 Good morning. Good morning. So I sent a presentation. Hopefully you just, it just got it. You just got it? Okay. It is, but it's not necessary. I can sort of walk through it. It'll provide. I don't have confidence. I'm sorry. If you give them too many pictures, they focus on the pictures, they don't want to see them. It's mostly just trying to pull all of these pieces together. I apologize. You will send it to the copy room. We'll have, we'll catch up. Okay. We'll have to pay their copies so people don't have to take notes like that. Perfect. Meanwhile, as for Senator Rogers to suggest, close the full attention. I got it. So my hope is to, to do some, some stage setting for you this morning and then turn it over to folks with the particularized expertise. Can start by talking a little bit about just nutrient pollution in Vermont's major watersheds, the Lake Champlain, the Lake Napa Maga, and the Connecticut River watersheds. The approach we're taking to identifying and projects and then funding those projects. And then Emily can speak to the accomplishments, which is really what's reflected in the Clean Water Performance Report. About 11 o'clock will be joined by folks. Hannah Smith, who's the attorney for the wetlands program and Patrick Muntz from the stormwater program, and can take up those, those specific detailed topics, which are certainly part and parcel of the larger Clean Water Works. We do have existing TMDLs or pollution budgets for both Lake Champlain and Lake Napa Maga related to phosphorus. Both of them require in some ways a similar level of reduction, about a third from the current condition. Similar also between those two watersheds is that wet weather really is driving the pollution in both cases. There's a very limited contribution from wastewater treatment facilities, but the vast majority over 90 percent in both watersheds is being driven by runoff-based processes, runoff from developed lands, from roads, from agricultural fields, from forestry operations. So part of the challenge we fundamentally face is as a result of changing climate, we're seeing increasing amounts of precipitation. We're seeing an increasing number of intense storms, and as a result we see an increase in the phosphorus load. The phosphorus load correlates pretty directly with the amount of runoff that we're seeing, which correlates pretty directly with the amount of rainfall. I think I've heard that from an average year it's something like 35 inches of rain, and that in the last, I don't know, how long? 20 years? 50 years? It's gone up 9 inches. Is that sound about right? So there is a graphic actually in the Clean Water Performance Report that speaks to this. We have a trend line that goes back to the 1940s up through 2020, so that's an 80-year record back in the 1940s. And this is at the Burlington Airport. We were looking at just over 30 inches of rain a year, and now we're up in the 37-38 range. There is a considerable variability within the state. The sort of the Champlain Valley, this is probably fairly representative of as you get out into the spine of the Greens. I think, if I remember correctly, JP currently sees over 45 inches of rain a year. So there's already a much more significant, there's an oriographic effect in addition to this climate change effect that probably is amplified as you move up into the Greens. Yeah, and I would say that we've always gotten more water than they have, so it would be on a relative scale. Yeah, absolutely. But just to keep in mind that this is really, the data that's presented in the report is for Burlington Airport and probably the most reflective of the Champlain Valley. And then more intense storms, and then even more problematically still, more intense storms that tend to come in the spring and fall and don't have crops on them. Correct. Shoulder season conditions. We also don't want to make that excuse also all the time, also that, you know, I mean, these are things that we've got to get ready and deal with, I think. Absolutely. I don't want it too much out there that, you know, this is not that you're coming from here, but that, you know, it's intense storms, where are we going to do, what was up? I think we've got to really start to recognize this and deal with it. I agree. Yeah, I think there's a new normal. But some of it is being aware of the fact that, I guess, where those key differences are between sort of historic conditions and rainfall patterns and what we're seeing under climate change. It's not shoulder months. Some of them mention shoulder months. It's not shoulder months. So I'll send you a link to a presentation, Senator. We had Leslie M. DePuigero, who's the state climatologist, come and present at the municipal day-in-the-day in our runs every year, and she had Vermont-specific data that indicated that a piece of it is that it is wetter in the spring and the fall, and we're actually seeing more drought-like conditions in the summer. Always has been. But storms that strip, fluvial, that's summertime. So one point that you made was that municipal static is a small part of it. Does that mean just the weight source, or does that mean when they overflow as well? So what's represented in when you see our sort of typical pie charts that show the load, that's generally the wastewater treatment plant effluent, the treated effluent. That said, CSOs are actually even a tiny fraction of that small wedge of the pie. Even when the overflow is so big. Correct. Generally, no, no, no. And to be clear, there are real human health concerns associated with sewer overflows. They are not a significant source of phosphorus. I know. This is great. So I talked about the idea that it's really weather is the primary driver of nutrient pollution. The other challenge associated with weather is that it's noisy from year to year, which makes it really hard to detect trends, particularly in the short term. We are the beneficiaries of some particularly robust data sets for Lake Champlain, where we have data that now stretches back the better part of 30 years, and we are able to look at those long-term trends. Currently, many of those trends are still ticking upward, and part of the challenge is rainfall is also ticked upward during that period. And so it can be hard to make sure that the work we're doing is having the desired effect on the ground using only these long-term monitoring programs at the mouths of the major tributaries in the lake segments. There is a body of work that's being done by the Lake Champlain Basin Program to try to control for the effects of weather, and it does show more improvement than you would see by looking at the raw data, but certainly not the kind of improvement we ultimately want to achieve. So just in terms of what needs to happen, we need to achieve a 34% reduction in phosphorus loading in Lake Champlain, a 29% reduction in loading to Lake Manfromegog, and we're looking at about a 50% reduction in nitrogen loading to the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, although that pollution budget is still under development. EPA is leading the work on that because it's not just Vermont and New Hampshire, but also implicates Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York. All have significant contributions to Long Island Sound. For perspective, the Chesapeake Bay TMDL requires a 24% reduction in phosphorus. The Gulf of Mexico requires a 20% reduction in nitrogen, and Lake Erie requires a 40% reduction in phosphorus. So we're within the bounds of reason. Are those all EPAs set up, or are those states individually working kind of on there? I'm just curious, is this something where the EPA is coming into Lake Erie? Yes, every one of those has multiple states, and so by virtue of the fact that it's a multi-state watershed, EPA can have a heavy impact. So if you could just say that Chesapeake's 24% reduction, and Lake Champlain's 34% reduction? Correct. So that's a bit of a sober statistic when I think of Chesapeake, where I've seen it. I thought it was that they were doing a lot worse at Lake Champlain because they had a lot more people, a lot more impacts, a lot more people upstream. I think last year that Chesapeake was making a lot of progress pretty quickly. Well, after 20 years of not making much progress. Right, right, right, right. So the Chesapeake is challenging from the number of political jurisdictions involved, frankly, from the size and scale of the watershed and how far we move. Many people who live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. I mean, you could live up in Cooperstown, New York, and be in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Yeah. Right, but so your people were very far removed from where the impacts are felt. And that can be a challenge as well. But they are at this point making significant progress, and we are in routine communication with colleagues down there too, which is an effort to make sure we're learning from them to the extent possible. The way we're going to achieve those reductions is a combination of voluntary and mandatory programs. We're largely laid out in Act 64 of 2015 and include the required agricultural practices, stormwater permitting programs, including the three per permit. We'll talk about a little bit later on and the municipal roads general permit, mandatory upgrades for wastewater treatment facilities that were by and large required by EPA. Because that's one of the few levers they have in this work and wanted to feel like that helps to them hold our feet to the fire. And then changes to the accepted management practices for forestry. Last session you passed Act 76, which speaks largely to the non regulatory programs and natural resources restoration work in particular. We have some significant efforts underway in terms of wetlands restoration with additional funding that Senator Leahy has been able to secure to support that work. As well as flip plane reconnection and river cord or protection projects. Really the work under Act 76 is about a third of the phosphorus pollution reduction we need to achieve. It's expected to come through these voluntary programs, two thirds through our regulatory programs. So the work the General Assembly did last session relative to Act 76 is really focused on that third of the reductions were expected to come from these above and beyond projects. There's a mix of funding that's also implicated here. So as I know you know we're spending on the order of 50 to 60 million dollars a year. Currently about a third of that comes from the clean water fund and that percentage will tick up in FY 21. But we're relying on there's a surcharge on the property transfer tax. The unclean bottle deposits have started to be remitted to the clean water fund as of October 1st of last year. There's four points of the rooms and meals tax in the current fiscal year that's dedicated to clean water and there will be six points starting in FY 21. And all told that reaches about 15 million dollars in the clean water fund for FY 20. We also continue to see significant funding from the capital. As you may recall in FY 18 and 19 we had a really huge increase in our capital bill allocation at the recommendation of the treasurer. It was about 25 million dollars a year for each of those two years. We've dropped back to what we hope is a more sustainable level. It can be with historic investments of the capital bill in the order of 10 to 12 million dollars a year. In FY 20 we are at 12.1. And then there are some other appropriations that go into clean water work but wouldn't be under the purview of the clean water board. Including allocations through the transportation bill for work along the state's roads and highways. And then the appropriations bill. There's both the SRF match which is the fund we use to make loans to municipalities for wastewater improvement projects. As well as money for the farm agronomic practices program at the IG agency. And last year we received 6.1 million dollars from Senator Leahy specifically to support implementation of the TMDL through the Lake Champlain Basin program. And this year are anticipating almost 6.4 million dollars in that same federal account. So again continue robust federal support for the work we're doing. You may have heard about the auditor's report last year just to reflect that there was some simplification in the way he considered how flexible all of those dollars are. So to the extent we have about 50 million dollars dedicated to clean water. More than half of those are what I would call directed. So the investments are real. They're just not discretionary. They are either they have strings that say they must be spent on municipal wastewater, stormwater and CSO's. They're required to be invested in transportation related projects. Or they're subject to the Lake Champlain Basin programs approval process and not governed by the state. I guess the last point I would make is I do believe that this is truly a 20 year proposition that this is. Once all is said and done going to be one of the most significant engineering undertakings the state has engaged in. The early years which were sort of in that transition period really have been characterized by planning and putting systems in place. And we believe we're about to see a dramatic acceleration in the implementation phase. I think it's just always important to keep in mind that progress won't come in neat increments of a pound of phosphorus per certain dollars invested. And that our progress is going to be complicated by climate change as rainfall and rainfall intensity continue to increase. But that we think we are on the path to achieving our shared clean water goals. And with that I would propose to turn it over to Emily who can talk about some of the more specific information we've compiled as part of the performance report. Unless you have other questions for me. That's one quick question. Just a sort of a lay question in a way. Will Otter Creek always run muddy? I mean it's just always a brick and brown plume sort of year in and year out. And I think some of the I would need to get back to you on specifics of that. I think that it's a slow winder is how we would describe that kind of stream. It's a slow gradient. And I think some of the turbidities some of that turbidities is naturally occurring. I think ideally we will all hope to see a reduction in the degree of turbidity but I'm not sure it would ever run clear. But I can check with staff that would be able to answer that question with a lot more certainty. We're all doing work and people are happy about that. But when you look at Otter Creek, the lake, when you just see brown water flowing out of this big plume into the lake and it's been that way for quite a while. Don't you remember the song, Oh Black Water? Some of them run muddy? Yeah. Let me get some additional information and get back to you on that. I have a lot to do with what soils they run through on their way there. It does and the fine clay soils tend to stay in suspension for a very long time. There's some amount of erosion that's a natural process. There was a gentleman who I had heard speak from the USDA Agricultural Research Service and what he had said is erosion is a natural process. What's unnatural is the rate at which it's occurring currently. And so just sort of keeping that in the back of my mind all the time too. And it's not dissimilar to the TM deals where the goal for phosphorus isn't zero. There's some amount of transport movement that just takes place naturally. We just have too much. And so I will get you an answer to that question. That's another question. When we had a presentation in the governor's address, he mentioned a certain amount being reduced of phosphorus. Can you tell us how that's being measured? So that's exactly what Emily's presentation will be. And then I have one more quick, easy question. Who are you going to vote for in the primary? I'll take it. Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I do have some presentation slides that I will hand out as well as a fact sheet. And I understand you all copies of the report in front of you. In the interest of saving paper, I did put two slides, but all of these graphics are noted page numbers in the report. If you want to see it in a little bit more detail, you might have passed that. Thank you very much. This is the report. Yes, this is stronger and stronger. Oh, thank you. Well, it's an ever-growing challenge to capture all the great works that's happening across the landscape for clean water. So we enjoy the challenge of putting it together every year. So thank you again for having me. I'm Emily Bird, Clean Water Initiative Program Manager at the Department of Environmental Conservation. My program oversees tracking, accounting, and reporting related to clean water. We work very closely across state government and knew this year we're also working very closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and the Lake Champlain Basin Program to start to integrate the results of federal funding more so into this report. So I'm going to walk you through the report today to give you a sense of what is included in the report. And I also want to make sure we have plenty of time to introduce you to a full new section of the report called Part 2. That is our Lake Champlain TMDL Progress Report. It fulfills the reporting requirements to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency within the Lake Champlain total maximum daily load. So we've designed this report to fulfill multiple reporting requirements from an efficiency standpoint. So the report's in front of you. The first page here slides one and two are really just introductory. Before moving on to slide number three, before we get into the details I usually just set the stage describing what a clean water project is because we use that term right a bit throughout the report as well as the total maximum daily load. Secretary Moore already gave a great primer to this, but just a refresher. We're funding a state of Vermont is funding and supporting clean water projects all across different land uses. It's really necessary when you're dealing with non-point source pollution for it to be an all-in approach, targeting all these different land sources of phosphorus and other nutrients and sediment, because most of our pollution is from rainfall-driven and snow-melt-driven events. So we're working through agricultural lands, developed lands, targeting stormwater runoff from hard surfaces like roof runoff in parking lots as well as roads and wastewater treatment. And all of these projects have a benefit of reducing nutrients and sediment, whether it's nitrogen or phosphorus or sediment from erosion, but they also bring a number of co-benefits that are very beneficial to the state of Vermont, including flood resiliency, habitat restoration, enhancing our recreational assets and supporting the working landscape. So there are a number of benefits and we're striving to capture all of those benefits in our data that we're tracking each year. Can I ask a question? Do you track employment that flows from all these resources? We have not begun to track that yet. There could possibly be some data sources available that may be of interest. It was something we had talked about briefly with the Department of Labor, because we know that these significant investments are translating to a body of work in the engineering community and the nonprofit community and in the contractor community, but haven't figured out exactly how to pull all of those pieces together. My guess is over 20 years, we were spending a trillion plus dollars. What billion? Billion. Oh, yeah, sorry. I won't say that anymore. Sorry, billion. I'm your director, Brett. So a conciliant dollar. Honestly, it might be sort of the largest infrastructure program the state's ever taken on. Absolutely. Rather than thinking of it as just a burden, it may well be that it's something we're doing for ourselves that provides good employment for many people. We've talked about it qualitatively, but haven't done that more quantitatively. We'd rather have this, I think. You spoke about the numerous weather events causing erosion. And we can't talk about the numerous weather events causing erosion if we don't say that at the same time we have numerous agricultural practices and road building practices, which together with those residents cause erosion. You've got to deal with both of those things and you can't attribute it to one or the other. Absolutely. And we are finding, especially municipal roads is a great example. Once a road section is brought up to the municipal road general permit standards, it is much more resilient to these severe storm events compared to before. And so municipalities are finding that adapting these types of practices increases their maintenance cost because it's making their road networks more resilient. Try to undo the practices that for 20 years or 30 years were actively championed and paid for. We've worked years to get rid of water downhill faster and now we are stepping back and trying to get water downhill slower. But the next challenge is going to be, I've heard we've got an especially problematic steep hill in our town that the stone-lined ditches have already filled up with sediment. And yes, it's doing its job, but it's an extremely expensive project if you have to redo it every few years. Absolutely. So I think in the future there's going to need to be technology invented so you can dig the stone out and separate the sediment out so that you're not just dumping all that stone you spent huge money on as filled somewhere and having to buy new riprap again. It's a very expensive process. Absolutely. Great. And throughout the presentation I'll also be referring to total maximum daily load or TMDL. Most of the state of Vermont is covered by these large-scale nutrient TMDLs that are federally-required, when a water body is no longer meets water quality standards. For Lake Champlain and Lake Memphormate Bug, we're really targeting phosphorus reductions in order for those water bodies to meet state of Vermont water quality standards. And as Secretary Moore mentioned, we're also part of a five-state watershed that drains to Long Island Sound through the Connecticut River, and there's going to be work needed under that section of the state both from wastewater optimization for nitrogen treatment, which is underway, as well as the non-point and stormwater sources that we've been working so hard to address in Plain and Memphormate as well. Is that correct a Long Island Sound TMDL? There is a Long Island Sound TMDL, and it was published in 2001, written by the state of Connecticut and New York together. And that TMDL primarily targets reductions from the Connecticut and New York sources being the primary sources. However, it does include parts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and requires about a 10% reduction from non-point sources, but then a more substantial reduction from the point sources, so the wastewater treatment facilities that discharge directly into the Connecticut River and its tributaries. We are missing a Vermont-specific allocation of the load, and EPA is working on a study that will help to better apportion the load reductions for nitrogen in the Long Island Sound watershed regionally, looking at the embayments of Long Island Sound directly, but also better understanding the sources in the upper basin states like Vermont. So we're already taking steps, even if we don't have a firm figure in mind for what a target is ultimately going to be. We anticipate it will be coming, and all of the work that we're doing related to Act 64 and Act 76 are really preparing us to be well positioned to say, yes, we are already doing a substantial amount of work that will benefit Long Island Sound, and we're tracking it too. So we have data about the extent of projects that are being implemented in that part of the state that we'd be able to share with the other states to demonstrate how we're doing our part and where we may need to do more. Thank you. So moving on to slide five here, this is found in page nine of the report as well, an overview of the types of measures that are included in the report. The first measure, really focusing on the state of Vermont investments in clean water is those investment measures describing how much the state has invested in clean water projects. It summarizes it by agency, by land use sector, geographic distribution. There's many different ways that it's presented. We also not only present on the level of investment the number of projects funded, but the results of those investments in our project outputs and phosphorus reduction estimates. That's also summarized in part one of the report, specifically for the state of Vermont investments. Part two of the report really broadens the scope to include federal funding programs and regulatory programs as well. Also understanding the need to do education outreach and technical assistance, we've been tracking the extent of the state of Vermont's outreach efforts related to clean water, as well as technical assistance efforts underway by various state of Vermont agencies and our partners. The goal of all of this education and outreach is really to better prepare the local partners out on the landscape, like municipalities or watershed organizations, farmers, to give them the right tools to be able to do this work and understand some of the resources, financial or technical that may be available to help them. I remember when Senator Pierson was in this committee and we talked about the possibility and this may have already happened, signage and notification letting people know what their tax dollars are for. Is that kind of thing happening? Yes. A couple years ago, we purchased clean water project signs that are posted while projects are under construction if the project is visible publicly. So for example, it's for water treatment practice at an elementary school, you'd see a clean water project sign posted. So those have been dispersed to the various state agencies that fund this work. Thank you, I think that helps. And also I'll get to it in a little bit. We have an online project explorer, which is like a dashboard that make all of the data that are summarized in this report available to the public as well. So there's quite a bit of tools that we've been working to develop to better get the word out. Thank you. Okay, moving on to slide six. I already mentioned that this report now has two parts. The first part is the investment report that you've been familiar with over the last few years. The investment report summarizes state investments in clean water as a result of the state investment specifically, understanding that it is a bit of a Venn diagram and that these state investments may also leverage federal investments and these investments may also support regulatory compliance. So there is overlap in these various areas of reporting. So part one really focuses on those state investments and fulfills the investment reporting requirement. I'll just walk you through a few examples of some measures in the report related to the investment. On slide seven here, this is from the executive summary. You can see the four major basins of the state, Champlain, Memphromagog, Connecticut River, and the Hudson. And here we have summarized investments over the last four state fiscal years by land use sector. So you can see how the investments vary geographically depending on the types of projects that are being targeted. For example, in the Hudson River section, a large wastewater treatment facility upgrade that is really showing quite a major investment in wastewater is because these are more expensive infrastructure projects compared to, say, an agricultural field practice. Just saying, showing how in the executive summary, we showed the investments by the four major basins by land use sector. And so you can see here in the Hudson River that there is a major investment in wastewater due to an expensive wastewater treatment improvement that was made. Like cement rebar and building? Yeah, it's more of the traditional infrastructure through a clean water state revolving fund loan which ultimately municipalities will repay. But you can see the relative distribution of the different types of investments in different parts of the states depending on what sources are being targeted. So you were talking about something about land use practices. Yeah, so I was just making the point that while the wastewater treatment facility expense may be high, there's still a lot of work happening in those other land uses like agricultural practices are being implemented, but they're lower cost. So it's showing as a smaller proportion of the cost in that part of the state. Mr. Chair, what's the body that makes a decision between whether to spend it downstream on cement rebar or upstream on agricultural practices? Is that the regional mission? I think I'll ask the agency to respond. So we use tactical basin planning. It's a approach that covers each of the 15 river basins in the state of Vermont. Tactical basin planning is done on a five year rotating cycle and it's really a local approach identifying water quality concerns in each of the river basins. So for example, Lewinowski, the Otter Creek, the Batten Hill, each have their own basin plan and they use the results of modeling sector based assessments like a municipal road erosion inventory, for example, to really better identify where there are pollutant loading hotspots on the landscape and where to target projects to address those issues and it's all integrated together in this one report of the basin plan itself that is really sort of the roadmap for the local groups in that watershed to better target where they're investing these dollars to achieve water quality results. That's quite important with the people in the area. There is participation in the process by the regional planning commissions, the natural resource conservation districts and they also hold a number of public meetings to provide local input in the process. They're eventually the vote on what they would recommend. I'm not sure that there is a formal voting process but it is certainly collaborative. For the total amount of funding and that's all those I was thinking of the tactical basin plan that's creating our giant project list right, the pipeline and then is it the clean water board that in the end then allocates money? I don't know how you decide which tactical basin plan gets how much effort maybe you can say something about how both decisions are made. Sure. So the clean water board provides a recommendation of how much funding is going to be invested in say agriculture compared to natural resource restoration and that's done at the pretty high level statewide on an annual basis. However, with Act 76 that just passed last legislative session we're moving into the fiscal year 22 budget process and then we will start to be allocating funding to those new budget categories and one of those is the water quality restoration formula grants where dollars will be allocated to the tactical basin planning watersheds we mentioned before based on a phosphorus reduction target. So that will be a new approach where we're actually allocating funding based on different watersheds and the results that are needed in each of those watersheds. So that's going to be a big leap forward and how these funds are dispersed and we'll get more into the geographic dispersal of funding. Is there anything you want to add to that? Great, thank you. Okay, so moving on through the report sharing some examples of the measures that are reported here. Slide eight shows the investment from state fiscal year 2016 through 2019 by land use sector. You can see in dark gray those are the municipal wastewater loans through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund that will ultimately be repaid back to the state and be used for more projects moving forward. I will point out there is a slight dip from state fiscal year 2018 to 2019 and that is not the result of there being less funding appropriated. It was the result of a spike in investments through the municipal pollution control grants and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund in state fiscal year 2018. These dollars are allocated to these larger infrastructure projects based on their construction schedules and it happened that in this year there was just a lot of projects aligning at the same time. So it isn't so much a dip but a spike in state fiscal year 2018. And as Secretary Moore had described the appropriations to Clean Water have been growing over the last few years and we expect that to continue to be reflected in these data moving forward. On to Slide 9. Here is an example of those outreach data that I had mentioned earlier. We've been working across state government since 2015 to track the extent of outreach that's being done by state of Vermont agencies related to Clean Water and this shows how the level of outreach in education has continued to increase each year. Remarkably in state fiscal year 2019 there was quite a large increase in the amount of outreach that was done by state government. We're also working on funding grants and contracts to partners like University of Vermont Extension or the conservation districts to also do some of this outreach themselves so we're gathering all those data so we're able to report back on the extent of those efforts. There's also a number of technical assistance measures in the report that you can look into to really show how we're providing support to the key partners in getting this work done. Slide 10. Agricultural Associations which took a big jump in 2019. Is that things like the Lake Champlain Farmers Alliance or the Agricultural Associations? That would be groups oh well University of Vermont Extension you can see in gray is also substantial I believe that this is Agency of Agriculture has been funding grants to Agricultural Associations to do outreach and educational efforts to support farmers and so I believe that's largely what that section of the bar chart is related to. Slide 11. The Lake Champlain Farmers Coalition that kind of the coalitions on the north and south lake. Slide 12. The Lake Champlain Farmers Coalition Farmers Warranty Alliance Connecticut River Warranty Farmers Alliance Vermont Grass Farmers Association Vermont Veggie and Berry Grove Association a lot of those folks are working on water quality outreach and education with their members. Okay. Moving on to slide 10. Here's an example of a project output table. This is in the executive summary as well as in part one of the report. We've standardized performance measures based on different project types. We've been tracking these data for four years now so you can really see how these efforts are starting to ramp up. For example acres of impervious surface like hard surfaces, rooftops parking lots, roads. Treatment of that has continued to increase each year as well as miles of municipal roads that are being improved for water quality. I mentioned many of these projects also have very beneficial results in terms of flood resiliency and reduced maintenance costs to the road networks. Next slide. Moving from the developed lands to the agricultural sector as an example slide 11 shows the estimated total phosphorus load reduction related to agricultural practices that were funded by the state of Vermont primarily through agency of agriculture and we've developed a best management practice accounting tool in our database that uses the Lake Champlain TMDL modeling and the annual performance of different practice types to estimate from a modeled standpoint the reductions that these projects are achieving at the practice level. So these are modeled estimates and each practice has its own lifespan. So for example an annual practice like cover crop is going to achieve a phosphorus reduction for one year unless we have data showing that it's being implemented longer than that and we take that approach to make the point that all of these investments require maintenance and that practice lifespan is a very important component to the tracking. So what you can see in this bar chart on state fiscal year 2016 to 2019 the estimated phosphorus reductions associated with agricultural practices and to the right of the gray dotted line in state fiscal year 2021 those are projected based on the project lifespan. So it's really important that we continue to maintain this level of effort and build upon it each year in order to meet our goals for the Lake Champlain TMDL as well as Lake Memphermate Gog and other parts of the state and again this is just the results of state investments. I'm moving shortly into part two of the report which really gets at the full scope of all of our tracking including the federal funding and regulatory programs. The next slide slide 12 from page 44 of the report gets to the cost effectiveness of these investments. So what I've done is taken the whole data set of everything that we're tracking and filtered it down to only those projects that have estimated phosphorus reductions and looking at the estimated phosphorus reduction the total cost reported to us as well as their lifespan calculating the relative cost effectiveness of these projects in terms of phosphorus treatment. So you can see here on the left hand side the lowest cost per unit of phosphorus treated are those agricultural practices installed or applied on fields and pasture. Can you repeat that again? The lowest cost per unit of phosphorus reduced is agricultural practices on fields and pasture. So this does not include the more structural fixes on a production area or barnyard for example. That's the biggest bag for our buck. It certainly is but I will add a caveat that lifespan is a very important consideration because these are practices that need to be continuously applied year after year in order to continue to perform and so it's really the long-term investment and that new approach to how land is being managed is really important when we're talking about agricultural practices. The next most cost effective... So what kinds of practices are we talking about in this case? Things like cover crop rotation like no-till as well as riparian buffer restoration on agricultural lands and some livestock exclusion from surface water. So again these are things we just have to keep going and making certain people continue to practice. And farmers are really stepping up. I'll get to it in a little bit but you can see that most of the reductions that we're so far able to quantify are from the agricultural sector with the caveat that we still have gaps in our ability to account for other practice types so we're expecting that as we fill in those gaps it'll start to round out the picture nicely and show substantial reductions in other sectors as well. So the next most cost effective are the restoration of riparian forested areas on non-agricultural lands and these are box whisker charts so they show the real range of the cost per unit because every project is different and have different site constraints that need to be dealt with so really what you're seeing is the maximum the minimum and then the median values on these charts. The next most cost effective are the road erosion practices that municipalities are implementing to bring their roads up to standards these are relatively more expensive but we believe it's primarily because a lot of these municipalities are targeting their trickiest road sections first those steepest most likely to erode road sections that are also more expensive to work on and then next is the stormwater treatment practices so stormwater treatment practices are engineered solutions many of them are green stormwater infrastructure so they still have that natural benefit however they are more expensive to implement their typically in developed areas which are more expensive with more site constraints so you can see that those are relatively more expensive than the other project types however they have about 20 or life spans or longer if they're properly maintained so it's really important to take that on to consideration and while these projects have varying degrees of cost effectiveness they're all necessary in order for us to meet the Lake Champlain TMDL requirements because reductions are required across all those different planning sources in order for us to be successful you call this FoxWisker FoxWisker chart is the technical name I've never heard of it I've never heard of it that's great it was a new one this year so we're testing it out that's great I'm doing a rough math when I look at the cost field practices at 200 bucks and you multiply it by 20 years it's $4,000 so it is and you look at the sewage treatment plants and the wastewater treatment facilities are not included on this I've only included those projects where we have cost and estimated phosphorus reductions at the project level from a data perspective that's really the only sound way to do that because wastewater treatment facilities and things like barnyard production areas on farms we have investments that are made in specific elements of them but we don't necessarily have cost in our data set associated with the whole site so I'm just trying to compare the fields and pastures costs to fully invested in sewage treatment plants and because they're yearly trying to multiply by work number and then be able to compare them in a more parallel way and this does factor in lifespan in this chart here so if we were to add a wastewater treatment facility upgrade it would likely be on the far right side but wastewater treatment facilities are up against much more than just phosphorus they're working on managing for bacteria other pollutants mitigating combined sewer overflows so those investments are very necessary for more than just our phosphorus reduction goals and some of the investments we're making are the refurbishment of existing infrastructure which is really necessary in order to avoid much more expensive fixes further down the road so wastewater treatment facilities are a little bit more difficult to fit within this context because they do so much more than just treat for phosphorus and we also don't in all cases have the cost specifically associated with their phosphorus treatment which made it limited our ability to integrate it into this graphic but you bring up a really good point that the relative cost effectiveness agriculture, natural resource restoration those municipal road fixes are very cost effective and sewer motor treatment can also be cost effective when it's maintained properly long term okay thank you moving on to slide 13 you can also look to page 71 in the report this is a watershed summary this breaks down all of the data presented in the report that statewide into those 15 river basins of the state you can see on the top left there's a small image of the state of Vermont and where this watershed is located with the political boundaries associated with it so you can understand where you're at in the landscape from a political boundary and a watershed boundary perspective see how the state is investing in that part of the state on a more local scale and then we also have the performance measures project results and the estimated phosphorus reductions summarized here for each of those 15 river basins over the last four state fiscal years so this has been a really helpful tool for our outreach and I certainly encourage you to take a look at the watersheds that overlap with your districts could be a useful resource when interacting with your constituents about what we're doing for clean water in different parts of the state and then lastly while we're on the assessment side of things slide 14 we have the clean water projects explorer this is a screenshot from our new online tool there's also a fact sheet in your handouts here that gives you more information about how to access and use this tool it is really making all the data that are presented and summarized in this report available to the public and can be searched by the map function and also search criteria on the left here so that's part one of the report part two isn't as long but I will just give you a quick overview of what it contains so we talked about part one that was all about state investments and the results of those investments part two broadens the scope to include data streams from federal funding programs like the Lake Champlain Basin program the U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resource Conservation Service substantial believe it was about $20 million in the last federal fiscal year as well as some of those regulatory programs that are now starting to move into the implementation phase and we can gather data about the results of compliance with regulation so in past years one of the challenges was getting that data and you pretty much worked out the linkages so that you can have that information flow over to you yes we have worked out a process with the USDA where they are able to remove the personally identifiable information from the data set and be able to report to us each of the agricultural practices that they funded with enough data that we're able to quantify results and there are still some data management challenges when you're working with such a large data set integrating it but I think we have come a really long way and it's been really nice to be able to include that in our reporting this year so we already talked quite a bit about the Lake Champlain TMDL and the reductions needed in order to achieve water quality standards in Lake Champlain so I'm going to skip over slide 16 and move on to slide 17 earlier I mentioned tactical basin planning and the 15 river basins in the state how it cycles through this map here also on page 46 of the report in dark gray shows those basin boundaries and the Lake Champlain TMDL has an accountability framework where EPA is going to be checking in with us to make sure that we're making adequate progress implementing the Lake Champlain TMDL reductions and so this year is the first year that we are up for a progress report card from EPA it's going to be done on a cyclical process so you can see in green the year that the basin plan was issued in yellow the date or the year of the interim report card halfway through our planning cycle where EPA checks in says how are you doing you should consider making these adjustments for the second half of this planning period and then in orange that's when they make their final report for that planning cycle so this year the Lamoille and the Cisco basins are first up for those interim checkpoints so we prepared this report to fulfill that reporting requirement and there's two appendices in the report that specifically say here are the strategies that we identified as necessary in the Lamoille and the Cisco basins and here's a status update on how those are doing I won't get into all those details but feel free to take a look at that and moving on to slide 18 we're now able to estimate phosphorus reductions for more than just state funding so in orange those are the estimated phosphorus reductions associated with federal funding programs green is state funding programs and blue are the regulatory programs so the federal funding is making a really big difference in the work we're doing to clean up Lake Champlain now that we've been able to integrate the NRCS data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture you can really see some measurable results there and then moving on to quick question yesterday with the U.S. Department of I'm not familiar with that you may know more about seeing its budgetary outline framework for the federal budget how did U.S. budget federal government I can speak to that if you like so yesterday President Trump released his proposed federal fiscal 21 thank you it includes significant cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency budget as well as conservation programs I believe within the U.S. Department of Agriculture budget not dissimilar to the budget the President has proposed to each of his first three years in office ultimately that will go through the full legislative process and while clearly a statement of the President's policy priorities of the U.S. Congress has by and large restored if not exceeded sort of previous year funding requests for all the accounts that are most germane to this work that's why I asked what budget that's the proposed budget proposed budget did I similar to the question of similar being that maybe that's the secretary of world okay so I'll just point out that now that we're integrating data streams from regulatory and federal funding programs you can see that the reductions were able to quantify our substantial we were reporting back to you about 1.5 metric tons just from the state funding and this year now there's a lot more work underway and more data available and we're reporting 16.4 metric ton reduction estimated okay and there are still gaps in our ability to estimate these reductions for all project types of notably natural resource restoration projects which we know are highly cost effective and so I'm looking forward to in the next couple years being able to integrate more of those results into this report but if you move to the next slide slide 19 you can see that most of those phosphorus estimates that were able to report back right now are from the agricultural sector partly because there's a lot of work happening in the agricultural sector these projects are highly cost effective and we still have some gaps in the other the other land use sectors so we expect this will be rounded out a bit more but it is substantial it amounts to about 36,000 pounds of estimated phosphorus reduction across all these programs in state fiscal year 2019 and moving on to the next slide slide 20 this is where we put it in the context of the TMDL so the TMDL on the left we have our baseline that's an average of conditions from 2001 to 2010 so that's really our starting point then we show from state fiscal year 2016 through 2019 the estimated phosphorus reductions that we have been able to estimate so far in those little white sections across the top and the blue represents the required reduction that is the ultimate goal for 20 years from the beginning of this implementation timeframe so this amounts to about 7 or 8 percent of the required reduction needed achieved in state fiscal year 2019 so we have a long way to go and these programs are still ramping up we're just starting to move more into the implementation timeframe on a lot of these programs and we've been really focused on laying the programmatic groundwork for this in the last few years so we do expect that this will ramp up in the coming years but there's a lot of work to be done and it is a 20 year proposition so we will continue to track and use these data to help inform where we need to target our efforts more so so I just wanted to put it into context for you to understand and there are still gaps in our ability to estimate phosphorus for all project types so this is definitely an underestimation of the work that's happening but it is also helpful to have these estimated reductions we talked earlier about how weather can really cause a lot of noise and data trends and this helps to provide an incremental level of accountability at the project level for how we're doing while it's going to take time for those results to show up in our monitoring data it seems like I remember from an earlier piece of work that you all did S-shaped curve for results over time so if I look at the first four years and at 16 I would say it was four times a year but 20 times it was going to be 80 instead of 12 but as you predicted I mean that it's going to have a modest start to this implementation that is what we expect and yes, like you said perfectly it's not a linear process so we can't necessarily track this rate of implementation and phosphorus reductions through that 20 year time frame and know where we're going to land we do expect that it will be ramping up and I believe that Secretary Morse's material has an exact graphic that you just mentioned to be clear this is a conceptual graphic but there is a page towards the end of 20 something conveniently I gave you a presentation with no page numbers but it looks like this and what this looks at is these are the different regulatory programs that state government was tasked with under Act 64 and the deadlines for when they kick in and it shows that in the first few years there was a lot of programmatic work that was underway and we expect the phosphorus reductions to increase over the next few years and I think we had initially predicted a 20% reduction in the first four years we've achieved somewhere between a 7 and an 8% reduction we believe based on our conservative estimates so it's not out of line with where we anticipated we would be with where we are on the overall project and I won't go into I apologize we're looking at this graph but one of the questions that the chair often asks is are we making progress is the labor itself getting cleaner and if you look at this it seems as though the answer is yes well of course we're coming we always say yes but to give credit I think the secretary has been very honest and at points has leveled concern around whether or not we're making progress but right now it looks as though we are making some progress we are making progress there are a lot of considerations beyond our direct control so we can control funding and regulation to a certain extent the report now has a whole section about external variables that affect our ability to meet the bill like Champlain TMTL, precipitation human population change, land use change agricultural considerations and the actual monitored phosphorus load to like Champlain those are all summarized here in this report in the interest of time I'm not sure if you want me to get into those details but I guess the short of it is it's complicated and there's a lot that we're up against but all of this work is certainly making a difference and adaptive management will be really important to check in and identify where we're backsliding potentially things that are beyond our control and how we need to mitigate the population changes interesting because really the population grows and the same amount between middle area and St. Albans then that's all that Lake Champlain corridor that's where everyone's moving into right so you're saying that's a factor well it's just an interesting factor as we're making progress on other fronts are we adding more pavement you know other areas more populations more waste and for regular citizens they're not necessarily that dial into how much phosphorus so we reduce them beach clothes of course those things are out of science bacteria that's related to but not entirely absolutely and there is a one pager in here that talks about how climate change is likely to affect cyanobacteria making them more likely with the temperature considerations as well so it's much more comprehensive than in prior years but feel free to take a look at some of those details and I'm happy to answer any questions I wish we could we could we could spend the day really going through this more detail but thank you again for every year it's a very good report it's more and more helpful in terms of really seeing how the work we're doing is adding on thank you very much my other question was the federal government has been writing rules on water quality air pollution air quality stuff like that if the federal government were to rewrite the rules of water quality and they survived the courts and the position we were in at that point was the same one we're in today but suddenly we were now in compliance because the grading criteria had changed and we're now passing grade what would be the fate of this project that the secretary and the administration and the legislature has endorsed would you like me to answer that sure so the water quality standards are what guide our work in this space and states are given primacy and setting their own water quality standards so all of the goals that Emily's program is driving to achieve derived from the water quality standards established for Lake Champlain by the state of Vermont similarly the Act 64 while we made a significant number of commitments to EPA as part of our TMDL implementation plan for Lake Champlain the state went to the next step and codified those commitments in Act 64 of 2015 so again if EPA pulled back from what they viewed as our obligations under the TMDL we would still be obligated under state law to continue the implementation but if we're obligated under the state law then the conservation and law foundation would have to sue the state if we were not carrying out our own law would that be the case not being a lawyer I'd better go with yes I believe so the members of the legislature to say notwithstanding the law will take longer to do this as long as we have the feds there we can't not withstand their law we are free to not achieve this well the water quality standards that we're striving to meet for Lake Champlain are state of Vermont water quality standards so ultimately it is a state if the federal government were to change water quality standards it wouldn't affect the ultimate goal for Lake Champlain so I think I'll leave it then we would be able to say notwithstanding our current law we're you know all the usual excuses you have for not moving forward on the path that you set for yourself would kick it you might treat that as a retoral right thank you so much excellent witness and very bold of you very very helpful thank you I don't know who's up next I think I get to come back you can do a little more stage setting and then we'll let you put questions to the next so yeah so you have two other folks on your team would you like me to introduce them well sure and we have 50 minutes left so I'll figure that you'll control the timing of things because you know how much each has to present my thought was just to give a fairly high level overview of both our work related to the wetland statute and our work related to the three acre permit and then essentially allow the committee as much time as remains to ask questions with the idea that Patrick and Hannah would take the lead in answering them so now you do have a copy of my presentation in front of you thank you Jude and if you flip two thirds of the way into it you'll see a slide that will be blue that says wetlands without page number yeah I know sorry I agree with you you're already down to a bean bite it's a hard center so just a little bit of context Vermont today is about 4% of Vermont's land area is covered is would be considered wetlands it's important to keep in mind the distribution of wetlands is not even throughout the state as you will notice it's sort of heavily biased towards the Champlain Valley and in particular Grand Isle as you might expect from pre-settlement to 1980 which is when sort of modern wetlands regulations started to take effect Vermont is estimated to have lost about 35% of its wetlands area so just to keep that in mind is context wetlands provide a wide variety of important functions and values which Vermont's rules seek to protect this is a little bit different than how the federal government looks at wetlands and maybe similar to the question you asked previously Senator McDonald about changes at the federal level there's work being done on the waters of the United States or the Wotus rule that doesn't have a lot of practical effect here in Vermont because we have set our standards higher than the federal minimum requirements which are being reduced somewhat it has a greater impact in other states for example I have a colleague in Oklahoma and she's indicated that their waters rules are tied explicitly to the federal requirements so to the extent the federal government reduces the level of protection being afforded to small streams and wetlands their rules would step back as well the way we identify wetlands is a combination of desktop work and then sending staff into the field to confirm our identification on foot there are three things we're looking at hydric soils and in the picture you can sort of see there's this modeled gray and brown color hydrophilic vegetation which means wetland loving vegetation and then hydrology and so it does often require a field visit particularly to identify the edges in the boundaries the question is like those nice light hydric soils can we if we need to create wetlands or is it not that for example when you said that we used to be lost 35% it need be for different reasons so I it's complicated and I can get you some additional information on that there are opportunities for wetland restoration in places where we might have modified the hydrology we can restore the hydrology and often times those wetlands will take care of themselves we've seen some particular success stories with marginal farmlands particularly in the outer creek and the bare watersheds where through a series of ditch plugs and other strategies we restored the wetlands we've had experience trying to create wetlands as offset projects they haven't been particularly successful so it's a little bit of a mixed bad but to the extent we know that some of the wetland properties are continuing to function often times we can do those sorts of restoration I guess it would be my guess not an anything about where the 35% came from but a lot of that probably development like in Burlington, St. Albans any of the places that are in areas that look like they probably were wetlands it was probably filled in and converted to development yes I think that that's a safe bet I think there's also we know that there's a considerable amount of agriculture that takes place on former wetland areas too but you're absolutely right humans are pretty industrious rendering the landscape to their liking John the next slide talks a little bit about presumed jurisdictional wetlands so any wetlands shown on the Vermont significant wetland inventory or VSWI map is jurisdictional but then in addition to that wetlands that are contiguous are connected to a mapped wetland as well as wetlands that are the same size and type as mapped wetlands are also considered jurisdictional along with wetlands that are adjacent to a stream river lake or pond some vernal pools and we have some special and unique wetlands like bogs or fence that are also subject to our regulatory jurisdiction all of that said last session we had come to the General Assembly with a proposal to a proposed suite of amendments that we were seeking to increase the clarity and consistency of the permitting process certainly the feedback we received from the regulated community is that our wetland rules at times can feel subjective and we're looking to get to a place with a more objective definition of a wetland based on physical characteristics specifically size as well as clearly defining the activities that would trigger permitting jurisdiction so dredging, draining, filling, cutting so with this includes some kind of delineation because that's one of the things I hear from constituents is how am I supposed to know what's a wetland should the state have a map with delineation so that I have an idea if I'm here a wetland? So we have an advisory layer that provides that sort of information it is imperfect partly because wetlands change over time they're not a static feature on the landscape but depending on changes uphill and downhill from the wetland can alter the hydrology on a particular site so it's challenging to produce a map that gives an absolute answer to landowners recognizing fully that's what they would like there is work being done by our wetlands program we have a pilot project in the Missisquoia watershed trying to take advantage of higher resolution data, LiDAR data that's now available throughout the state to see if that helps a higher quality map that would be a better value to landowners who are looking to understand where wetland resources may exist on their property ultimately we encourage people that went into the police call and we'll be happy to help provide site specific guidance. Because if we're identifying stuff based on hydric soil I would guess that there's a lot of hydric soils that have been in agriculture for a lot of years from the state of Vermont. So as you probably know the wetlands the last session spent most of its time in the senate agriculture committee and the committee's focus was really on exemptions for various agricultural activities. In the end the wetlands conversation happened in the agriculture committee. It started in the end. Can you tell me why? Well because the wetlands agricultural definition is one of the areas that could use some clarity. Okay. Agricultural definition of a wetland as opposed to the other definition. Well so our current statutory definition of wetlands says creates an exemption within the definition for areas being used to grow food or crops in conjunction with farming. One of the changes was to move to a scientifically based definition of wetland consistent with the Army Corps of Engineers and so that obviously has direct implications then for agriculture. Ultimately the changes we discussed much of the last session in the ag committee were not voted out but H525 which became conveniently Act 64 of 2019 not to be confused with Act 64 did include several provisions related to wetlands. It has us doing work to look at standing up wetland scientists licensure requirements which would be a step towards self-certification so that we aren't the only ones who can go out in the field and verify wetland boundaries. It did establish a $200 maximum permit fee for a suite of water quality improvement projects and a $5,000 cap on the fee for permanent structures used for farming so barns most notably but also the newer pits. It created a legislative study committee on wetlands which I know members of this committee participated in and directed the ag agency to revise the required agricultural practices. The legislative study committee did submit a report that addressed four issues and ultimately recommended no legislative action to be taken at this time while the ag agency continues their work to revise the RIPs to address farming activities in wetlands and also the agency of natural resources has a wetlands stakeholder advisory group that will continue to meet with and flesh out the changes that have been discussed to increase clarity and consistency in the permitting process so both of those pieces are moving along right now. So maybe you can switch gears then and talk about storm water if you would like to ask wetlands questions Hannah and I can endeavor to answer them I think last that I mean wetlands is something we'll have to come back to but for now I think unless there's any sort of brief questions we should move on to keep on covering our terrain. Okay, storm water it is so as you may or may not be aware there are about 60,000 acres statewide that are hard surfaces so that's roads, rooftops, parking lots anything where any place where water can't soak into the ground and currently less than 10% of those 60,000 acres are under some sort of regulatory requirements from the agency of natural resources so a relatively small subset if you look at the sources of phosphorus in the Vermont portion of the Champlain basin you can see that about 20% of them are really associated with those impervious surfaces so developed lands paved roads and unpaid roads and the Lake Champlain TMDL requires that from those reddish wedges of the pie that 20% that we achieve a 21% reduction so we have a number of tools in our toolbox to go about achieving that 21% reduction from developed lands these include the municipal roads general permit that Emily spoke about as part of her presentation the MS4 or municipal separate storm sewer system general permit that's issued to our larger communities mostly in Chittenden County but then also St. Alden's in Rutland TS4 general permit which is issued to the agency of transportation and covers storm water runoff from state highways and then the three acre general permit which we are in the throes of working on right now just a question to make sure I'm keeping up here the impervious surface slide so the 60,000 acres of impervious surface that's about 1% of our land area and then 10% of that so 1.1% is regulated currently and then if I go to the pie chart on the next page so then we're looking at is that 1.1% that's regulated that would be the whole that would be the whole percent the whole 10% 60,000 acres is 1% of our landscape and that's an important point so we have a relatively modest amount of devolved land in Vermont but it disproportionately contributes phosphorus there's not much of it but it's highly impactful correct so when we're talking about three acre sites there are two sort of big categories one is a single track so a single landowner with greater than three acres of impervious surface that hasn't had a storm water permit from us before the other group is projects that may have had a storm water permit from us before but the permit was issued prior to 2002 and 2002 is what we sort of think of as the modern age of storm water regulation so prior to 2002 we have catch basins and pipes now it's actually about treatment and so that's an important piece we have estimated that statewide we think they're about of the storm water as opposed to just moving we believe that statewide there are about a thousand of sites that would fall under this three acre definition and about half of those already have some permit from us but that would be fact of prior to 2002 as part of drafting the general permit when we released it for public comment this fall we did send a letter directly to those landowners outlining what the requirements of the general permit was the fact that we believed based on our own evaluation it applied to their site and encouraging them to take a look and we can talk in a minute about the amount of comments we received as they sure did what the three acre permit will require is that folks achieve a level of treatment consistent with the 2017 storm water manual and what we call our redevelopment standard which means they have to treat storm water from half the site a new site would have to treat the entirety of the site when we're talking about these redevelopment or retrofit projects we scale that back recognizing that they're likely to be inherent challenges we also have an engineering feasibility test that we put these projects through and specifically landowners do not need to purchase additional land they don't need to pump storm water and they don't need to construct flood plains or wetlands essentially they don't need to get another permit from the agency to comply with their storm water permit and if they're unable to meet the retrofit standards on their site there is an opportunity to pay offsets or impact fees those impact fees though are not only available if you can't build the project on your site the TMDL pollution budget assumes where you're going to get so many pounds of reduction associated with storm water treatment and so just letting folks into the impact fee bucket doesn't actually reduce pollution directly so I think that's an important piece to keep in mind and the impact fees will vary depending on where you are in the state and whether you are in a storm water but in addition to being in a phosphorus impaired watershed between $12,500 an acre to $25,000 so the public comment process for the draft permit closed back on December 2nd we received many many sets of comments Patrick and his team are working to develop or finalize the responsiveness summary and we believe we remain on track to issue the final permit by the end of March if we talk thinking high level, the two big buckets I will get the comments we received on the general permit in two where the schedule how quickly folks are going to be asked to comply and then what kind of funding or financial assistance the state will make available to support implementation we are actively working on a funding plan that we anticipate will include a mix of grants and subsidized loans and we will have that available before any applications are required is it traditional for us when we fill out a permit to also a new permit or change a permit requirement to bring money along with it for implementation what has that been our historical practice I think it depends certainly when we have been doing work for example related to the municipal roads general permit in parallel or in conjunction with that we stood up the municipal roads grant and aid program to provide financial assistance to municipalities and complying with that permit we often offer incentives for early adopters people who are willing to take action sooner than they are required to because it has such benefits for us this is a fairly significant change in public policy we have been told for the last 20 years of stormwater regulations that they are grandfathered they don't have any requirements nothing has changed on their site which is a usual trigger to bring people into our regulatory universe it is simply that public policy has changed so there is in some ways a rather unique set of circumstances here and we think it is important to have a financial assistance program to support the pollution reduction targets that we all want to achieve how much money we put out to help support the municipal roads general permit it has been increasing every year this year I believe and by this year I mean FY21 I believe our proposed budget includes $4.2 million also that's and do you have a sense of scale of what you might propose for the three acre support funding so we are looking it is a little bit of a different animal the municipal roads grant aid program is truly a grant program the financial package we are putting together related to the three acre permit includes both loans and some amount of loan forgiveness which would be the moral equivalent of a grant program we don't have a dollar figure yet it is looking at how we can take advantage of some of our state revolving fund dollars and make those available to support this work but should have those answers in the next few weeks I'm just trying to think what will be unhappy on our other water quality work if we provide more funding we will have to step back on something else or these are complementary funding streams well so the FY21 clean water budget included a fairly significant increase by virtue we should back from 2019 to FY20 it is essentially level funding and really the big change that occurred in the clean water budget is we transition from a significant amount of capital dollars to sort of a 50-50 split between capital and more flexible general fund dollars from FY20 to FY21 we are going from four points on the rooms and meals tax to six and we will see a full year of the unclaimed bottle deposits the combined effect of those will grow clean water funding by between four and six million dollars depending on how those accounts perform we program some of that increase in funding into actually supporting implementation of the three acre storm water permit so we have about three million dollars in the FY21 budget that would go to support this work we are imagining that that's probably probably plus or minus 50% that's about the level of support that the clean water fund can provide that's why we are looking at using our state revolving fund program to leverage those dollars and make more resources available recognizing that the storm water work is relatively front loaded it will take place over the next eight to ten years the implementation will and then it's really an operating function there's a bill on our wall that talks about delaying implementation because although people have been hearing about it there's nothing like the specter actually happening and well the rules are not final so there are people who are worried about will they be able to apply in time etc so can you talk about timing and are you contemplating asking is there any need for the legislature if we were to say that that we need to change the statute in order to provide more time or what are you thinking on timing so that is absolutely one of the areas where we receive the most significant amount of comments and concerns we have also commitments that are both contained in Act 64 of 2015 as well as that we need to EPA in our phase one implementation plan both of which require that all of these three acre sites obtain permit coverage by 2023 and so we're trying to design a framework that recognizes the need to provide landowners with time that their spy night capacity within the engineering community to actually do the design work and at the same time being true to those goals it is a little bit of a it is a work in progress right now but it's something we don't believe from where we sit currently that it would require a statutory change we think that we have flexibility within the existing framework that allows us to remain consistent with achieving that ultimately and in the end EPA will be evaluating the implementation right so is it from your point of view have you tested this with them and said here are the whole suite of practices that's lagging but we're working on it and you're getting feedback from Boston that says you're fine keep going I think we've gotten feedback at the 30,000 foot level that what we're talking about is acceptable to them certainly the devil is in the details and once we have a full outline of our proposed approach we'll need to cycle back with them but clearly a friend of mine is to remain consistent with the commitments we've made to EPA there's plenty that came out of the rooms and meals on this which obviously isn't going to where it used to go except for that I was just exchanging notes about the new New Jersey which is between Middlebury and St. Alden's is that what you called it no he is the new New Jersey shore at the same time this winter has been an unusual number of complaints about road routes throughout the state and their real inability and lack of professionalism and not as good as their predecessors back when the roads used to freeze in the first December and state frozen like asphalt and cement until month season which was an affordable way to maintain a road throughout the state that's no longer the case today and because of the climate change issues and yet we always seem to everything is done without any new monies how are we how do we take care of this with as if the climate issues are taking place we sit here and make decisions with don't you think it's best but no new money and we have the federal government that may tomorrow declare us all passing grades and on our water quality I'm concerned that we are not tackling the climate issues in a way that is sustainable and we are understanding that we can just keep different cookie jars going back and forth and we can blame the road crews for not maintaining their roads and that everything is going to be hunky dory maybe I'll check a little later and I think you guys folks are doing a job a good job with the resources that you have but you've been put in a box and told solutions that tackle the problem you have to Rob Peter to pay Paul in this environment so I have a sense of urgency that it's not shared that was supposed to be a question but it was a guilt state I'm just trying to get a sense of what project Senator McDonough would like him to be working on just help me out because the box where would you like to see them go I'd like to see him look at some other states that are dealing with road issues and putting money into it in Pennsylvania where they raise the gasoline tax where it takes ten cents a year to pay for four years of 40 cent increase and I think that would be that would be that would be a political chaos here in Vermont to do 40 cents in four years but we've done we've said four cents since 2000 2000 and we sit here and wonder why our road crews are not performing we watch we watch what's going on and we sit on our hands and say well it's not a big deal we've got to deal with this stuff and we are playing with cookie jars moving things back and forth relying on folks' skills as you are trying to make do with as we fall farther farther behind and compliment you for doing good work with the resources that you have today thank you for that, that was very helpful the finance committee could define your records not unless this committee and other committees it was booed in the backside not unless the governor says we have a problem before us that climate change is an economic problem money you know but finance committee can attack uphill against the sheet then you'll have a new finance committee it is an amazing committee but we can't do it all 3 years running we had a per parcel thing we would send it out as a way to find a revenue it was never very popular no revenue was popular that's because there's a lot of remoders that are stretched to the limit and already can't keep up with the bills they have and so how do you make them pay more and I put an alternative for climate change on the ball everybody should be responsible for their own carbon okay okay always willing to help with alternatives and I appreciate that I am so helpful I appreciate that I'm not saying you've given me this cold it's not this trash we're sitting here doing my four sequestered carbon on your plane trip to California over at God's seat we blame one another we blame one another that the solution is just simple we've got to deal with this secretary here this sounds like an excellent conversation another moment that's that goodbye from him we have to bring them gone we digress do you have anything more you want to fill us in on three acre permit I have a bunch of Patrick any particular highlights you feel like you covered it well Ms. Smith do you you've been intimately involved with the whole wetlands question so that working group still going anything more that you want to fill us in on we're looking to reconvene at the beginning of the work we've made so on a serious level on three acre we should have a check-in at some point to know prior to German how that's unfolding and if you feel like this we should at least be aware and maybe there's something correct if we can probably think about doing a concert with you yes on the one side I don't know if you're anticipating that that group is going to keep on working the RAPs are going to keep on being written and really we won't revisit that for the most part until next session that's all right that's great yes and as I said we're working towards aggressively towards an end of March issuance of the final meeting we would be in a position to come back and talk further about where things stand and if there are any changes but as we sit today we believe that we have the authorities we need to make the modifications to the schedule so that it was originally everyone would have had to have file by July 1 of this year I would ask Patrick to talk about the original schedule everybody would have to be permitted by 2023 the first applications would be due draft permit as obviously early as 7 months out push that so everyone has at least 12 months we have to avoid having everyone apply at the same time so we'll spread those applications out over the course of until early 2023 so everyone's permitted by later in 2023 so there's that we'll get finalized what's the issuance date for the final so the rule is finalized what's in front of us is the general permit that implements the rule the general permit, our goal is to have it finalized by the end of March and then as Patrick indicated there would be at least 12 months provided for the first group to obtain coverage and are we using that secure structure by TMDL so a pair of waters are going first and then it follows out from there yes there are only applications due to the storm water, a pair of waters and then it's really just broken out by leg excitement to future groups so if the general permit is out in March is it your sense based on conversations you've had that the engineering level and the staff level that you're seeing capacity to meet that late 23 timeline any other so we covered a lot of characters today thank you very much thanks for coming in and I don't know if you or any members of your team have anything more to share while you're here schedule follow-up on one particular issue I do have it since we are running a little head miraculously I do want to check back in on late Carmine so that was I think someone said what was that I was kind of like the swamp team like everything we could think of was sort of formed around looking at how to address late Carmine can you give us some briefly Carmine updates I know I didn't ask you to be prepared to do that and then I can get you some additional information that will probably have more details that I'm capable of recalling but we did work aggressively through the spring and early summer of this past year to install an aeration system in late Carmine it's a lake-wide system it's one of the largest aeration systems that has been installed in the country and the theory behind the aeration was we know a lot of the phosphorus that's actually in the implementation we turned the system on quite as early as we would have liked to which did allow some phosphorus to become mobilized into the water column and then also had just some mechanical issues frankly with this complicated system that caused the system to be taken offline at a couple different points during the summer we've collected an inordinate amount of data to test sort of the hypotheses we have that keeping oxygen at that sediment water interface should be the total phosphorus in the water column at a lower level the data seems to support that when the system is working that that is indeed the case we know that there was a significant algae bloom this fall on late Carmine and you know the conventional wisdom would be it would have been worse but for the system but that's a hard theory to prove and we're looking forward to having another year of operations under the belt in 2020 again collecting really robust monitoring data but believe we've worked the kings out of the system can turn the system on as early as we believe is necessary to maintain that oxygen level at the sediment water interface and hopeful that we'll see even more significant improvements in terms of algae blooms. Just from on the ground I do think most people saw that they feel and I don't believe on the ground that the blooms happened so much later where they the situation we had in Lake Champlain you know St. Almond's Bay was blooming early July where you know late Carmine didn't until later in the year so there was a reason for optimism there but one of the concerns locally was is that the cost to run the thing is a lot more expensive than they anticipated the electrical costs are very expensive to run the two generators constantly Yeah, no we certainly heard that as well and are looking at ways to sort of optimize the performance of those systems Is any more phosphorus going into the lake at all? So the goal is number zero, right? For Lake Carmine we also have a very specific pollution budget and I think it targeted and maybe Ryan can correct me if I'm wrong but a 40% reduction from the watershed into Lake Carmine and we've achieved that reduction based on the BMPs that have been deployed related to agriculture and road runoff and storm water management there are no wastewater sources in that watershed so we believe we achieved the reductions and that's why we were confident in moving ahead with the aeration system so that many of those practices require maintenance in order to sustain the sort of reductions that they have achieved and that's an ongoing book of work and I'm saying to Trump why 40% So when we build these TMDLs or pollution budgets what we're looking at is the water quality standard whatever the allowable concentration of phosphorus is in the volume of water in the lake and we come up with essentially an estimate of how much phosphorus the lake can have without having an adverse effect from other than this instance phosphorus pollution and then essentially the math problem where we're calculating what the current load is where we've measured incoming phosphorus contributions to Lake Carmine and the maximum amount we believe the lake could actually sustain without having an allowable adverse effect So yes, so it's still going in that just not as much? Correct we've done a lot of work in the watershed to sort of turn back the spigot and we believe that the amount currently being delivered to the lake the lake should be able to sustain the complicating factor is there's a lot of legacy phosphorus sitting on the bottom of the lake and so to the extent the loads coming in from the tributaries have been reduced it appears that it's essentially that load gets made up by releases from the bottom seven and so we're hopeful the aeration system will take care of that portion of the load ultimately as well and the third is who decided on the 40% it's just through the formula you put in things It's a combination of model to monitor data there's a team within the department of environmental conservation that runs a suite of water quality models and then ultimately EPA needs to approve that pollution budget as being an accurate reflection of conditions on the ground. Thank you So if the aeration system works and even the phosphorus logged out we always have legacy phosphorus so we have to run a aeration system for the rest of the time No, so as I indicated in my earlier remarks there's a certain amount of erosion and sedimentation that's occurring naturally in all of these systems by virtue of the conservation measures we've deployed throughout the developed land and agricultural communities the new sediments arriving in Lake Carmi should be relatively phosphorus poor compared to the legacy sediment sitting on the bottom of the lake and so the thinking is ultimately we're going to bury that phosphorus essentially with cleaner sediment And of course humans exacerbate all of these problems but that's one of the things that I think is under realized in this building is that nutrition and sedimentation is a natural process and some of our older lakes and ponds are filled with nutrients even before humans started disrupting so much stuff Utrification is absolutely a natural process it's the rate that we tend to affect So what are the lessons that are is it too early to say what the lessons are that we're going from Lake Carmi how they might be applied more broadly to our phosphorus challenge I do think it's probably too early I think it speaks to the importance that in lake treatments may have and just while we need to do essential work throughout the watershed whether it's the three acre permit the required agricultural practices etc but ultimately in order to sort of have the desired outcomes that Vermont just want in terms of whoever it said fewer beach closures and fewer elbow booms we may have to have an in lake component to our treatment and we have ongoing books of work in St. Albans Bay working with the Army Corps of Engineers and Lake Champlain Basin program to look at internal loading phosphorus that's being released both from the Black Creek swamp as well as the bottom sediments and then a new project again with the Lake Champlain Basin program looking at the river deltas where those richer sediments have accumulated to see if there's some spot or targeted treatments we can deploy so as we are successful and what we believe is the work required in the watershed to then be able to turn our attention to controlling in lake sources as well because I mean you too in Fairfield pond I think their whole issue actually is just in pond sediment they actually don't have that many nutrient sources running there and it's different for each water body and I think the challenge is trying to figure out what the right timing is for an in lake treatment so that's a wise investment of resources that we've done the work necessary to make sure we're not just continuing to load a receiving water and applying what would effectively then be a bandaid within the lake that we've done the hard work on the watershed and then can provide treatment in the lake that's really meaningful. Are you still considering using things like alum? So that has some application we've had a very successful application probably the better part of 30 years ago now down on Lake Moray although we've started to see more recent breakthroughs in the the alum treatment we applied down there there was a treatment in Tickle Naked pond in Ryegate I think and there was a fairly catastrophic event in the watershed that resulted in a large nutrient release and it overwhelmed the alum treatment that had been applied there in a matter of years. It's something that's being looked at in St. Albin's Bay but I think there are concerns about the fetch and the way the wind and wave action might move that material around so there it's another tool in the toolbox aeration we believe is probably a tool in the toolbox and it's trying to figure out what the right combination is for the sort of site specific conditions in different parts of the lake and different inland lakes and ponds. That causes dementia also and there's some serious side effects of using it I thought we heard about in years ago but yeah. I don't remember that in particular but we start applying lots of things that aren't usually there to concern no matter what, how natural or not how unnatural the things are St. Rogers. Have you, I've been learning some I want to learn more about biochar and from what I understand it has an ability to lock some of that stuff have you guys been doing any projects with biochar? So we have probably the So biochar is wood that's burned under low oxygen pyrolysis and what it makes is like a charcoal looking substance wood that's partially burned but not really burned and has the ability to act like a sponge to suck up nutrients. Yes. It has a lot of surface area and also it's huge in store and carbon and can last for thousands of years once it's put into the soil as locked up carbon. So the administration's been doing work under what we call the phosphorus innovation challenge which is sort of a joint initiative of our agriculture and the agency of commerce and community development and it was looking at innovative strategies for addressing phosphorus pollution and there was a green state biochar was one of the award recipients under the phosphorus innovation challenge and they had installed a couple of different filter systems and were going through the process with them now looking at what it would take to bring that to scale and if there's actually sort of market opportunities that would allow that to stand up and be a cost effective treatment practices on its own. That's great to hear because what I understand is the thought process is that you can actually make like big baths or whatever with biochar and it will act like a sponge in places that have too much phosphorus and can actually possibly absorb and hold a lot of it and then it could, it would have value to put it back into land somewhere and it needed phosphorus but would also lock up all that carbon and improve the soil. They're sort of working with folks from the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund on the business case right now to see if that all kind of depends on that. Interesting. One other phosphorus challenge project I think was it was going to be a methane digest with phosphorus removal as part of the technology. Three or four farms and they were being sure at one farm of your weight. Do you know if that has moved forward or? So the community digester in St. Aldens hasn't moved forward. That was a Green Mountain Power project. That said the phosphorus innovation challenge is partnered with a digester on a farm in Addison County and the pilot project used a technology called dissolved air flotation to capture the finest particles out of this manure stream and was able to show that using dissolved air flotation after digestion, after anaerobic digestion they could reduce phosphorus concentrations in the manure by as much as 80%. Now they're in the process of looking at can they create a potting soil mix using those fines removed from the manure that has real market value. What do you think the larger fibers is my understanding and this is really focused on the smaller finer particles but I would say it's kind of a theme of variation in that space. This is on the Audette Blue Spruce Farm in Brickport and I think the challenge has been they're very successful at capturing these fines but as they dry it turns into something that's not unlike cement and so trying to figure out a way to keep them light enough that you could actually mix them into a potting soil mix and again they've advanced through this first stage that they've shown they had a grad student at UVM my understanding is running this material through food processors and creating not a scalable technology but she was able to do grotesque with this and showed that this material is very good in terms of its germination results and its productivity results so it's really this matter of how do you keep it from turning into it. You always prove things on a very small scale at first or attempt to prove things because you don't want to build a specialized machine and then you find out how the theory to write or actually write. So they're continuing research in that space and my understanding is have come up with a second process and they're currently doing grotesques on it but that's another one that shows real promise the third one that shows real promise is a sort of hub and spokes composting system model that there was work done at the Foster Brothers Vermont Ag Products Facility in Middlebury looking at accelerating the rate of composting by changes in airflow and heat and I can't claim to understand the full details and then now there's work being done to look at could you create sort of a Foster Brothers North somewhere in Franklin County again with that hub and spokes model where you have a centralized compost facility that is bringing in material from farmers in the area and that's another one that there's business case work being done on right now to see if that would pencil out as well. Thank you for a great testimony. A very helpful update. You're welcome. My pleasure. Thank you. Team as well. Thanks. So we are adjourned.