 All right, so good morning. It's Friday, January 21st. It's 1031 a.m., which is a second half of Senate Natural Resources and Energy's morning of testimony on S148, an act relating to environmental justice in Vermont. We're gonna pick up where we left off with taking testimony from a variety of folks who work together in bringing forward proposed amendments to the original bill as submitted last spring. And we'll go to Mr. Wu now. Good morning, good to see you again. Thanks for coming in. Good morning, good to see you as well. And good to see all the senators in this committee. I think it's the first time meeting some of you. Thank you all for your work on behalf of Vermont and Vermonters and for the invitation. I really appreciate being here. I also wanna express gratitude off the bat to all my fellow guests and those beyond this Zoom room who have already done so much for environmental justice in Vermont and have made a great case for continuing and formalizing this work. For the record, my name is Sebi Wu and I am the climate and equity advocate at V-PURG, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. We are a statewide nonprofit with a membership of tens of thousands of Vermonters across every county. And as I think members of the committee know, we are deeply committed to taking action on the climate crisis commensurate with the challenge while also ensuring that marginalized Vermonters are able to participate in the transition to a cleaner economy. At the same time, we must proactively prevent and remediate environmental harms. As one small example that I know that the committee is familiar with in my first year with V-PURG canvassing door-to-door in 2017 between semesters at UVM, we were pushing legislation that would make polluters pay for medical bills of those who suffered from PFOA contamination in the North Bennington and surrounding area that Kaia mentioned earlier while also supporting more preventative measures be taken against toxics. It's the values fueling this type of work that informs our support for passing an environmental justice law in Vermont. I have also personally had the honor of participating as a member of the Vermont Renews BIPOC Advisory Council mentioned earlier with Kaia, Bindu and several others, which as has been mentioned was consulted in the drafting of key definitions for environmental justice included in S148. And over the last few months, I have been helping coordinate with that group as well as with a broader coalition of Vermonters from different backgrounds who strongly support moving this work and this bill forward. In fact, I know that some of you were able to attend a press conference put together by Senator Keisha Rom-Hinsdale, the lead sponsor last week held Monday, January 10th, in which community leaders spoke to the need for the state to focus its efforts on pursuing environmental justice and passing S148. I've shared the video recording of that event with the committee and I encourage you to listen to the powerful words spoken that day, which include supportive remarks from leaders of our Vermont NAACP chapters, Indigenous Leader Judy Dow and many more. And of course, there are many others who have an interest in environmental justice in Vermont beyond those represented at that press conference in this Zoom committee room. We believe passing S148 is really a modest step in what is absolutely the right direction in getting our state to focus on environmental justice. In fact, members of this committee probably can name several issues where VPIRC has a clear opponent or maybe several. In contrast, during my time working on this issue, I have not come across anyone who is outwardly opposed to passing such a bill. Do I welcome discussion if someone does? The more central question it seems to me is whether the first step that we take on this meets the moment and sets the state on the right trajectory to do this work properly. That's why we wholeheartedly believe that this bill should include key principles that Jennifer and Bindu mentioned. And I know that Elena plans to walk through in more depth shortly, which are informed by expertise from other states and jurisdictions, as well as environmental justice leaders right here in Vermont. And as you've heard from the speakers before me, we do have an idea of what environmental justice and injustice looks like in Vermont. It's a distribution of environmental benefits and burdens and it is a process. At the crux of environmental justice is a historical and present lack of environmental access and disproportionate negative impact experienced by low income, BIPOC and other marginalized populations in the state who also tend to lack political power in Vermont. That's why it's past time that Vermont codify an environmental justice law, something many states have already done. Doing so is the critical step in the process of achieving environmental justice. And as Senator Rom Hinsdale has emphasized in front of this committee before, this bill is just the floor or the blueprint using your words chair bray for building this work over the next years and decades. We must be sure that we have ground to stand on as Vermont joins other states in passing an environmental justice law. I think it's worth noting that not only have other states already codified EJ laws, other states have taken measures far beyond those contemplated in this bill. States such as Massachusetts, New Jersey and Washington are some good examples of that. So we don't need to reinvent the wheel in passing in EJ policy in Vermont. In fact, we shouldn't try to. A lot of work has been done at the national level and in other states to break ground. At the same time, an environmental justice law for Vermont should be tailored to the particularities of our state. And that is why that's what we're hoping to achieve. And that's why I've been so glad to work with so many partners on this over several months. Not having this policy in place is really a missed opportunity to coordinate statewide and local community efforts as Sandrine mentioned, to promote learning, resource sharing and action, to prevent environmental harms and deliver environmental benefits in a just and transparent way across the state. As 148, especially strengthened in the ways in which Elena will detail shortly would support such statewide and community led efforts and set Vermont on a path towards environmental justice, which is why we are working really hard to see it pass the legislature this year and appreciate you all taking it up. Thanks for your time and attention and I'll try to answer any questions or pass it on to the next guest. Okay. Thank you. Any committee questions for Mr. Wu? Thank you very much. Seeing none, hearing none, like then to move on to Ms. Holly. So much I'll make them run. Let me double check. I'm always double checking on pronunciation. For years I've been saying your last name Mahaley, but someone said I mispronouncing it. So let me hear it from the owner please. Yes, it's Mahali. Yes, for the record. Thank you. You said it right. Thank you for asking. Yeah, for the record, I am the vice president of CLF, Conservation Law Foundation's Vermont office. So I have prepared some slides to help keep me on track and help give you all a visual. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen and pull that up to guide us. Can you all see my slides? Yes, ma'am. Great. So thank you very much chair Bray and the rest of the senators on this committee. Some of you I have not met before. So it's a pleasure to appear before you and to be able to speak to more of the nuts and bolts of what this bill looks like and how the coalition and the working group of members that I've been pleased to get to know over the last couple of months, many of whom you've heard from this morning have been thinking about S148. And so I've prepared some slides that I can walk through in about 15 minutes to talk about the core components that this group believes should be fundamental parts of S148. I just thought it would be helpful to speak briefly about why CLF is here. We are a part of the environmental justice movement across New England. We are working with partners and state governments throughout the region on environmental justice issues ranging from lead in drinking water to transportation justice to the siting of hazardous waste facilities and more. And we were very pleased to work side by side with grassroots environmental and justice organizations in Massachusetts to help them enact their first environmental justice law just last year after a 20 year long effort. And currently we're also supporting the main governor's office to develop environmental justice protections there. So it is with that expertise and the lessons learned that we're really delighted to come and help support the legislature and the groups that you've heard from earlier work towards passing Vermont's environmental justice law. As you heard, there are increasing states across the country that are enacting environmental justice laws. There are 17 other states that have environmental justice mapping tools that you'll hear later as one of the components we recommend and be included in S148 to make decisions. We've also heard that Vermont agencies are lagging in terms of having community engagement plans to help make sure that they are carrying out the obligations of the Civil Rights Act, the Federal Civil Rights Act. And finally, as Ms. Morris mentioned earlier this morning the Vermont Climate Action Plan calls for an environmental justice policy. So for all of these reasons, it's critical for Vermont to, as Sebi noted, meet the moment and act on environmental justice this year. So there are seven components I wanna walk through that best practice and our experience looking at environmental justice policies across the region as well as speaking on the ground with Vermonters who've been working in this space. All kind of coalesce around should be core components of a strong environmental justice bill. And what I'll do is I'll just walk through each of these and give a little bit more detail on how it shows up in S148 and how we think any amendments could be made. So the first is the finding section. As you heard from Dr. Panakar, there's a lot of data out there that we have to help make the case for the need for this bill. So having a strong finding section allows us to document that data and show that there are existing disproportionate impacts in terms of environmental burdens and distribution of environmental benefits. The current finding section of S148 is robust but the language that we worked on as a working group helps shore up and modify some of, and modernize, update some of those data points. The definition section is also critically important in terms of making sure that we're on the same page for very important definitions used throughout the bill. And I listed here the definitions that we believe should be included in the definitions section of this bill. And you have heard from multiple people this morning how inclusive of a process it was to define specifically the term environmental justice as well as meaningful participation. Those terms were really workshopped through a number of different groups throughout Vermont, including the Vermont Renews BIPOC Council. One definition that we think is extremely important to make sure you include in this bill is a definition for environmental justice population. We say that for a couple of reasons. One is it allows for implementation of the law to happen right away, as opposed to having a whole year-long process of trying to determine that definition. It stakes out a preliminary definition and allows for certain protections under the law to happen right away on effect of passage. Also, it allows for that advisory group that has been mentioned that would help advise the state on implementing the law to be made up of a significant number of the members would be residing in environmental justice populations. So it helps assure that that group is a representative group. Specifically, we recommend that the environmental justice population be defined in statute based on demographic information. That is things like race, income, limited English proficiency, as opposed to something like hazard exposure, which for example, would be saying populations that live next to a hazardous waste facility. And the reason for that is a couple of things. One, generally it's not good practice to make the community that you're trying to help have an additional burden of having to prove and demonstrate that they are overburdened. That puts the onus on that population to collect the data, which many times is difficult to find or is not fully covering or going down to the level of granularity that they need. Second, we know that race and limited English proficiency are through data. We've seen there are the primary predictors of whether a population is going to be overburdened by environmental hazards. And so a data-driven approach to defining this population is to focus on this demographic-based criteria, which this is the direction that other states are going as well. Massachusetts law that was just passed last year takes this exact approach of defining environmental justice populations based on these three demographic criteria. We've then gone further and worked with this work group that I mentioned and is why Dr. Panakar was referencing these statistics earlier in testimony. We've basically established a proposed definition of what the environmental justice population definition would be in this statute. And it would be based on these three criteria. And then you set threshold to essentially say, okay, if you look at the census block groups throughout Vermont and you say any census block group that has equal to or greater than 6% people of color in that census block group, it will be designated as an environmental justice population. Similar for the 80% low income, which is the HUD definition for low income and limited English proficiency is 1%. Those percentages were selected because those represent the statewide average of people of color, 6% and limited English proficiency being 1%. So we're basically saying any census block group that has above the statewide average would be considered an environmental justice population. We didn't just arbitrarily choose those thresholds. We then created a map to map out what that threshold looks like in the state of Vermont. And we then circulated that map to stakeholders, academics who've been working on environmental justice in Vermont and representatives who you've heard from just this morning to make sure and kind of gut check that that definition was going to touch all of the communities that they believed should be included and protected under this bill. I'd note that this is a large population. It's 52% of Vermont's population is covered using this definition. And there's understanding that that is a broad swath of Vermont but I think there's general agreement too that it is better to err on the side of being over inclusive in a bill like this than under inclusive. And as I'll go into further, we've also included avenues in the bill for this definition to a requirement that this definition be scrutinized, be revisited and tailored as necessary based on community input. But acknowledging that a preliminary starting point is important for at least getting us going in the right direction. The third component that I wanted to talk about is really the meat of the bill itself, which is the environmental justice state policy. So to be clear, the whole bill would be the environmental justice law. Within that law, there would be a discrete environmental justice state policy. And I've put verbatim what S148 states in the EJ policy section, which is that language that no segment of the population of the state should because of its race, cultural, economic makeup, very disproportionate share of environmental burdens or be denied a proportionate share of environmental benefits. It also promises to make sure that there is meaningful decision-making, meaningful participation in decision-making, excuse me. And that goes to the community engagement planning process that you've heard about as far as Title VI goes. Best practice would be that this policy applies to all state agencies. That is, it doesn't make sense for there to be a state agency that does not adhere to this policy. That being said, there are certain agencies that have more funding or more decision-making within the environmental realm. But as you heard from Ms. Byrne earlier, it is such a broad umbrella environmental justice that we do believe it makes sense to apply the policy to all state agencies in Vermont. Lastly, we think that this policy should have a, not only to address the environmental burdens and how they're inequitably distributed in Vermont, we also also recognize that benefits like renewable energy investments, like clean water investments, those are also disproportionately and inequitably distributed right now. So this last bullet is getting at basically having the state commit that the dollars going out into the community that if minimum percentage of those are going to be spent in environmental justice designated communities or overburdened and underserved communities to really rectify and own up to the fact that we have not so far been meeting that goal. The fourth component is a rule-making section. It's really important that the legislature help define where the agency of natural resources as the lead agency implementing this rule would need to refine key definitions in the rule where the agency would need to provide guidance like for how agencies should be using the environmental justice mapping tool that that should happen through rule. Similarly, a direction that the agency review the definition of environmental justice populations as I noted, every five years is the standard that we've seen in other environmental justice legislation, particularly Massachusetts just had that included in their law. Also, there should be general rule-making authority for state agencies at large to be implementing the EJ policy as they see fit. Finally, and this is a very important point and kind of gets to what we heard from Ms. Morris this morning, it is fundamental that the state not repeat the problems that came up with the climate council and members from the BIPOC community feeling like it was extractive, feeling like the advice that they gave was not heard. It is really important that there are feedback mechanisms that are built in so that this advisory council on environmental justice made up of community members is truly heard and that they have the power to actually influence outcomes. So some kind of approval feedback process needs to be in place so that this advisory council is not just advisory advice going into a vacuum. And we have some thoughts on how to do that that I'll discuss in a moment. So as I noted, there is in S148 there is an environmental justice advisory council but what we heard through feedback from both the agency of natural resources as well as folks working on environmental justice in the community is that it really makes more sense to separate out these councils into two different bodies. So you would have an environmental justice advisory council which is made up of community representatives the majority of which reside in EJ populations. And then you would have a separate interagency council on environmental justice. And that would be representatives from each of the state agencies that we believe are touched by the most by making these kinds of decisions impacting environmental outcomes. The EJ advisory council I noted here would be more advisory but I underlined it has the power to actually influence and ways that we have built that in in the proposed language that we've submitted is things like the advisory council gets to approve and vote on the community engagement plans that agencies draft and before those plans go out the advisory council has to agree by majority vote that they're hitting the mark. Similarly, we propose that rulemaking particularly rules that are implementing the environmental justice policy that the EJ advisory council have a clear approving role so that they can be heard and that if they have concerns that the agency has to actually respond to those concerns. It's a built-in mechanism to really truly empower this group and make the commitment that they will be heard and that action will be taken not just heard but it will be implemented and sort of input into the rule. So I have duties here spelled out but I think for the sake of time we'll keep it at that and the duties are more spelled out in the bill itself. The sixth component we think is core fundamental piece of this bill is having the agency of natural resources create with support from the agency of digital services an environmental justice mapping tool. I've put on here an example of the kind of mapping tool that I'm talking about. This is a map that's created for West Virginia that shows cumulative environmental justice impacts. I just wanted to make clear that this committee understands it's different map than the one that I pulled up earlier which is just mapping out the demographic information of okay, what are the census block groups that fit into this particular definition of environmental justice. This map has more layers included like Dr. Panakar was talking about having a map that layers on environmental risks as well as health risks and the state contains many of these databases and it's a question of basically compiling that information from multiple sources into one map that can be used by the agency as well as by communities in terms of decision making of where we decide to put environmental harms like landfill for example versus where we decide to send out and place environmental benefit. The last thing that I'll speak to is this notion of committing to spend 55% of environmental climate transportation resiliency related funds in those EJ populations and overburden underserved communities. This concept of targeting or earmarking funding for those specific communities is a concept that was included in the Climate Action Plan as a key fundamental way that we can ensure that we are making a just transition to a clean energy economy and it tracks a federal initiative that's called the Justice 40 Initiative which is a federal program that commits the federal government to spend 40% of climate and energy related funds in disadvantaged communities. The reason why we chose 55% is just going back to that map of looking at the state of Vermont and 52% of the population falling in that definition of environmental justice communities based on race, limited English proficiency and low income. It didn't make sense to choose 40% since in Vermont we know that at least 52% of the population meet that federal definition of a disadvantaged community or at least the guidance around that definition. So this is a core piece that I think environmental justice advocates feel is very important to kind of think about how the state is distributing environmental benefits. And as we've proposed the language it would be a kind of two step process where first state agencies would have to do an inventory and assessment of where their dollars are going based on just like a zip code analysis of where certain grant dollars are going. And then once that inventory is conducted every year after that they report out where dollars are going in order to meet this target. So to close, I just wanna reiterate what's already been said that there's widespread demonstrated support for passage of an environmental justice law in Vermont. And really the important question is like what does that first step look like? And this bill as we've proposed language revisions represents truly a modest initial step in that direction to create that blueprint or that framework so that we have in place a launching pad to do much, much more. But this is a critical time to act to build that infrastructure. And I really am excited to work with this committee and other partners to make sure that we launch in the right direction. And so I will end there and take questions. Okay, thank you very much. So looking to the committee to see if there are any committee questions for Ms. Mahaling. The, we know and thank you too for providing I don't know if every member of the committee has it yet or not just checking in. You had written up a draft that of revisions to the bill within the group. And has that been sent to Jude so that every committee member? No, so yeah, what you're referring to is that we rather than red line S148, there was so many suggestions from different parties that we decided it would be a cleaner approach to basically just read, take the language that there was but redraft it and not have to show everyone the huge mess of red lines. So we do have a revised version that you've at least had an initial conversation with the agency of natural resources on. I know that they have further reflections but we do have that draft and I have only shared it with you, Mr. Chair. Okay, so if you just to make sure I have the correct and most current one if you could resend it to me and Jude we'll make sure that it gets distributed to committee members and post it on the website so that people can see what additional ideas are coming along on the being offered in the language. Happy to do that. So yeah, we basically took the core components that I just walked through and modified the bill to embrace those components. Okay, and then just process wise for the committee and anyone interested in following I think next week we'll start to, we'll shift from general high level testimony on the bill to starting to look at the normal section by section working our way through the language and taking testimony about different sections and editing as a group. Okay, well, great. And with that, I'd like to turn to our colleagues at the agency of natural resources. So good morning, Commissioner Walk and Secretary Gendron good to see you back again. I don't know how you wanna do this. You can switch back and forth go in whatever order you like. We have a half an hour and so the floor is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to take this opportunity to take over Peter's spot and go first and let him bookend this conversation if that's okay. Thank you to the committee for inviting us today. This is an incredibly thoughtful and thorough discussion to begin before you actually go through the content of the bill. So I appreciate that. For the record, my name is Maggie Gendron and I'm the deputy secretary for the agency of natural resources. And today with me that I just referenced is Commissioner Walk who is the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation and the two of us have been working very closely on this particular subject matter for the past year. Before I focus on a couple of ideas that Elena so thoughtfully presented, I just wanted to provide a little bit of a narrative to maybe lend some context to the environmental justice conversation as your committee is beginning to create the storyline that you see that will better engage for monitors in this space. And so first and foremost, I'd like to say that it's been a really professional group of witnesses that you have here today and they have great experience in this space. And so I really appreciate hearing what your witness is, your guests here today had to say and I think it has been excellent testimony. And I'm gonna reflect on a couple of items that were said here to wrap up my, what I have to say today. So before joining the agency of natural resources, I actually worked in Baltimore, Maryland, Washington, DC and Richmond, Virginia on transportation policy. And I did it both in the capacity of public service in the private sector and the space that I'm passionate about and that I worked within over those years was within sustainable transportation meaning that we were trying to create systems that move more people onto shared transportation systems and away from single occupancy vehicle trips in order to decrease carbon emissions. So that was really my intersection with natural resources was caring for the environment while understanding that transportation especially in urban environments connects people to the resources that they need or should anyway. And this is where environmental justice comes in. So in that particular field of work, environmental justice was about a decade ago environmental justice really started to become a topic of conversation, especially within the government sector in transportation particularly and was really becoming a key building block to access equity and correcting the injustices of our transportation systems of the past. So for example, in urban centers specifically like Washington DC, we would often talk about transportation policy and environmental justice communities by tracking health indicators, race, income and then layering that with access to green space, urban canopies, which is trees and shade, access to bus lines and train lines, the frequency of those routes and then determining if our systems and our plans to connect communities was in fact doing that or if we were disconnecting communities by, for example, if you're extending a highway or you're building a new train line, are you disrupting a community? Are you actually connecting people to resources that they need? So we really worked on the planning part of the component of it to correct the injustices of the past transportation systems by trying to make sure that any policies and procedures that we were putting in place prevented those systems from doing what they had done in the past and promoting the goals created with environmental justice principles as the lens in which we wanted to work. So that's how I come to this work at the Agency of Natural Resources. And when I first joined in January and I sat down with Secretary Moore, she and I were discussing the goals of the agency and the first item on her list was taking the work that the Department of Environmental Conservation has been doing for the last couple of years and making that work consistent throughout the agency and accessible to all three of our departments. This was really music to my ears and quite honestly, I hadn't thought about environmental justice and a natural resources lens before. So this was new work to me, even though I had done it in the transportation space, there is a different component of like I was talking about the layering of how you look at communities and what the needs are. Nonetheless, this was definitely music to my ears and I was incredibly excited to be able to take this on for the agency. And so we took three big steps in 2021 and they were hard to take, just given COVID and all of the components of what we heard Ms. Morris talk about previously at the beginning of this conversation about the difficulty of engaging through COVID. But we did hire an environmental justice and civil rights coordinator and she worked pretty furiously at the beginning she was hired in July of 2021 and she worked pretty furiously to create an internal roadmap for the agency. We identified at liaisons within each of our departments to help start the work and we engaged the EPA on federal strategic planning processes. So the federal government is undergoing a strategic plan for environmental justice and so we engaged in that process to advocate for resources and technical assistance to states for this work. And we have quite a bit of work to do at the agency but our focuses are really threefold right now. One, we wanna create regular and consistent training as a series for staff on the components of environmental justice and civil rights which we call within the Civil Rights Act. There's a title six that anybody who receives $1 of federal money must comply with. Two, to bring the final development of our limited English proficiency plan to final and to be able to implement that. And three, develop our community engagement plan and I'm really simplifying this body of work tremendously by highlighting only a couple of objectives because there are a lot of components to this. I think you've been hearing a lot of them throughout this conversation but it must be thoughtful, it must be inclusive and it definitely takes time. So I wanted to share that as context to also acknowledge that the witnesses that you invited here today and I appreciated how Mr. Wu had said this too. It's not just the people here today but the people who have spent their careers in this field and have really worked hard to highlight why in community engagement that's intentional is so important. So I have the utmost respect for the work that's been reflected in the modifications that have been referenced here today to S148. So just like Secretary Moore has prioritized making environmental justice work consistent at our agency and across our agency at Natural Resources, a statewide environmental justice policy makes sense in that same regard. So transitioning now to the bill that we'll discuss more in depth next week. There are some places that I just wanted to shine light on to ask that we spend a little more time discussing and having a dialogue. And that would be around the structure of the advisory council and the interagency council. I would really recommend that we have a targeted discussion on the roles and responsibilities of that body and how it would intersect with state agencies and how to ensure that agencies internal controls are able to move plans and actionable steps while appreciating that those bodies are created for consistency purposes across the state and also to provide expertise to the work. And I really take to heart, I know this has been referenced a couple of times so I won't spend too much time here but I really take to heart what we've learned from the climate council and the Just Transition Subcommittee. I'm still processing and I think many of us are the many comments that I've heard and witnessed from our community members who served as a professional expertise on that council. I don't think I would recount that their participation was one that they necessarily think glowingly on. I think it was very taxing for many people. I think that the incredibly quick timelines we had placed on ourselves didn't do us justice. And I think that the asking professionals to volunteer their time in their space of expertise is a really hard ask. And so without harping on that too much, I would just reflect on Ms. Morris and the other witnesses here today or guests I should call them on that and making sure that we're being thoughtful there. So I know that we only have to 11.30 so I'm gonna speed through a couple of other comments I wanted to make and- And you know, I'm sorry to interrupt. If I- That's okay. If a half hour is not enough time, please don't feel compelled to rush. We are gonna spend ample time on this. So of course you can come. We'll- Okay. Hoping you'll be back. Okay. I will, I'll focus just on two more sections. One is the rulemaking process. I think we should spend some more time having a dialogue around there. There is a particular revision that allows the advisory committee, advisory council I should say to oppose any proposed agency rule if 25% of that body objects to the rule. I would discourage this approach just for one of them being that intentional and meaningful and community engagement. If we're allowing for that, that would allow for this advisory council to essentially oppose that community input. And so I would just say in light of the public process, I would encourage the advisory council to definitely have the ability to review the rule before it's published and offer comments and have those comments being incorporated so it offers power but not necessarily oppose a rule once final. And then funding. I really appreciate that there's a section of this bill that focuses on funding. This takes time. This takes resources. It takes dedicated and specific attention in order to move the ball forward and make meaningful progress for communities. There's also the J40 initiative that Elena had mentioned. And I would just say that that commitment of funding we're still waiting on, states are still awaiting guidance onto the impacts of our special funds. So I would also encourage that that 55% of commitment of funding to disadvantaged communities does track alongside the federal initiative. And I would just focus some attention on there. I don't fully understand what the impacts will be to our state special funds. So I think we should just pause there and make sure we understand that particular component of it. And so I do wanna reflect on three things that I think are important before I turn it over to commissioner walk. And Ms. Morris had said the need to share space and dialogue because this is not a binary conversation and I cannot agree more on that. That is so spot on. And for example, translations I'm very, very passionate about limited English proficiency and the plans to be able to provide better translation services for our communities. At the agency of natural resources, I've learned a lot from our professionals that I work alongside. We have scientists, we have enforcement, we have laws and we have wildlife educators and the translation services available to us right now do not appropriately translate science nor enforcement and those have critical, those mean the meaning matter, words matter and that meaning matters. So we really need to do better there. And then lastly, title six and environmental justice have many core foundational blocks that come together. And so there's internal facing work that has to be built and foundational to any agency. And then there's external work that needs to, where trust building needs to happen and that comes with intentional community engagement. And then those two pieces have to come together. So this is not a binary conversation. This is an important conversation to have and I will stop there and appreciate your time. And as you can tell, I get very engaged on this topic because I do care about it. And I feel like I have a sense of where we're going, where we have failed in the past and I really get excited about doing this work. So thank you. Okay, well, thank you. And again, I don't want anyone feeling like they need to rush. We're, I mean, it's good that we're talking with everyone today, but we're gonna have a great deal more discussion. So we'll come back to it. Commissioner. I'm also apologize. I was, I was, I'm freezing. So I feel like I keep wiping my nose, but I realized it feels like it's might be 30 degrees in my house right now. We're sorry. We're sorry to hear that. Any questions for the secretary? Okay. So let's go on to, thank you. Commissioner Walk. Good morning, everybody. For the record, Peter walk commissioner of the department of environmental conservation. I want to reiterate all of your, your guests. Thanks for the opportunity to really have a deep and meaningful conversation about this important work prior to getting into the substance of the bill. I think it is a benefit to all of your work that we have the opportunity to talk about the issues surrounding a topic before we get into the substance because the substance matters, but it's important that we're all coming from the same perspective or at least not coming from the same perspective but talking the same language and being able to understand the different perspectives that are brought to the table. So thank you for this opportunity. I do reflect the words about the sort of extractive nature of our engagement with communities and our reliance on expertise really resonated with me this morning. I think if there is an indication of what occurred in the climate council, it's that those members who were there to represent communities really felt that extractive nature. I would encourage you to hear from Abby course on her experience and working through the climate council work that she put her heart and soul into and put her own professional life on hold in order to do. And one of the things that I reflect upon as we think about this bill is that we, you've heard from others here how important it is to appropriately compensate people for their expertise and the nature of the way we've traditionally done that work in the past is great councils and bodies that get paid a small per diem for the meetings that they participate in. And the reality is that the participation in that work goes much beyond the actual participation in meetings and in order to do it well must. And so we need to be conscious of that fact as we move forward. I really appreciate the discussion around sort of how we as a state have arrived here at this point right now. I think it's important, it's an incredibly important work and I'm one, I'm glad that. So, you know, as was alluded to by Haley, the we have in 2018, I believe are, we worked with the environmental protection agency as we do every year to establish what our performance partnership agreement looks like. And that may have been in 2016 as I'm thinking about it now. So what we are, what that document does is it reflects our shared commitments to each other to implement the work in response to the funding that we get from EPA. And we as a department, and then as Maggie's mentioned has been expanded to the agency level reflected on our need for a clear environmental justice policy. And we were prepared to move forward with that work. As Sebi mentioned, sort of taking what we have learned from other states and putting it in a place here in Vermont in a Vermont context. And we were asked rightfully so by many of the members of, and guests you've had here today to slow down to engage Vermonters to understand what their needs are and understand how we engage with them and what that looks like. And that's the work that we've done over the last few years to try to advance that and are continuing to do so now. And it is really a meaningful conversation and one that will help us understand better how we're communicating, what we're communicating and the ways in which it is either being received or not being received. And so that we can better engage with our communities across Vermont to be able to ensure that value statement that all Vermonters have equal access to the environmental benefits and protections from the environmental burdens can be carried out. And so what we are engaged in now with Ms. Byrne as one of your guests here today as one of the leads in that work engaging Vermont communities, specific Vermont communities in an in-depth way in order to understand more about their needs and the ways in which we can effectively communicate with them, that we can then take back and learn and continue to think about how we take some of the things that we've learned there understand how applicable they are across the board and understand how to implement an effective community engagement plan. So we're not sort of state agencies are doers, right? You tell us, you give us guideposts and we go out and we do things. In this case, we need to listen first before we go do. And that's the work that's happening right now. And I appreciate that that's been the process. I've been in this role now, this specific role. I had the pleasure of doing Maggie's role previously but then this specific role for the past two years as I got my feet under me in the job, I set out three priorities for the department. And the first priority was to advance our environmental justice work because I knew that we needed to make significant progress here. And so it's with that lens that I come ready to participate in this conversation ready to lend the expertise of our staff who have participated in that work to understand how and where we can to make meaningful progress for environmental justice communities here in Vermont. And as I reflect on what that looks like and therefore what the words on the page in this bill look like, it really is important as many folks have said, words matter, how the definitions work, how we use that definition and apply it and then how we look at funding really does matter to have the impact that we're hoping to achieve here. And so I think about a lot of things that are gonna be challenging on the implementation side, not because we don't have an interest in doing that but because we have an interest in doing them well means that they're informed. I think about things, I think there was a really great discussion about the sort of the distinction that you heard in the definitions between using demographic based definitions to apply to what a community looks like that could be impacted as an environmental justice burdens because we know what the data has shown us that those types of demographics help to predict those burdens. On the flip side, as Elena mentioned, there's the sort of where are we seeing those environmental burdens? The Dr. Benakar talked about the nature of the research that they had been doing at UVM looking at the outcomes associated with different things and how, so there's a sort of predictive and a reactive side to that work and understanding how those work together is really important. The other thing I think about is ultimately the way other states have chosen to sort of apply their environmental justice policy is to look at what are the cumulative impacts of a facility or a project or what have you in relationship to other things that may be existing and already burdening the community. And that's sort of that cumulative environmental burden concept is really important. It's also really hard to do from a definitional standpoint because ultimately the end of the day what the Agency of Natural Resources will have to do when applying this to our environmental permitting is to be able to take a project and look at it and understand where, how it exists and determine whether or not a threshold of cumulative impact has been met. Because ultimately at the end of the day you're talking about permitations or denial for our purposes. And so it matters to me a lot and it matters to me to hear from impacted communities to understand what that looks like. And so I think there's an opportunity for that to be a really thoughtful conversation and to take the time to do it well. And then I just wanted to make a quick note. I know we're running out of time and I'm happy to come back as much as need be to be part of this conversation because it's really important. Is the funding component matters. I think Maggie and Elena both refer to the Justice 40 Initiative. I think the sort of initial response is we queried different programs within the department about where our funding goes and whether or not this is could or should be implemented the sort of 55% or the 40%, whatever it looks like. The feedback I got was many of our the monies that flow through the department end up going to address existing environmental burdens or to lessen existing environmental burdens. So I use the example of a wastewater treatment facility. Most of our clean water money goes towards helping communities fix, repair, replace, et cetera, wastewater treatment facilities. I think it's important to consider whether or not we want to, this is just an example to highlight that funding needs to be in an environmental justice community. I'm not sure that that reflects the intent of the policy. And so we need to be thoughtful about what we mean by funding because not all funding is a reflection of an environmental benefit. And at the same time, we make investments that could be say for a, you know, as one of the facts that gets often cited about tropical storm Irene and the impact on mobile home communities that was disproportionate to the population that is represented in mobile home communities is we often, we do work on flooding necessarily upstream of where things exist. And so that investment may not occur precisely in that work, in that area, but it has the impact there. And so I think it's important that we think through those pieces, this is incredibly important work and it's incredibly important that the impact of this work meet the need. As Savvy said, I think that's the words he used meet the need that's out there. And so I look forward to getting to the details with you and really appreciate the opportunity to be part of the conversation. Great, well, obviously we're a little constrained. So we'll look forward to more time to really work our way through the bill and definitions and I'm taking more testimony. Just one thing I'll flag as I'm not sure how it applies because we have like 30 seconds till Senate floor, but for a future conversation is enforcement, we haven't talked about, we've been leaning into sort of the planning side of things. I don't know how the relationship between EJ and enforcement compliance rolls out as well, okay? So thank you everyone for an excellent day. Look forward to seeing you all next week and to my Senate colleagues, see you on the floor momentarily.