to do that, they're going to, you know, not engage the onsite kind of onsite discharge or some other concern. Absolutely. I think, you know, getting an early read from the municipal services around capacity is important. I think those systems have a pretty good idea of what capacity they do have to allocate. So, you know, it's not like it could go disappear quickly. So I think, you know, just getting some early indication around water supply and wastewater capacity is a great suggestion. And I think for these larger operations, you know, we as an agency would certainly be happy to provide some kind of pre-permitting scoping review to kind of just sit down with them and say, here is, you know, the checklist of things that we would be looking for as a regulator. You know, the range of permits, the range of issues, you know, what are you proposing? Let's talk through it and we can give you as much guidance and technical assistance as we can on your kind of concept plan to make sure that you're successful when you ultimately do move forward with permits. We could roll the water, wastewater capacity stuff into those conversations. So that's certainly, you know, that's something we do now for large developments. You know, folks will come and sit down with my office to say, hey, I want to do this thing at this place. You know, this is what we're thinking. What are we missing? What do we need to do? And that's a service we provide regularly. So I think, you know, that would be something we'd be happy to do for, you know, anyone in this market, but especially the larger folks that might have the bigger issues. Yeah. Are you fully staffed up at ANR to kind of bring on this new industry and the kind of concerns that they, you know, you're getting your inbox flooded with these folks that want to come and talk to you about these. Are you able to handle that? I think we will be. You know, we are trying to bring on some capacity in response to the federal ARPA funding that is coming through the state, because that's going to just generate a lot of development, a lot of permitting. So I think in some of these key programs that I talked about today, we are hoping to grow some capacity. And we've also kind of reorganized the focus of the Environmental Assistance Office recently. I think specifically to create space for this kind of sector focused outreach. So my hope is that within that group, especially there will be people or at least a person that could really run point for the industry. Yeah. That's great. Any other questions at this time? I got questions, Billy, but I know you don't have the answers right now. So we'll talk more about this thing kind of starts to stumble down health. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, feel free to engage with me kind of formally like this, or if you ever just have questions, you know, feel free to shoot me an email, give me a call. If I don't have the answer, I can connect you with the people who hopefully do. Great. Thank you very much, Billy. Thanks for joining us today. You're welcome. Thank you all. Right. We have next on our agenda, another session of public comment. We're going to follow the same kind of model where the folks who joined by the link, please just raise your virtual hands if you have a comment. And then after we get through those comments, we'll move to anyone who's joined us by phone. So if you have a comment on anything that you heard or anything in general, please raise your virtual hands. Graham, we'll start with you. Hey, folks, this is Graham again, policy director at Royal Vermont. Thank you, Billy, for that presentation. I think the only thing I really want to mention here is that there's been a number of potential conversations about the potential for conflicts between diversified uses of a farm or a farm starting into cannabis production or a cannabis producer, maybe, you know, wanted to move into agricultural production and potential jurisdictional overlap, etc. And I think it should just be recognized that from our perspective, the likelihood of this is very low given the zoning. How many farms are currently established on commercially zoned land? How many commercially zoned land pieces are appropriate for outdoor production? You know, I think that answers a lot of the question right there. There are certainly areas without zoning, and I think that's where we'll see most of this issue. But otherwise, unless you're operating a very large farm with particular zoning already established for a retail store or something like, there's very few farms that have commercial zoning and will be able to even produce it all. And that's part of our point is that outdoor production is more or less made illegal and based on how this law is written. And we don't feel that this is an official solution. We need outdoor to be protected as I guess we've said. And lastly, I just know that Billy was mentioning, you know, are there people he should talk to? And I would just recommend, Billy, that you turn to the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition, the Vermont Growers Association, Trace Vermont, Royal Vermont, Nova Vermont Farming Organizations. Sometimes it feels like we are speaking into a vacuum, but we are here and we definitely claim expertise on different aspects of this issue. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thanks, Graham. Next on my list, I see Alyssa Yance. Alyssa, feel free to unmute yourself and provide a comment. Can everyone hear me? Can you hear me? Okay, so I wanted to thank Billy for his presentation and I wanted to bring up something about the solid waste portion of that. So there is a way to recycle some of the crops rather than composting all of them. So for example, the stocks contain material that can be used to create clothing, biodegradable plastic bags, paper, butter, oils, teas, lotions, et cetera, et cetera. So this can not only reduce crop waste, but it can also promote other types of cannabis businesses as well. So to take that into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Tito, do you have a comment for us? I do, and I second what Alyssa Yance just said too. I feel like I need to be a voice for sustainable indoor growing. It is true that maybe some people may be growing hydro indoors, but there are a lot of really, really great sustainable ways to grow indoors. So I just don't want indoor growing altogether to be very demonized. If you, for example, by using no-till techniques, you reuse your soil using a blue mat watering system, for example, there actually is no water runoff if you use it properly. And absolutely every single part of the plant can be reused. So I just want to continue being that voice for sustainable indoor growing. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else who's joined by the link wanted to make a comment. Please just raise your virtual hand and we'll call on you. And anyone who's joined by the phone, you can unmute yourself by hitting star six. We're going to break for lunch. We're going to be back at one o'clock to hear from Ryan Patch around some additional water and land use considerations. So Kyle, could you please pause there? We're back. It's one o'clock. This is the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Our next presenter is Ryan Patch, the Deputy Director of Water Quality at the Agency of Agriculture. And Ryan, are you with us? I see you. Yes, I am. Great. Can you hear me? We can hear you. If you'd like to video, that's fine. If not, don't worry about it. But you're here to talk to us, kind of continue the conversation from an agriculture agency of agricultural perspective around some of the land and water use considerations that the board should have kind of at a very high level as we start to move into our kind of regulations and considerations for cannabis cultivation. Sure, absolutely. For the record, Ryan Patch, the Vermont HTA of Agriculture, I would like to turn on my camera, however, it is non-functioning at this time, so you'll have to make do with the slides I'm about to share. If that's all right with the board on the slides up. Great. Please do. Are you seeing slide deck? Yeah, we see that. Yep. Excellent. Great. Well, I was able to watch Billy Coster's presentation and would echo his introductory remarks about, you know, a bit of, I don't know, uncertainty or not fully understanding how, you know, the laws pass reconciles with, you know, farming. What I'm here today to do is to, you know, first just I'm going to attempt to provide a, you know, brief overview of the, you know, environmental status of agriculture to the lens of water quality in the state and what current programming is seeking to achieve. What I will then move into is perhaps of more relevant interest to the board, which is the structure of the required agricultural practices, what it governs, how it regulates in some specifics of how, you know, farms move through that rule and what sections of agriculture touch it. You know, when a farm is farming, as we'll discuss many of the programs and permits that Billy Coster shared don't apply to farming as they're regulated through the RAPs. That being said, there is a section at the end where there absolutely is oversight for farming from ANR and other agencies for particular farm actions, which I'll try to summarize at the end of the presentation. But just to orient the board to agriculture and working landscape, State of Vermont has 94% of its land based covered by natural working lands, 73% forested, 12% agriculture, only about 2% of the state's land base is covered by development. That being said, there are still water quality challenges across the state. On the left, you'll see a map of impaired water bodies, not all of those are impaired from agriculture, of course, but certainly many of them have large contributions from the agricultural landscape, which can manifest in eutrophication and harmful algal blooms as evidenced in the right hand photo from the Member Magog watershed. I will drill into the Lake Champlain Basin very briefly as this has been the driving force for agricultural environmental management in Vermont. The Lake Champlain Basin has a very robust monitoring set in lake monitoring that goes back to the 1990s, so over 30 years of monitoring. And what we see from that is that in many segments, water quality standards are exceeded, and in some cases the trend lines is increasing. As such, you know, when we look into the adoption of a total maximum daily load for phosphorus for Lake Champlain, that is the pollutant of concern as it comes to that monitoring that I just showed you. Modeling from EPA and Tetra Tech showed that agriculture was the largest single source of the contribution of phosphorus to Lake Champlain. Two areas within agriculture were identified for reduction, both point source management and non-point source, the landscape, with which the RAPs are structured to disallow or not allow discharges from farms in the state as well as regulating non-point source activities on farms or farming management on farms to ensure non-point source runoff will meet water quality standards. So here's just a breakdown of the loading and the reductions that would be required over this 20-year total maximum daily load for phosphorus. And when you, you know, 41% of the contribution coming from agriculture and a significant reduction coming from the agricultural sector as well, over 67% of the reduction to come from changes in agricultural land management. And we'll talk about those strategies. The agency in collaboration with, you know, DEC worked to put together the agricultural implementation plan, which touches many different areas of farm management, both education outreach, technical and financial assistance as well as regulatory through inspection and enforcement. The reference for the required ag practices, definition of farming as used by the RAPs, and many of the programs that are used to implement that program as well as inspection enforcement standards are included in Title 6, Chapter 215. And from that, the agency of ag promulgated the required agricultural practices rule, which I'll dive into in about three or four slides or so. But this RAP rule was a large part of the first stage of implementation efforts that the state would undertake to meet those reduction requirements established in the TMBL and provided a large part of the reasonable assurances that the state would meet those reductions. So what I'm going to share now is just a bit of an update of how implementation has been going. This is a letter from EPA to Secretary Moran, Secretary Tevitz, you know, saying that, you know, again, it's not just agriculture, it's all land use sectors, but the state has successfully met the Phase 1 implementation milestones, which is good news. Brief overview of the programs that the agency of agriculture implements to address agricultural non-point source pollution that prevent discharges from farms. As I just said, it's a bit of a three-legged stool. Education outreach is a very important component, as well as providing technical and financial assistance to incentivize and encourage farmers to adopt practices and increase their adoption of those practices to improve water quality, as well as a robust inspection and enforcement program for which the Clean Water Fund provided additional funding to do so. Over 500 or so inspections a year of farms are conducted by the Agency of Agriculture Water Quality Division. The documentation of cleanup work and the modeling of that is reported by Agency of Ag to DEC, and this is the Clean Water Initiative report from 2020, which catalogs the reductions agriculture has contributed since 2016 in relative comparison to other lands. We anticipate this balance to shift as other lands get up to speed as I'll be sharing. There's a long history of agricultural implementation in the state to work towards non-point source management improvement. We realize these reductions in part from regulatory programs, state funding programs, and our partnership with federal funding programs, all three of them coming together to support agricultural adoption of water quality practices, a cost effectiveness analysis, and the phosphorus space shows that agricultural field and pasture practices are by far the most cost effective on a kilogram basis per unit of production. But there's still a long way to go, and that's a whole other presentation of how we're working to get to 2038, but about 13% of total reductions reported to date. And please feel free to interrupt me at any time with questions or clarifying thoughts folks may have. But that was just a brief overview of the history of water quality and where RAPs are at today. So what I'm going to dig into now is a structure of the RAPs, what they regulate and how they regulate that. What you'll see here is just a catalog of the history of developments and the water quality space going back to the 1972 Clean Water Act. You'll notice a phosphorus standard for Lake Champlain was established in 93 and the first TMDL adopted in 2002. The required agricultural practices, RAPs, were renamed from the AAPs, the accepted ag practices. And there was a bit of a misnomer out there that the AAPs were voluntary and not required. Most everyone knew, you know, the winter manure spreading ban. You can't spread manure between December 15th and April 1st. But there were many other standards that were promulgated and enforceable beginning in 1995. Those AAPs were amended in 2006, renamed and amended in 2016. Further amendments with the title of drainage in 2018. And we are about to engage in rulemaking for technical service provider certification in this year, 2021. You have Act 164. We have Act 64 of 2015, which many called the Moss Clean Water Act, which provided the funding, authority and requirements that the agency amend. The AAPs not only to call them the RAPs, but to include a number of different requirements from a new small farm certification program, standards on nutrient storage, soil health requirements, increased buffer zones, livestock exclusion from surface waters, and nutrient management planning requirements. So here's just a bit of the breakdown between point and non-point source regulation of agriculture in the state of Vermont. We have a memorandum, a memorandum of understanding with the agency of natural resources, and we partner on farm inspection and enforcement. When it's a non-point source, it's with the agency of agriculture, and if it's a point source, it goes to the agency of natural resources, and we coordinate in that space. So what are the required agricultural practices? You may glean from kind of the introductory framework that it's very much about the agricultural non-point source pollution reduction, reducing nutrient losses from fields, making sure they don't get to surface waters, make sure they don't cross property boundaries. However, the RAPs do establish other minimum standards in areas that relate to farm construction and management. So minimum construction and siding requirements with farm structures and floodways, flood plains, river corridors, and flood hazard areas. Farming, you know, the definition in the RAPs is essentially word for word from, you know, the definition of farming is used in Act 250 sections of statute, but it's a broad definition that covers a number of different activities on a farm. It means, you know, the cultivation or other use of land for growing food and fiber, raising and managing livestock, greenhouses, production of maple syrup, the storage and preparation and sale of ag products on a farm, when they're principle produced on a farm, onsite storage and preparation of sale, you know, production of sale or fuel or power, you know, some biofuels, raising and management of horses as well fall under that definition of farming. So we regulate waste and agricultural waste. So when a waste stream is generated on a farm related to, you know, farming, that material has disposal standards, generally stacking setback requirements, spreading setbacks from surface waters and is, you know, comprehensive of, you know, runoff from feed bunks on a farm, manure and ag waste that a cow may produce, and other waste that may be generated from the farming operation. The RAPs establish what is a jurisdictional farm. So it's not anyone that has a vegetable garden, backyard vegetable operations are not regulated by the RAPs until they reach a certain scale. The threshold criteria are established in section 3.1. One of the largest things that would tip someone into the RAP regulation is, you know, you operate for more acres, use for farming, or you earn an annual gross income of $2,000 and more from the sale of ag products on an annual basis. And, you know, we also have, this is the RAP, the minimum threshold criteria as farms increase in size, they increase in permit oversight and regular inspection cycle. That's established by law and we implement that through a number of different permits in addition to the RAPs. So RAPs apply to all, you know, all farming operations, but there are also increasing standards for certified small farm operations. Those small farms that are larger in scale generally 50 dairy cows or 50 or more acres of land used for the cultivation of annual prop land. And then we have general permits for medium farms and individual permits for large farms in the state. The RAPs govern a number of different activities on a farm. You can read the list here. I will paste in the chat, or I guess you'll also see it on the last slide, a link to a website where you can read the full rule. But there's a number of different activities that are regulated in the RAPs from how and where to confine feed, fence and water livestock, how to store and handle ag weight, how to, you know, the preparation tillage, fertilization, planting protection, irrigation or harvesting of crops. The zoning or the construction, siding for farm structures, roads and other associated infrastructure, as well as, you know, the management of livestock mortality increase on the farm. So there are standards as we'll see for a number of these activities enumerated in the rule. There are sub-jurisdictional operations, those that are engaged in growing food or crops, but do not meet the special criteria of the RAPs. We call those non-RAP operations and those would be able to be regulated by a municipality. There is a general exemption in Title 24 for farming from the regulation and application of municipal bylaws. And so we'll talk about that a bit in Section 9 of the RAPs when we get there. But that's an area of oversight that the agency has authority over for those that meet the special criteria of being a farm. So here, and I will not trust, I will not be walking through each one of these sections, nor all of the Section 6 standards, but I wanted as an introduction, you know, for the board and those, you know, participating in the process just to understand that there are many different sections of the RAPs that provide specific requirements for farms, a lot of specific definitions, details about in Section 3, the, you know, applicability and special criteria of the RAPs, standards for small farm certification, training requirements for farms, standards for the exclusion of livestock from water to the state, groundwater quality and groundwater investigations that the agency of Ag conducts for farming operations, requirements for the construction of farm structures, both in existing production areas and new production areas, custom manure applicators, site-specific on-farm conservation practices that may be required if a farm is having a deleterious impact on waters, even if they're following the rules, standards for subsurface tile drainage, as well as what we'll touch on some in Appendix A variance processes that the agency oversees as it relates to the construction of farm structures, and then the roles of other state agencies, and that will be, you know, while there's a number of exemptions for farming from many other titles, Vermont statutes, there are those that do apply to farms. What may be of interest to the board, and I've just pulled out, I think, two examples from Section 6, these are the real operational standards that farms need to follow in Section 6, and that's 6.01 through 6.10, the prohibition of discharges to nutrient management planning requirements, where the application or cultivation of cover crops are required on particular fields, manure spreading standards, composting requirements, as well as, you know, requirements for stabilization of banks of surface waters. So what I'm just going to do here is just dig into, I think, two just examples of what the rules say. What you see here is an example of a production area or a waste storage facility that are creating a discharge of waste directly to either a conveyance or a surface water, and this is prohibited under the RAPs. So all waste need to be appropriately stored and cannot run off directly into a surface water without a permit from the Secretary of Natural Resources. So, yep, 6.01 discharges is kind of foundation of the RAPs, whereas a CAFO permit, you know, for under a CAFO permit, which is not what the RAPs deal with or the MFO or LFO permits, it could be a permit to discharge under certain conditions, the RAPs prohibit any of these discharges of waste to surface waters. Just another example of some specific requirements within the RAPs, you know, manure stacking and ag waste stacking, this could apply to a compost being managed on a farm, but, you know, we establish specific minimum setbacks that a farm needs to follow for stacking manure or other agricultural waste, setbacks of surface water, ditches, private water supplies, as well as property boundaries. And that's something that the agency is enforceable and the agency engages with farms on ensuring they have the best, you know, using the best available sites to stack and store manure appropriately. Another important standard for farms, which kind of informs the baseline of crop land management is vegetative buffer zones and required manure spreading setbacks. So all surface waters in the state need to have a 25 foot manure spreading setback, and if they're an annual crop land or cultivated crop land, not hay, they require a 25 foot vegetative buffer zone. All ditches in the state are required to have a 10 foot setback for both manure spreading as well as a vegetative buffer zone. And there's other specific buffer zone requirements as well for some other, you know, wells and the like. And here's just a diagram of how a field could be cultivated between surface water and ditch and the setbacks of a farm need to follow. Within the appendix, this is related to section nine, the construction of structures on a farm. You know, there's a process for obtaining a variance to municipal setback. The agency tries to meet municipal setbacks wherever possible. However, folks may be aware, you know, farming in Vermont, many of these locations long, you know, predates many of the modern zoning requirements that the state has. And so you'll find, you know, barns and animal operations and locations that there are standards and requirements that they improve their management of a particular, you know, barnyard as an example. But they can't meet the setbacks for, you know, either those established in the RAPs for setbacks from a surface water or the municipal setbacks. And so there's a variance process at the agency overseas to ensure those conservation practices can be installed where necessary. We established specific criteria within appendix A that a farm needs to demonstrate before the secretary will issue the variance. And one example is a waste storage facility. Here's a diagram here that, you know, needs to be installed to collect waste to prevent a discharge, but there's no space available on the farm or the land base. And this is the best available site on the farm and will enable the collection storage of ag waste and runoff from that farm so it doesn't get to a surface water. This is obviously mentioned, you're trying. So kind of just wrapping up through the quick run through, you know, the RAPs. While there are a number of, you know, exemptions for farming for those farms that are regulated by the RAPs, you know, as Billy's presentation pointed out, you know, ground groundwater withdrawal, you know, reporting and permitting requirements. Farms and those that are irrigation farming under the RAPs are exempted from that ground water withdrawal, both reporting and permitting requirements, just as an example. You know, other examples that were talked about were the Act 250 exemption for farming. And I touched briefly on the exemption for, you know, municipal bylaws. So within this appendix or advisory section of the RAP as we try to outline, well, there are, there are areas of law that affects farm operations from wetlands, right, you can't convert a non farmed area to cropland without a permit from DEC. You need a construction stormwater permit for new farm structures. If you're going to do surface water withdrawals above the minimus levels, you'll need a permit from DEC to do that. There's stream alteration permit requirements that a farm may need to have. And of course flood hazard area and river corridor permits would apply for certain farm structures that may need to be constructed in those areas. Yeah, so that is a brief overview of RAPs. Happy to engage and answer questions that the board may have. But you can, you know, learn more about either water quality programming or the RAP specifically there and my contact information is below that. So thanks. Happy to answer any questions. Yeah, thank you, Ryan. That was very helpful. Any questions for Ryan? Yeah. Yeah, so Brian, thanks again. And I think just a point of clarification for everybody on the phone. Ryan went over parts of the RAPs that will apply to a cannabis cultivation business. Regardless of the commercial versus agricultural designation and Ryan correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's section 6, 8 and 12 of the required agricultural practices. I was curious, you know, we've been we've been hearing a lot about this ag versus commercial designation. Are you aware in your role as deputy director of water quality? Is there any other kind of commercial businesses that are subject to the RAPs or is this kind of uncharted water for not only the board? But for you and for and our. Yeah, so to I'm the first point of information you shared, maybe I'll try to see if I understand that the point you made there. My so hemp right cultivation falls under farming and the RAPs. As I read the act 164 2020 and the cultivation of cannabis. You know, it says that a cannabis established established should not be regulated as farming under the RAPs. And so I don't believe the RAPs would apply to those operations. There may be farms in the state that are existing farming operations that may move to to cultivate cannabis as defined in your law. And I don't know how that overlap would apply. There are sometimes commercial areas on a farm, but I don't believe the RAPs would apply to those operations. Yeah, I remember there's a language in 164 that they're still subject to certain sections, but I don't have that in front of me. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I'm still I'm curious. And I know I'm opening up a black box. I don't have my thoughts fully formed but wondering just general thoughts on, you know, how outdoor grow operations kind of maneuver through through this puzzle, considering it's not an agricultural. Well, what were pressure points bottle next to you view for C. I'm sure you've been tracking some of this, but carry carries off the issue. No, it's not. Just in the room. Kerry, feel free to be free to answer the question, but also step and I are here if you want to phone a friend. I'll be happy to turn it over to you folks to provide comments in this space. I will just say, you know, I have experience with implementing the RAPs on farms and understand that there are a lot of exemptions and allowances for those operations that are farms and are farming. And when an existing agricultural operation may choose to engage in the cultivation cannabis as defined in the bill, while some of those sections of the RAPs may apply, I don't think it's going to be administered by the agency bag. And further, there are a lot of those exemptions and limited liability or permits they don't have to get that maybe that section of the farm may have to get or they'd have to be aware of that their existing, you know, farming may lose some of those exemptions. So there's a lot there. We've talked about a few and Billy did as well act to 50 store water exemption, groundwater withdrawals, municipal bylaws, you know, yeah, wetland exemption, you know, streamflow alteration so there's there's a lot, you know, do some suits perhaps. So there's a lot there that a farm would need to be aware of and I don't know how that would, I don't understand fully how that would be integrated. So I'll turn over to Carrie and Stephanie to provide any additional revision or feedback in addition to what I've shared. Yeah, I think we'll quickly carry thank you. Thank you, Ryan. I guess I'm just trying to also get a better understanding of how the puzzle is going to work together recognizing that, you know, there's a little bit of ambiguity, I guess. No, I, Ryan, I'm sorry to put you on the spot but I think that the reverse of Kyle's question is sort of more important and I think better to hear coming from you. And that's sort of what are the unintended consequences of or implications of designating this agronomic practice of growing cannabis as not being agriculture. Yeah, that's the question I was trying to get at. Thank you for wording it perhaps a little bit, you know, better than I did, Carrie. Sure. Boy, um, yeah, there's a lot that could change for, you know, an existing, you know, farming operation. We know what do you do with the waste? You know, do you need a nifty permit? Do you need an erect discharge permit? If it's a farm operation, you know, crop residue can be incorporated and composted on the farm. Are you now going to need to go to, it's a farm now going to need to go to ANR to get those applicable permits for this non-farm cultivation? Billy Costa raised the question around Act 250. I don't have any more of an answer other than just an open question. As he, you know, phrased it, you know, nuisance suits, there's, you know, limited liability for farming operations for existing ongoing farms. You know, would you lose that designation? Would you be more open to, you know, nuisance suits from your neighbors? You know, I talked about groundwater withdrawals. If you're going to irrigate, are you now going to need a separate well or permit for that outdoor cultivated area? Boy, you know, that's a tractor question, right? There's AOT allowances for, you know, tractors and trucks and that's for farms and this isn't farming. So you have to buy all new equipment to do that. I can't answer that. I don't know. And, you know, fire building electricity codes for barns, you know, would that apply to a hoop house? Because it's not farming. You know, I can't answer that question. I don't know. But I think there's a lot of things that a farming operation deals with through the RAPs and the siding and zoning and, you know, best practices that the agency provides that oversight. And that framework is not, you know, for an existing farm, it would really, there would need to be a lot of education as to how particular permits may apply to that section of their operation if they were to cultivate cannabis and that, you know, farming as used throughout the statutes wouldn't apply. So I think there would be a lot they'd have to become aware of for that portion of their operation. Like Ryan, I was just, Steph and I were, are you still allowed to use off-road diesel is one of the questions that would need to be answered. Some of the questions that came up when we were giving testimony on, hearing testimony on, testimony on cool events about farms accepting food scraps and are they a farm or are they a solid waste facility? One of the issues came up that on a hosted road, in a dirt road in the spring, trucks are allowed to deliver ag commodities but they're not allowed to, if it wasn't a farm, then driving those food scraps across that road would not be considered legal. So those are all questions that I think need to be addressed before we move forward. Go ahead, Senator. I was just going to add, Mr. Reed, I'm channeling Heather Darby, across the rotation in order to ensure community farming has not become perpetuating past that field and that's going to actually potentially be more regular than even like an act, you know, as Billy constantly described, an active victim permit that dissolves after that activity no longer occurs but then it doesn't come back on. So that's another question. Yeah, no, absolutely. And Ryan, I apologize. I wasn't trying to put you on the spot thinking that you had all the answers to all my questions. It should have been better phrased than what questions do you have realizing we're kind of in uncharted waters because we've got a laundry list of them and we've got to start developing answers, you know, through the board, through our partner agencies, consultants, so on and so forth. So I was really just trying to tease out what questions remain for you recognizing that, you know, this looks a little bit different than things have been, I guess, relatively speaking. Yeah, no, I appreciate the question. And I kind of struggle to contextualize the kind of shift in thinking that a farm operation and existing farm operation would need to take on to understand how the cultivation of food and crops has, you know, historically been regulated that sharing that, yes, there's all of these unanswered areas where if you're farming, you don't have to deal with those things because you deal with the agency of agriculture. But now a farm is going to need to potentially engage with, you know, all of those different permanent areas. And yeah, Stephanie's point is great, you know, just from a basic agronomic point of view, you know, crop rotation is really important for, you know, suppression of weeds and pests and diseases. So if you're going to have to be rotating are all these areas of your farm going to then be subject to that, you know, the non farming designation. And yeah, it's just it's very broad, right, you look throughout state law and you'll find many exemptions for farming and those farms that follow the RITs. And I don't have an answer for how comprehensive that may be, but it's definitely I think about as a farmer there would be quite a lot of, you know, learning and planning what would have to do to cultivate cannabis on existing ongoing farming operation. Yeah, I mean, in addition to that, another question that I have and you and I ride have been in farm structure meetings, various meetings together and know what happens if somebody wants to build a structure on a diversified operation that might have elements of part of their cannabis cultivation business but also elements of are they wanting there's intended use there in the more traditional farming context and how do we treat, you know, folks that do stuff like that so a lot of questions that I have that we all have. So if you have any further questions. Yeah, just on a different topic Ryan, you talked about kind of an inspection and enforcement. So what does this look like exactly is your kind of inspections and enforcement annual is it be supported as it's just kind of like a site visit. I'd like to hear a little bit more about some of the enforcement and inspection work that you all do. Sure. Absolutely. So, Agency of Agriculture has a lot of regulatory oversight. All I will speak to is the water quality division and the inspection and investigation that we conduct to implement the RAPs. As I breathe through, there's different sizes of farms in the state that trigger different levels of either permit compliance and regular inspection. So the smallest firms in the state are inspected on a complete different basis. A neighbor calls in and alleges something doesn't look right. There's manure running off. They're stacking the new ones are close to the road. That's kind of an ad hoc investigation that the agency will undertake on those size farms and of course will conduct on any size farm where there's a complaint. And that's generally limited to the specific complaint that comes in. Certified small farms, medium farms and large farms are inspected on regular schedules, at least once every seven years for certified small farms, once every three years from medium farms and annually for large farms. On large farms, all production areas are inspected on an annual basis and a proportion of crop fields are as well. And we're looking for compliance with not just all of those sections of the RAPs, including the no discharge standard but there are specific permit requirements and both the general permit for MFOs as well as individual permit requirements for large farms. And so as I shared, we'll conduct over 500 inspections and investigations that result in enforcement actions. When it's a non point source issue, when it's a point source issue, we refer it to the agency and natural resources and they will take action, or we can refer that to the attorney general's office for prosecuting those very complicated cases and that is something that was funded by Act 64 of 2015 and the Water Quality Special Fund, it was in part funded by some fees, but the Clean Water Fund provides funding to the agency for staff to implement the regulatory inspection program. Who pays into that, the farmers? No, so for the record this is carried. So Ryan's team does inspections under the RAPs. I have a separate field staff that's located in different quadrants in the state and we do not only farms but retail inspections and bounce courses. And we're inspecting under the pesticide feed seed fertilizer, nursery, vector management hemp program, so we've got another field staff that's inspecting under a completely different set of statutes. And we're hitting every sort of class, being pesticide dealer every other year, the golf courses every year, farms, it varies, but we're at the class A pesticide dealer court. So we're in the hemp program staff, the inspection staff as well, and it's on a cycle that we could use more help with. It's about, we're trying to hit 20% of our students. Yeah, I think it would make sense for us to just go through the hemp program and kind of suit to nuts at some point soon to hear about some of that stuff. Well, thank you, Ryan. I hope to be able to tap into some of your knowledge moving forward. So if I start to annoy you, please let me know. Happy to share what we do and happy to, yeah, happy to continue the conversation. Thanks for the opportunity to share. Appreciate it. Ryan, if you could forward me a PDF of your presentation, we can get it up on our website. We'll do. Thanks. So we have more public comment kind of woven into this, because these are such kind of weighty issues with large implications. And so we're going to turn to public comment now. We'll do it the same way we did earlier in the day. If you joined by the link and you'd like to provide public comments, please raise your virtual hands. And then we'll move after that to the folks on the phone. So, Graham. Hey, folks, this is Graham you next roof or not policy directorate rural Vermont. Thank you, Ryan for that presentation and also for the questions and comments from Kerry and Stephanie and Kyle and use well James. I just have a couple comments and first I just wanted to address that the comments that Tito made in the last public comment session and he said that you know he feels curious to speak here for sustainable indoor production and I just wanted this to lend support to that I know that we have a lot of people in Vermont and our coalition is here speaking to to equitable opportunities and access for outdoor production but we certainly want to make sure that he knows now there's no that we are here to support people choosing sustainable indoor production as well there's lots of reasons that people choose to choose ways. We don't need to get them all here. And I think like you know one thing I wanted to point out is Ryan went through the RAPs and our coalition certainly presented this in our comments legislature but cannabis meets all the definitions of agriculture in the RAPs. It's also a crop principally produced on the farm. We are trying to do research within our organization right now on commercial zoning and intersection with equity and access. I want to let folks know that the initial response we got from someone from the Vermont legal cities and towns I believe suggested that they don't have maps on all the commercial areas or you know comprehensive maps of zoning in Vermont. But he suggested that we can sub downtown and village sensor designated areas as proxies for commercially zoned areas. So again I just want to ask if that is what what commercially zoned areas are how many of them are on farms and how many of them are going to be appropriate for outdoor production. We would imagine it's very little other barriers mentioned that weren't mentioned by Ryan and Kerry and Stephanie and Kyle are in the legislation for example one is such that security requirements are not differentiated between indoor and outdoor currently basic agronomic methods like crop rotation. And I think you know the fencing requirements etc would we currently really interrupt that so I'll leave it there and just want to appreciate folks getting into this a little bit more. Anyone else wanting to provide a public comment in this period of joining via the link feel free to just raise your virtual hands and we'll call on you and anyone who might be on the phone you can unmute yourself by hitting star six. Well we're a little ahead of schedule I do see Matt our next witness Mali and Eddie has joined us. I don't know Matt if we can take a break that's easier for you. Or would you just move on to your testimony. I'm happy to take a break. I'm happy to just continue whatever you guys feel is is the most appropriate. Either way it's fine. If you're willing you know you know thanks again for your willingness to join I think you and I had a conversation earlier this week about what would make good for you know a presentation like to hear your thoughts as environmental professional working in this space for some time and also about one of the one of the organizations that you work for which is which is clean green and you know how they you know fit into the conversation at the third party certifier. Sure. Well I'll say thank you to everyone that's here in the meeting I'll say thank you to the control board for for having me and allowing me to speak. I'm Matt Lee and Eddie I represent clean green. I will say I'm also a convicted felon. I was facing life in prison in the 90s for growing cannabis so I appreciate the opportunity and I've seen this industry change significantly over the last three decades. But what I will start with because I think it's fairly appropriate and it will touch on you know a lot of the environmental stresses that cannabis will place on the environment and that is exactly the basis why clean green came to being in 2004. So kind of back step just a teeny bit clean green is the largest nationally recognized certifying body for cannabis in the industry and we were started in 2004. There are a lot of third party certifiers out there everyone's got a little bit of a different set of teeth to them. But the pillars of our program or one legal compliance. This is the first one we discussed this is the first one we talk about. And the legal compliance aspects is is everything it's it's how you're obtaining your water it's your plant counts. Your wages making sure you're paying your taxes. Everything about your operation needs to be in full legal compliance. The second is the cultivation practices and these go from seed to sale pretty much how is your crop being grown the source of your water electricity using solar. Are you part of a grid what is that grid a part of hydro fossil fuels nuclear your soil erosion protection. I think these a lot are you know just basic kind of farm protection ag protection components border areas your natural vegetation. Facilitating beneficial insects you next to a toxic area do you need your buffers and what are you doing for your past weed and disease control. And then you know one thing that I've I really have an issue with is single use plastic and I'll jump to that as an impact later. Another component of the program which I think a lot of other third party certifiers as well as the USDA kind of overlooks is the social component. If we're talking about regenerative agriculture I think we need to think about our farm workers and we need to make sure that you know because these are generally a group that are marginalized. They're not treated right they're not paid right they're not respected they're not treated with dignity and I think this program has decided that this is a major component. And we need to make sure that the employees on your farm are treated as as employees with dignity with respect and that they're paid appropriately. So once your application is completed we do a crop inspection. This is where we go through all of the inputs fertilizers pest control sprays potting soils everything that is used to make sure that it is compliant. With you know our our our parameters and we are going off of the USDA program as a baseline but we've added an enormous amount of teeth to it. I think another very interesting component of clean green is that we are a carbon reduction program. And I think this ties into the statewide climate reduction goals. So every year you are required to show an annual drop in your carbon footprint by 10%. Now there is a point of no return and you can only go so far with the operation that you have however. This is something that we absolutely stress so we do not just hand out a renewal application. These things need to be documented seen proved and some of these are very simple of collecting rainwater switching to solar composting plant ferments from bio waste. So I think that's an interesting component to this. And then there's the final agricultural inspection, which is just basically a confirmation of the cultivation and the facility that was put into the application. Something else that clean green does that I don't see with a lot of other programs. We require a soil sample prior to the approval of your application. So we send off this sample with that is tested out in California at an ag lab for 118 different compounds. And I think the reason for this is we know the power of this plant to remediate components out of this soil. So we're looking at things like Eagle 20 Michael butanol where DDT is actually on the list of one of the tested because we know how that lasts in terms of its half life. So this is a huge component we will not allow you to get a certification to grow on contaminated soil. So let's take a peek at that soil first and foremost to make sure what we're doing is appropriate. And as I continue if anyone has feels free to chime in ask questions if I'm moving too quick or wants to exemplify something please do. So I think when Kyle and I spoke we were kind of talking about some of the environmental stresses of cannabis on the environment. You know the biggest one for me and I'll go right back to this one is single use plastic. As a person who was a silent investor in a dispensary in East Oakland in California visiting the facility and seeing the enormous amount of plastic bottles used for nutrients pest and disease control is just staggering. And I think a lot of this has been in the news has been in our faces with the Pacific garbage patch with micro plastics and everything so I think we can do a lot better and reduce that impact. A lot of packaging I think is is not responsible is not sustainable when there are options for biodegradable and compostable packaging that also allow some of the child resistant components to it. So I think when we look at this industry you know the plastics that are used are extensive. And I know we use a lot of plastic I've tried to minimize that as much as possible but there's no way not to use some component of this. But I think as we move forward and create this I think there are great options that can minimize that impact in our use of plastics. Electricity load you know what are we using for electric. And where is that actually coming from so I think this would be probably a way to kind of look at indoor and outdoor where indoor is going to be a heck of a lot more intensive in terms of its electrical use. I believe it can also be done in a very smart and sustainable way I know there are some absolutely phenomenal facilities that have fully integrated lights, collecting heat water from those lights circulating it through the slabs. There are ways to make indoor facilities work extremely well. But the indoor load is still going to use an enormous amount of energy. And I think you know when we look at outdoor outdoor does not use that kind of load, we are running off the sun it rises in the morning and it sets the days and there's our answer. So, you know, and I guess it would be the technology that is actually in those facilities and what they use. If we can get to solar I think that would be phenomenal. LEDs seem to be kind of the way to go I know there's a lot of varying perspectives on that for some of the older technologies, but they are all there. So, indoor versus outdoor, you know why I, you know, the definition of farming that Brian Ryan gave to us. If hem falls under that I don't understand why cannabis can't either. That's a big one for me. You know, the other impact that we've seen and again this is why clean green was born in 2004 was the impact of the use of pesticides insecticides might asides on the crop. You know, this is an economic crop, no one wants to lose everything that they've put months into this, but there are a lot of people that are more than willing to spray things. And I don't think a lot of people are knowledgeable in the requirements of what it takes to spray appropriately. A qualified chemical applicator for about 17 years I do not carry that licensure now, but I understand, you know, the biggest worry within a lot of that is the home grower that goes out and dumps an entire load of glyphosate on a dandelion. So I really do worry in a new regulated market the use of chemicals, the use of chemicals by people that are not trained in the proper use of them the proper handling of them the storage of them, the cleaning of containers afterwards. So I think you know the insecticides and the pesticides have had a significant impact on the environment as well I think we're getting a lot better. But those alone impact our soil our water, non target species and beneficials. They certainly do worry me. You know another big impact I think is you know the loss of nutrients nutrient leaching on farm fields and I think it comes down to a lot of better timing of applications and we're taking into weather considerations. I think a lot of cannabis farmers honestly do not understand the proper timing of their applications for certain nutrients and I think that could make a big difference. Proper amount of dosage a little extra is not going to make a lot of significant impact, but there are a lot of ways that we can remediate that by the use of biochar. I am also a certified green roof professional I work in green roof design and one of the studies that recently came out is that they are using biochar to reduce any sort of nutrient leaching off of the roofs, which I've never seen before that just popped on my radar in the last couple days. But we do know the power of biochar as it plays into soil microbiology the carbon to nitrogen ratio and all of that so building soil organic matter less tillage. Permaculture practices. I think there's a lot of things that we can do as cultivators to create and foster an industry that is sustainable that steps above some of the commercial agriculture, and we kind of reinvent the paradigm and recreated a little bit to something that has a much longer term perspective. The indoor and impact from indoor one thing I would like to look at is the the HVAC. There's going to be on larger facilities. There's going to be an enormous amount of condensate the humidifiers. And what are we going to do with that because that's not water that I would recommend using back on your plants because of the collection of heavy metals bacteria molds and everything else. So there's got to be some sort of reclamation some sort of remediation. I think another thing that was mentioned that we took a look at that was mentioned the cannabis waste stream and I know it varies a little bit from indoor to outdoor but is there a way that that waste can be minimized that that waste can be utilized in some sort of ancillary fashion. And for that I'm thinking you know can biomass somehow be collected for plant ferments. We can use that for compost on the farm close that loop and you know reduce that carbon footprint. And again this goes back to plastics. You know that's a waste both indoor and outdoor. I don't think black plastic robot should be used in outdoor cultivation because of the impact on the environment that stuff never leaves the fields. How you know and everyone's cultivation practices for their operation are going to be slightly different and everyone's going to have a different waste stream based on what they're doing. So I think it's going to be very difficult to kind of put a baseline. There should be a baseline. But I think this would be the context of looking at each application and having the applicant form an appropriate plan that could be accepted for how they are cultivating cannabis. You know one thing I kind of wanted to step back to that I think was mentioned several times is the designation of commercial and I really do believe that is a significant barrier of entry to a lot of us. Vermont has a very beautiful diversified landscape of small craft farms all over it. I believe in the United States we are number one in community supported agriculture CSAs. And that is kind of our heritage and that is kind of our legacy in the state of these small farmers. We don't have large factory farms on the size of the plains in the Midwest. And it is our heritage to support our small farms. And so this commercial zoning I think puts you into an area that does not provide good soils that provides that an increased cost of operations when you're in more of an urban center than a rural area. I really believe that cannabis farming is agricultural and should be relegated as such. And so with that I think that is pretty much what I had to say for the most part on clean green and some of the impacts that I have seen throughout time and in this industry. Thanks Matt. Carrie's here in the room with us and I'm going to ask you something. I am. Hi Matt. Good afternoon. Good question. The chair opened the meeting with an announcement that there was a proposal to be list high THC cannabis nationally as a controlled substance or not good. Take it down a notch. And if that happens and USDA is allowed to certify a cannabis crop as organic is there still space in the industry for clean green. I think there's always space for third party certifiers. You know we know the USDA and I appreciate everything that they've done to create a baseline but I think they are basically that they are kind of the bottom rung of the ladder and a lot of the third party certifiers have come out and taken those standards and gone several steps further. Now I understand that their hands are somewhat tied because when the USDA got took over the national organic program you know industry lobbyists obviously added components for their benefits. So the program to me is kind of the lower rung of the ladder and I think everyone wants to differentiate themselves everyone wants to have different standards. And we've seen I think here in the in the state of Vermont the program the amount of organic people that are certified here is truly phenomenal. But I think there are room for programs that offer different sets of standards that are more stringent and I'm sure there's people that are going to want them. There's there's so many there's there's sun and earth there's kind. I think all of these are going to exist in this marketplace even if it does get federally changed. I think the more the merrier we can hold this whole industry to a much higher standard than what we've seen in agricultural prior I am all for it. And I think there's plenty of room for everybody here. Yeah I haven't read all of the proposal from Schumann. It looks it sounds like he gave jurisdiction to FDA, ATF, but not USDA. So I'd be curious to see if that does move anywhere. But that would look like right now it's the four Republicans that have program. Any other questions for that? Matt Matt we touched you touched a little bit upon the environmental stress that that cannabis can put on you know the environment. I'm wondering if you might be able to talk about the environmental benefits cannabis can bring to an environment whether it's its ability to uptake nitrogen and so on and so forth just for the board's knowledge and also for those listening on the phone. Sure. I think any diversified operation is a wonderful thing. And I think as cannabis has become legalized everyone wants to have the best practices. So I think as we move forward with that I think there is a lot of great opportunity with a lot of great growers to kind of push and showcase and change the agricultural perspective and push more towards organic practices more towards biodynamic practices more towards permaculture practices. I know you spoke about remediation of nitrogen and other things but I do know that you know when we look at elemental analysis now we look at Chernobyl they're using hemp to clean it up. What do we do with that hemp now that it is collected all of whatever it's picking up heavy metals. I don't know. I don't think cannabis should be used as a bio remediator in any way shape or form if it's going to end up out in the open marketplace and sold to the consumer because I worry about the content of what is in it. But I think the practices that that cannabis can employ you know crop rotations cover crops diversification within those rows we're talking some of the best practices and I think a lot of people are looking for. And there has been a significant shift in cannabis production in the last 30 years where we went from kind of the back to the land movement and then all of a sudden we got into the Green Revolution and there were enormous amounts of just regular conventional chemicals used and we have shifted more towards you know soil you know the benefits of our soil microbiology pushing that with the the microbes and using a lot more microbiology to cultivate our cannabis and reduce the amount of impact from fertilizers from pest spray so getting back to some of our best practices. I think this industry is really taking a hold to and I think that is a wonderful thing to see and I think most growers would want to be in that no till that living soil have those best practices because I think that's what consumers are now looking for. And it's yeah sorry brain fart. Yeah, thanks a lot man thanks for joining us today. And I'm sure we'll be talking again in the future. Hi, I appreciate you having me I appreciate the opportunity and thank you to all you guys are doing and everyone's comments have been wonderful it's been great to hear how the the folks speak today. I know we're running about 20 minutes ahead of schedule which is shocking and folks have been tracking are being clear 20 minutes behind schedule but Jacob it looks like you're with us. If you're ready to move a little bit early hey how's it going. Hey, how are you. Good. So I got a back to some of these bios. I was going to read that for a couple of times might not be as familiar with, but Jacobs work one second. So yeah. So Jacob is the co founder director of science and strategy with the cannabis conservancy which developed for sustainability certification for the cannabis industry in 2015 and mission is to empower the industry to achieve environmental, economic and social sustainability. He's also the co founder and board chair of sun and earth certified a regenerative organic cannabis and have certification on profit. He's also a founding member of the city of Denver is cannabis sustainability working group and national cannabis industry associations cannabis cultivation committee and availability work group Colorado Energy Office is in this advisory committee and Southern Colorado cannabis Alliance, Jacob as a master and in environmental science policy and management of the European Union and the STL and for the last seven years, Jacob has focused exclusively on assessing and mitigating the environmental impact of cannabis cultivation and building a resilient board of cannabis community. Thank you so much for joining us. I think you've probably been listening in for the last couple presentations so anything you can say to supplement conversations is really great. The theme is around energy and environment and land use considerations and how cannabis cultivation kind of factors into the broader environmental goals that the state of Vermont and us as a nation and a world are really looking to tackle working in this space and multiple jurisdictions Colorado California. So, we love to learn a little bit more about your experience and tap into some of your institutional knowledge. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here being able to speak to you guys today. Yeah, so I was listening here and there throughout today so kind of just highlighted some things that maybe haven't been mentioned before. I don't want to start with saying like while there are environmental implications of, you know, cannabis recreational legalization there also are a lot of benefits. You know, I think, you know, on a macro scale you are bringing economically viable business owners and committee members, you know, into this marketplace who are or will be, you know, stewards of the land that's kind of what we're seeing. And now we oversee over 100 farms in eight states and two provinces and do a bit of international work as well. And for the most part, I feel like cannabis cultivators are stewards of their land and do value that. So I do think you're bringing on or, you know, supporting, you know, good community members also think from a small farmers, small farmer perspective, you know, you're adding the ability to add a luxury crop into what they're already cultivating. I think that is a huge economic boon to a lot of struggling farms, especially small farmers around the country. And I think there's also the, you know, a true economic opportunity for the underserved and underprivileged, you know, community members out there, you know, the ability to own businesses, to create generational wealth, you know, so what the cannabis industry does bring to different states as they become legalized. And then I think from like an environmental perspective, you know, we are seeing, especially for outdoor greenhouse growers, you know, increase in biodiversity, increase in habitat improvement, infrastructure improvement, soil health, things like that. I think from, you know, in prep for this, I talked to quite a few different state regulators and municipal regulators in the cannabis industry to kind of see what their, you know, lessons learned were. And, you know, I think with the way Vermont is structured and my understanding that municipalities and counties do look to the state for guidance. In Colorado, we have home rule, so counties kind of create their own or can create more compliant or stricter regulations. So there's a little bit of a difference between what the state has passed and what local communities actually do. But I think from a Vermont perspective, I think the state does have an opportunity to really set standards for sustainability and have them valued alongside other health and safety licensing issues. What we see a lot in most states, Washington, Oregon, the California, you know, Colorado is like sustainability has always been an add on, and that they're not really from a, I guess, regulatory perspective, given at, you know, such value as all of the other things. And from an operator perspective, you know, where we're most are interested in, you know, maintaining compliance to maintain their license and so they'll be able to conduct business. So I think at the GECO, being able to kind of pair the sustainability regulations with everything else is, you know, is a big win. And then also having all the different state regulatory bodies and the stakeholders, business operators, you know, really understanding the intent behind the regulations, the process for it, and then the implementation is really important as well. So just some things that came that I wanted to mention, so as far as energy, I did see that in the previous speaker at the beginning in their talk, they talked about the requirements for renewables. Well, I really like that I do want to point out that what we're seeing in most states is that there is a split dilemma between the operator of the business and the building owner, and that actually implementing installing solar panels is usually a burden to the operator, because they're going to see the benefits, but they don't actually own the building. And so understanding how that's going to play in Vermont. A lot of what we've seen, you know, operations come in and take over older buildings was because in, especially in Colorado, there was a one-year operational requirement to get your license. So you have to actually be operating in one year, and it was too risky to kind of build specific cultivation facilities. You know, we're seeing a lot of that's changing a lot now. We're kind of in our third iteration, I would say, of the industry out here, but it's something you keep in mind. And also, I think access to capital, especially traditional capital, is can, you know, not as wealthy applicants be able to actually afford to build a building or to retrofit and maybe potentially offering a credit for building retrofits. So that building was used for something else, and they're improving it, especially building envelope. What, you know, what is that tradeoff in potential carbon emissions? And then also the applicability of it, you know, is 0.5, I think kilowatts per square foot with an indoor grow, you know, the lighting intensity and the energy demand. You know, how feasible is that in different scenarios, whereas I think other options are potential renewable energy credits. So RECs or having carbon offsets. The one thing I would say is if you guys are going to do promote, accept carbon offsets is to have those pre approved. I was just talking to Boulder County, Boulder City, and that was a big issue is they had requirements for that, but they didn't actually know which ones they would accept. So making sure that they are, you know, legitimate carbon credits. And then the other issue I want to point out is like we work a lot, we're mainly with mostly working with small growers and we do work with a few MSOs, multi-state operators. But with the growers that are very environmentally friendly or sustainable or even off grid generating their own power, the harvesting issue, they usually require a lot more energy than they would year round for when they're harvesting. So they have to bring in either gas generators or cold storage trucks to maintain the quality control as they're harvesting because it's, you know, quite like taking a whole harvest, you know, within a few days and dealing with that. Then I didn't have too much. I have to do some calculations on some of the HVAC stuff. But one thing I didn't want to point out was it's not really mentioned in the climate control aspect of how the equipment is being used. I don't know if that's something that Vermont that you guys want to actually take on or that's too restrictive. But, you know, big things we're seeing for optimizing indoor cultivators is equipment staging. So having variable speeds on fans, having multiple output options for exhaust or lighting banks or heating zones or light deprivation. So really just using the amount of power you actually need is, you know, one of the big ways we're seeing a reduction in energy use as well as kind of set point optimization. And I just think that there's one of the highlights of the difference between what equipment you can use and then how are you actually using the equipment. I did like seeing that you guys were or they were considering like facility maintenance plans and ensuring the optimization of the equipment that's in place. I think it's really important. And then for the reporting requirements, I do think reporting pirates are important. But is Vermont considering providing resources such as expert advice to growers? So like what do you do with that information? The reason I bring that up is I was just talking with, so Boulder County and Boulder City have an environmental impact offset fund. So essentially it's an energy fee. So I think it's 2.16 cents a kilowatt hour in Boulder County and 2.09 cents a kilowatt hour in Boulder City. And the reason for that was one is to like finance like in kind of community supported solar initiatives, renewable energy initiatives, but was also to by charging a fee having kind of that, you know, that pays understanding there, but it hasn't actually translated into energy reductions. So I think there's that next step on actually guiding cultivators or operators into what to do with this information, what to do with these benchmarks. Thinking about how that all aligns with what Vermont State's goals are as far as are you guys trying to develop or increase more community solar or more renewable power, you know, the Canada's initiative I think could easily support those initiatives. And then also when it comes to auditing and oversight, making sure you guys have the teams in place beforehand and understanding kind of what those things include. So there's water. I would just say learning from some southern Massachusetts was doing and talking with some Massachusetts growers, you know, they with the water testing requirements on sourcing of water is I guess there's no biological allowed so it's requiring almost all grows to go with an energy system. And that's an increased energy consumption usually overkill for most parts, or some kind of like sedimentary filter but most are just going with our own and that's kind of the ending it and it's not, you know, it's not a very efficient process. But as far as actual irrigation for negation, you know, most of us are using a high efficiency technology such as for irrigation or gentlemen have mentioned before like blue mats. I would say from my conversations with Denver Municipal Water throughout the last 10 years they have not seen any strain on their wastewater systems and we don't have any requirements. A lot of growth, especially originally we're just doing straight, you know, waste right into the municipal water system. And so they did not see any issues with that. Most of that will be I think in, you know, for irrigation stuff. So nitrogen phosphorus potassium, you definitely wouldn't want that, you know, going straight into open waterways. And then I think there's a lot of options for discharge on farms. We see a lot of farms doing constructed wetlands things like that. As far as waste is great to hear that you guys are having biomass collection and composting, I would just make sure that that is expressly allowable in the regulations. That was a big unintended consequence to Colorado's waste regulations. So we had in there all cannabis waste so stems, root balls, leaf material had to be next 5050 with and rendered unrecognizable and useless. And that just caused massive and it all had to be landfills. So the marijuana enforcement division here as of 2021 has now they didn't change the regs but they changed the interpretation of the regs allowing an exemption for organic materials to now be collected and composted either on site or out of facility. But then it's also how is that process done. It's something that I'm trying to figure out for some growers right now is the hauling issue is something that we're working on because it was kind of banned. So now that it's legal how do all of the stakeholders understand that this is now, you know, possible. I think also allowing on site biochar anaerobic or Bukashi or biomass gasification as possibilities. And then with a gentleman before me was just saying is yeah consumer waste single use plastics I think that is a big issue we've been trying to tackle since the beginning is what to do with all of these single use plastic containers and the ability to collect containers. So that was also now being allowed in 2021 is that retailers are now allowed to collect previously used cannabis containers. Before it was illegal because of the concern of like residue and it having cannabis residue in there and then that being so now we're able to do it and we've been working a lot on like take back schemes to try to limit those use because there is somewhat of consistency in packaging. But then also having us think about your child resistant packaging and how that interplace with sustainable packaging and essentially not requiring additional layers additional material, you know, just generating both ways, I would say. Then other things that have come to mind is and I don't know if you guys have thought about this or where things stand within the medical cannabis industry right now but allowable pesticides, I guess considering just doing like Massachusetts 25 the exempt or going along lines of organic and allowing organic materials. I think from a farmer perspective, there's definitely impacts on there and what's being used. And then I think testing levels for microbials. I don't know if you guys have thought about that yet, but either looking at feasible limits or specific pathogens, because most of the limits for a lot of states are very low and especially Massachusetts are now requiring remediation technology. And that can be as simple as like hydrogen peroxide. But a lot of people now are using kind of these like extra technology that is generating a lot more energy demand to to remedy a product that doesn't necessarily have to be remediated. And then from an outdoor perspective, something we're tackling now here in Colorado is like cross pollination issues and how cannabis and hemp operators can be good neighbors and what that looks like because of the issue both sides. I think if you're having pollen in the environment of essentially testing to ITC for hemp or lowering yields for recreational or medical. And then also the volunteer issue, what's who's responsible and what are the issues around cannabis plants that like grow naturally did a seed just being in the environment and how is that going to be addressed. And then I think from a tracking trace perspective, because we're going to be doing metric or another similar program for one thing we just are, I think we actually just got passed yesterday in Colorado was the ability to have weather contingency plans for outdoor growers. And so there usually is like a 30 day within the system within metric you have to let the compliance authority know that you'll be harvesting within 30 days but that doesn't give you enough time if there's going to be a freeze or hail or something like that. So it allows for, you know, essentially adaptation based on weather to really promote more outdoor cultivation or passive greenhouse cultivation. And then there is definitely a burden on the tracking trace with I would say infield trimming and manicuring and just you have to weigh those things and apply them into metric or if they're not leaving site and they're just being on, you know, outside composted is that allowed without having to be, you know, dragged inside and lead and then implemented there's definitely administrative burden on especially small growers having to deal with compliance. So I think I'm understanding that as well. And then, as far as promoting I would say small farmers and or mitigating the risk of just being taken over by large you know what to say operators, limiting the number of licenses of business can own and potentially the size of each license. One question. I think the thing about is how are you guys determining canopy size is that just for flower is that bed size is that drip size of full plants are aisles included or exempt. So we've run into issues. First one comes as a California between how humble county classifies canopy size versus how the state classifies that and so just leads to a lot of headaches for farmers as well as even state regulators on figuring that out. I would say making sure that you guys are promoting diverse crop production and avoiding monoculture so allowing for polyculture and companion planting and intercropping and things like that and not segregating cannabis to its own sector due to security or fencing or other limitations because I think it really does benefit from having been a beneficial insectaries and being part of a holistic kind of ecosystem and also not limiting farms who you know want to intercrop with other medicinal plants not being able to use that or sell that because they were grown within their license. Other briefly of the basic into mind was when thinking about the tax structure try not to make it a burden on the farmer. They're definitely the lowest person on the totem pole and usually get taxed you know the highest whereas distributors processors retailers do make the bulk of the profits in this industry and so you know understanding that especially from a small farmer perspective and it really does avoid a race to the bottom of everyone trying to grow the cheapest cannabis possible. You know if they're not taxed as much and they can actually make this economically viable on a small scale. I think it lends itself to having more environmental stewardship you know at the get go. Other things to think about it was like as the gentleman asked a question earlier is how will federal legalization kind of impact this. That's what we're looking at in Colorado and other states as well. We just enacted with this kind of outdoor policy here the ability for I think it's outdoor potentially the entire cannabis industry if it does go federal federally legal to be then classified as a legal crop to avoid kind of a lot of these cannabis taxes so that they are economically viable in a national marketplace. So I think you know as you guys are building out this this market in this industry that I'm assuming federal legalization is going to happen at some point. And that you know everyone's investing capital in this does still have a place in the federal legalization and doesn't just you know explode open and then close down because it might be cheaper or beneficial to grow it you know somewhere else and then thinking about regulations most states don't really have them but for supply chain quality control. The amount of times I do hundreds about it every year we do pull things off the shelf and send them to laboratories for testing and you know making sure that once it is leaving the farm you know it's tested before it has to sell the distributor. But then from the distributor to the retailer retail to the public are is cannabis cannabis products being stored properly so that it's more like a health and safety issue but I think also from you know quality control supply chain and just industry integrity standpoint and then allowing for onsite processing on the farm and what those policies would look like regulations and then potentially farm gate sales as well and allowing the opportunity for small farmers to be able to sell directly to the public. You know that is kind of I think a virtue of Vermont's you know pet beer industry and a lot of other industries and having cannabis aligned with that I think would be extremely beneficial. So I think that's That's what I got. You just ran the gamut of that reason we're thinking about I don't know where to jump in I mean you and I have had multiple conversations extensively over the last month or so so James you guys. I have a question and I'm not quite sure to ask it but that you you were talking about canopy size and things like that if this Colorado designate cannabis as an agricultural product. Or make such designations like do they do that. Originally it was not and that led to a lot of a lot of issues but also because of how Colorado is done on the county has I guess final approval or say in what goes on so we still have counties in Colorado that have banned recreational cannabis. Whereas others allow for it so in both in Denver specifically we originally did not allow for greenhouses and now that they are allowed there's not. It's very onerous process to get a greenhouse because the zoning authority just doesn't really have experience with it. And so I know multiple operators who want to transition from a 70s building that they took over into a state of the art greenhouse and they're having issues with transferring licenses but then also getting those approved. And that's led to 85 90% of all cultivation facilities if not more in the city being on site or sorry indoors which is you know not necessarily put a tax on our grid but is a massive you know carbon emission source. Jacob thanks for joining us. You know one thing you mentioned about kind of small cultivators and not trying to create, you know, economically viable business for them. You know, you know something that we're trying to weigh on heavily and it kind of counts the cuts against having all sorts of environmental and energy sustainability regulations. Folks, just even though it's really important. I'm wondering how do you kind of thread that needle and is there a way to kind of phase up, you know, maybe have less regulations in year one and then kind of phase them up for small cultivators or, you know, I know certain infrastructure that they're going to have to buy around the lightning things you're not going to want to buy one set of life forms in year one and then totally new set year two but are there ways that you've seen maybe in Colorado or elsewhere to kind of phase up regulation so it's not as onerous in year one. Yeah, I definitely think there is ways of facing regulations specifically if you're looking at like fish and wildlife regulations or the environmental impacts for outdoor or greenhouse cultivators and not requiring to be like requiring plants potentially like a three year plan. We saw a massive shrink I would say of the legacy growers in Northern California when the new kind of trailer bill was enacted like 2018 because of the oversight of fish and wildlife and you know just having to change culverts you know a couple of inches of these $100,000 kind of changes, you know put a lot of growers out of the business. And so I think one I think is how you approach the different stakeholders and understanding the intent and they understanding the intent of what these you know regulations are trying to achieve and then working towards them and having potentially more of a not so restrictive process like there's definitely you know public health and human health you know safety requirements and all of that but I think having them demonstrate how they will achieve these goals and maybe a multi-year process especially when financial considerations are there. I think as far as equipment issues you know that's what I think we're seeing in Massachusetts where when they calculated their it was unclear how to calculate canopy so a lot of early adopters calculated canopy I believe in just flower rooms they didn't include aisles or included aisles whatever it was it was to make sure that they were in that you know 36 walker but when in reality they weren't there and now they've just kind of been grandfathered in so that's not really what you want to see either but I think for capital investments having practices in place at the gecko is probably the best way of going about it but then I think looking at if someone is buying a disused building and is going to repair that and going to fix up you know that part of the neighborhood potentially having a plan to implement the various building envelope requirements you know or lighting requirements or having an incentive to go above and beyond which we're requiring whether that's in less you know county municipal oversight or reduction in taxes something like that. So I think there's kind of a some parrot and stick to play around with but I think it's I feel strongly with that be the intention of the grower and bringing them into the conversation and how they're treated from the regulatory you know agencies really matters in making sure that it's like a good relationship is that business are doing this for the longevity and want to have the relationships with their their auditors and inspectors their you know commissioners so I think it's a it's a lot of like explaining the regulations and what we're really striving for and not necessarily overly pushing someone who you know mistakenly you know did something that kind of thing. Yeah. Hope that answer. I felt like I kind of took a little bit of attention. Yeah. And I do like kind of you know potentially idea of racks or carbon offsets you know as a way to kind of give me a year to offsetting some of your carbon footprint as well. Yeah. Because I think also what's missing a lot from the energy efficiency conversation is you know we're looking at metrics you have your energy use but you also have your production and the production should be increasing you know annually so you are efficiency wise getting better. So you know I think from where growers starts in their first year to where they're on their second year after you know four or five cycles they will automatically be a lot more you know I think efficient. And then I think you know what's going to be interesting in Raman is also genetics plays a big role in this as well and finding strains that are optimized for climate as well for indoor cultivation. And you know we're seeing a lot more kind of auto flower coming in which is cannabis is not photo period so it's going to automatically flower not the same yields but we're seeing a lot of growth supplement with that kind of preimposed to extend the season. And you know it requires it can be grown outdoors without supplemental lighting regardless of season and things like that so I think there's a lot of operational efficiencies that we're seeing just to me and to me because it is kind of a bit of an overly taxed industry. And as well as like the 280 federally you know there's not as much deductions that cannabis operation takes so probably margins are definitely concerned for you know a lot of operators. Any other questions for Jacob. Jacob thank you for joining us. With carriage here with the agriculture. Just sitting in the board today and quick question a few years ago. All the headlines are saw coming out of Colorado or about pesticide residues and pesticide misuse. Any advice how to sort of avoid that scenario. Yeah I mean I think it came from. Well there's a couple of things with that and one was it was like equal 20 very bad pesticides was like a legacy hold over from a lot of like Northern California growers who kind of came in to Colorado and were used to and there was no oversight or very little oversight from the state level like there was an estate lab to actually send products to no one really wanted ownership of that kind of you know that process like the liability responsibility of a state agency. So I think when we started cannabis wasn't really the agencies weren't funded very well. And so you had a lot of growers who resorted to that when they were facing kind of critical crop loss. And yeah so when we finally started to do it. Yeah all of those bad actors who I believe shouldn't be in the industry to begin with have left and now the state has kind of what we call like a cannabis Bible but like an approved pesticide use guide book that gets updated I believe annually. And now everyone that I know like just uses that so if it's not on there and that's based off of also active as well as product name. Products might have other either inert ingredients or minor active ingredients that are not necessarily labeled or on the label so pretty sure we grow I know now uses that guidebook and will only use that and it's also easier for the agencies to oversee that in their audits. And then I think also the testing processing has gotten a lot better. I mean you're always going to run into something we do with our audits is we require kind of standardized testing to make a representative sample again to what like global gap requires or ISO 1000 1722 don't go on that one things but you're always going to have people cherry pick and I think a lot of it has to come with the oversight and integrity of the labs as well. I mean there's definitely still in other states kind of a pay to play you know if you pay an extra whatever you will get a result like that needs to get you know out of the industry as well. But I think also that comes into what are the testing requirements you know our big thing right now is like heavy metals and what those levels are set this is a bio accumulator on some level. But also, you know, making sure that you're not requiring like zero. You know how many units and that there is you know some leeway realizing that this is an agricultural product even if it's not labeled out by the state. But that is why you know we dry in here as a traditional, you know, technique for ensuring safety. And so, but I think a lot of it just had to do with what people knew, especially when they were facing, you know, a massive financial impact, but that's pretty much gone away now. Thank you. Well, thank you, Jacob really appreciate it. I look forward to catching up with you down the road. Really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. Just stay on for public comments or You're more than welcome to continue to stay on. If you if you want, you're the end of the year. You must. Thank you. Well, let's see, roughly quarter to three. We have one last witness were about 15 minutes ahead of schedule at this point. But Sam, if you're here, and you want to just go ahead. Awesome. We'll just kind of skip both. We won't take a break right now and we'll get right to you. Sam, you're muted. Hi, thanks for having me. How are you doing? We can just introduce yourself and, you know, kind of what we want to talk to us about. Absolutely. My name is Sam Bromberg. I own an operate mountain fire farm. I would I am now considered a small farming operation and a large part of that is due to my maple syrup production. And I am a cannabis cultivator. I have grown hemp in this state. I have been a medical patient in Rhode Island when I lived in Rhode Island. I have cultivated cannabis since 2013 and I became interested in advocacy for cannabis in about 2005 or 2006 as an undergraduate student where I started a students for a sensible drug policy chapter interned with Rhode Island's medical marijuana advocacy program. And in that decade and a half of advocacy, my number one priority has been equitable access to the marketplace and laws, rules and regulations that are based in science and not fear. So I was told that you all would like to have a candid conversation. Would you like me to start by going through my sort of list of things that I would like to talk about? Or do you have any questions that you would like to jump right into? No, you can go through your list and then maybe we'll open it up to questions afterwards. Well, thank you. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with you today. I think that it's extraordinarily important for you to hear voices who are small farmers who would like to participate in a regulated taxed and legal market. The current rollout of cannabis laws is so new across the board and across all the different states that I consider it to be an experiment. And it's important to recognize that Vermont has an opportunity to learn from other states implementations during this process. In particular, those that create a market that is open and equitable for all of those who would like to participate from customer to cultivator. An example of how laws can be made more creative in the modern times is how Vermont along with some of our neighboring states created laws that allowed for the delivery of alcoholic beverages and take out alcoholic beverages as a response to social distancing needs due to the pandemic. And many of these states have transitioned these temporary laws to permanent laws because it was found to be beneficial for local businesses. So just because there has never been a or because there aren't many examples of cannabis delivery services in many states that doesn't mean that it is not something that could exist in Vermont and probably should exist in Vermont. But I'm here to talk to you more about cultivation in the context of energy and land use. And very briefly, there is a great distinction between indoor cultivation, outdoor cultivation and mixed light cultivation. And in my mind, outdoor sun growing cultivation is farming. Indoor cultivation is the production of a product and regulating them in the same manner will most likely lead to a burden of compliance that is extraordinarily difficult for a small farm or a small farm operation to achieve. In Ryan Patch's presentation, the RAP seems to indicate under what is farming that sun grown cultivation meets the state's criteria for farming. It includes the onsite storage, preparation and sale of agricultural products primarily produced on the farm. I personally believe that a system that allows immediate access to the market for small farmers to sell to directly to consumers would meet and match many of the goals that already exist within the state's agricultural program. An example of this is poultry processing. As a small farm operation, I'm able to raise and process poultry with a very different level of oversight as long as the quantity that I am raising stays, I believe, below an average of 50 birds per week. Whereas a large poultry farm that is processing hundreds if not thousands of birds on average per week has a significantly greater compliance demand. There is a difference in the, as you've already, and a lot of the things I'm telling you today, you've already heard from the other presenters who have given a tremendous amount of information. But there is a difference in the energy requirements for cultivating indoors using artificial lighting and outdoors. And I'm not going to say that indoor cultivation cannot be done in a sustainable manner, but I will say that it is very hard for me to grasp how indoor cultivation will ever be as environmentally feasible and have the same low environmental impact as outdoor cultivation. Now, from a business operator perspective, cultivating outdoors is sort of terrifying. There are variables such as pests, weather, wild animals, mold. Many different things that can impact an outdoor crop that are not able to be controlled as easily outdoors as indoors. So how does someone make a business decision to cultivate outdoors when it may be sustainable compared to indoors? And part of that is by incentivizing small growers to grow outdoors. If there is a limit of a thousand square feet cultivation for indoors, then an outdoor grower being able to grow in for six months out of the year could be a large, by giving the cultivator a larger size to grow in. So this could encourage businesses who might say, let's grow indoors to instead say, well, we can grow a little bit more outdoors. This is better for the environment. Well, if there's an incentive, then maybe more people will grow outdoors. When it comes to permitting and oversight, the RAP has a fantastic guide for this, that the larger you are, the more oversight you have. Now, this doesn't mean that there's no oversight. It doesn't mean that there are no regulations, but having regulations and compliance as something that is feasible for a small farmer is extraordinarily important. In a prior life, I managed point of sale systems and credit card security systems, and they based their processing based upon tiers. If you processed over X dollars, you were tier one. If you processed between X and Y dollars, you were tier two. If you processed another, it was tier three, and the tier two and tier one requirements required a significant amount of auditing to the point where it went from being a part-time job to a full-time job just to complete the annual auditing required by these major companies. And I think that we've seen in other states through the use of metric or other track and trace programs that these have become extraordinarily burdensome for the small farmer. And a burdensome compliance system is worse, in my opinion, than a compliance system that is a little bit lighter touch because something that is achievable will actually get done. Whereas something that is burdensome is going to be avoided and it will drive people out of the industry who would otherwise have a very good business. And again, this isn't to say that there should be no compliance and no oversight. It just really needs to be done in a manner that is fair for the farmer. My greatest concern that I had in my previous life with credit card security was that those compliance costs were always dumped onto the farmer, or well in that case it was onto the retailer. And I'm extraordinarily concerned about what the costs of compliance will be. Now the cannabis marketplace is brand new. It's in its infancy. And when we compare the cannabis market and the products that will be created to other industries such as alcohol that are more mature, we see that quality starts to become a deciding factor for the consumer. And quality is something that when it comes to cultivating cannabis is very difficult to do at a large scale. So having small scale cultivators, not limiting the number of small scale cultivators within this state and allowing those small scale cultivators to access the market will help create something, will help create products on these farms that are sustainable as the cannabis industry matures. And grows and as customers start to want smaller batch higher quality products or just products that they know where they are from. I could talk about a lot of different things but I really wanted to talk primarily about how land use will impact farmers and how zoning restrictions could be used to prevent equal opportunities within the marketplace. Great. Thanks, Sam. Thanks for bringing up the security bid and that experience you have maybe we'll leverage some of your knowledge down the road when we start to think more substantively about cash management and security concerns when it comes to a retail operation or how that might differ from an indoor versus an outdoor operation as well. Any more questions for Sam? I don't have any questions. Thank you, Sam. Yeah, Sam. I mean, you and I had a great conversation the other night. I'm not going to put you on the spot. You had some cool concept ideas. We can visit those later unless you want to, you want to talk about them now, but no pressure. I mean, I think that talking about incentivizing farmers or cultivators to utilize what nature is giving us to cultivate cannabis is just it's extraordinarily important. And I don't know if that's much of a conversation than a statement. No, I'm not going to force your hand to elaborate on that, but look forward to working with you and tapping into some of your ideas and knowledge as we move through this process. Thanks for being here, Sam. James, you've got nothing for me. I do. I do have some thoughts. I mean, really, like we've been hearing over and over again about this ag or commercial distinction. You know, I'm just trying to think, you know, how, how do you as a small farmer give the folks that made that distinction in our legislation? The assurance that, you know, this industry isn't going to be harmful to the environment to, you know, the thinking was the right farm and other issues associated with agricultural products are going to, you know, allow certain allowances, create certain allowances for farmers that they wanted to just avoid the issue altogether. I don't know, you know, I think that that is the thinking in the legislature. And it'd be nice to hear from you how, you know, if it was reclassified as an agricultural product, how we get how you as a farmer might be able to convince the legislature that that some of their worst fears aren't going to be realized. Sure. So I think it's important to start by clarifying what some of these worst fears are. And from my perspective, I hear regularly to two primary fears. There's the environmental fear of pesticides and runoff and waste. And then there's the other fear of non adult use. Do you have any other specific concerns that you'd also like me to address? You know, I wasn't even around. I wasn't paying attention to the testimony. I don't know what, whatever came up in committee, but you can certainly talk about those. I know we had also, you know, it's also my understanding that there's there's constant anxiety, you know, I think from from folks that are with us on the call now, but also at the legislative level that, you know, multi state operators would, you know, look to come into Vermont by large plots of land and look to over exploit a lot of the exemptions that we talked about through Ryan's presentation that that agriculture typically enjoys. So I think that was likely involved in the calculus. That's why this was designated commercial versus agriculture. Looking to carry to you might have some thoughts here, but, you know, using that as a launch pad, Sam, would like to hear your thoughts. I'll address the waste aspect first and pesticide use. That is something that should be highly regulated. And it is something that it is a lot easier to handle the waste and cultivation of cannabis at a smaller scale than it is at a larger scale. When you talk about growing 25 plants, 50 plants, 100 plants, there is an actual exponential difference in the amount of waste and pesticide usage that you might have to use compared to 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 plants. Their hands on and being able to actually handle things allows a farmer to notice issues and problems that a large scale commercial operation may not be able to notice. In my opinion, the agricultural farming of cannabis could be something that is tied into license size to prevent a large scale operation from coming in, as you said, and sort of destroying the landscape. I'm not the person who should tell you what those sizes should be or what the limits should be, what is fair. And I think that a craft cultivator is farming, and I think a small scale cultivator can be farming, and I think that a large scale cultivator could also be farming. But it needs, as those levels are reached and those sizes of businesses are met, that different levels of regulation can help ensure the safety of the environment. As far as products reaching the community and members of the community who are underage or for whatever other reason should not be getting these products, I think that the green market or regulated market solves that problem. By getting rid of an illicit market, by degrading a black market, you are left with businesses and people who are members of those communities. And members, there is an obligation as a community member for many people and many business owners to do good and to be good members of the community. And business owners and businesses who do not act well and do not abide by the laws for the state or their community very frequently go out of business. So much like liquor stores and breweries are not selling out their doors to children, I think that it is very important to recognize that cannabis business owners will take laws and regulations just as seriously and that there should be repercussions for anybody who does anything otherwise. Yeah. Thanks for that. Yeah, thank you. Well, any further questions? I think I'm good for now but thank you Sam and then I'll certainly reach out if you know I need any clarifying answers. All right, thank you very much. The only other thing I would like to say is that cultivating cannabis outdoors in Vermont is not easy. And there are a lot of people who want to do something that is very difficult and y'all are in a position where you can essentially make it easier or harder. And I'm not going to encourage you to do anything that would put anybody's health at risk or the environment at risk. But I would encourage you to please do whatever it is that you can to make sure that every Vermonter who would like to participate can participate. The war on drugs has made it so many people have been directly harmed by cannabis laws and this is an opportunity to you right now. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Next on our agenda today is public comments. This is our last public comment of the day. So I will follow the same procedure. If you'd like to provide a public comment to the board and you've joined us through the link. Please raise your virtually in Jesse Lynn. Okay, is that better. There we go. I just wanted to quickly speak to clean green as the first certified clean green farm here in Vermont and kind of respond to what Carrie had asked. Clean green to me is a little different and there's a reason I chose clean green instead of USDA organic and I just wanted to throw some of those reasons out there to you. Sorry, I'm out of breath. I just ran in from the greenhouse. I was waiting for public comment but I was out with the plan so I apologize for breathing heavy at you. So clean green does mandate soil testing like Matt said they 100% of farms are soil tested where the national average for USDA from from my stats that I understand is about 5%. Another difference that was really important is that they mandate parameters for clean for for drying parameters. So you have to have non porous cleanable washing surfaces where the USDA hemp program one of the differences is that they allow it up to a farmer's best judgment which some some might make wonderful judgment. Sometimes we do worry where are they drying and can that be a cause of some of those contaminants. So a couple of things I again wanted to just mention is the zero net as the goal through the carbon reduction program is another reason that I went with clean green because I feel that is so important. I'm as you guys know a patient advocate I talk all about protecting the patients through consumer safety we have to protect our planet so I feel just as strong that we need to. You know while we're looking at consumer protection look at the environment in my mind USDA organic and from my understanding is that's a marketing for the most part. Versus clean green where that's literally environmental and consumer protection and that's why it was made it was not made for marketing. So I do see a lot of room even if there is federal legalization for programs that are more for consumer protection than just for marketing from that organic stamp. Again and product we always want to look really for that final product lab testing regardless what we're doing. We also do have farms that have been certified organic that I've had a nurse shoot me a receipt for them using Eagle 20 so I would always say that final lab testing is the only way we can protect the patient but that's also protecting the environment by knowing what our farmers are using so always circling back to that full panel lab testing. And then one thing we do in a hospital setting is we allow spot inspections as a nurse you know at any point jaco or someone could come in as a regulatory body. So I would consider having spot inspections of farms and maybe giving a suggested list of allowables. So you're giving the guidance of this is what you're allowed to use instead of saying oh no you're using that let's not use that let's make some of these really positive recommendations and put Vermont out on the right foot. So I just wanted to again speak to why I chose clean green and I do feel as Kerry asked there is a lot of room for these third party organizations that are going to take it a bit further than the USDA organic program is allowed to or has been known to do. And that plastic that carbon reduction the plastic rows that they allow in organic farming let's let's do that different here in Vermont we can do it a little bit better and we have this unique niche to do so. So thank you again just wanted to share as the first clean green certified farm here in Vermont. Thank you. Next up is Graham. Hey folks can you hear me and see me. Yep. Great. I know you've been hearing a lot from me today thanks for this marathon meeting with the great guests and a number of opportunities for public comment. Yeah I really just going to comment on a number of things that were said. There was a suggestion about taking a deeper look at the hemp program and believe chair pepper you suggested that and I think you know we fully support that and definitely recommend that you all do that in our coalition did advocate that we that we do have an existing it's it's our hemp program and in fact one of our coalition members trace contracts with the state to administer it seed to sell tracking system I know Kerry and Stephanie are there and you know I hope that you all do. Take a deep look into that. The news about federal advancement has certainly been been making the rounds. And you know I think hopefully from our perspective. We hope that we can be a model in Vermont for what this looks like what an equitable model for cannabis marketplace looks like. And I think unfortunately you know our legislation is actually ranked very poorly nationally in terms of equity if you saw the law most recent leafly survey. You know we have good relationships with a federal delegation we can bring them in we can we can talk with those folks. And we already do see some glaring inequities at the federal level I believe I've heard already that those with felonies from cannabis will not be allowed to access the marketplace so you know there's some ways that Vermont has already done better and I think we can continue to try to do what a national program might offer. Carbon offsets and credits were mentioned and I just wanted to say that from our perspective is an agricultural organization. Both based on our national allies the national family farm coalition global allies like La Via Campesina. We see carbon offsets and credits as a false carbon solution really marketed by corporations who don't want to want to be able to keep polluting. So I would encourage you to not engage with carbon offsets and credits and actually look at real means of producing pollution. In terms of there was a suggestion just around technical assistance for growers and I think that's just so important to think about that as we think about regulations. There's a suggestion about weather contingencies from Jacob I believe and I think for outdoor growing in particular and I think that was also a great recommendation. Really good questions around canopy size and how that will be interpreted and just making sure that we have that well articulated. I'm not going into it so that no mistakes are made and people don't build their businesses on sort of unstable ground. There are comments about promoting intercropping and again I think this it's going to be very hard to do intercropping on an existing farm if with the current zoning challenges. On-site processing and farm gate sales. Gosh that's so important. Direct market opportunities. These are mentioned by a couple of the guests. On-site processing and you'll see in our recommendations we do recommend a sort of small scale farm integrated license where people could produce their own product, process their own product and directly sell their own product. I thought it was really interesting to talk about the use of the pesticide regs not only by active ingredient but by product name as well. In terms of the ag use and legislative fears I just wanted to quickly get into that because you mentioned the concerns around MSOs coming in. You mentioned the concerns around youth and I think around the environment. I think we heard loud and clear today that there are RAPs that exist to help farmers with environmental regulations. We heard about some of the environmental impacts of indoor and how outdoor production will have a lot fewer environmental impacts in different ways. In terms of MSO impacts and impacts of money in terms of land use and land acquisition, production caps that we've recommended and no horizontal license holding that's already incorporated into the law would do a lot to I think prevent that. And lastly I think in terms of the youth prevention focus call last week I didn't hear anybody conflating outdoor production or a smaller scale cultivation with youth use. And I think as Sam said, the more people you can get into the legal market the more accessible it comes. That means the more people you have selling by the regulations, selling it visible to the public, carting people and not selling to youth. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else want to make a public comment please just raise your virtual hands. Hey there. So, I would like to see some an educated education component for all the small outdoor growers that are that are going to be taking part. You know, the, the, the runoff and lake quality problems are a serious problem. I haven't been able to take my dog to the lake for a while. And I miss it. So maybe some like, just a little bit of education about creating a healthy soil food web, keeping liquid nutrients out of the equation. And I think that that would be really, really important. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, we have one last agenda item before we adjourn. You know, we are going to engage with two consulting firms and to help us develop our regulations and manage kind of the next phase of the board's work. We've had a number of times, both as a board and with these consulting firms, we've narrowed it down to two. We think we can do it for us. And so we're ready to take kind of a vote on starting the process and negotiating with them. So I would entertain a motion to, I think, Julie, you have a specific language. So I'll move to authorize executive director bring here to enter negotiations to contract with two consultants. National Association of Cannabis Businesses and via strategies to negotiate scope of work is outlined in our request for services. Second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Okay. So that's it for today. We will be meeting again next Thursday, probably 930 to two or three. And we'll put out an agenda as soon as we have a little bit more finalized next week. So with that, I take a motion to adjourn. All right. All in favor. All right. Stop the recording.