 Good afternoon everyone. My team continues to respond to the latest flooding event and I appreciate those who work through the night to keep people safe from our switched water teams, the V-trans crews, local responders and more. The good news is waters have been receding across the state. We'll now begin the process of assessing damage while we're cleaning up and the cleanup part is critical. We'll need to take a look at the stormwater infrastructure like culverts and catch basins to get them cleared out as soon as possible because, as we all know, all too well or a recent experience, this can happen again. So removing silt and vegetative debris will be key over the next coming days and weeks. So if we do get more intense rain, it has a place to go. Cleaning homes and businesses surrounded by water once again has been heartbreaking. I feel for those who are just getting back on their feet after this summer's flooding and are now dealing with water in their homes and businesses again. I can't imagine the toll that has on anyone. But Vermonters are resilient and tough and have stepped up time and time again and will need you to help your neighbors once again. I'm calling on anyone who is able to reach out to those who might need a hand and help your communities. This storm also highlights the importance of the work we began after this summer's flooding. We simply cannot rebuild the same way in the exact same places as we have. Because as we've said, events like this will become more frequent, which is why the resiliency and mitigation work will be so important. Our team will continue to reach out to gather information, offer help, and plan the next steps. For municipalities who need immediate assistance, please reach out to the State Emergency Operations Center so we can coordinate and expedite any needed response. With that, I'll turn it over to Commissioner Morrison for a situational update. Thank you, Governor. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here. As the Governor mentioned, in most parts of the state, floodwaters are receding. But Vermonters need to remain vigilant. Some rivers are still at flood stage and most have extremely strong currents. Everyone is encouraged to stay clear of floodwaters. Thankfully, the state has received no reports of deaths or injuries resulting directly from the flood. We want to keep it that way. Please respect all road closures and never drive or walk through a flooded area. Should you be considering recreating in a river or stream in the cold of December, wait. Currants are not that it was a good idea in the first place, but wait because the currents are still too strong and debris and other pollutants are running downriver. Yesterday and overnight, our Swiftwater teams made a total of 12 rescues. I reported to you yesterday that three people were rescued from a home in Jamaica and there were nine separate rescues from vehicles caught in floodwaters. Our teams also assisted with some voluntary evacuations from residences that were threatened by but not inundated by water. Two Swiftwater rescue teams remain staged, one in Colchester and one in Waterbury. We expect that these teams will demobilize this afternoon. The Emergency Operations Center is still activated. If towns find that they need additional assistance, they can contact the EOC through their Emergency Management Director. We've begun the process of assessing damage to determine if the state qualifies for public infrastructure repair assistance. The team at the Emergency Operations Center will work with towns to collect and assess data in the coming days. Those returning to their flooded homes should be mindful of potential hazards. Turn off the power to your home if you can do so safely and have the system inspected by a licensed electrician. Ensure that your food is not spoiled and that your water is safe to drink. I'd like to ask you to visit the Vermont Department of Health website, healthvermont.gov forward slash flood for more health and safety information. Related to shelters, there's one warming center in the state currently and it is at the Cavendish Baptist Church on Main Street in Cavendish. All other shelters have closed as residents who used them have returned to their homes or made other arrangements. The Vermont Emergency Management website and social media channels will list other shelters or warming centers should they come online and anyone needing housing assistance should call 2-1-1. We are working closely with 2-1-1 to capture damage to residences and businesses as a result of yesterday's flooding. I want to take a moment here to be very clear about how we are using 2-1-1 in the wake of this emergency. First, if you have a life safety emergency, please call 9-1-1. And if you have immediate needs for food or shelter, please call or text 2-1-1. If you do not need immediate assistance but your home or business was damaged as a result of this flood, please go online to vermont2-1-1.org to report your damages when your situation is stable. Please use the online form to report damage. Only if you do not have access to the internet, you can make your damage report by calling 2-1-1 and speaking to an operator. The damage reports will be used to aggregate and quantify the damages to residences and businesses to determine if we may be eligible for any federal assistance in the wake of this event. At this time, we do not know if any communities or the state as a whole will qualify for federal assistance, but we want to make sure that we accurately tally up the damages. If you are already making repairs to your home or business, please take pictures, document the damages, save all receipts associated with the work you are doing to remediate the damages, and then report to 2-1-1. With that, I will turn things over to Secretary Curley from the Agency of Commerce and Community Development. Thank you, Commissioner Morrison. Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm sorry. The Agency of Commerce and Community Development has been doing outreach this morning to our regional partners to try to determine the impact of the flooding, both to our downtown and within the business community. We're hearing that in many places like in LaMoyle County and in Montpelier, basements are once again flooded, but the damage has not risen to the level seen during the July event. That said, in areas like Waterbury, the Okimo Valley, and the Mad River Valley, the impacts of the high water mark of yesterday's flooding appear to be great. We know businesses that were impacted in July are again faced with cleaning up from yet another flooding event. And this time doing it while temperatures drop and more winter weather-like temperatures return. ACCD, through our Department of Housing and Community Development, has also gotten word that impacts to mobile home parks are not necessarily as severe as the July storms. We're still gathering reports and awaiting some responses. But from what we've heard so far, there are some damage to culverts and roads and bridges within the parks, but we have not had reports of significant damages to the homes themselves as of yet. Right now, the very best thing that Vermonters and business owners can do is to clean up what you can and those who can volunteer their time, please do so in support of your local community. Much like the flooding in July, it is best to document everything you can. As Commissioner Morrison said, take pictures, make notes of any and all damage you encounter as you clean up. It will be important to have this documentation for your insurance company or in the event that the state receives a federal disaster declaration. All of us standing here today realize how devastating another flooding event is to what we are already vulnerable in our communities and businesses who suffered so greatly just a few months ago. ACCD will remain in contact with our regional partners and the business community to assess what recovery needs exist and we will provide what support we can in the days ahead, working in conjunction with Vermont Emergency Management. And with that, I will turn it over to Secretary Pushe of the Agency of Education. Thank you, Secretary Curley. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by just noting yesterday's activities very briefly. So beginning around 8 a.m., the Agency of Education's operations team started working very closely with our schools and ensuring that they had safe plans for students. I'd like to commend and really call out our schools, our school leaders. I think it's a real testament to what a great education system we have. 120 total schools were closed early yesterday, so you could think of it as a mass early dismissal. I'm quite convinced that our superintendents and our principals did not anticipate when they showed up for a regular Monday that they would then almost literally have to turn around and send kids home. And they all did it and got kids home safely, got them fed and got them really to their communities and homes before the roads were flooded and I just really wanna commend them for that work. So today, what we know is that six districts, and that's Harwood Union, Lemoyle North, Mount Mansfield, White River Valley, Orange Southwest and Orleans Southwest were closed in full, are closed in full today, and that's a total of 54 schools. Many other schools reported a delayed opening today, and that's because they wanted time to assess conditions this morning. The closures were largely due to needing to find alternative busing routes, given road conditions as affected by the rain event. To our knowledge, no one is anticipating closures beyond today, which is great news. So far, Moretown School has reported damage to its heating system and some classrooms, Moretown Elementary School, to be more specific. Their K through six students are going to Harwood Middle School and High School, the remainder of this week, and we're working on a plan for their pre-K students and hopefully we'll have that finalized by the end of the day today as well. And Moretown Elementary is planning to reopen that school by January 2nd, so hopefully students will be right back into their regular type of education experience when they return back from winter break. One school in Bethel has lost its softball field, and my understanding is this is a repeat, unfortunately, so they lost it as well in July, fixed it up, and now it's lost again, so that's disappointing. AOE, our ops team is working with schools and districts like Moretown to ensure that they're following any requisite steps, as Commissioner Morrison said, should there be a FEMA declaration, we're just not sure about that right now. Thanks. Good afternoon, Julie Moore, Agency of Natural Resources, and I'm going to provide updates on dam safety, water and wastewater concerns, waste management, river corridors, and a little bit of information about landslides. So starting first with the Winooski Flood Control Dams, members of ANR's dam safety team monitored these dams literally throughout the night and are continuing their efforts today. As of noon, I can report that Wrightsville is 22 feet below the auxiliary spillway, and the rate of reservoir rise at this point has started to slow. Waterbury reservoir, the rate of rise has also started to slow, and we are still eight feet below the action level for that facility. Our current plan is to keep the gates closed on that dam for several days until high water levels recede in the Winooski River. And the Eastbury Reservoir Facility is 15 feet below the auxiliary spillway, which is lower than what I had reported last night, and we are pleased to see that decline. The dams do all continue to perform admirably under this second really significant test this year. In terms of other dams in Vermont, our dam safety program is communicating with emergency managers for municipalities and contacting owners of high and significant hazard dams to request that they take a look and ascertain and report any damage. Our engineers are doing in-person visits to several dams today, including Curtis Pond and Callas and the Gale Meadows Project in London Dairy. This is a dam that had significant damage during July and was actively being rebuilt as of last week. Also, we've had no reported issues with any of the hydroelectric dams from Green Mountain Power or Morrisville Water and Light. In terms of drinking water, the team is actively reaching out to public water supplies in areas with reported flood damage, but generally no issues have been reported. And as of 11 a.m. this morning, there were no state mandated do not drink or boil water notices or local advisories in place. We do have technical staff working with the towns of Woodstock, Fairfax and Richmond, all of which experienced very high flows into their drinking water systems to ascertain potential problem or damage. We've received reports from 15 wastewater plants across the state that experienced flood-related concerns, including overflows of partially or untreated wastewater at pump stations out of manholes and at combined sewer overflows, all of which have resolved with receding floodwaters and without permanent damage or disruption of service. Two facilities in Waterbury and Richmond are still experiencing high flows, likely attributable to the high flows in the Winooski River. And specifically Richmond is reporting the river continues to back up into their plant. We've also spoken with the operators at the Johnson Wastewater Facility, which was so heavily affected during July. There is flooding in and around the plant. However, the data that was collected this morning indicate that their effluent quality is unaffected. Our geology team has received a few reports of landslides, primarily along road corridors, and I expect Secretary Flynn may speak about those in more detail, but indicated rain on snow events tend to cause greater runoff and reduced infiltration, which means there is less concern about landslides on the partially frozen soils that exist currently. Our waste management division continues to monitor, and as of 11 a.m. this morning, there have been no flood-related spills reported, but encourage any homeowners that have had water in basement that may have come in contact with fuel oil to call the Hazmat hotline at 1-800-641-5005 for technical assistance about how to proceed with that potentially hazardous condition. And then finally, according to our rivers program, they're still very early in their assessments and have reached out to local liaisons as well as conducting field visits to help craft a better picture, but generally this event was less destructive from a river erosion standpoint than the floods we saw in July. That said, there are engineers on the ground working with the towns of Chester, Ludlow, Wardsboro, Brattleboro, Springfield, Stratford, Jamaica, Randolph, as well as several communities in the Mad River Valley and the Greater Mount Piliar Area to address river-related concerns and damage that's been reported to town-owned culverts. We're going to continue these on-the-ground assessments over the next several days and also have technical experts who stand ready to assist municipalities should additional concerns arise. And with that, I will turn it over to Secretary Flynn. Thank you, Secretary Moor. Good afternoon. When we reported to you yesterday at five o'clock, we reported there were 15 full closures of Vermont State roads, not counting local. By nine o'clock, that number had risen to 40 full state road closures. I'm pleased to report now that number is down to seven roads, still remain fully closed. They are US 7 and Milton at the dam. Vermont 116 in South Burlington, the city is doing a project on a troubled drainage issue there now. Vermont 12 in Berlin from Riverton to Montpelier. US 302 from Berrytown to Orange. Vermont 109 from Cambridge to Waterville. Vermont 15 at the Wrongway Bridge in Cambridge. And Route 14 at the junction of Route 15 in Hardwick. The three partial closures at this hour are Vermont 106 in Weathersfield at the junction of 131. I mentioned yesterday, Vermont 108 at Spruce Peak Lodge in Stowe. That is a project being undertaken by the ski resort in by Stowe. We are keeping in touch with them. It's my understanding they are attempting to have two-way traffic restored for skiing this weekend while a permanent fix is planned after that at some point that they will announce. And the third partial closure at this hour is Route 14 in South Randolph. I'm pleased to also report there is no significant rail damage. You recall what you saw, especially like in Ludlow after the July event. All the repairs withstood this storm event. Amtrak is back on schedule and departed both Burlington and St. Albans this morning. Cape Air has restored service to Rutland. The LaMoyle Valley Rail Trail, as you might recall, heavily damaged in July. And we've been pushing to try to repair the final segment with the possibility of having it ready for snowmobile season. There were four major sites remaining. And while they did have some slight damage, with an abundance of caution, I will say we are still tracking for some potential good news in the month of January regarding that. There'll be more coming at a later date. There are no bridge issues on the state network other than the bridge on Route 7 Milton, which is a result of the outflow from the dam. V-Trans is assisting the town of Fairfax today with some geotechnical service. And the only slope failure that is problematic for us at this point, I reported yesterday, is Route 2 in St. Johnsbury. It's still closed. We had a slope failure in Wardsboro, Springfield, excuse me, and I believe Chester. And we consulted with ANR as well on that so we had a total of four on our network. And that concludes my comments and I'll turn it back over to the governor. Thank you very much, Secretary Flynn. We'll now open up to questions. Governor, obviously just going through this in July, I know it's still early, but from what you've seen, whether it's numbers and information, I guess, what are the odds or what's your best bet on? Do you think the damages will reach that threshold for a federal disaster declaration again? It's very difficult to tell at this point. It will be close if it does, but we'll just have to wait and see what the damages are, what they report, and then we'll go from there. There's still a lot of standing water out there. It's going to be in the 20s tonight, I think. Is there a concern or a message about black ice or road conditions tonight? I will let Secretary Flynn answer that, but obviously in those areas that were closed, they're still with water still on the ground, so to speak, and the road's still wet. It could be slippery, but I would imagine if the water is cleared that they will de-ice that and put some salt on. Secretary Flynn. V-Trans has been out through the night monitoring our roads and is out again today. We'll continue to do that. Of the roads that I have reported that have opened since yesterday, some of them still have water right up to the white line, so they have to continue to be watched, and clearly we'll be taking de-icing measures where we think it's necessary, but it's a great opportunity to just remind Vermonters that black ice can fool you, you can't see it, you don't know you're on it until it's too late. So whether it says the result of this event or any other time that you're traveling on the highway, especially around that freezing temperature, the sun has been out during the day and its temperatures drop in the evening, it's just great to remind ourselves that you can be caught unprepared and taken by surprise. So black ice is a real threat year round, well year round throughout the winter months, so we'll leave it there, thank you. Governor, when you talk about federal declaration, what are you looking at? Are you talking about what happened back in July with FEMA or something that's more limited than that? It would be, you know, this would be another event at this point in time, so there'd be a separate declaration for this. If we met the threshold, so that's what we're looking for at this point, just to assess the damages and see if it meets that level of declaration. Here it comes. Yeah, that's accurate. So for the July event, we actually got two declarations. We got the first one for the, I believe, it was the 10th through the 21st and then the second one was for the 3rd to the 5th. So each one hit certain milestones, so it starts up a declaration at the federal level and that works through reimbursements at the town level. So with this one, we have to see if we hit those thresholds, so we're actively going out to towns now to collect that data. And Governor, after the July flight, you set up the program with the Agency of Commerce and Community Development to help businesses because they didn't have assistance from FEMA. Are you contemplating reviving that program? We're expanding it? Difficult to tell at this point, we'll have to see what the damages are and then the legislature will be back in sessions. We'll be able to deal with them directly on this issue. Do you anticipate that lawmakers will be asked to provide some financial assistance to both residents who had a cap of what? Was it $43,000 from FEMA in businesses which got their grants from the state? Do you see a role for the legislature to play, to help people? There's always a role for the legislature to play. I would caution everyone, this is going to be a very, very lean year in terms of our own budget. There isn't any surplus left and there isn't any federal funding coming our way that would help offset this at this point in time. So we'll do whatever we can to help but at this point in time, I just want to level set and caution everyone not to assume that we'll be able to accommodate their financial loss. Your opening remarks, you stress that we can't continue to rebuild in the same place in the same way. Certainly like in Montpelier, Barrie, they've been trying to lift up utilities above the flood plain, make it a little more resilient but not everybody's been able to do that. I'm thinking there's many homeowners in Barrie. Some of them took on floodwaters in their basement and had some of their utilities wrecked this time around. What options do people have, especially this is the second flood in five months? Yeah, well again, Barrie in particular, as you know, we have a plan, we put forward approach to the city council about this. We're still working our way through that in hopes of getting some sort of federal help for that project and we'll see what happens there. Obviously we'll be in contact with our federal delegation and they'll be working hand-in-hand with us to seek any opportunities to get reimbursement, mitigation, money and so forth. So we'll confer with director Farnam, our flood recovery disaster officer and he'll be probably at our press conference tomorrow or be available at that point. So there may be other opportunities that I'm not aware of. There's always buckets of money opening up and we'll do whatever we can to help. What progress, I guess, have you seen in Congress, I know the House is on break right now, the Senate's dealing with immigration I suppose, but have you seen any movement or the needle moving on that request at all this year? I have not seen any, I think they have their hands full. I was just taking care of day-to-day business and the good news is in some respects, there is funding available through FEMA or that is available to them and needs to be distributed in a different way so it would take some sort of a notwithstanding congressional act to distribute that money. But the good news is that it's been appropriated in that supplemental a few months ago. Was there any point last night where as you assessed the damage that was going on, two big floods in five months, where you just scratched your head and said, what the heck is going on here? I don't think it's anything that we didn't expect in some respects. I've been saying all along, climate change is real. We're going to see more of these intense storms. The temperature fluctuates. With all the snow that we have on the ground over the last few weeks, I mean, think about all the Mondays we've had with this wet, heavy snow a few degrees one way or the other would have changed that into a rainstorm and more flooding at that point. So I don't know as we expected it to get as warm as it did. I don't know as we expected it to get as much water, rainwater as we did. But I don't think anyone should be surprised about this. Kind of going off of that after the July floods, it was kind of talked about what they're just looking for housing or flood plains, how often maybe 10-year storms, 50-year floods, 100-years, does this qualify the storm under any of those amount of year floods? I don't think we can use the traditional methods of 100-year storms. We've proven with Irene and then the July flooding and then just five months later, another storm. So I don't even know how to qualify them at this point. If you have a little bit of insight into the decision to roll back the FEMA trailers. We will be taking that up tomorrow. We'll have General Roy there in tomorrow to explain what happened. It was a bit of a surprise to me. But it's not all bad news. I want to level set this. There could be some opportunity there as well. But we'll go over that tomorrow. Are you surprised though? Word was out Friday afternoon that FEMA was going to stop that project in my period. I don't think you knew about it until Monday. I did not. How is that possible? Well, I mean, I do know. They were talking about reassessing because they pulled a lot of different levers, right? And I think General Roy will explain this better than I can tomorrow, but they wanted to help us in any way possible. So they pulled every lever they could possibly think of, whether it was the mobile units coming in, whether it was available units they could rent, whether it was housing that they could retrofit, anything all the above. And they pulled the lever to make sure they could house people. And when it came, push came to shove, all of a sudden they figured out we have it somewhat covered already. So again, he'll explain that better than I can tomorrow. And hopefully it makes some sense of it. They have a signed agreement with the city. Yeah, well, the signed agreement is still in place. It's a signed agreement. The city will benefit from it. But again, I'll let General Roy talk about it tomorrow. If we focus on the phones, we'll come back to the room to start with Keith, the Rutland Herald. No questions at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Keith. Ed Barber, Newport Daily Express. All right, we'll go to Emma Cahn, VT Digger. Hi, can you hear me okay? We can. Governor, you said yesterday that you were a bit surprised by the extent of the flooding. And it sounds like, you know, superintendents and education officials were also surprised, I think, since 120 schools home closed. I just wondered, was there information that you weren't getting about the extent of this, what this one was going to look like? And is there more that the state could have done to prepare, given that it seemed to take a lot of folks by surprise? Yeah, I'm not sure that we could have done anything more to prepare. We'll learn something from this storm. I think there was a bit more rain than we thought there was going to be. The temperature was elevated more. The snow melt was intensified as a result and it just kept coming. And so, coupled that with, you know, the elevated temperature in the back roads that we have and the buses that have to travel on them and the roads breaking up like it was spring, we had mud conditions. So we were dealing with a lot of different things at the same time, which impacted the decisions of the schools, which I think made the appropriate decisions because we didn't know what to expect next. And again, the elevated levels of the streams, the Winooski and Lemoyle and the Otter Creek and so forth just across the state. It seemed like it was much broader geographically than maybe the storm in July, but not as intense and not we didn't suffer the damage, but much broader. And we saw up in the Northeast Kingdom and Caledonia and Linden and so forth impacts there, some up in Franklin County down in the traditional areas of July and Wyndham and Windsor and Washington County and Addison County as well. So it touched maybe touched more people, but it wasn't again, as intense. Okay, thank you. I'm also wondering if you might be able to tell me if there are any processes that were put in place following the July storms that benefited the state or municipalities this time, given that it was so soon after the July floods? I can talk and there's probably many instances and maybe the team has other ideas, but the one area that I thought we did took steps on early was the stormwater collection systems, the catch basins and stormwater piping and debris removal in the culverts and streams and bridges and so forth. We focused on that intensely, reached out to municipalities asked them if they needed assistance with vac trucks and so forth, which some of them did. So we got the upper hand on that. I believe had we not taken that action, the damage would have been much more severe because the stormwater would have had no place to go. And as we saw last night in some of the areas, whether it be Waterbury or Barrie or Montpellier or Richmond or wherever, the water in those towns and villages proceeded quite quickly once it stopped raining. And that was, I think, attributed to the stormwater systems of being able to relieve the flooding, which wasn't maybe the case in some of that in July. Anybody else have anything on the hand? This is Eric. Hold on just a second. I'm gonna have the last question. I was just gonna talk a little bit about the community response to like some of the businesses and residents. So knowing the storms were coming for some of the folks who had built back since July and were able to move like HVAC systems up, and others that were not able to do it yet, local community efforts deployed. And there was a lot of activity during the day yesterday where volunteers were helping folks move, whether it was businesses moving inventory up or moving equipment up or homeowners helping get things out of their basements. So obviously, they still have to clean up the mud or the mess in basements, but it's a lot easier than when there's a lot of stuff in those basements that can't, that become soggy or very expensive equipment that can't be replaced. So I think that those were some lessons learned from July where people saw the rain coming, kept coming and just really got out and helped each other. Again, this was both in businesses and residential is hearing stories all day long of this happening. So that was one other area that was sort of like an organic effort. And I might just add around dams and dam safety. So there are hundreds of dams in Vermont, the vast majority of which are owned by private landowners. And we went to great lengths in the weeks immediately following the July floods to establish current contact information with every one of them and are able now to go back to that network that we've built, push out requests for information and also make offers of technical assistance if folks are observing damages or defects that they believe warrant some sort of inspection. And so I think that that is a significant improvement and one that ultimately will be codifying as we move into a rulemaking process around high hazard and significant hazard dams. I just want to make sure we got everything for Emma and then we'll go to Ann. Yes, Emma, thank you very much. Thanks, can you hear me? We can. Just to follow up on that rulemaking process, I know that lawmakers have various bills aimed at mitigating future flood damage and streamlining the emergency response and things like that. And I'm just wondering what you think the legislature can do to make this type of situation easier as in the future. And also if you have anything that you're thinking of that you'd like to see maybe in your budget for flood response or mitigation. Yeah, we're still putting our budget together, obviously. And as I said before, it's going to be a fairly lean year, but we're looking at buyouts as well. Anything we can do in that regard and making sure that when people are more building, that we're doing it in the proper way to mitigate any future damage due to flooding. In response to your question, one of the things that we will be advancing to the governor's office for consideration in this budget is to bring the urban search and rescue team into a proper existence and acknowledged as a unit of state government by bringing it into a general fund stream. We have been cobbling that team together, which as you can see from July and from yesterday's events, it is an absolutely crucial piece of keeping Vermonter safe in these disasters. We've been cobbling it together for years with a variety of different federal grant streams and also borrowing some funds from the hazmat team where the areas overlap, et cetera. And it's really, I think it just really highlights the fact that we need to put that team on firm footing so that in future times when times are lean or other people in government perhaps don't remember the value of the team, that it is part of state government and our ability to respond to Vermonters, particularly our most vulnerable, because we know that people in the flood prone areas sometimes have fewer resources and ability to remove themselves from a dangerous situation. So that is something that we will be advancing to the governor's office. And Sherwood, love your support, boss. One of the other things that we're looking to push forward is the flood of resilient communities fund. It's been funded in a couple of different ways over a couple of different years, but trying to formalize that in a process and put that into statute. It's a fund that can fill the gaps that FEMA doesn't fill. FEMA is very specific on its mitigation projects and some things do not fit very nicely in that square peg and around hole. So we are backstopping with this FRCF and we've been using that money very quickly and very diligently, but we would like to potentially keep that process going. That is my cabinet knows very well this is going to be a very lean year. So any new initiatives will have to be offset with something that we're going to do without. All right. Tom Davis, compass for mine. Thank you, Jason. Governor and your team, how difficult or easy was it for you to obtain information from the various EOC representatives from the municipalities around the state? Eric? So the emergency operations center talking about building off the summer, we had relationships and we've had relationships over the last several years with the local EMDs. Each town has a EMD in statute, so they are appointed or they are elected in their local municipality, whichever way they decide, but that official then has direct connections to the emergency operations center, as well as VM during blue sky events when they need training or they need resources, they can reach out to us. So we've built those relationships over several years and we call on those during these events and those EMDs stand up and give us a lot of resources both ways. We ask them a lot of questions. They ask us a lot of questions. They give us size in years on the ground and they will be the ones helping us decide whether or not we hit those thresholds and then we will work with them on resource needs. So we have a great relationship with the local EMDs. Do you get 100% participation by then? We don't get 100% participation because not every town activates their local emergency operations center, but we do have the EMDs participate in regional emergency management committees. Then those emergency management committees participate in other state-level activities. So those EMDs do participate, but like everything else, they're volunteers. So they don't have the resources they need to do the job full-time. So we are looking to see what we can do in that capacity, but it is like everything else, it's a short resource, but they are doing well with what they have. Okay, thank you very much. No other questions? Back to the room. Governor, you several times now in several of these press conferences, we've talked about the need for buyouts for restoration of flood plains. Are there any specific areas, geographically, that flooded in July that also flooded this time around like some of these like a real problem area that you'd like to see? I think it doesn't take long to find some of those areas that are prone to flooding. And I would say throughout in this area, through Washington County, all the way from Barrie into Richmond into Essex down through on the Winooski, the Lamoille through Hardwick and Morseville and then into Johnson, Cambridge problematic, but also in the Otter Creek and some of the tributaries down through Windsor and Wyndham as well. So there is a common theme here and it's in those low lying areas with substantial volumes of water in those streams. What about dredging, lots of people ask me, why are we not dredging? Why did we stop dredging? Because we used to do that. You know, dredging and Secretary Moore can answer this probably more elegantly, but with my background in construction, it's just not that easy to do. I mean, when you think about it, just the work itself, take away whether it's ecologically suitable. Just dredging, how do you get the material out? Where do you put it? Where do you dump it? What do you do? And do you get a machine down in and go right up through the river? What about bedrock? I mean, there's all kinds of things that are problematic in terms of trying to dredge the streams to get any kind of volume, increase volume. If you get down two or three feet, that's not going to be enough. Going wider with a stepped approach, a tiered approach, much easier to do. Still, you know, difficult in some respects, but much easier than dredging out a stream. When you're dealing with water, trying to dredge anything in the water, you're just fighting the water and the different types of materials and so forth. Just not as easy as it seems. Our river engineers are out assessing needs for localized dredging projects, generally around bridge abutments and culverts, places where material's been deposited and could actually present a real risk in the next flood. In general, as the governor described though, we can't dig ourselves out of flooding. We just can't kind of create that capacity. And the other piece is oftentimes, if dredging is done in one area, it really just pushes the problem further upstream or downstream. You create a place where maybe the water is able to slow a little bit, but remains in the channel and it'll burst out at the other end in kind of a fire hose effect. And so being thoughtful in trying to look for places to reconnect those flood plains is a far preferable solution than dredging. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.