 We're really fortunate and happy to have all of you here. Last year, we did take testimony about water quality issues and agriculture's role in problems versus opportunities. We also heard about some permits that were being required for farmers who were really just trying to institute soil health strategies that were asked to pay significant permit fees for that. Over the summer, I've had some conversations with folks, including Julie and others. And maybe some of those things have been resolved. But we're going to look at this issue again. And hear from both the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, and the Agency of Natural Resources. So thank you guys for coming. Yeah, we're here. Yeah. So Laura DiPetro, Agency of Agriculture. I'm the director of water quality division. I'm Brian Pash with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. I'm the deputy director of the water quality division. So I'm going to give you a couple of handouts here. And Linda will make sure we get them an email to you as well. Interesting. We'll have one and take one, pass them around. So one of the things we've done to try and provide some education this year, often there's lengthy reports that each agency will provide. And we decided to go with one pagers and a couple of topic areas so that you can really digest it and get something quick and move along. And so these are three documents we'll be handing out to you to reference throughout your tenure here, this session. The first one that I'm handing out is about enforcement. And I'll go over that one and then Ryan will cover some of the other topic areas. And you can see we try to highlight a few things in terms of how much we work on this. I'll give you an org chart in a second to explain it. But basically since Act 64, which was in 2015, the Agency of Agriculture was given resources to do the job that we're charged to do in statute. Prior to that, we had very minimal resources to do that job. We had foreign specters for the whole state in more than 6,000 farms. And so you can imagine the ability to actually effectively enforce and also provide education outreach and technical assistance was pretty challenged. And so all of that has shifted a lot. We're able to be really productive at this point. We hired a number of people and we went from, I think it was a total of 11 in the division to now almost 30 working on water quality. And so basically that translates into a lot of work. And this report here provides for you some information on what we've done. On average, we visit five farms every day. That's pretty significant presence. And there's always that sort of parallel that says the police are on the highway and you're driving and you see them at every turnaround point. You tend to start slowing down, right? If you're on a farm this often, that behavior of making sure that you're doing your housekeeping and management and keeping up with the practices you've implemented goes up the likelihood. We've taken 240, notice 244 violations which has resulted in 118 enforcement actions. So there could be multiple violations off farm but 113 individual actions have been taken to cover all of those violations. And we've also in this timeframe worked pretty significantly with DEC to the way that it's structured in St. Vermont is that non-point source pollution is delegated to the agency of agriculture by this body. And point source, so like a pipe discharge into a stream is A&R, agency of natural resources which you'll hear from them later. So of course if we see something like that we have to refer it to them and they take that from there. So we worked on an MOU which was also required. We already had one in place for a number of years so it's required that we revise it. So we did that work following Act 64 and since then have been meeting regularly, training regularly, doing all the things and there are reports for that MOU that also they were sent over. Did you have it? Yesterday. Yesterday Monday. A&R will produce one and agency of agriculture produces one of the charges that we each produce a report to you. So those are forthcoming. In addition, every year our agency of agriculture puts out a full enforcement report so this is sort of the highlights and they're on our website and we will be producing it before the end of the month and we're happy to go through it but it's a lot more details in the areas of where violations might occur. Is it manure stacking? Is it nutrient management implementation? So that it will be forthcoming and we'll give you more detail there but yeah. So you can see $69,000 in penalties which is not like given the climate that farmers are in right now in terms of dairy economics. The majority of farms that we work with are dairies when it comes to this work. We do, predominantly when we talk about farms we break them into a couple categories based on size so we have small farms which for us are very small. Often people have both working jobs and then they have a farm as well. Certified small farms are farms where someone might be working on a farm full time and then someone else might be working a separate job so that in a dairy it's 50 cows, up to 200 cows. And then medium-sized farm is 200 to 699 cows and a large farm is 700 or more cows. And so we break those up in terms of the regulatory structure and large farms are given individual permits specific to their farm and medium farms are given general permits and they are sort of a, I'm gonna say a special farm but just see there's something significant about it that makes it different than another type of medium farm. We could give them an individual permit so that we could, certainly one area that the authority is given is for special technology. And so for instance, Vermont Technical College is a farm that, this is a little bit of a different parallel but they're technically a small farm but we put them under the medium farm general permit. So we have that ability to bring folks into an area because they have a digestion and a different setup that is structured in a certain way. So we felt they're bringing in other ways that made them equivalent to an MFO even though they didn't have the animal numbers. So there's some flexibility but it's a space that we can provide coverage no matter what size you are. We also refer cases to the attorney general's office. We have an MOU that we've worked with them and we had several cases, I believe there's been, well, I mean here you can see, yeah, I was gonna say nine but there's seven cases that have been reported over there this year and there's still existing cases from previous years that they're working through. So there's been some pretty significant accountability to farms either through the agency of natural resources, the agency of agriculture or the attorney general's office in the last couple of years. Does anyone have any? Laura, yeah. Yeah, watch the demo yesterday. Memorandum of understanding. So operating procedures of how we will work. So for instance, you know, like if our agency because we create general permits for farms, right? If we're gonna write a new general permit, there's this respecting courtesy that we show it to A&R before we release it because they are actually medium farms and large farms. There's a federal regulatory structure called CAFO. So for concentrated animal feeding operations, there's, it's a federal permit that farms get and in some states that's how the state operates is like the agency of natural resources equivalent issues those permits for farms. In the state of Vermont, A&R can do that. But the agency about AG also has this program of medium and large farm permits that essentially are equal to or greater than, right? In order to be able to operate that way. So if we're going to release something in one of those program areas, we need to make sure that it works for them because they are responsible to issue the federal permit, if not. Sure. And when you cite number of cows, you mean the milkers, you're not including heifers? Yes, it's mature cows, that's the number I just gave you which could be milk or dry. So if I can interrupt, I wanted to have as many people here as possible so that you could introduce yourselves to you. John is on a field trip so he will not be here today from now on, I believe. But if you don't mind us interrupting, go around the room because some of us are new. Tom? My name is Representative Vock, I'm Vock from the town of Chester. I represent the town of Chester and over Baltimore and part of North Franklin. Cherry Norris, I represent Benson, Orwell, Shoram, and Whiting. Caroline Partridge, I represent Athens, Brooklyn, Grafton, part of Northwestminster, all of Rockingham, and my hometown of Williamson. Cognac Ham, I represent Williamstown, Washington, Lawrence, Halsey, Gersharing, Clarkson. Sharon Figuard, I represent Highgate, Franklin, Richford, and my hometown of Berkshire. John O'Brien, I represent Tumbridge, and Russell. I'm sorry, I'm late to squish by you like that. Sorry. I'm Representative Vicki Strong, I live in Albany, and I represent Albany, Barton, Crosbury, Greensboro, Glover, Orleans, Wheeling, and Sheffield. Great, thank you. So I'm Laura DePietra, I'm the director of Water Quality for the last year. Brian Pasch, the deputy director. Please continue. So if you have any questions about inspection or an enforcement in how we do this work, this is a quick overview of it, just to show you what we're doing. Terry. Oh, actually, Sharon had a question that you didn't ask. No, I didn't. You did? Oh, I'll move it in my mind. Okay, Terry. Let's see, you have 69,000 in penalties, do they have like three strikes and then there are hours of just one, you know, as soon as you see a violation, do you send the fine or do you get them a chance to fix it first? Sure. So there's been some evolution in enforcement throughout the years. You know, the statute has changed and we've rewritten rules. So at the time that I became involved in enforcement in the agency of agriculture, we sort of shifted. There's a lot of tools that are given to us in statute. And so for instance, I wanted to make sure, and it does actually say it in statute, everyone's given fair notice of what their issue is, right, because you need an opportunity to fix it. Our philosophy across the board is that this dollar value goes into the general fund, right? It doesn't change the fact that you have a water quality issue unless you actually have change at the farm. And so we would rather see this money put into that change instead of receiving it for the general fund, you know? So our first effort is to notify people, have them understand what's wrong and have them correct it if they can. With some farms, especially medium and large farms that have been regulated for a number of years under permits, they've been noticed already. And so for them, a new incident is then going to ramp it up of the same nature. So that's where the penalties start to come in is where repeat behavior has happened. I noticed you called them a proposed penalties. Yes, so you issue penalties to someone and then they have an opportunity to come into the agency. The agency of Ag has a unique process that I think is very effective in terms of, it doesn't cost a lot of overhead, right? So a farmer doesn't need to go and get a lawyer to be able to represent themselves, to be able to make their case. They are able, it's an administrative enforcement mechanism. So we send them a notice and say, proposed penalty of $5,000. Then they can have enough, and we send them a hearing date, right? And a hearing is where a third party hearing officer is there and they can bring counsel and they can go through what their situation is. But we offer them a pre-hearing, which is akin to a settlement discussion, right? If you were gonna go to court, you have an opportunity to settle before you actually have a court date. So that pre-hearing opportunity is where they can come in and just talk directly to the division and we can hear all the situation and we make a determination of whether we're willing to settle, right? There's enough facts and evidence or information or there's a lack of fact of evidence and information in some instances that warrant that they've agreed to make changes and it makes sense. In some instances, they have already fixed it by the time the date comes about. So that's an obvious area where that's our goal, it's fixing it. And so if they fix it, we can look at maybe a reduced penalty. The outcome of a pre-hearing, if it does get to that, is an assurance of discontinuance. So we agree to terms and we write it up and the secretary signs it and the farmer signs it and it's enforceable. So a lot of times what we'll do in our agency is say you have a $5,000 penalty and you say, I'm gonna do X, Y, or Z. We say, okay, great. Well, you owe us half of that now, just as an example. And the other half, we're gonna hold it there for two years and if you abide by that and you don't make another mistake similar to those or any other mistake, because then it covers all other RAPs, then we will let go of that other $2,500, right? So we hold it in advance. So it's a way to be able to say, the state that's put you on notice, you need to fix your situation and if you do fix it, then we'd rather you see that money go into that project but if you don't fix it, you're gonna have to still do the project and you're gonna owe the money and you're gonna get another penalty for violating that assurance of discontinuance. So it really does start to ramp up with that. Are the fines variable? We have a penalty matrix that we work with which is also very in line with what DECs and the attorney generals are. So we all have operated under a very similar structure. We've taken every rule that we have and broken it down. But then of course there's ability to have deterrent effects or sometimes it's a continuing violation and it happens regularly. So the nature of the violation and the length and duration and the intensity of the violation will vary that. It's not textbook specific. And that's on our website as well. So that was one thing farmers wanted to understand and see it as well. I mean, it's blank, it's not filled out but it's at least an understanding of how we get to a penalty calculation. Sharon? With the five farm visits every day, is that done on a schedule where the farmers know you're coming? And the second half of my question is farmers come in all kinds of shapes, sizes and personalities. Do you tend to visit the farms with a history of violations more than you do the farms that have been consistently playing by the rules? We have statutory requirements to visit farms on certain cycles at minimum. So for certified small farms at seven years, meeting farms is three years and large farms is every year. One of the things, for instance, that we were able to do with the increased staffing is for large farms, there's often lots of facilities that are associated with one large farm. And so when we only had one person managing that program, they couldn't be everywhere all the time. And so we are now able, we weren't doing every single facility. We were at least every year doing some portion of the facilities but now our policy is we do every single facility every single year because we have the staff ability to do it. But if you are someone who has challenges and we've identified them either through an enforcement action or something that we see and it's easily resolved, we will be back for follow up either programmatic or enforcement. And we track all of this so that we can make sure and we have the whole system of making sure that that is not lost between the cracks. Essentially, the more and more problematic you are, the more and more we will be visiting you. That's just the nature of it. So even though like a certified small farm at seven years, if we've identified some real issues, the likelihood is we've potentially sent you a notice, gone back and checked on that notice. If you didn't do it, then we've probably sent you a penalty. And then maybe you came in and we had an agreement and assurance of discontinuance sign, then we need to go out and check on that. And as that seems to go forward, there's these visits that are required as enforcement follow up visits. I don't know if that, as far as notice to farms, our policy is we don't want to be on a farm unannounced in terms of the last thing you want to do is someone go, what are you doing here? You're in their field or something like that to respect property rights. However, we have a job to do. And so what we typically do for these inspections is, and you can tell, there's only so much, if you have major issues on your farm, you're not going to fix them overnight. But we give people at least two days notice. We call them and say, we're coming to do an inspection on your farm. And that way it allows them to be there. Sometimes people legitimately have appointments or whatever. We want that farmer who operates that farm to be there to see what we see so that they can make the corrections that we see. We also, when we do our inspection, we have a check off sheet that essentially says, silage was an area of concern or something to that effect. It doesn't say you were in violation of X, Y, or Z because our inspectors do not make that decision that all comes back to a review committee and the decision gets made based on the evidence that was collected. But at least tells the farmer and gives them a checklist when we leave that they know the areas and hopefully we walked and showed them what our concerns were when we were there at the farm. Then we send them a full report once that is completely written. And sometimes those reports, for a large farm it's not uncommon for it to be 18 pages long. It's very extensive. We were very thorough. For these farms, I think in some ways, we definitely heard it's overwhelming to them because of the level that we're going to, but that is the level of, when you look at the RAP's medium farm or large farm rules, there's a lot in there to make sure that you protect for water quality. So we try to get a notice. If we get a complaint on the phone, someone says, oh, somebody's spreading manure and it's going into the river. We have an MOU with DC. We give that to them and they'll go and inspect it and enforce it. If they go out there and they don't see that it's an issue that falls under point source, they'll send it back to us and then we can follow up with it. But no matter what, those types of situations, whoever goes out, there's typically not a lot of notice, if anything. It's a phone call. The person might be in the town next over who's the local inspector and they're just gonna, they need to call and show up. You need to see that when it's happening, not after the fact. So for complaints that come in, our goal is to get out there within 24 hours. There are some things like buffers, they're not gonna move. So we'll take a little more time if the schedule doesn't allow it, but if the schedule allows it, we try to get out there within 24 hours. And so there may be less notice in those instances, but we certainly still won't just go walking around. We'll try and find somebody on the farm to say, we're here and this is what we're here for. Terry and then Tom. Hi, I was just wondering, have you worked on like PR with the farmers? Because I know Ryan probably knows who I'm talking about, but there's a farmer in Orwell that had a violation and it was like, I don't know, six months after the inspection before they even got a notice and they could have fixed it the next day if they'd known, but the inspector could not indicate that this is a problem. Yeah, so there are technologies in that realm because again, we don't want the inspectors making a judgment call on the site that that's a violation. I mean, sometimes it's really clear, but sometimes it's not that clear. And so we have a committee so that way every farmer is treated equally statewide and all the information from any farm comes back and it gets the same level of review. You don't want to create bias amongst inspectors. You want to keep them all consistent. And so they were noticed that it was a concern, right? We will tell you that universally every inspector can point out it's a concern. They can't say it is a violation. And the timeframe to write up these reports, as I mentioned, they're lengthy reports. There's maps that we have to generate, there's folders we have to put in and we have to write the text, obviously. And then we have a review process to make sure that we're using consistent language and we're operating under all the terms that we're supposed to. So with that said too, we were in a phase in the last couple of years since Act 64 of training new staff and getting these processes in place. And so that time lag was not ideal and I recognized that. And so the fact that it took six months to get enforcement to that farm is not a place we are. I don't believe our interest is to try and get someone an inspection report within 30 days. We're more like it's 60 right now. We're going to continue to do the best. We're building a database to try and tighten that. The next piece is then the enforcement obviously comes immediately after following that. It gets referred to the enforcement committee once the report is complete. So it's 60 days and then the next calendar date we meet weekly to discuss enforcement items. It would go on the agenda and a decision would be made. And then the goal is 30 days after that, the enforcement action that was drafted and sent. So the terms of what the expectations are, are tighter but in that time period we weren't able to meet those goals due to trans people. You have, what did you say you have like 30 people? Yeah, let me hand it off. Did you have to hire new people or to ship people around? It's been a lot of time. Interviewing and getting people in place. We opened a whole new office in Williston because this building across the street does not have the capacity to pull the folks that we have now. And actually we're going to be moving into another space because other areas of the agency have also expanded and we've outgrown that. Do you have any clue how that, there's only certain amount of money that we give you to operate? Do you, you must have to cut back somewhere? You know, so it was all on my shoulders when figuring out what do we need to accomplish the goals of the TMDL because that's sort of where a lot of this started. And you know, I'm frugal and efficient. So, you know, at some point the number of staff that we have are the minimum that I had requested. And we did grow, you know, in the following year and then the following year we did grow a little bit more based on the needs. And even at this point I would say, you know, something for instance that I didn't consider when I think of time constraints for staffing or public records requests. We've spent hundreds of hours, every single inspection about a farm, every single communication with DEC about farms. All of that is out in the public at this point due to public records requests. And that's a significant time and resources you can imagine to be able to pull and make sure all those records have been redacted as necessary and are probably all the nutrient management plans for large farms are out there as well. So I did not account for that. That is a huge time suck. It is an important piece of making sure that there's transparency for the work we're doing, which we're really proud of. I think with having these staff you can see this org chart shows, you know, what we've got in terms of capacity. If you look at, for instance, the first two purple columns that you can see the two purple supervisors and then there's four folks underneath each one of those. The first one is the group that's for medium and large farms. So under Maria Steyer and then Trevor Lewis supervises the certified small farm group. So that's for small, small farms and certified small farms. And we will be adding one more position into the medium and large farm group based on a shift from a position that we reassigned because there's a lot of demand in that group for medium and large farms. They're time consuming to regulate essentially. There's a lot more. If you look at a farm, maybe one farm, but again, like a large farm could have nine facilities. So when you compare it to the workload of this certified small farm group on balance they both need to be counted by facilities. So we're gonna be increasing one there. But in the past what we had prior to that was we had one person in the medium and large farm, I'm sorry, in the large farm group and we didn't regulate certified small farms in the same way of doing inspections at all. And we had three people in a medium farm group. So big change since Act 64. In the engineering, which you see the blue column with Robbie Killies. You can see there are, well, there's five engineers underneath him and then a CREP position, which is the CREP is basically a technical assistance person who helps farmers fence cows out of streams and plant trees or grass buffers or grass waterways. So that position, it becomes a very technical position so we stuck it in the basically technical assistance group there. But we used to just have Rob Killies, right? We had one engineer and now we're up to this and I'm actually, I have a request that'll be coming through JFO because I have received federal money to support another CREP person so that we can expand that service and then another engineering because we have more work in our docket than we have capacity to provide engineering services to. So those areas, we didn't have capacity in the past and certainly have ramped up significantly. And then you can see what's underneath Ryan here is effectively what I call the communications team. That didn't exist. None of that exists. There was no Ryan, there was no communications team at all. And so there's been big changes which have allowed us to really be, I think, a lot more effective at communicating with farmers, providing information, having all of our resources up to date, all of these kinds of things. We weren't able to generate at this level. We were focused on just the core of the job that we needed to do, which was still not enough. So we've got capacity, we're doing a really good job. Certainly there's always room for doing more. Some of the things that we're trying to move into aside from the core work we have to do is just innovative things, right? So for instance, the governor has the Vermont phosphorus innovation challenge which is trying to remove phosphorus from farms and create new byproducts that can have actual value. That takes a lot of resources and energy to develop and to launch and to do all of that. And one of the people underneath Ryan is doing that work currently now in addition to all of the other ones that they do. So we're trying to branch new areas and come up with new programmatic opportunities that make sense to provide incentive to farmers. Another one is looking at, there are some sites where when you look at how much we are able to invest us and the agency of, I'm sorry, the natural resource conservation service, you can sink a lot of money into a farm in conservation practices. And sometimes that farm might be suited in a place that it may not be sustainable for the long term for growth of that farm, the ability to continue to comply with future regulations. And so in some instances, that money might be better spent in another way on that farm. And so trying to create these opportunities and new program areas, it takes a stakeholder process and making sure that we're working in the right direction to get it to so that it's effective. So those are some of the areas that we don't really have capacity for that, but we find the capacity where we can. I think they answered your question. Kind of long-winded. I'd just like to say that I, going out to the farmers meetings, I don't feel that distrust that I used to feel the first year I was here. I mean, farmers were kind of angry and they don't, I didn't think they understood what was going on as much as they do now. I think they could see the positive benefits of it. I agree, I'm starting to see that too. I think there was sort of a rough patch. I mean, we revised the required ag practices as we required to. We did over 90 meetings trying to educate people about it, but it was a big change. And when you look at every other state in the United States, we have the most restrictive non-point source regulations in the country. And that's hard to digest to know that you're having to go above and beyond your neighboring farmers in New York. And they, the farmers provided us a lot of input. We actually, two years prior to Act 64, we had a work group where we tried to educate farmers on what was going on and said, help us think about things that really could be good for water quality and are achievable on a farm. And that is the report that basically helped generate what the TMDL would do and what Act 64 became and told us to require in the RIPs. Despite all of that effort that we did to try and get farmers engaged in that process, it's still a hard pill to swallow, right? It was a big change in regulation. And we actually have copies of the new RIPs because they just changed again. We had to implement changes for tile drainage. And so now you can throw out your old copy and this is the new copy. It's like a lady. I make a terrible joke that we're gonna have a good phone for one day. But because we keep changing these rules, it feels like pretty regularly lately. But even despite that, I think there was a rough patch between the agency and farmers following that. And at this point, I think that we've educated the crews and worked with them and been available through the outreach opportunity staff that we have to try and spend time really getting them to understand what it is, how it can be done and they're seeing it and they're doing it and they're seeing that it is achievable. There's still grates and we've been working through the grates and listening and trying to adjust where we can on those. I think we're, I hope people realize we're pretty open-minded. In my mind, if regulations are not understood by folks and easily attainable, they're not gonna be effective. You're gonna be chasing your tail. And that's the worst thing for a government agency is to try and chase your tail because your administrative resources are lost. No, I think you and Ryan, when you go to the Farmers Coalition meeting, I mean, you do a good job. Thank you. Appreciate that. So we'll be a full enforcer here, sorry. Oh, Tom. Oh, sorry. Okay, time for some questions. Just a big picture, Laura, is it up to your division to measure progress or to see what's happening at the industry or to take a bucket out of the team? Over time, what's happening, how are you measuring it? Well, so that is A&R's role and then I'll let Marlee try and talk about maybe how that works. But with that said, for instance, we do monitoring where we can, right? So a couple things. We have a pesticide monitoring program that is basically resources provided by EPA to the agency back long-term funding opportunity to make sure that herbicides and nitrates are managed on farms. So when someone goes to a farm to do an inspection, they take a sample of the well to make sure that that well is basically groundwater monitoring. So we do that and the other thing we've been doing more recently is tile drain sampling and collecting information there so that we can understand what's going on on the field. And accountability is an important part of the agency's work to support the implementation of conservation practices through financial assistance, so ensuring that we're tracking where practices are going in so we can measure their effectiveness for faster productions. This is a big part of the charge of ACC-C4 and a big part of the clean water investment report which was being discussed right now and some of those figures are embedded in, some of the handouts will be reviewed when we talk about financial assistance programs that the agency ag administers. Okay. No, I just wondering if you're measuring progress and if you've seen that based on all the efforts you've been doing. Yeah, so there are definitely reports that have come out that have shown progress. What progress is defined as is I think a little bit challenging. If you're gonna go to the end of the stream or the lake, progress is gonna be a difficult thing because there's so many variables going into that, right? So every time it rains, every single sector is contributing. It's non-point source pollution so it's the landscape coming off. There's also legacy phosphorus which is a real thing and there's a new study that just came out of Canada that looked at basically, you know, in the 1910 or something like that, I think it was that these lakes just north of us all hit that tipping point where, you know, some of them it's gonna take anywhere from 100 years to 600 years to improve water quality in them because of the land use of the past, right? So that is a real challenge in trying to deal with looking at what we manage today and what it means in terms of water quality at the end of the line. However, you can stand there and you can look at something and you can see the improvement. You know, there's obvious visuals and, you know, we've got some photos and things and that is where you can see at the farmstead, there is a big difference. DEC has been working with our staff to do some bracket monitoring where it is feasible. Sometimes you can't control the watershed so it's hard to get a good sense of it but to look at, you know, if a farm is still a practice and you monitor above and below, can you see that difference? And they have been able to do that and a lot of that work is up in Orleans County where they've done some of that. Yeah, and then there's the basic accountability of not. I'll definitely send this to you, Lana, so you can post it. This is a summary of conservation practice implementation for financial assistance programs from state and federal. So this is both the agency of agricultural farm agronomic practices as well as NRCS equips program for that. And if you look at what I'm showing you here, if you can see it, it's a cover crop. And back in 2014, you know, 6,600 acres of cover crop was implemented in the state and now we're up to 26,000 acres of cover crop being implemented. So we're looking at, I think it's close to 200% increase did the math earlier today, but I can't remember but a really significant increase on the part of the farmers. And, you know, no-till is another area where we've seen improved implementation, you know, going from 1,600 acres to 16,000 acres. And that was something you go back 10, 20 years ago, you know, we can't do no-till in Vermont. We don't have the right soils. And so the work of, you know, the partnership, you know, from UVM extension, doing the, from the outreach to, you know, farmers, you know, listening and trying and trialing, there's really been great progress as far as implementing those practices that work to reduce non-point source losses from fields. So, you know, really since Act 64 and the real engagement and additional resources that have been allocated, I think, you know, we're definitely seeing some improved implementation. The outcome and improvement in the water courses is going to be another, as Laura just alluded to, a bit more of a lag to see that, you know, improvement and there's other factors as well. Okay, but you're with me fishing on a lake channel playing with about five guys and we're not catching anything. You know, it's the farmers that are in, I'm going to say no, no, no, we're making a lot of progress. Is that what I'm going to say? So, the way that this, I hope you do, because farmers have been making a lot of progress. I mean, these graphs are phenomenal. The engagement of the ag community is through the roof and I've been here for 15 years now and seeing that change myself. These, the way that this data is managed is, you know, you can't put a monitoring station at the end of every single one of these fields. You just can't. It's not economically feasible. But you can take this data and there's plenty of research on sites that says, well, this, that, you know, one acre of cover crop roughly equates to this many pounds of phosphorus reduction. And so you can model it and come up with an estimate of phosphorus reduction. So everything the agency of agriculture is doing, we're keeping track of, and DEC is responsible through EPA, through the accountability there to be able to report out what that means. And so, the Clean Water Investment Report and Emily Bird, I know she's doing some rounds. That's where all that, we give all this data to DEC and they turn it through their machine and then comes out with an estimated phosphorus reduction. So that will continue and also data refines of what is the appropriate phosphorus reduction credit will continue to be researched and improved as we go through time. John. Are those increases due to, are they inspired by your restrictions or is there also a monetary parent to do that? So that, the data I shared there, those are implementation numbers through financial assistance. So there is financial assistance from state and federal programs that support the implementation of those practices. But in watersheds where organizations have gone in and done survey work or additional work with farmers, they found implementation rates are actually higher than what's reported through financial assistance programs as farmers are, there are caps in many cases. The agency only does $5,000 per farm because we have limited funds for cover cropping as an example. And so, you can farmer stretch it a bit further maybe while still meeting the minimum standards. So, thanks for your question. I think a lot of it though comes to Heather Darby and Jeff Carter and their work providing demonstration to these farms and they do it through farmers actually doing it on their own farms and they all communicate, they'll do field days where they'll take field trips and go to these people's farms and see it and you hear all their stories and their struggles with trying to do it and then you start to see them expand because they've worked out the kinks. And that's where we are today, is that Heather Darby came probably, well about the time I came so probably 15 years ago Jeff Carter's been here for a long time and he'll tell you the cycle we're right back finally where we were before when we had dropped off when all the resources, because there was a time where UVM extension was cut substantially. And so everything is kind of back up to where it needs to be in some level and that change and just that support for these farmers to do that. I think there's a real social piece that is so important and that's where for me, we can talk about all the financial assistance programs, all the enforcement but what's gonna make this happen is people changing and that's where relationships and just building support is the most important piece in my mind. And so that's where we are right now and asked if farmers are implementing an accelerated rate. Yes, they're highly educated at this point. They're engaged, they're doing this. They're taking it on their own and not just yes, we're regulating them but they're taking steps that are going further and helping teach us some things that we, sure we could make now this the regulation but they're doing it without that. So what I've just handed out is a summary of the fiscal year 2018 Education Outreach and Technical Assistance Summary. We started off talking about enforcement. The agency is a regulatory agency but in the water quality, agricultural water quality regulations in Title VI, we do enforcement inspections but we also provide resources to fix problems as the goal is improving water quality and one of the tools to get there is, folks have to be informed that the rules have changed and they have to be provided technical assistance to ensure that they can comply in the most cost-effective manner to make sure they're complying with the rules. So through the Clean Water Fund and the monies that come to the agency of agriculture, we run a program called the Ag Clean Water Initiative Program and some of the brief outcomes of the program impact are on the upper right-hand side there but it's essentially grants for water quality partnership as well as farm or watershed organizations and other organizations that work to improve water quality on a local watershed basis to support them to do the education about the RAPs and provide information about, these are management practices you can use to comply and we've documented some of those outcomes such as the increase in capacity on the part of those partners as well as the additional services they've been able to provide and if you look on the back here, what you can see and you feel free to read through just an example of some of the recipients of those grant funds and some of the important work they're able to do such as getting farmers out to look at some trials or look at new technologies for establishing corn or cover crop or a combination they're in and funding folks like the University of Vermont Extension, conservation districts, council, grass farmers. So there's been a real, since the Clean Water Fund was established a real opportunity to recognize that it's not just the agency of agriculture it's a partnership with the Vermont Ag Water Quality Partnership, which is made up of a number of signatories of another MOU as well as the farmer watershed organizations and other local watershed organizations that are doing this work on the local level to generate and incite not only compliance but folks often going above and beyond what the minimum requirements of the required agricultural practices are. And just one thing I'll add, one method we took for putting these grants out to these folks was we tried to do them for multiple years at one time and then each year we get the next allocation, we use it for the commitment we've already made so that they could hire staff that people could build relationships. Prior to having a Clean Water Fund everybody was annually waiting for the general fund appropriation trying to figure out the agency of agriculture is gonna give out this money and now we're able to make these bigger commitments and it has really been something that I think that these groups have appreciated because they have people now that are staying on board for longer and being able to be paid in a reasonable way it is. So the next part of the increase in resources that have been allocated to agricultural water quality since Act 64, 2015 are the financial assistance programs of the agency of agriculture is able to offer. And as you can see here, we were able to outweigh 3.2 million dollars last fiscal year. We're implementing close to 100 best management practices and over 7,000 acres of conservation practice implementation from manure injection to cover crop establishment to crop rotation. And here on the right hand side you can see what some of the outcomes are of those dollars. You can show up on a farm whether it's a result of an inspection or a farmer voluntarily participating in the best management practices program saying, hey, I heard about the rules. I know I can't, this management system isn't going to comply and I'm going to be inspected in six years but I want to get ahead of that. And so the best management practices program is a voluntary financial assistance program that the agency like ministers to kind of do what you see on the first page here on the right hand side, the going from a institute unmanaged kind of barnyard area to a full heavy use area protection with concrete and collection to ensure that runoff from that particular site is mitigated. And that's something that we've seen really significant increase in both applications as well as the resource that we've provided for staffing to have the engineering services so that we can design and have those designs in place to ensure that we can get the financial assistance dollars out the door. Another important program that the agency runs is the capital equipment assistance program. And you see an example on the bottom there of a no-till rain drill which a farmer would use after the corn comes off to expediently and ensure a good take of a cover crop being seated directly into a corn stubble so there's no need to till it. You can just run this piece of equipment through the standing corn stubble and depending on weather, a few weeks later you can have a pretty good catch of some green, good looking, generally winter rye. And driving around Addison County, if you do it in the fall, personally it just seemed like a bit of a noticeable, things look a lot greener. So it's definitely a visual public saying, oh wow, these fields are greener in the winter time cover cropping I think is one of the most visible examples because close to a third of all of Vermont's corn ground is now cover crop based on the financial assistance program. So we're definitely making real strides there. Sure. I have assumed that all of this is, even though we're talking about farms, we're really talking about dairy farming, is there a small percentage of this work that is actually used in other operations, other types of farming? Yeah, so this program, BMP program, best management practice program is eligible for any type of farm. The grants that Ryan had mentioned, we give that like for instance vegetable, we're not experts in vegetable, but the UVM vegetable group is, right? So making sure that they're on board. We are an experts in grazing, but the UVM group is. And so we've got a grant to them. And so we've outsourced some of the areas that farmers need assistance and support. It doesn't mean that we don't inspect them because they do fall if they're big enough in that sector than we would. So for instance, if you're 58 for some more of annual vegetable crops, then you fall under us. So there's a set there where we have become more expert in dairy and we use our partnership with the other sectors, but our cost share programs are eligible for that. The required agricultural practices apply to all farm operations that meet the minimum thresholds. And so one example of a, you know, sure it's livestock, but it's not necessarily dairy. The pasture and surface water fencing program works on supporting improved grazing management, livestock exclusion from surface waters with fencing and all the associated practices you need to make that grazing system work. And we work in conjunction with NRCS and their programs there, but that's definitely available. You have to have livestock, I guess is a prerequisite, but dairy or beef or sheep and goats, what have you, I'll be eligible for that particular program as an example. So yeah, it's really been, you know, since access for 2015, really good launch to develop the rules, make sure they're well known. Partners and agency staff are out there doing education outreach and inspection enforcement is happening. And in parallel, we're providing support to ensure that the folks are able to understand what needs to happen on their farm, to come with the compliance and then supporting where necessary farmers with the financial assistance programs to implement the conservation practices to meet the minimum standards of the R&Ds. Okay, that was your 30,000 feet. Yeah, I did. All right. So you guys have said everything you wanted to. I mean, I suspect that this is the first time we've been here. I suspect we'll be back. I suspect you will too. Yeah, we just want to give you a big overview. Great. I'm gonna ask for general questions. So John and then Rodney. What are the gray lines on this map here? Sorry. What is the gray lines on this map? Those are 12 watersheds. So very small watersheds, the Lini Asians, within the state of Vermont. So, you know, sometimes you'll see it on one of the financial assistance ones. You see the big up for the, those might even be eights, the big basins, I guess. But yeah, these are the even smaller breakouts of those. They call them catchments. Technical term. Rodney. What percentage of arms have you not in the fact that you have? Well, all the medium, all the large. And on the small, I don't have the number right now off the top of my head of what we've inspected versus what we have as far as certification forms that have come in. So I can get that number for you and get it back. But I suspect it's at least a third of that, it may be higher. One of the things that I, the first year of that program, I asked the staff to go do meet and greets. So what we learned, you know, I was here through the evolution of the medium farm program when that came about. And the first thing is, is you gotta explain to them, like, hi, I'm here from the agency of agriculture. There are rules that apply to you. I do have to inspect you. Here's the things I would look at for an inspection. And we created a video to explain what we look at. And so I wanted staff to go and just explain that I'm your inspector so that you know who I am. Here's how you can reach out to me. You're sort of kitchen table step, not an inspection around the farm. I will be back in probably the next couple of weeks and we'll do your full inspection. So we set it up that way so that people weren't blindsided. They knew what to look for. You know, some of it is just understanding you've gotta do this basic housekeeping, right? And that's where, you know, you could live in a dirty bedroom, but if your mother's paying attention to you and making you keep it clean, you will. And so it sort of gave them an opportunity to understand you need to go make sure you clean your room. And we're gonna be back and we're gonna be back fairly consistently to make sure that you do. As we've moved forward, we're doing less of those because I think we've done enough education outreach and we're moving in a space where we just call and give a kind of explanation on the phone, set up an inspection, and then go out and do it from there. So we tried to just slowly roll it. Certainly we couldn't reach every farmer with a meet and greet, so there will be people who are new to the program and will come in that way. But hopefully they all talk to each other at some level. Other questions for Laura or Ryan? Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Yeah. At some point, Ryan, we're probably gonna wanna hear about the environmental stewardship program again. Absolutely. I'd be more than happy to come back and share an update on what we learned over the past year of the first year of the implementation of the pilot. Great. Happy to come back. Okay. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right, Marley, are you set to go? I would love to, but I do know that Julie is on her way and I think she would like to have a chance to speak to you. Do you mind waiting or? No. Oh, how far away is she? She's due here by the quarter of, so seven minutes. All right. Your call. Do we wanna take a very short break and be back here in five minutes? Really? Just having the door open, getting air. No, yeah, air. What's that door open? It's tight quarters, they do this. I have to shut it off. No, as long as it sits quite up there, we can have the door open. Thank you. Are you sitting there? I hope so. Let's follow them. Yeah, it lines the door. I was like, oh, that's the light. Is your apple disappointed here? Great. All right, Linda, are you all set? I'll say it. Okay. Julie and Marley, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for coming and I'd love to give you an opportunity. Oh, we should introduce ourselves. That would be great. You are here. Tom. I am Tom Ockham, I represent the Towns of Chester and over at Baltimore and Washington. Teri Norris represents events at Orwell Shore, I'm waiting. John Bartholomew is on a field trip to Windsor. Carol Hargridge, I represent the Towns of Athens for playing Grafton. I'm part of Northwest Mr. All of Rockingham and my hometown, Minnum. Rodney Graham, I represent Wimstown, Washington, Orange, Chelsea, Bereshire, Croydon. Sharon Figuard, my district includes Igate, Franklin, Bereshire, which is my hometown and Rich Croydon. John Bartholomew, I represent Rich and Rowan. Picky Strong, Northeast Kingdom, Orleans County. Yes. I'm making it short, I'm making it short. It would be a long list. So I'm Julie Moran, I'm the Secretary of Natural Resources. And I'm Marley Gruep, I'm the Agricultural Mortar for the Section Chief for the Vermont and the Fiddle of Agriculture Environmental Conservation. Sorry, Ryan. It's all right. So my understanding is you invited us here to give a little overview of the work of the Agency of Natural Resources as it would relate to the work of this committee. I assume you will have Commissioner Snyder and at some point to talk in more detail or maybe he's already been. I already did. All right, fantastic. Good morning. And then we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have and brought my brains with me, too. So the Agency of Natural Resources, as you may know, is organized into three departments, the Department of Environmental Conservation, which is where Marley works and that houses the majority of our regulatory programs dealing with air, water, and solid waste. The Department of Fish and Wildlife, which as its name connotes, is responsible for the stewardship of Vermont's game and non-game species. And in addition, looks at plants and habitats and all of the things necessary to support Vermont's wildlife and fish. And then our third department is the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. And I expect Commissioner Snyder was able to answer all the questions you have about the scope of work of that particular department. In total, the Agency of Natural Resources at this time of year employs about 600 people, 300 of them in the Department of Environmental Conservation with the balance, roughly evenly split between Fish and Wildlife and Forest and Parks. During the summer months, our staff expands to nearly 1,000 people as we hire on temporary workers for Vermont's 55 state parks. So within the Agency of Natural Resources, sort of the priorities are my areas of key focus for the coming year are clean water, which certainly has a significant nexus with the work of this committee. In particular, ensuring that there's sustainable long-term funding and a robust framework to support implementation of all the types of projects we need to do on the ground in order to achieve Vermont's clean water goals. We have some fairly explicit regulatory goals when it comes to phosphorus reductions needed in Lake Champlain and Lake Nefermega that we've agreed to with the US Environmental Protection Agency, but also know that they're broader environmental goals. For Vermont, that were articulated by this body through Act 64, which was passed back in 2016. In addition, we're doing work related to toxics, which I think is very important. You may have heard the governor mention lead testing in schools, work that's underway now, and is a partnership between my agency and the Agency of Human Services, and specifically the Department of Health, as well as the Agency of Education. We are continuing to do work with Fish and Wildlife, recognizing that the numbers of hunters and anglers in Vermont continues to shrink, and that the dollars generated through license sales to hunters and anglers is an incredibly important revenue stream that supports the conservation work of the Agency at large and the need to try and draw additional revenues into the work of the Fish and Wildlife Department that reflect that there are a lot of users of Fish and Wildlife resources that go well beyond people who are hunting and angling, including everything from bird watching to using Fish and Wildlife access areas to put canoes and kayaks out onto major water bodies in Vermont. So that's a piece of work that we've been engaged in for the last several years, and will certainly continue. And another big place or area of focus for the Agency, this session is going to be on the work surrounding Act 250. We've been a very active participant in the Act 47 commission that's been meeting for the last 18 months, looking at Act 250 at 50. The Agency of Natural Resources is a statutory party in every Act 250 proceeding, and there are a number of places where Act 250 has a fairly significant connection to regulatory programs administered by the Agency, whether it's stormwater management, river corridor protection, wetland protection, looking at critical wildlife habitats. And so trying to ensure that there's good alignment between our regulatory programs and the regulatory requirements within Act 250. So that's a little bit about where we see our focus being this session, as well as the overall work of the Agency. Maybe you could let Marley talk for a minute or two about the work specifically that she's engaged in, that's certainly the most directly connected to this committee, but then we'll be happy to answer any questions, folks. So as you can imagine, one of the most important parts of my job is coordination with the Agency of Agriculture because our job is to make jointly to make sure that we're meeting the water quality goals in the state. And with agriculture being a portion of that, a major sector in that is critical that we really communicate and make sure that our programs and our policies align and complement each other. So we spend quite a bit of time together working with each other, but also a lot of what I do is working with the partners around the state as well, the watershed groups, the UVM extension, the conservation districts who are so critical to us in getting that water quality work out on the ground and actually implementing some of these practices and guiding the farmers and the landowners into our doors. We have funding that we administer through our ecosystem restoration grant program, quite a bit of which has gone to the conservation districts and UVM extension in the past. Not a large amount of our funding goes directly to agriculture. We do refer to the Agency of Agriculture and to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service funding first because they have a substantial amount of it, quite a bit more than we do. But when there are conflicts and challenges and an opportunity for us to help supply some of that funding. But an important part of this networking is to make sure that we simplify it as much for farmers. I was down in Hartland this morning at the Connecticut River Farmers Watershed Alliance. And it's a very challenging time for farmers right now. As I'm sure you are very well aware. And for us to be as coordinated and clear and supportive as we can of each other in communicating with farmers is incredibly critical right now. And we want to make sure that they're aware of all the resources that are available, both technical and financial. And I think that's a key part of my job is to make sure that we work with the other agencies and with our partners to do that and so. And the other thing that I hope that we're trying to do at least is help farmers understand that we're not the bad guys. I think sometimes we are seen as the enforcer. And while certainly enforcing in clean water and ensuring that we need our water quality goals is primary and is our major role in the agency. There's a lot of technical ability in the agency to help farmers on the ground. In wetland management, in wetland restoration, in river corridor management. And in agriculture. So we try to work very closely with farmers and make sure those relationships are strong so that they do recognize that we can provide a helpful service as well. So last year, I referenced this before you came, Julie, but last year we heard about some instances where farmers were trying to implement some soil health practices. And they were running up against a situation where they were being expected to pay very high fees, at least I think a very high $11,000 just for the fee. And I met with you guys just a few weeks ago and had some news on that. So I thought I would like to give, since some of us are repeats here, I thought and are aware of that situation, I thought it would give you an opportunity to talk about it a little bit about that. Great, thank you. So I believe what you're referring to is our wetlands permitting program. And you know wetlands are an important natural resource and component of our water quality landscape, but we recognize that also at times, there's some challenges when it comes to the intersection of our wetlands regulations with water quality improvement projects, where the overall outcome is truly a debt good for water quality. And the asking a landowner to get a wetlands program permit to implement that water quality improvement practice actually stands in the way of doing that. There are instances of this occurring in the agricultural sector, but frankly also in the developed land and residential sector. And so earlier, well, it's 2019, last year, we promulgated a non-reporting general permit and that non-reporting general permit is specifically targeted at water quality improvement projects. So the types of things we're talking about are the installation of animal trails and walkways in an agricultural setting or stream crossings, replacement septic systems that simply can't be built outside of a known wetland or wetland buffer, and also some modest expansions to existing stormwater facilities required to meet another objective of the agency, oftentimes referred to as a flow restoration plan where we're asking municipalities or landowners to expand existing stormwater treatment. The idea behind a non-reporting general permit is to provide a path forward for landowners that are interested in implementing these water quality improvement projects that requires little or no reporting in the case of agricultural projects to the agency. On the municipal side, we're asking for simply a sort of a postcard letting us know that they intend to do this work and no fee because our wetlands fees are established in statute and they are very much an all or nothing proposition. They're established statutorily at 75 cents per square foot of impact, 25 cents per square foot of buffer impact, and as you indicated, representative Partridge, that can result in potentially significant fees. We have had the opportunity to look at a handful of the exactly the types of projects we were hoping would seek coverage in this non-reporting general permit through the fall and have found that virtually all of the ones we've looked at either qualify outright for coverage under the NRGP or can be modified slightly in order to qualify for coverage. There's some thresholds associated with the non-reporting general permit with 5,000 square feet of impact, but that's per instance of wetland or stream crossing, not total necessarily for the project. So when you're looking at a septic system, it would probably only qualify for one of those 5,000 square feet of impact, but if you have a long linear project like an animal trail, as it goes through the upland, essentially that 5,000 square feet counter resets and you look at each crossing of a wetland or stream separately. This is an interim measure. We are working to develop a statutory proposal to bring back to this body for consideration, hopefully this session, that could provide some overall clarity and further objectivity within our standards, but believe that this is a tool, a really important tool in helping move these projects forward in the interim. Thanks, I've been thinking about that in, so 5,000 square feet, I know that some folks think that's not a lot of, not a lot of square footage, but oh, if it gets really annoying, oh, gosh, it's great. We're dying over here, thank you. But when someone needs to, let's say do one of these water quality improvement projects, do they, would they come to you if they're under 5,000 square feet? Would they come to you to say, we wanna do this, we believe it's under 5,000 and then you would check it out. If so, ultimately do you check that they've done it properly? And then the final question I guess is, do they get some kind of certificate or letting the world know that they've done this so that five years down the road, when some neighbor moves and it doesn't like what they're doing, they can't say, hey, you didn't go through the, you didn't get this, so can you tell us a little bit about how that would work? Sure, so we are always available to provide technical assistance to landowners that would like to invite us to their property. We publish maps of the wetlands on our website. We recognize that they are not comprehensive or exhaustive but oftentimes are a useful tool in terms of providing landowners guidance about whether or not there may be a concern. We are engaged in training with a number of our partners including I think last week, there was a training provided to NRCS and the Association of Conservation Districts about the non-reporting general permit and steps farmers can take in order to ensure that their project is being built in a way that is consistent with the NRGP. The actual NRGP ties itself to specific NRCS practice standards. So again, trying to give folks pretty clear guidance about expectations. There, this is the second time this week I've had questions about sort of the long-term liability that landowners may face. I've shared those with our legal staff. I don't have an answer back but as soon as I get one, I'll provide it to this committee as well. Great, Julie, that's great. Because you know, we've heard of these as we've taken testimony not to say on water quality but on practices for sawmills, for instance, and we've heard about this from Michael Snyder last year and tried to remedy some of this. We asked the active commission to take a look at some of these things. For those of you who are new, there's a firewood facility, I think it's in there. It's field? It's field, yeah. Where, you know, they've been there for decades but there's a neighbor who's had issues with it. They're not even sure that neighbor still lives there but when they leave the facility, even if they need to go right, they're asked to go left, down the road, turn around and then come back through so that they don't make a shifting noise. And, you know, when you talk about carbon footprint and things like that, it's like, really? You know, so at any rate, it would be great to hear. Absolutely, and I think that's an important question in making sure that folks have all the information they need to make good decisions and feel comfortable that they're, not only that they're doing these good water quality projects but they're doing it in a way that ensures that they're not liable for anything undemolined. Yeah, yeah, thanks. And it just, I mean, I think a piece of my response will ultimately be speaking to our enforcement discretion that the agency does have a significant degree of enforcement discretion and to the extent that the practices are constructed consistent with the NRCS practice standards and under the advice of NRCS or the Association of Conservation Districts or the Agricultural Agency that factors heavily into our use and our ability to justify our use of enforcement discretion. It would probably be also valuable to have some kind of indication that they've gone through the process or that, you know, they've been certified by you all. Yeah, I appreciate that. We had sort of looked at that early on as we were developing the NRGP and as I say, municipalities, we asked to submit a postcard, essentially acknowledging that they were about to start work. We decided not to ask that of farmers in particular in recognition that they're often partnered with another agency doing this work, that it seemed like just another unnecessary step. But perhaps it would be a way to have that kind of record on file at our agency and be able to offer the assurance that I can appreciate people would like. Yeah. Questions for Julie or Maureen? Sorry. Vicki and then Jerry. Yes, thank you, Julie. What about, I just happen to think I live up where we border Canada, where waterways are connected. Is that something you work closely with let's say the folks from Canada, New York State? Yes. And I'm sure that complicates how things, how much control we have. So we are the beneficiary of some really robust partnerships when it comes to the two major, and I know Wallace Pond also stretches across the border, but the Lake Champlain Basin Program will start west and work east. It's a coordinating entity that works with Vermont, New York and Quebec to first and foremost ensure that data collection that's being done in the watershed is done in a matter that's consistent and so that we actually have one single unified dataset to be able to look at long-term trends and water quality in Lake Champlain as well as in the major tributaries to it. And so the body meets court, there's a steering committee that by virtue of having this job, I have a seat on that meets quarterly, but there's work, project implementation work as well as monitoring work that's ongoing. It receives a federal appropriation every year of about four and a half million dollars to guide that work. It is really an important partner in ensuring that Vermont, New York and Quebec maintain an awareness of what each other's doing, create an opportunity for technology and technical transfer between agencies and programs. And at the end of the day, have a singular dataset that really allows us collectively to look at long-term water quality trends in the lake. They don't have a regulatory role, so they aren't trying to make sure that the regulatory landscape in each of the three jurisdictions is the same, but it's really that coordinating function. Similarly, there's a steering committee for Lake Memphermegog that again, Vermont and Quebec both participate very actively in Lake Memphermegog. Actually, I think about two thirds of the watershed, if not more, is in Vermont and two thirds of the lake is in Quebec. So there's a real interest there in making sure that we're all on the same page. Absolutely, the landfill problem. Correct, there have been a lot of questions that have come up surrounding the Coventry landfill and the proposed expansion there. But that steering committee also has been meeting regularly for a number of years now. We developed a pollution budget for Lake Memphermegog similar to the pollution budget, the TMDL that exists for Lake Champlain that then makes allocations to different land use types and the different jurisdictions. And we've each taken responsibility for doing the work necessary to achieve in-link water quality targets. So there is a lot of good work there. The IJC, the International Joint Commission, which is at the federal level of both countries is also actively engaged right now and work on both Lake Champlain and Lake Memphermegog on Lake Memphermegog. They're doing some work related to the fishery and understanding fishery management. And on Lake Champlain, there's a significant project underway in response to flooding that took place in Quebec along the Richelieu River in 2011. We had those really high lake levels where Lake Champlain reached, I think, 103 feet, which is several feet above flood stage. And this IJC commission is looking at how we might be able to work together to mitigate the flooding they saw on the Richelieu River, which is the outlet to Lake Champlain as it flows to the St. Lawrence Seabway. All right, thank you. You're welcome. Just as a follow-up, does Memphermegog also have a river flowing out of it north? Or is it just a lake? So I honestly don't know the answer to that question. It's a man river. No, that's a lake. So people tend to think that Lake Champlain's a lake. No, but that's something that's true. It's actually a very wide river flowing north. It is. Southern Lake Champlain looks, you would think it was a river. Yes, right. And then it gets wide for a while, but you're correct, it is very river-y. I think, like Memphermegog must, I mean, all of our waters that are flowing into it are flowing north. I will actually look into that myself and I'll speak to my interest. Chair, yes. Chair, you had a question or comment? I, yeah, it's probably not even appropriate, but are you in charge of dam removal or is that another agency? Well, so we have a dam safety program within the Department of Environmental Conservation that's responsible for inspecting and looking at dams. We generally have very limited funding available to support dam removal. We've done some of that through the Clean Water Initiative program that Marley's part of in our ecosystem restoration program, but by and large those projects are being driven by partners, whether it's partners like Travel Unlimited or the Vermont Natural Resources Council that are offering accumulating a suite of resources and A&R resources tend to be just a small piece. Our role is really in the inspection of some of the state's larger dams and frankly, we're also responsible for the operation of the Waterbury Dam as a flood control facility. So they have a good situant that bugs me quite often, but he had a earthen dam and was 50 years old and was made by his grandfather. And somebody reported as being repaired from a washroom so the state got involved and came and told him he had to either fix it, it was gonna cost $50,000 to fix it, or remove it. So he opted to remove it and it was, I mean, the water was five feet deep, wasn't very big dam and it cost him $44,000 by the time that Du Bois and King came to inspect it and told them how to do it and they wanted to come once a week to inspect the repair or they had to take the earth out, put in a river bottom and there was really no water running. I mean, it's like a lawn now, but they finally, Du Bois and King finally came and inspected it and said, this is good. And they indicated that he would get something in writing from somebody saying that he complied with everything. And it's been over a year now since it's been repaired and it just bugs him that he's not getting anything because they hounded him like crazy till he got it done. So maybe if you wanna write down the location, I can look into that for you with our dam safety program and see what the status is. Because he had me come over there. I was when I first, very first got up here and I really didn't know a lot from this angle, but I listened anyway. I mean, it was really done very poorly because Du Bois and King, once the initial engineer came and they sent another engineer who had never been there. And then he had to go through the whole process again and make up this big plan. I mean, it was, it's very expensive or just a normal homeowner. I mean, he has a business, so it kinda helps, but I mean, it was 44 grand. I mean, he would have had to go on file for bankruptcy if he, you know, if he was just a regular person. That's part of the challenge. We tried to work to build an inventory of what we are calling derelict dams. So dams that haven't been properly maintained over time. And there are a lot of them in that same sort of precarious position where it's damaging to the river and potentially to those who live downstream to leave them in place if there was a catastrophic failure at some point, but also very expensive to remove. And so it's a real challenge. I don't have any great answers, but if you can give me sort of the specific location I can look into where that may stand within our record keeping process. Because they, I mean, he told them, you know, it's five feet deep. They, you know, they had to go through this whole plan because they were gonna, you know, when they opened it up, it was gonna flood that everything downstream. He said there's five feet of water because it's in a near a farm and the farm had basically filled it for manure or anything like that. We don't go there. But so he asked them while we told him, I'll take you out to a hobo or, you know, I'll take you out in a boat and you can put it stick down. And you'll see it's five feet deep. And the engineer said, no, no, no, we can't do that. We have to assume that it's 18 feet of water because that's the standard for a dam. There's no 18 feet of water there. I mean, it was just, it irritated him so much. I mean, it was, you know, and it went on for two and a half years. It was just horrible. I'm happy to look at it. Just, just if you could just write him a letter and say, we're not going to Bobby again. Well, I'm wondering who should have certified it. You know, like we should have been Du Bois and King or were A&R? Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. I have to look into the specific. I think they had, I can't say who, because I wasn't there when they came and did the final inspection because they had to grass it all over and make green grow there. And they have this little, I mean, it's a spring that runs very little. I mean, in the summer, there's no water there, but they've got a nice, you know, stone riverbed there now. It was just such a fiasco, really. But it was because some neighbor across the pond saw that they repaired it. So they reported them to the state. But it turned out, well, I shouldn't even say so. It turned out that the one that reported it was the farmer that filled it full of an oar. So, well. Oh, right, enough of that. It's fault out loud. I think John has a question or a comment. Yeah, do you, does A&R oversee the sort of battle against invasive, water invasive, like milk boilers that didn't know and things like that? We do. So we have, within the Department of Environmental Conservation, there is an aquatic nuisance control program that both works on spread prevention, which is certainly the best strategy for reducing aquatic invasives or at least limiting their spread, as well as is responsible for issuing on aquatic nuisance control permits, which would be what folks would need to apply there or they're going to do some sort of treatment for either a plant-based invasive or frankly something like the Asian clams or zebra mussels or others. We also do terrestrial invasive plant work through the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation. And they have an invasive plant coordinator who works on things like honeysuckle and other things that are pretty damaging to some of our weapons. Sharon, when you say apply for a permit to do treatment, do you mean non-mechanical treatment as in applying pesticides or do you mean any treatment like even going and mechanically removing these? I may be getting a little far out of my skis, but I believe we require permits for mechanical removal. I don't believe we require them for hand pulling, but anytime you're removing a significant amount of plant material, you want to make sure it's properly managed. Just probably know a small piece of milk oil can create a whole other colony. And I'm happy to give you contact information for folks in that shop because that could answer your question in much better detail than I can. Other questions or comments? Thank you. Julia Marley. Thank you. The only other thing I wanted to offer was, yeah, go ahead. So our Clean Water Initiative program, which is sort of the umbrella under which work is done with Agency of Natural Resources, Agency of Agriculture, and Agency of Transportation when it comes to clean water implementation, just completed our 2018 investment report, which does a really nice job summarizing all of the work that's being done on the landscape as a result of the Clean Water Fund. And if this committee is interested, Emily Bird was the lead author on that report, and she would be pleased to come in and share it with you. It's really an incredible piece of work, and I think does a really nice job laying out sort of the scope and breadth of what state government and all of our partners are engaged on when it comes to clean water work on the landscape. Is that online truly? It is online. As a guest, you're going to do it. And I believe it was submitted electronically to... Just today? Yeah, I'll get it on. I'll put it on your webpage. Great. I was going to ask, thanks. But Emily's got a nice overview presentation. If you're interested, I'm sure she would be pleased for the opportunity to come talk to you. Sure. Why don't we ask her, Linda, if she's available next week? Yeah? As Laura and Ryan mentioned earlier, they give us a great deal of the data that goes into that, at least as it relates to agriculture, as does USDA, Natural Resources Conservation Service. But one of the gaps that we have that we're actively working on with the Ag Agency and with our partners is farmers who, as Ryan indicated, are doing an awful lot of work on their own and not necessarily with state or federal funding because that's the tracking that we're able to do at this point of view. So I'm sure the Ag Agency at some point in the future will talk about their partner database that they're developing to gather some of this data. But we're also working on developing some protocols so that the Extension Service and Conservation District and our partners who are working one-on-one with farmers who are doing this totally on their own have an opportunity to share that information with us so we can give them the credit for that agricultural improvement, that water quality improvement, and also be able to document it in these reports. That's an important part to us. Yeah, I know last year when we had the hearing regarding Lake Carmi and the farmers testified, it actually was pretty clear that a lot of them were doing a lot of extra work, planting trees, certain shrubbery to help mitigate the water quality problems. So I'm glad to hear that that's gonna be potentially recognized. Well, as you can imagine, it's pretty critical that we make sure we don't double count things. So making sure that a lot of the time a farmer said, you know, I did or didn't get help from the state of the feds and they don't necessarily know who's the state or who the feds, for us to be able to be really clear about where funding comes from if it does and if it doesn't, to make sure that we're able to say that as well. Right, right. Good, great. Any other questions, comments? All right, thank you both so much for coming. Thank you for having us in and we're at least pleased to come back any time. Thank you for the questions you have.