 Great. Okay. So good morning, everyone. It's Thursday, May 14th. It's 10 o'clock and this is a meeting of the Senate Naturally Sources and Energy Committee. Today is going to be day one of two days on some solid waste issues. We've had enough interest in getting field reports. And I think that I think our legal discussion of possible responses will roll over to tomorrow morning. And today we'll concentrate on hearing from people. So I know that there are some people like Commissioner walk who can't be with us for the whole meeting but he'll be back as I understand it tomorrow morning to, as we work through legal considerations. For anyone who's here for the solid waste work. Because the Senate Rules Committee asked us to bring Senate bill 337 our energy efficiency bill to the floor today. First, non coded related bill for the session. We are doing that and we need to do a little housekeeping in order to be ready for that floor action. So, and that is namely for the, we voted the bill out in January unanimously went down the hall to finance, they made a proposal of amendment. And we should review that proposal amendment, take a committee vote so that when I delivered our national report on the floor today, I can follow up with what our position was on that proposal. So with that, we're probably for anyone who needs a cup of coffee and is here for solid waste, we probably have 10 minutes till we're back on solid waste again. And with that, Mr. Martin Lane, could you walk us through the finance proposal of amendment committee members should have a side by side to help us see. Thank you very much for the record this is Luca Martin land, the director of Ledge Council and it's good to see everyone again. This is bill s 337. And as the chair indicated, if you remember this was a bill that was a committee bill out of your committee back in February, it was referred to Senate finance. And we have put forth a proposal of amendment that's a strike all, and that was put on the Senate calendar on March 12, but the next day the 13th you stopped working in the building so nothing has happened since then. And I believe that everyone in the committee should have two documents the first is the Senate proposal of amendment, and the second is a side by side. In page two of the side by side, you'll see that there is highlighted text in yellow. That's the text that's new and different between your original version, and the Senate version. And I'll walk through it very quickly but these changes I do not believe are substantive. It was done in the form of a strike all, but most of the language is the same between both versions. Now if you remember very big picture for this bill. It requires the PUC to approve in an amount to be determined by the PUC in energy efficiency utility to spend part of its electric resource acquisition budget up to $2 million a year on programs that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the thermal and transportation sectors, if those proposed projects meet certain criteria. So that's the general purpose of this bill. If you now go to the Committee on Finance proposal of amendment. On the first page under subsections A and B was reworked a little bit rephrased a little bit but I don't believe it has any legal impact. So there's no real legal changes as to what is on the first page. If you flip over to the second page this is where the changes are. I mentioned how the projects have to meet certain criteria and they're set forth in 12345 on page two for is new language. So for was added by finance. And I'll give you a moment to read it if you haven't already read that. And the other new language was on lines 17 and 18. The right hand side of line 17 the words for the calendar years 2021 to 2023 was added. And in addition online 18. The word proportionate was added there was a requirement that it be proportionate but the word reasonably was added. Those are the only changes substantive changes in the two different proposals. I don't have any questions about that or any questions about anything else in either version of the bill. Senator campion I'm just wondering look if you could give folks some background on the proposed why we did number four. I mean I can take a stab at it. And for me it was and maybe Senator McDonald also recalls. This had to do with. You know how we might incorporate state agencies and departments into this work and into these kinds of conversations and we put this in here to prevent things from being duplicative. Or in competition with one another. Just looked reading and thinking here at the same time but. Yeah again with relevant state agencies and departments so I think what we were trying to make sure didn't happen is you know there are of course departments and. Agencies that there's no need to consult with so I think we were just trying to hone in and give some additional specificity there I don't know if Senator McDonald wants to add anything or council wants to add anything. That's my recollection. Thank you Senator campion sir McDonald. I objected to this legislation originally, because it sent money to utilities to perform tasks that they should be performing on behalf of their rate payers to begin with, and to reward someone for to send them dollars to do things that their own fiduciary should have prompted them to do was duplicate and not in the best spirit of, of new and experimental activities, and I gave a couple examples in committee and they haven't been resolved. So, I'm disappointed that they haven't but that's, I'm in the minority on that view. And I have repeated it here, two months later for the record. Thank you, Mr chair. Senator McDonald. Senator Bray mask a quick question. Please, I don't. And Senator McDonald, did you vote against the bill in our committee as well. I did not. Okay, however, however, yeah, when I voted for the bill I said the part having to do with money and finance would be dealt with in finance committee. Council, Mr. Martin wants to add anything or any clarification to what I added mentioned about, you know, why we did what we did. I don't have anything to add I think you summarized it well. Okay. Senator McDonald I'd like to just check in, in terms of sending money to the notion of sending money to utilities that I'll be doing to work. Anyway, when you say utilities are you talking about for instance the distribution utilities are electric utilities or the energy efficiency utilities. It's a tear free business of sending them for energy transformation. The example that we used in committee was, should we be subsidizing local utilities for having grants to people who purchased electric vehicles. And one of the utilities that gives the lowest grant for electric cars is the utility that has the most surplus and unusable electricity. Rather than this is live. More electric vehicles to use that electricity up and benefit all its ratepayers, it has chosen not to do so. It would be paid for by the energy efficiency charge when they should be doing it for their own ratepayers on their own money to get the savings. So, I, that's familiar to the members of the committee and I've only repeated it because I was asked. So, okay. So I think the distinction I would make is that the funds that are that the PUC can allow to be used under this pilot. I would go to the energy efficiency utilities, not to the electric utilities. So it's complicated, you know, the whole notion is that, yes, in a way you could say it's helping out the de use but the financial picture for the de use themselves. As I understand it will not be impacted by this other than it might because of some synergy between what the EU does in combination with the de you. So I don't want to be more success on their tier three program but we're not sending dollars to any utilities. I don't intend to stand in the way of the bill. I express my concerns. Okay, thank you. Thank you center McDonald. Just for Mr Myers I see you on the call we're doing another piece of work if you could mute your connection then we won't pick up any background noise while you're working in your office. All right, any other committee questions about finances proposal of amendment morning center Rogers. So, if, if there are no more questions or discussion on it, then I would look for a motion from someone on the committee to take a position on the Well, I take a position on the Senate proposal of amendment and I think just so that we have an accurate count. I'd ask the clerk to just call the role so that we get an accurate count on Senate naturalist position on finances proposal amendment that will be offered today in the floor. So this is Senator Campion I'd like to make a motion to find Senate finances amendment to the bill favorable. And I'm happy to call the role. Yes, please thank you, Senator parent. Yes. Senator Rogers. Yes. Senator McDonald. Yes. Senator Campion yes, and then Senator Bray. Yes. Okay, thank you everybody. A vote of 500 and the chair will mention that after I give the finance report today. Yes. Okay, thank you everyone for taking care of that housekeeping so now we are going to switch gears back to our previously scheduled programming which is solid solid waste issues in the era of COVID. And we, the last time we talked about this was five weeks ago, which is a very long time ago, given that the first case was reported in Vermont only on March 7. So it's two months and in that eight week or so time frame. Five weeks is a long time. So we thought it would be helpful to hear basically reports from the field today, because there are enough people interested in participating. We, it's possible we'll run out of time today and have a witness or to roll over to our morning. So just for the committee and its planning, we will reconvene again tomorrow at 10am. As a quick aside, we can talk about this more later, but you're playing on now that we're being released to take on bills. The Senate natural will start meeting again next week on a regular schedule Tuesday through Friday, but somewhat shortened hours 10am to 12, I don't think a zoom session over two hours is all that bearable or productive so Senator break quick question. I know we've had this conversation before, you know, some of us will have to jump off at certain times do we have time limits have witnesses been instructed around how much time they have. Yes, so any witness that we haven't heard from before and there's only a couple. This is one Mr Myers is another. I said, you know, we could go 12 to 15 minutes. Everyone else I'm asking them to aim for roughly eight to 10. Let's you know, that's a pretty good chunk of time to get meaningful message through and that way we'll hear from, we'll get a good cross spectrum collection of testimony. And so, to explain then today will be mostly listening mode to check in under COVID now we have five more weeks experience under the our belts. What has actually happened out there and in this whole solid waste ecosystem there are a lot of actors a lot of different interests. I think we've been updated. Then based on that we make as a committee tomorrow we'll come back and say, in our has some proposed language will be discussing whether or not the committee believes that we should be making any changes to how the system operates, and to cut to the chase on it. In statute and in legal practice the ability to do things like enforcement discretion, that's how the redemption centers which are actually legal required to be open right now. Not all of them are, although most I think have reopened. So there's enforcement discretion their waivers their variances. So the question is, does the a in our toolbox already include enough flexibility that concerns that we'll be hearing about today could be addressed under existing law, or do we need to look at new legal tools. And that's what we would be considering passing tomorrow. So for today, the focus will be hearing from folks out in the field, and I don't want to take any more of our time before we go to our first witness, other than I do really want to pause and say, thank you to the people on the front line sanitation workers out there, collecting and hauling every day, you know I feel like some of our prior discussion, I think made some people feel like we, we may not have been listening well enough or I, there's a fault there I accept that as my shortcoming in terms of how we were conducting our meetings. And I, I know that amongst committee members and discussion. Every senator is appreciative of what people out there in the front lines have been doing. So we hear you, we thank you and we, that's part of why we're taking this testimony today. Before we go to a first witness center Rogers you had something. Yes, so Senator Bray, just a quick comment. From, from my perspective, looking at the agenda. If we're talking about what's happening in solid waste. We'll be talking to the people on the ground and someone from DC and someone from the health department. I don't see anybody from the health department and I'm just wondering why some of these other folks. Well, we're, I appreciate the point. A&R has actually been our liaison to health department most of the time so Commissioner Walk, I think, has been in touch with David Englander for instance and he can share the health department perspective. I can actually. So what's your point is noted and we're going to start with people out there in the field, because there are many interests that's why we're hearing not everyone on the list today is someone who's an operator we have regulators operators and interested parties and it's going to be a mixture. But hopefully I think we will hear from everyone in the major sectors out there. Okay, well, I would just like to say if there's anybody sticking up for the fact that I believe we need flexibility and if there's anybody who says we don't need some flexibility in the field I would hope they're willing to volunteer to ride on trucks and help help pick up stuff that may be contaminated with I think this discussion is long overdue and I've been trying to raise the issue for weeks now. Okay. All right, with that, then I would like to thank their Rogers go to our first witness, and that is Jeff Myers, who we not spoken with and previous meetings. So good morning, Mr Myers, the floor is yours. Can you hear me, Senator. Yes. Okay, thanks. Because I'm not I'm not that good with a phone or a computer so. So thank you for for listening. I'll be quick because we've talked about this like everybody else has said for five weeks. I think. Excuse me, we're we're looking for flexibility. With the recycle and the compost. So we get a couple guys that still are not coming in because they're scared. They don't want to be involved. And we hear every morning watching news religiously day in and day out. How everybody's worried about touching stuff that that could have this 19. And this was the first time, Senator, I heard you thanking the sanitary workers. Nobody else has. And so let's get to the recycle. That's that's my short recycling. So we're not going to quit completely doing recycling where we can do automation. We will do automation, which means the truck will reach out pick the can up dump it in. My men do not have to stop it. We're looking for the flexibility. I'm looking for flexibility is where we have to manually pick the recycle and up. If this gets worse. That that we can put it aside. We're not taking that week. So that's kind of it's not completely. 75% of my business and I cover probably three quarters of state and 75% of my business will still do recycling. So this isn't drastic. So compost, compost is combos can carry the virus. We've got one guy that will not run my compost truck anymore. We can get equipment and everybody says, why didn't you order equipment last year? Well, it doesn't operate that way in the real world. You know, you buy equipment when you can afford to. We don't have those type of budget numbers. So, so with the compost. I seriously, I'm really strong on a compost that we've got to put this off to January 1st. And the other issue is with the combos. How are we going to throw another bill, another, an average restaurant in town and I'm in Chittin County and average restaurant will be paying 1000 to $1500 more. So why would we throw the other bill at him right now? For that much money. Let's stop sending them the checks. And they don't need that bill right now. It's that expensive. Compost is almost as much to get rid of as it is trash. So I think, excuse me, excuse me, January 1st. I think at least with the compost, we need to give these restaurants. Okay. The, the, the recycle. Sorry. Quick question on restaurants. So I don't know the restaurant business enough to know what, how heavy the, what kind of weight they generate on an ongoing basis. Since, you know, 2014, then it was 14, 15, 16, 17, we set that threshold for, for managing organics. So 17, the threshold was down to 666 pounds per week. Have I, which my understanding was that we had already brought in as of 2017. Most restaurants is that not right. That is not true. Okay. So what kind of weight do you tend to see from restaurants just so we will all know how that. I bought every second truck four years ago. Because when, when everything started, okay, and they're custom built, you got to order on that truck today is still three days a week. That's it. And the law kept changing. And I've talked about this time and time again. Is, so our restaurants, do you think there are restaurants that are not complying or restaurants that actually just a lot of them generate less than 666 pounds a week. There's nobody compliant center. Yeah, it's like I said, I bought that truck four years ago is still only on on the road three days a week. Okay. And then if you're trying to interrupt you ever, that does not mean that they're not complying. They could be bringing it somewhere else or doing something on their own. Okay. Yes, that that correct statement. Yeah, because I have restaurants down here that, you know, I believe are absolutely compliant. So I would just be cautious in terms of those kinds of statements. Thank you. So sorry for the eruption. I just wanted to get some clarity on that. You were, you were starting to pay something else. Mr. Myers. He threw me off, but, but the bottom line is, I'm a local business guy. I, you know, we're going to, we're going to generate compost. The it's another, it's another item on the bill. I mean, my company's going to make more money. It's not about the money issue. It's about, I don't understand right now how we can, we can throw another bill at these people. That's all I'm worried about. It's packing on another bill to the restaurants to buyer owners and all these people that have the compost issue. That's all I'm worried about. I'm a local business guy. I've had restaurants. I've had it all. That's what I'm worried about. I don't see how we can. So just for clarification, you are right now speaking on behalf of the restaurant industry, but you yourself in your profession, you are fine with this bill going forward. But it's your concern is that it's an additional cost to the restaurant industry. So if the restaurant industry and bar industry were to say, you know, we're comfortable with this. You're okay. Let's, let's say they're not paying her bills now. No, no, no. I just don't see how we can do that. Okay. Wait, wait, I'm not done. I'll get back to the equipment. If this really passed until I first, I don't have enough equipment. That's, I mean, everybody sits with their bookcase behind my home. All my 50 guys are working here on the streets. I know it's nobody's listening. Okay, so you have, you have a truck for handling more compost on order, but you're whatever their back order. Maybe that a work stoppage because of COVID who knows but I do know that our town when it orders a truck, it does not get it right away. Sometimes it takes a year. So I don't know what the situation is for you. Yeah, so it's a year to get a truck. And unfortunately, I don't order, I try to push them along. I can't order a truck a year ahead of time. I mean, it's not feasible for me. Great. Okay. Great. Anything else that you want to send McDonald you have a question. It was discussed it was a thousand dollars that would cost restaurants is that a week a month a year. No, I'm averaging that if I took the average of what we do with some places. We got some places some stores that are a lot more not three or four times more than that. And, you know, when you said that the other gentlemen, the senator said, are you worried about the restaurant people, but I'm a local guy here. You know, as brought up in town, I these people just can't afford. I don't think to have something. Okay. Thank you. And, and let me just check in. So how is how is your crew doing everyone healthy or okay. We're doing good. Good. We're doing we're doing quite a bit they're not allowed in the business in the building they keys in a truck so we've changed a lot of things so the way we operate. Yes, we're doing good. Good. Good. I like to hear. Yeah, I listened to your testimony in the house a month ago and seems like you took a lot made a lot of adjustments to for safety. So that's great. Yes, we have. Thank you very much Mr Myers if you don't have any other last comments, because we are trying to really cover a lot of territory today. I'm, we're ready to move on unless you have something else. No, no, thank you very much for listening. Okay. Thank you. Now I'd like to invite Craig good enough to join us. Good morning Craig. Good morning everyone. I'm good enough rubbish and brother a lot of you've seen me in the past. I still have the same concerns I had when I spoke to the house. Basically the the volume is down we do food scrap anyway which is compost collection with cardboard and paper mixed in. And my volume is probably 20% of what it was before COVID-19. And we still run a separate truck out to collect all this food scrap compost material. So, the cost of me running around for minimal stops is, is the same as it is basically if I get a half a truck load. So, and my guy everything we do is from the rear it's all everything you handle all the barrels and dump the dumpsters from the rear. So your exposure to the food scrap is, is right there. A lot of the restaurants are closed. And just to get back to what like Jeff said a lot of the cuffs restaurants I have don't generate that kind of tonnage period there. So, you know, we're out of the little small stuff down here where it's, you know, maybe 100 pounds a week or something like that. And the recycling. There's a big concern of mine because the cost went from when we started three years ago on the single stream collection was like $25 and $35 a ton. Now we're up towards 170 with all the transportation on it. And what happens is a carbon footprint for that right now is it's minimal. It's more footprint, because of the lack of volume. And I'm afraid of the contamination because we dump everything from the rear my guys to. So, if you get somebody if you get COVID-19 in a in a bottle or can, then there's a chance of that splashing. I'm afraid of the splash my guys are too. Nobody cleans the recycling very few people will wash your tins out or buckets out you get stuff of food waste in them all the time we do our best to try to recycle. But you know I'm kind of looking for some leeway and some of the stuff to save my customers money and save myself some money for things to get started back up. There's a lot to it. And we've managed to get through it my crew is all safe. I haven't found a guy. I haven't rehired saw anyone because of the COVID deal. Most of my restaurants are shut down. We cut reduced all their pay, their costs. So I'm doing I'm working for a lot less money than I was at the time. So it's kind of a, it's kind of a it's kind of a health thing in a, in a financial thing for the for the whole Bradwell community for me. Well, thank you. And, well, Senator McDonald. Do we have a question before us, which is whether the law should take effect on the first of July. And I think we're several, several of the witnesses are telling us about the COVID hardship is one of our alternatives as we take testimony today to do further to or to make reference that as long as the COVID emergency is in place. This will not apply. But when that emergency goes away. This, the court will law effective on the first of July will apply is that one of our choices before us. Yes. Then for the folks that perhaps from the public that are listening in it's not an either or here it's an either or but and a when it will take place or not take place. Thank you. Thanks for that clarifying question. And I think amongst the things that might have their timelines altered their depending in the conversation sometimes we're hearing about. Could this be applied to glass could this be applied to recyclables could this be applied to food residuals that they're not all necessarily handle the same way treated the same way. So there's some nuance to what that that question. So Mr good enough anything else that we should be aware of from your neck of the woods. Um, you know just it's just expensive and we're just trying to keep my guys safe basically and I do like Jeff said you know the restaurants I buy food from our restaurants in town I'm a local guy been here forever and I'm just trying to watch out for everybody, hoping things can come back. I guess that's about it. Right. Okay. And how's your crew. They're just good. They're nervous but we try to do the best we can that we haven't taken anything extra we tell people that if you got it actually got away to look over. People want to put mattresses out by the trash cans or by the dumpster so we, we've limited all that to know until something's lifted. But I could just, I could just use. In fact, I want to say something real Frank I mean, I don't, we could do what we wanted we're trying to ask you guys for permission to help us out, not just just say well I'm going to dump recycling trash or I'm going to dump the food scraps in the trash because, because we could easily do that, but we're just trying to do the right thing. Well we appreciate that. So good enough. What kind of equipment safety equipment does your crew wear gloves, masks. Yep. Okay. And hats. Okay. Thank you. Usually they wear plastic glove under their work gloves. Okay. Just for double protection. And then they, when they get back in the truck, they take their work glove off. And then they run with a plastic with a plastic with them so we keep them, we keep them as clean as we can. Thank you. Yeah, but no I appreciate the time to talk so thank you. One last quick question. Yeah, you know I've seen a fair amount of guidance from swan and others on good practices for sanitation. How do you guys. Who gives you who's your source, so that as you try to figure out how to run your business, you have you, do you have a good source of information and who is that I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah, we use on a guidance. And then there's NRA guidance because we belong to NRA in New Hampshire, which is a recycling New Hampshire's big recycling company we actually haul recyclable for them. And I follow their guidance in transportation advisors out of Massachusetts bomber mass. Okay, okay. If there are no more questions for Mr. Good enough. Thank you very much for, for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next up is Pat Austin. Good morning, Mr. Austin. We can't hear you. There you go. Yep. Thank you for letting me talk. I'd just like to start by saying it seems as though Senator Rogers has got his fingers right on the pulse what's going on here. I'm going to be a hauling issue and I'm confused where Paul Burns fits into this. He's not a processing facility. He doesn't pick up organics. He doesn't call waste. Mr. Austin, let me interrupt for a minute because I set the agenda. You do not. I know, right. And we're hearing from a broad cross section. So there are people who aren't necessarily operators who do have a legitimate interest in how solid waste is managed in the state. So please provide your testimony and we'll leave other people to provide theirs. Just ironic how the haulers have to go first, and you said it you set the agenda. So, you know, the problems have not changed. And I think it's clear that you guys have not been listening to rural areas, places that have specific issues. In terms of coming and testified in your committee. And like you said, the agenda has always had solid waste districts stacked up behind me, or somebody like Kathy James from from the agency. I've done the footwork to find the infrastructure that's available for this hauling requirement to collect food waste. I reached out to the agency. I got a list of facilities that were available, and I reached out to them facilities. They did not have capacity to accept from a solid waste hauler. That didn't change. You guys have done nothing to fix that. When Mr walk got involved, he clearly recognized an infrastructure need and offer the quarter million dollar grant to the Northeast Kingdom, which would have been a great request of this committee just so you'll realize. So it wasn't so it wasn't just the request of your committee chair. It was at the request of me also with a lot of data that I had to give. There's, there's clearly a lack of infrastructure in rule Vermont is clearly a lack in the Northeast Kingdom. If we would have had these discussions two and three years ago when I was coming in and and relaying these concerns to you guys. This money would have been huge for the Northeast Kingdom, two and three years ago. There's no system that's going to be in place that's going to haul food waste out of Newport, Vermont to North Heartland to grows facility, which is what has been told to me over and over is infrastructure. It's two hours and 45 minutes one way in good weather. That's not feasible. It's not economical and it speaks to exactly what Mr Myers was talking about, which is the severe cost of this type of infrastructure in an area that doesn't have processing capability. So now we have a quarter million dollar grant that I've heard you say more than once has been put in place to solve the issues in the Northeast Kingdom. We haven't even been able to generate an RFP to put out put in front of our board to accept to put out to try to set up infrastructure for this money. We're confused on if it should be infrastructure for small farms that can accept more material directly from a restaurant, or if it needs to be a facility that can accept from us. It's not a holler, which is exactly what needs to happen if we have the holler requirement in place. I've asked multiple times for exemptions in this I've been to many stakeholder meetings constantly misrepresented and even not represented at times. And, and now here we are, covert hits and all infrastructure build out has stopped. And I've heard from many customers, restaurants and facilities in my area that cannot pay what Lisa has quoted them for cost to collect organics in the Northeast Kingdom, and then she calls the agency and says well they won't they won't sign up to my to my service. So Jeff is right, people are not in compliance because it is not in their budget. The restaurants that have that should have come under the, the, the, the levels each year of the diversion of the amount of food waste that's generated have not been have not come into compliance on that so it's going to be from no service to all of a sudden happen to have this high cost of service in, in can be a set of a campaign is correct that some of these places very well are diverting food waste, and that is going to be the only way in rural Vermont, that this is. It's going to be a valuable process until we have infrastructure. There's farms in the area that will take food waste from restaurants. They can do that at a very good cost savings to that that business, as opposed to disposal, but they cannot hire a solid waste to collect it and haul it three hours across the state and save money. And so I've posed this question many times if we remove the hollow requirement and let the band stay in place and enforce the band. Then we will find out if the facilities are able to comply and pay for this. The facilities that are accepting food waste right now are in the same boat Chittin and solid waste district was with their mirf when the, when the recycling went into place and I, I brought this to you guys attention. This facility can charge anything they want for this material. So you ban this material, they were charging $5 a ton when the band went in place now it's $80 a ton that can go to any level. The same thing is going to happen to an organic facility that has capacity. When the agency is pointing at a restaurant saying you have no choice. It doesn't matter what the cost is. That's not what the monitors want. It's not what the monitors need and coming out of COVID. We're hearing these restaurants are going to open up at 25% capacity. The whole business model has been flipped on end. They're going to have to put tables in the, in the driveway. They're going to have to do more to goes that their whole business model as they know it staffing waitresses, buses, dishwashers. They don't even know how that's going to look. I have three daughters that work at a restaurant in the Derby area, and they can't give them direction on how this is going to look when they open and I can tell you that signing up organics July 1 is not on their radar. And unless we can do that at a cost savings, it will never be on their radar in rural Vermont, where we struggle to even fill restaurants. This is working and it's working well in areas that have been for structure around Montpelier around Burlington is working well in them areas the people that have major volume of food waste are able to easily divert this. But when you bring this down to a no food can be thrown away level that creates anxiety confusion. It makes people do things that they should not be doing. And then and all we're asking for and the agency is asked for this. And I feel the governor agrees with this is some flexibility. We dealt with this specific this discretionary enforcement is not an option. We've dealt with this we had. I know we're going long. Could you I know that's nice. I'm sorry you can just you can just hang up on me whenever you want, but we had a situation in the Northeast Kingdom that we could not move our glass. We had roll off boxes for multiple trash companies that our district was paying rent on to hold our glass. And we had the secretary specifically for a variance to dispose of these these roll off boxes in the landfill and Coventry to use for road base or drainage, and it was denied, because it was not in statute to allow for that. So 49 towns in the Northeast Kingdom incurred over $6,000 more cost on this glass, because common sense decisions could not be made. And that is all we're asking for. They're not going to give that unless there's some sort of reason to give it. And that's why that's why I'm opposed to Paul Burns speaking because he is just going to say, Oh, there's nothing here. They're just using coven and he knows nothing about the process, nothing. So, let's, you know what, it's never helpful to be talking about the other witnesses so we got your message. Thank you very much. I'm going to go along. So I'd ask if Ms Franklin is on the call Cheryl Franklin. I don't see her at the moment. Okay, then in that case, we'll go to another part of the system and ask Mr. Letty to join us to talk about the code impacts as it's flowing through to the districts. Good morning, Mr. Letty. Morning everybody. Thank you, Senator Bray and members of the committee. So, just to talk about code 19 impacts on solid waste districts and specifically so at John Letty I am the executive director of the Northwest Vermont solid waste management district. And I'm also the president of the solid waste district managers association. And so we've been meeting the solid waste district managers associations been meeting weekly to discuss covert impacts across the state. And obviously, you know the solid waste Northwest solid waste district have been reacting and changing operations as well. So the solid waste district in the Northwest part of the state, our operations consist of drop off centers, we operate five drop off sites for trash recycling, hard to dispose of items. And we also have a household hazardous waste facility. We also operate food scrap hauling operations across Franklin and Grand Isle counties and have a partnership with a compost facility in Swanton the Houdek farm. So, in terms of impacts to the solid waste Northwest solid waste district. We have paired back what we collect to what we've deemed the essential items like Mr. Good enough said, we're not having folks deliver mattresses or refrigerators, or things like household hazardous waste at this point. The labor force was impacted sounds like many of the on the ground folks are also dealing with it, where we have employees who were fearful employees who had underlying health risks, whether it's diabetes or COPD, or are, you know, over the age of 65. So, in order to manage operations at our sites and what we can provide, we limited services to those essential items. And we did end up closing one facility our St. Albans drop off site, because it was within reasonable distance to our Georgia, our largest facility. And since then we have also relied on guidance from swanna. The new Moa, the New England Regional Waste Managers Association, and NRA, which was mentioned. I'll just put a plug in that NRA produced a wonderful webinar about COVID-19 and it's a relation to the waste stream. So that was really helpful for us and our employees. And we've been following their guidance for best management practices like wearing PPE, frequent hand washings. And we found our biggest concern our biggest point of inner of contagion is face to face contact with our customers, because we operate drop off sites. So it's that interaction with the customers and also in protecting the public, the people we serve, how those people interact at our drop off sites because we've got containers for materials that are very close to one another. So managing traffic in and out of our facilities have been a major concern of ours. And we are moving forward now in the reopening phase of how do we adapt to this new normal and how do we adjust what we're going to be doing so that one, we can increase flow through our facilities so that people can get in and out efficiently. And how can we increase the materials that we accept so people can get rid of their tires appliances and old paint cans and things like that. So those are the things we're sort of preparing with now and using masks, safety glasses, multiple layers of gloves and frequent hand washings to protect our employees. On our food scrap hauling routes, we are sanitizing so at the household level, people leave out buckets. We have been trying to give sanitizing wipes to our drivers so that they wipe down the bucket quick as they dump it and same with totes when we pick up totes from businesses that are composting. But we have seen an impact to in restaurants, the schools being closed in terms of the volume of food waste that that we've been dealing with. And so the solid waste district managers around the state have also, we're all grappling with how do we reopen and also how do we keep our employees in our public safe. We all understand that there needs to be measures in place to provide relief, if it becomes necessary at you know if this crisis worsens, if it's prolonged in the state of years. I think the majority of solid waste districts support a and ours authority for discretionary enforcement, and if other powers could be given to them at the agency level. That's the perfect place for it. And it allows them to be reactionary when they need a rise rises. But in terms of the solid the food scrap ban on July one. We have food scraps are put in with recyclables and other landfill banned items at the agency level, the need to adjust or move the landfill ban is, is not necessary, and sends and sends a poor message to the agency, the agencies in the state who have worked really hard to bring us up to where we're at right now. Solid waste districts. We've been talking about this frequently. All solid waste districts in the state except for one Northeast Kingdom district who obviously have, you know, they're growing pains with this and we all understand that. Solid waste districts, with that exception, do support the, the July 1 food scrap ban. And we also support the agencies role in in being able to provide relief. So, and just to ask a quick question, and in terms of providing relief, what would be an example of what kind of relief you might think could be needed. So markets have been pointed to as a driver. If, if there isn't a place to bring recyclable materials. If, you know, the a certain material will cause the cost of the system to skyrocket, whether it's glass or plastic, you know, right now the price of oil is extremely low, which means Virgin plastic is going to be competing with recyclable stock. So, who knows what it is if markets get to that point, allowing the agency to pause or come up with an alternative plan for that material that that's a tool. So, yeah, I'd say just, it's, you know, in terms of giving the agency the ability to suspend the landfill ban or put a moratorium on it through, you know, because of force major, then that's what we would support. Okay, great. Thanks. Any committee questions for Mr. Letty. Senator Rogers. I got a quick question center break. Mr. Letty. So are you guys at this point able to sell your number five plastics. So the Northwest solid waste district we have a dual stream. We accept we accept fiber material so paper and cardboard in one stream and all other containers. So that's plastic metals and glass in another stream, and we send the container stream to the Chittenden solid waste district. Okay. Yep. There are obviously certain resins in the plastic stream that are more problematic than others, but I'm not right now with the changing landscape. I'm not sure what that is. Okay, thank you. And, you know, just just for the committee, I know the solid waste districts don't seem to have much sympathy for the, the Holland community but it is to totally different aspects of the solid waste stream, and they get to sit in an office while the solid waste haulers are out picking up materials that our health department has said can carry COVID for four or five days. And that's been my concern all along that the folks who get to wear a clean shirt to work and sit behind a desk don't seem to care very much about the folks on the ground that are picking up these contaminated items. So I would respectfully disagree. One, I don't think we should comment on whether or not they care. Two, I think from every conversation I've had, they have Mr. Letty can speak for himself. And three, there's many people who are handling the same materials at the waste district, not everyone's in the office taking care of administrative operations. And that was not targeted at Mr. Letty, but it's targeted at all the folks who really have, have not seemed to show any sympathy for the folks on the ground that are handling the material and that are worried about it and are asking for the flexibility. And I'll just point out. So we have at our facility where we do handle fiber and as Senator Rogers said, the, you know, it's been pointed out that the virus can live on cardboard for an extended period of time of 72 hours. And so we have, we altered the operations at our facility. You know, we sort of look back and know that when people drop their cardboard off the drop off site on a Saturday. It's, you know, they may have touched it last at that point. And then it's dumped at our facility two days later. We give that material a cool off period of 24 hours to make sure that we are safely able to handle it. We try not to handle it by hand at all but we all know that it every once in a while you got to pick that piece up. So we've been making we recognize that we've had to make changes to our own operations to adjust. And that's really what we see is the new normal like thinking about every part of our operation and how can we adjust to this crisis. Senator McDonald. Mr. Chair, the last witness was very helpful and explaining to us the challenges faced both by the Covis and the long term challenges and I commend both witnesses for having made decisions to delay mattresses and electronic waste and other things that were not necessary during as necessary during this crisis and to the extent that we can address these two separate short term Covis issue and the long term, where do we go for recyclables and and waste the better off our committee is this morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And again just so people know where we're heading. The goal is to continue to collect sort of field reports from different parties, and then tomorrow will be looking at getting into the legal details of what would legislation rules enforcement discretion all that kind of stuff how might it work. Michael Grady will be helping by walking us through that first thing tomorrow. With that I'd like to invite Lisa ransom to join us. In another part of the composting eco the solid waste ecosystem out there. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Chairman Bray and members of the committee. My name is Lisa ransom. My husband and I own grow compost of Vermont. We've been in the business of collecting food scraps throughout Vermont for over a decade. Actually before the universal recycling law was enacted. We have nine frontline employees. All of them are healthy. And all of them are incredibly dedicated. We run five trucks five days a week to service every county in Vermont. We collect food scraps every day all day. Last year our trucks hauled over 7 million pounds of food scraps from Vermont schools businesses, resorts and residents, diverting this material from landfill to agricultural uses to chicken feed compost bedding and clean energy. The shape and guided our business infrastructure around it has been slow to grow in Vermont but we're we're finally seeing results roll out as this law approaches its full implementation on July 1. And we're opposed to any delay of the universal recycling implementation timeline at this time. To begin, most importantly, all of our employees at grow are healthy. The COVID pandemic has caused a ripple in our business for sure. And it has throughout the state but it is also highlighted how important the service we provide is to our customers. The season the demand for soil is unprecedented. Our residential food scrap collection has tripled the food scraps we collect from grocery stores has almost doubled. This has continued at almost low volumes prisons and hospitals have continued their source separation of food scraps, even our smallest businesses have adapted to this law. Source separation of food scraps from trash is now woven into our culture it's taken years of work to educate businesses and the public about the importance of this law and of the importance of diverting organic material from the landfill. And this pandemic has brought us an even sharper awareness for our communities, the urgency of our environmental crisis, reversing this learned behavior could be catastrophic for this industry and for the safety and quality of life for Vermonters. We understand that the impacts of the virus are real and we understand the critical need to focus on the health and safety of our frontline workers. Like I said a very dedicated workforce and they're proud of the work they do every day. We've increased our safety protocols every driver uses the same truck every day. All trucks are sanitized before and after each route PPP is worn contact with customers is at a minimal. Our management attend solid waste safety webinars weekly to make certain we're using best practices and keeping up with the scientific data around the virus. The scientific community continues to assert that the potential for virus transfer is highest on the handles of the totes that contain both trash and organics, not in the material itself. We believe that there is no scientific reason to cease the separation of food scraps from solid waste. Remember this is material that gets thrown away either way, we're only asking our residents in Vermont to source separate their food scraps from their solid waste. Now is the time to set the stage we believe for a greener future. We're looking at the long marathon, not the short sprint through this COVID we believe it will most likely come back again and again and again so we're trying to look at this, the long haul. The majority of our customers those who have adopted practices to comply with this law continue their source separation of this material or intend to continue when they reopen, and we're just now seeing businesses come back online and and ask for their totes to begin composting again. We have not had any businesses start up again and ask not to do that to continue with composting. The other bit of green businesses in Vermont is bright gardening and local food production is increasing the organic transfer stations are in the midst of construction. New anaerobic digesters are being cited around the state and built around the state and new small food scrap hauling businesses that are picking up from residents are all seeing growth in this crisis, as we near July 1 deadline. It's crucial to the growth of our green economy and to the clean air soil and water in Vermont that we keep an eye on a greener Vermont and that there not be any delays in the timeline or substance of this law. I'm happy to take questions. So as with all the other practitioners we thank you for your role out there on the front lines a different piece of the puzzle but an important piece of the puzzle and glad to hear that your crews are all healthy. Any committee questions for Ms. ransom. Well thank you for thank you for your work and thank you for filling us in. It's been a while since we talked to it feels like a very long time ago for that our last committee meeting was all right. Seeing no other questions for Ms. ransom, then we'll turn to Miss Inc. Good morning, Judith. Good morning. Good morning, Senators. Thanks. Thanks for having me. I appreciate being part of this discussion. My name is Judith, Inc. I'm a visiting professor at Bennington College, where I founded a project called beyond plastics. I'm very sorry for the environment in New York's government and most recently served as EPA regional administrator for EPA region to where I had a lot of experience dealing with emergency response situations and how we protect health and still have compliance with environmental laws. I think the conversation so far has been just a little bit off kilter I want to say that everyone absolutely supports protecting the health of people working in the solid waste field. No one and no policy should ever jeopardize that these are people who are working very hard every day. They are frontline workers that are keeping Vermont moving in the right direction. However, you do not need to give a state agency extensive enforcement discretion authority to essentially allow source separated recyclables and compostables to be landfill in order to ensure worker safety. Yesterday, your attorney general TJ Donovan was part of an important lawsuit with seven other state attorneys general where they challenge the EPA's decision to essentially wave enforcement of all federal environmental laws during this pandemic, and I commend the attorney general for taking that legal action. I think we can have safety among workers and still comply with existing environmental laws. I think Senator Rogers raised an interesting issue about collecting recyclables of plastics. I'm not supportive of recycling, but I acknowledge that plastics recycling has been a failure largely. There's an only 8.8.5% recycling rate among plastics, the only plastics you can find markets for or number one and number two plastics. I think it's personally perfectly reasonable to say that haulers should only be required to collect number one and number two plastics. Back to the issues at hand. What you're being asked to do is not happening in any other state. We have 89,000 local governments in the United States. 69 have either partially or fully suspended their recycling programs. So 69 out of 89,000. And most of these changes have been in the states of Alabama, Missouri, and Texas. All at the local government level, not one state has provided the the policy that you're being asked to decide on today. On composting I want to point out that the business community has had eight years to prepare for full implementation of this law. I think extending the deadline before beyond July 1 is a mistake. Food waste is very heavy. I can see why a landfill operator, for instance, would want more food waste in the landfill because they would receive more revenue known as tipping fees, if the waste was landfill rather than composted. Food waste can be effectively source separated. If it's not composted it's either going to go to a landfill where it can go to the Hudson Falls garbage incinerator in Washington County, New York, where the emissions from this old incinerator could reach parts of southern Vermont. That is not a good trade off. On the recycling issue it's important that the health of workers for both collection and processing is protected. And it's not just during this health emergency, but it's at all times at material recovery facilities or MRFs. The staff need to always wear personal protective gear. That was not always the case prior to the pandemic. We need to wear masks, also protective eyewear, because the way most likely get your nose or your mouth. They need to take gloves, common areas such as break rooms and bathrooms need to be regularly disinfected. There are a lot of resources. Senator, you mentioned SWANA. There's also safety resources available from OSHA, other trade associations. I think before proceeding with the proposal, we need to find out are all workers wearing the protective gear. Do the waste companies provide paid sick leave? The recycling trucks automated. There definitely is a difference if you can pick it up mechanically versus having to leave the truck and pick it up. Can collection schedules be modified so both the solid waste and the recyclables can be picked up perhaps on an alternating schedule. There needs to be analyzed case by case by the haulers. We know that residential waste generation is up, commercial waste generation obviously is down. So that's going to require some changes in routes that the haulers, I believe, are capable of achieving. If Vermont were to give a state agency legal authority to allow waste haulers the option of suspending recycling programs, again that would be highly unusual. No state has done this. The state of Vermont, administratively, has said the bottle bill doesn't have to be enforced. We're still paying a nickel deposit. But at least, I hope, temporarily, not all stores have to accept the containers that was done without changes to the law. The public needs to be fully involved in these deliberations. I think if you asked many people in Vermont, do they want to sort of separate their recyclables and have the chance that the recyclables are not recycled but are landfill. There would be serious concern about that. So there needs to be some type of public participation process before such a dramatic change is considered. There are three things that I think could provide some relief. One is on plastics recycling I mentioned just collect number one and number two plastic because those are the only things that have markets. Second, I think there should be serious analysis of whether single stream recycling continues to make sense. If you have dual stream you have cleaner materials that have a much better chance of finding reliable markets. And finally, I want to jump ahead to July 1 when Vermont's landmark plastic trifecta law is scheduled to take effect. It's very important that that not be delayed. The law would, for instance, ban plastic bags. Plastic bags are nightmare in material recovery facilities because they jam up the equipment. The law also says you only get a plastic straw if you ask for one that will save a little bit of money for small businesses. And finally it bans polystyrene expanded polystyrene food containers. There's no market to recycle polystyrene, none at all. So taking that out of the waste stream is a big plus. So we're not considering a delay of July 1, but since I'm talking to you now I wanted to go on the record saying let's start planning for full implementation of that law. And I think those are the kind of things that can provide some relief but this is not a worker safety versus the environment issue it's just not it is all over the country. People are safely collecting recyclables composting lots of time to prepare. I have not seen any data that the virus lives on food waste. I mean that indeed would be troubling because we're all eating food. So I think you know I think pulling in the public also in addition to these hearings are important because this is a very sweeping change that you're being asked to consider. Thank you. Okay, great. Any committee questions, Senator Rogers. Yeah, just a couple of points Senator Bray in that it's really perceived recycling and nobody is proposing that the folks who have mechanical arms that dump recycling are going to stop recycling. But as we remember the Attorney General still hasn't settled the case to Chittenden County solid waste for their illegal dumping of glass and that glass. People up here in all of the state who sent it there thought it was being recycled and paid for it to be recycled and it wasn't and if I'm not. I'm pretty sure that New York City, which has way more population than the state of Vermont has made significant changes in their recycling and sanitation laws because they've had a bunch of sanitation workers die from COVID and I think Maine made some changes to but talking about would the public accept it. The public hasn't even figured out how to clean their recycling yet and they're still doing wishful recycling. Nobody's saying that we want to stop recycling. We're asking for some flexibility. And then the last point would be, is it really recycled because as I've mentioned to the committee a couple times. I watched the frontline documentary and a lot of the US is plastic is going to third world countries where they pick out the number ones and then push the rest of the plastic into the rivers in the ocean where it leads to more pollution and environmental damage so we really got to be clear on what we're doing and I think there is nobody I don't think I've heard anybody say that the food scraps can carry the virus the container certainly can. The big concern is the recycling that is not done by a machine that people have to handle because we know gloves. And PPEs are only as good as the person wearing them if you have a rubber glove on your hand and you touch your mask or your face, you're still transferring it. So, that's my big concern. Okay, well thank you. Frank, do you have anything you want to add either in response or just that you didn't include just just quickly in response. I think most haulers in Vermont have mechanical pickup of recyclables and if they don't, and there is the opportunity to talk to the haulers about the ones that do not have mechanical pickup. They can do things like pick up every other week rather than every week. Could they be particularly vigilant with personal protective equipment for all of their staff. I mean you talk to doctors and the risk is when it's the it's an airborne aerosol. It's when someone is sneezing and I know that wearing masks is is not comfortable and my sister is a visiting nurse. I had to go find masks for her because her employer was not providing it she wears it all the time. And it's, she feels like she can't talk to her patients. It's uncomfortable. So, even when you have nurses that have to struggle with that I can imagine that people working, picking up materials, it's not going to be convenient, but wearing the mask, even eye goggles and and proper gloves is crucial and then I think they want to pick things up I think it's fair to tell customers overflow outside of your recycling bin because we don't want to collect things that are not in the bin. But let's just kind of sensibly think about this. It's a recycling bin. If you don't have mechanical pickup. It's physically picked up if you're wearing gloves and protective gear. This should work. No, suggesting not picking up mixed solid waste, for instance, just hearing about the need for flexibility on recyclables and compostables. And so I think that's also a little inconsistent. The question it was, I was looking into jurisdictions that have made some alterations to their solid waste laws, particularly around recyclables and of the roughly the count I saw was that of its surge to a total of about 75 but and then 15 of those have now gone back online, which would bring it down somewhere in the neighborhood of 70, but of the 70 60 had ceased operation. Prior to January 1 of this year, so it really didn't have anything to do with COVID it was that for that municipality, they decided for whatever reason, sometimes most often it was money to suspend those operations so I think there's remarkable account in talking to an industry expert yesterday is you're right many predated COVID and it's right now it's about 69 very little in the Northeast and on the point of New York City, they have suspended curbside pickup of food scraps. You can imagine how hard a task that is in a city of 8 million people picking up food scraps they did it for a while. And they they they have stopped, although the city council there is trying to get it reinstated full recycling continues in New York City, which is the epicenter of this terrible pandemic. Tragically, I believe one department of sanitation worker has died from COVID that is one too many. It is a city of 8 million people. Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. I would like to invite Mr burns to join us this morning. Good morning, Paul. Good morning, Mr Chairman and members of the committee. Again, for the record, my name is Paul director of the Vermont public interest research group or v perg. I appreciate the participation of all of you members of the committee and all of the witnesses who have testified or will testify later. And I want to be very clear from the start that my organization and the 50,000 members and supporters that we have around the state stands, united with all of you, I'm sure in our appreciation for the work of all of the frontline and those who work in the solid waste and recycling industry the haulers, those working in recycling facilities and at the landfill and, and beyond that this is, there is no point of difference between us at all in our concern and appreciation for all of those folks. I also want to say that I appreciate the opportunity to be here and to represent interests of those members that we have. People who are concerned about public health issues people who are concerned about the environment on people who just have an interest in what happens to the material that they put out to the curb every week or two weeks there is a genuine and I think important public interest and consumer interest here in the conversation that you're having so again thanks very much for the opportunity. The premise I guess that we start from here is that we need to both protect do everything we can to protect public health and do what we can to continue to protect our environment. So overall protecting the environment I think has is now and always has been an important value that Vermonters share the laws that you and your predecessors have passed to require recycling and to protect our air and water and so forth these are laws that have provided very very broad public support. And so the thinking is I guess from our perspective that any at any time that we might consider rolling back or delaying or weakening or providing exemptions to the laws. The justification should be very clear and compelling and to the extent that it can be you know time limited just as specific as it as it can be to provide any relief that you believe is absolutely justified and necessary. And so, again, I don't expect there's a broad disagreement around that but that's our starting point here. I've heard over the course of the last number of weeks, a number of different justifications you might say for the proposal that you have before you and any any previous proposals coming from the administration or coming from businesses themselves. The proposals have differed somewhat, and the rationales have differed considerably. Today you've been hearing some about the idea of costs costs to restaurants costs to haulers, the lack of equipment, the lack of infrastructure, possible health concerns, and concern over markets or the lack of markets for some of these materials. Those potential justifications could and should be considered on its merits, but let's be clear they are, they are very different. And there isn't necessarily a cohesive thread that brings them all together. They do not all really have anything to do with covid some do but others, I think do not and I encourage you as a committee just to to try to break that out if, if you're going to be persuaded here that a change needs to happen be clear about what what that rationale is what that basis for the for the change is does it have anything to do with covid or not. You shouldn't do it if it doesn't have anything to do with covid but I think I think you should be clear about why you might do something here. And again, consider what what the most limited means of providing leaf relief might be if you feel that a justification has merit with respect to the health concerns. I just, I'm not going to repeat everything that you've heard from other witnesses here but most recently with due to think, you know, describing the fact that there are very few other jurisdictions, local or municipal across the country that have taken this kind of action that is being requested of you today, no state has done so. And Vermont couldn't be worse than every place else and therefore require this kind of relief but really there is no evidence of that there's no science or health justification or, or evidence that I've seen that suggests that Vermont is in a worse position than other places and as Judith just pointed out New York City does continue to provide regular curbside pickup for recycle a recyclable materials. And the reason why they dropped it for composting was financial it was not a health concern there. So I think these are. This is an information that it should be important to you is, I don't believe that you have heard directly from the health department and I know Senator Rogers mentioned that I think that that would make sense as well. I have not heard anything from the health department that relates directly to this issue, or that they believe that there is a health concern associated with the collection of recyclables, or food scraps that is not there for instance with the collection of trash generally. So I, so definitely look into the health concerns but if the justification isn't there then I think you've got to be honest and clear about that as well and be thinking about how Vermont perhaps differs or does not really differ from these other jurisdictions that have been able to maintain their important programs. A word about markets. I know that's kind of a new element here of that again may or may not have anything to do with the COVID crisis, but on a swan a webinar just in the last week or two. I noted that there was some discussion about markets and it was important point here made that I wanted to share with you and it was this that because commercial recycling is so low right now for obvious reasons residential recycling is perhaps more important than ever. The price for fiber is in fact increasing, and it kind of makes sense because this paper is necessary, and you're seeing a lot of cardboard now be you know products being delivered to people's homes and so forth. This is material that is eminently recyclable. And, as Mr letting mentioned earlier there are also ways of making sure that you, you can set it aside for a period of time to even address what health risks that you that you think may be there. I think that makes perfect sense as well. But the paper recycling is essential for the manufacturers of everything from toilet paper to food packaging even to items for first responders. This, I just wouldn't underestimate the importance of continuing the collection and the recycling of material that does in fact have markets today. And that is important to our economy it's even important to our health and and to the way that we are living our lives today. So, so let's not, let's not miss the importance of continuing these programs. As someone else mentioned as well, I think just the public's participation in these programs is something that has been strong and has been broadly supported. But if we were to begin to say that the material that you put out to the curve is now going to go to a landfill that we're not going to do recycling any longer for, for whatever reason. That has a ramification in the near term but potentially over the mid to long term as well it's hard to bring people back into recycling once they've been told that those materials are going to be going to a landfill. And so, I think these are important decisions I think that you could also look to ways to improve markets here to the extent that that is an issue markets do change regularly on their own but let's consider for instance rather than putting those materials that may not have a great market now into landfills. I hope your committee will continue the work that you've been doing to think about ways to improve the markets. One of the bills you were considering this year for instance would require higher levels of recycled content in packaging materials so that to the extent that we're seeing plastics is a huge problem in recycling. Let's make sure that we're doing our part to create markets so some of that stuff can be used again to the extent it needs to be used and I think we should use a lot less of it to begin with to be sure. And the bottle bill was mentioned glass is a problem has been for some time at our recycling material recovery facilities, but the market for glass coming from a bottle deposit programs has always been much stronger and you've heard that from folks in the industry and from the community and anybody who knows anything about it I think agrees that we can do better by separating materials out keeping them cleaner and having a stronger higher more valuable market for those materials and that's where the bottle bill potentially an expanded bottle bill has, I hope, resonance at this time. So markets are a problem let's do we can to improve those markets rather than moving immediately to say well we're going to put that stuff in the landfill. But my final point is, you all are in a position to decide whether you think these arguments have merit I just want to encourage you to think very very carefully about each one of them what other what is the argument being made doesn't have resonance here. And is there a lesson that we can learn from other jurisdictions that seem largely to be able to move forward with these important programs without having to resort to putting that material into the landfill. So thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you Mr burns. Any questions send Rogers. So, Mr chair. Paul's the second person who's mentioned no other states have made a change and I'm looking at main public radio. So main has changed its recycling rules to guard workers from exposure to cobit 19. So I thought I had heard that and, and so there are jurisdictions who have made changes, and nobody is proposing to throw all recycling in the garbage. The ask is for some flexibility. So that if some of it ends up in the garbage. Folks don't get in trouble for for violating the law. And the other ask of course is for, you know, if the rest of the state doesn't need a break from the food waste. You know, delay the implementation in the Northeast Kingdom, where we don't have the infrastructure. In any place to put the food scraps until we've had time to use the money that the department has put forward and get something in place for infrastructure. Thanks, Senator Rogers, could you send that article that you're looking at and about main over to Judith and we'll have her center around the committee. Mr chair, could I just add that to Senator Rogers point with respect to the Northeast Kingdom and it is it is certainly true that in certain respects markets can differ by region, and certainly differ by material and so that, to my earlier point to the that any relief is granted that is one way of being as specific and targeted and hopefully time limited as possible would be to look for solutions like that that may be more limited in the jurisdiction of the region or the material and the time. Thank you. Um, you know, the other thing called as 227, which tries to address this abysmally low rate at which plastics get turned into something useful again by looking at extended producer responsibility. A big lift that we would be taking up next year so 227 is now in finance and I hope to see it out within a week or two and so that we'll have the opportunity to move that forward because we know working as far upstream on the problem will help eliminate is just a much more effective process for us to be working. So, and Senator Bray one more question for you. Thus far, I don't think we've ever had anybody give us testimony as to where Vermont's number fives and less valuable plastics do end up and that's been one of my concerns. It's been very long. We've heard that there's only a market for the number ones, and I've seen reports where plastics are being burnt and improperly disposed of and are sitting around the country and giant cubes so it would be nice if someone in the agency or something could actually tell us what is happening to our low value plastics. Okay, great. So, Kathy Jamesons on the call will ask her to, I'm going to flag that question and we'll come back to it probably tomorrow, given our schedule for today, being so busy. And with that I'd like to move to Jen Duggan, Ms. Duggan. Good morning. Good morning, Senator Bray and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. For the record, my name is Jen Duggan, and I'm the director of Conservation Law Foundation, Vermont. I just want to start off by saying I really echo and support what my colleagues, Mr. Burns and Ms. Inc. have said, and also just that I really appreciated the hopeful vision that Ms. Ransom laid out in terms of Vermont's, you know, COVID recovery path forward. Our first priority has to be protecting the frontline workers in the solid waste and recycling industry. I think you've heard that, you know, that's a common thread that's run through all the testimony. And, you know, these folks are heroes every day. They deserve protection at all times, not just during the pandemic and so that really has to be and should continue to be our first priority. That said, a sweeping rollback of recycling laws and our composting laws, it just isn't the right approach. And I think it's really important to back up and consider why these laws were enacted in the first place. If we're not recycling, if we're not composting, this waste is going into a landfill and landfills pose a risk to communities through multiple pathways through ground and surface water discharges, for example. The more waste you have, the larger the landfill, there's more truck traffic and impacts to communities. You have more leachate that's generated. And I know this committee has spent a lot of time. Learning about the toxicity of leachate and the PFAS chemicals that are contained. Those aren't able to be removed when it's sent to a wastewater treatment plant. Those are discharged to our rivers and streams and they end up in sludge that's applied to farmland. So, you know, in production of single use plastic if we're not recycling that carries a whole host of serious public health consequences, you know, through the life cycle. So recycling and composting are not just nice things to do these laws were put on the books to protect public health and our environment. And so I think that's really important as you're considering these requests to wave these rules, why we adopted them in the first place. And if we're talking about COVID impacts, then the question, you know, the committee should really be focusing in on and zeroing in on is what are the legitimate public health concerns associated with COVID. And the solid and the solid waste and recycling industries and how can we put in place protections for workers without a rollback of these important laws. And a lot of the issues and concerns that are being raised today, really predated COVID and those are really important issues that the committee should be addressing, but it's not, it, you know, it's not helpful I think to confuse them with the pandemic. And so I think just to echo what you know Paul Burns said earlier, it's really important to be laser focused on the rationale and take those things one by one and being clear about what the problem is that you're trying to solve for. I just want to say again, you know, we absolutely recognize the risk that comes with handling people's waste and recyclables and that is that happens at all times, not, you know, not during a pandemic that's that's constant. And when it comes to protecting these frontline workers. I think you've heard from Mr. Letty and from Judith, Inc. and others that there are pretty simple solutions that in most cases are already even in place. So I don't want to go into detail again in terms of what those protections look like. For both haulers and folks that are working at waste processing facilities, but I think the, the takeaway from CDC guidance and OSHA guidance, and from industry organizations like the Northeast Resource Recovery Association is that we can protect frontline workers without setting back years of progress to reduce waste going into landfills. I think, you know, Mr. Letty and Ms. Ransom both talked about the need to think about what is the new normal and really pinpointing the, the highest risk in terms of face to face interactions and managing for those and making sure that there's people are wearing protective equipment and gear when they are handling these materials. But this is really the new normal. And I think that there are a lot of lessons to be learned across the country in terms of how we can do this right and protect our workers and keep Vermont moving forward. When it comes to the food scrap ban. I think that there really hasn't been discussion around the health related concerns with handling that material. It, you know, this is an area I think in particular where the, the issues have gotten confused in terms of what was a pre covert concern and what is a, you know, as a concern and an impact, you know, from the pandemic. And so I think we would strongly oppose any delay in the rollout of that law. These operations have had years to prepare delaying implementation now is only going to harm businesses that have been planning for years to meet this deadline. And as we are starting to reopen restaurants are coming back online construction is happening there's even less reason now to delay that law. And if there is really truly a unique in a case specific challenge to a business. That's the result of COVID-19. The agency already has the ability to address that on a case by case basis. And, you know, I think that we all recognize that this is an unprecedented crisis, and that there may be some instances where limited exceptions are might be unavoidable, due to the public health impacts, or other issues that arise but any restrictions should be directly related to the emergency, they should be narrowly defined, they should be time limited, and most important, they should be assessed on a case by case basis and not dealt with, with a broad rollback of a law. Judith, I'm glad she highlighted the lawsuit that our Attorney General has brought against EPA for putting in place just such a policy where it is really a broad rollback of our environmental laws and is not the sort of focus case by case analysis that would be appropriate to address compliance challenges and an emergency. This is authority that, you know, the state already has. I think I'll just, you know, say again I think this is a, this is a dramatic and it's a sweeping request, and I do strongly agree that the public should be given an opportunity to weigh in. I think this is a significant public health issue. And I just to highlight again, you know, be, I think it's really important to be able to articulate what is the COVID impact and how do we solve for that while we keep Vermont moving forward. I do think that there, you know, there's there are common sense solutions for us to protect our workers without rolling back these really important public health and environmental laws. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any committee questions for Ms. Duggan. Senator Rogers, you're going to get a gold star today Senator Rogers. I'm going for the participation star. Ms. Duggan was the second person to mention our attorney general. And, you know, I agree with not rolling back the EPA stuff, but I'm, I got to say I'm extremely disappointed that the attorney general's office is still sitting on the Chittenden County solid waste glass issue. The rest of the state paid big money to Chittenden County solid waste district and they disposed of the glass in, in their landfill, and then when Northeast Kingdom solid waste district has glass that they're paying storage on, we can't use it to cover the landfill which seems like a perfect use of a material that there's no market for. And it just, it just, I just don't think our agency has done a good job of rolling this thing out and using common sense and in making it work. And I'm, I got to say I'm disappointed in the attorney general's office that they've not gotten resolution on the illegal dumping of glass he may be doing some good things in one area, but I think they've dragged their feet on Chittenden County solid waste. So noted. Ms. Stuggin, you were, were you general counsel before for agency and natural resources, am I remembering that right. I was, yes. Okay. So tomorrow we're going to be talking, we're leading off, we have a witness or two may not have made it in today that we'll hear from but the focus tomorrow is going to be talking about language and remedies, including enforcement discretion. If you're available to join us at 10. I hope you'll consider coming back because you have experienced both inside and outside the agency that could be helpful to all of us as we thread our way through it. Great, I'll be happy to join tomorrow, Senator. Thank you. So we are, the agency is also deferring till tomorrow as well so that means our next person up is Ms. Crosby, I don't see Kim on the call any longer. All right, so not seeing her. She calling in but she thought there were two more witnesses so. Okay. Since we do have only 12 minutes left. We'll probably have her roll over till tomorrow and ask, invite Ms. directed to join us who's been patiently waiting in the wings. So, Mr. I take a morning thanks for hanging in there and if you can introduce yourself to the committee because I'm not sure if you've been in our committee in the last year. Thank you. So thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. I'm Natasha Duarte the director of the composting association of Vermont and as it has been a little while, or for those of you who are unfamiliar with the association. We advance the production and use of compost is vital to soil health through practices that contribute to water quality plant figure and environmental resilience. We try to demonstrate the value of compost through education policy outreach and partnerships that reduce waste capture energy and create jobs. We're a statewide 503 not for profit organization and we are a membership association. Our membership includes compost facility operators concerned citizens and solid waste management entities. Those entities are responsible for representing more than 75% of Vermonters. So just to be clear, I'm going to be addressing the issues in terms of organics and food scraps specifically and not. We don't, we don't get into the recyclables the other recyclables at all. Thank you. Well, while we understand and support the need for solid waste management transporters to safely manage and adapt to workforce shortage issues, or other concerns that are specifically related to covert 19. We as an organization do not believe that there is cause to delay implementation of the organics diversion as articulated in the universal recycling law. So in terms of of what that means or the experiences we've had. I'd like to point out that backyard and community composting is on the rise. I think delaying the residential diversion requirement is directly opposed to the work and the forward strides that have been made by several of the solid waste management agencies, our own organization and other organizations that have been working consistently and diligently to get the word out about residential organics diversion. We've developed guidance I've personally been involved in developing guidance for safe backyard and community composting management during covert 19. I've been working with DC the swimmies and others to share these guidelines. I also worked early on in the epidemic, the pandemic with the US composting council and others, and which resulted in a five series webinars, safety measures that around management of organics and how that can continue as an essential service during covert 19 times. I would like to just echo that safety measures have always been promoted but not necessarily always followed and so as the US composting council our organization and others have actually seen this as an opportunity to double down on the importance of these practices in the general at all times but especially during the pandemic. I agree and want to just restate that I have seen no data that supports that food scraps are particularly dangerous and that it's really on the plastic handles of buckets or totes or equipment. That is true. I believe whether it's for trash recycling or organic so I'm not sure why that would be called out separately. And while there have been no studies. Well the studies are in process right now there are no results on this specific strain of the virus hot composting has been shown to kill other types other strains of the coronavirus in as little as a minute. So this is actually I think there's a strong argument to be made that that composting is is a best management practice for dealing with viruses in many cases. It's, we believe that that composting and organics management is an essential service both for the solid waste management side as well as producing a soil amendment that supports the food system so it's sort of the double the double essential service. We know a lot of the other folks giving testimony have have talked about this but just very briefly we've been building to this July 1 date for a number of years, people have been getting into gear, and maybe discouraged by the delay or feel that their intentions were unnecessary through the annual Vermont organics recycling summit backyard and small scale composting workshops which have been consistently in high demand and selling out. Well attended webinars that were just convened last week for the International Compost Awareness Week and meetings that organic haulers or meetings with organic haulers that have been hosted by the different organizations throughout the state over the last couple years. We believe that significant progress has been made in preparing for residential organic diversion. It does create I think a lot of confusion among Vermont residents when potential changes and delays are raised when vpr mentioned that that this committee would be considering the delay. I recently started getting emails and phone calls from people wanting to understand what's going on and why. And I think aside from the early adopters who've been diverting for some time now a lot of people have been making plans to better manage their food scraps because it's the law. And I, I haven't seen any. Certainly a lot of of infrastructure and other issues to be worked out but I don't believe that that is reason enough to delay that date that we've all been working towards. I've been working in my current capacity for about three years and in that time what I've seen at least for the small scale generators is really that outreach and education has been prioritized over enforcement. And that the July 1 date of this year has been integral to that message. So I would just really encourage that we as a state stay on track and get the process started. And the need for outreach and education is by no means over as of July. So it's not like anyone I think thinks that you know this date is going to come and go and we're going to have 100% compliance. That's never, you know, been the reality but I do think that rolling back that date puts us at risk for losing the steam that we've been able to build up to this point and that it, it's hard for me to understand how it would would serve our collective goals. In terms of sort of workforce issues or or the need for flexibility in enforcement of the law, I think it is a little confusing in terms of talking about the you know there was at least some language previously mentioned about specifically having you know delays or not having these requirements need to be met during the state of emergency due to COVID-19, but we're in the process of reopening. So I think that we need to think collectively about how to safely reopen and move forward. Among our members, we have not heard of specific workforce constraints, there are definitely concerns and hesitations and fears around COVID-19, but I, you know, I know that a lot of people with the increased use of personal protective equipment. This is being effectively addressed through sanitation through wiping things down and it really is those those contact points, and there's also been changes made in terms of limiting the face, you know the customer interface or the face to face interface, which is one of the higher risk points. So I just want to, you know, say again because I forget which of the other folks said it previously but compost facilities are selling out of compost right now. In response to the pandemic victory gardens are on the rise. We have been coordinating our organization has been coordinating with partners for a victory garden campaign that really highlights the importance of soil health and all of the benefits that that brings. We believe that compost facilities are selling out of product and working hard to keep up with the demand. And as you've heard, because of the businesses closing there's also already been a reduction of the volume that some of these facilities are seeing so we believe that it's important to continue organic collection to ensure that we're prepared not only for the demand for compost now for the finished product now, but also into the summer into the fall. And, you know, I guess my hope would be that we could find ways to collectively support this opportunity to further educate Vermonters about compost and soil health and the importance of a robust local food system by keeping organics out of the landfill. And with that I'll just thank you again for your time and if anyone has specific questions I'm happy to address them. Thank you. Any committee questions from a story. Okay, I have one. Do you happen to know off the top of your head. How many Vermonters currently just compost at home. Yeah, there was a report out I believe last year and I think the numbers were in the. I'm sorry I don't have that data right in front of me but I think it was in the 50 or 60%. And I do know just to that point I've been receiving increasing calls with specifically because July 1 is coming. And I've been working with our member swimmies in terms of helping figure out even in this this time of COVID of doing either curbside or drop off or ways to source lower priced backyard compost bins. And so all of that is still working and we work specifically with an organization to provide compost tumblers for example at a 40% discount to Vermonters. And we've been doing that for the last two or three years so I think that the interest is only going to be growing and I think that that is one way that that organics can be managed very safely and effectively, especially in our rural areas. Okay, oh great. Well, seeing no committee questions. Just want to thank you for joining us and with that committee we have reached 12 o'clock on the dot. So thank you for everyone today for anyone who's still on the call again I want to go back to where I started the day which is to thank every sanitation worker at the curbside whether it's at the mirfs or the transfer points or composting facilities, wherever you are working we appreciate the work that you and your, your teams are doing and public health and safety will remain our top concern. We'll reconvene again tomorrow to take some more testimony and talk about some of the legal choices in front of us in terms of responding to today, what we heard, or could also be that we decide we need additional information and we're not acting tomorrow but anyway that's the next point is to say, given what we've learned, what are we considering as a committee doing and what are the tools out there that are already available in law and practice that could be used to address some of the concerns we've heard expressed and shared with the committee today. So with that I say thank you to everyone and we are adjourned for the day. Thank you. See you on the Senate floor at one. Chairman Judith Marrith Niles did us.