 So I just want to do a brief introduction before we dive right into our panelists so you all know who they are. We have two very esteemed panelists today. So the first on the far side is Lauren Oates. Lauren is TNC's Director of Policy and Government Relations where she develops, supports, and advocates for science-based policy solutions to our changing climate. In 2020, Lauren was appointed alongside Dr. Dupini Jerome to the Vermont Climate Council as a member with expertise in natural hazards resilience implementation. Prior to joining TNC, Lauren served as Vermont State Hazard Mitigation Officer, working with home and business owners, municipal, regional, state, and federal governments to develop plans and fund projects to reduce hazard vulnerability across Vermont. Particularly noteworthy for this conversation, Floodyne actually brought Lauren to the lab. She lived here following topical storm Irene to assist the town of Waterbury with its long-term recovery training efforts. And has continued in the climate adaptation and flood resilience realm ever since. So welcome, Lauren. Dr. Dupini Jerome applied climate scientists by training Dr. Dupini Jerome's research interests intersect a number of interdisciplinary fields including hydroclimatic natural hazards and climate literacy, geospatial climate and land surface processes, all within the context of our changing climate. Dr. Dupini Jerome has served as this Vermont State Climatologist since 1997 and is the immediate past president of the American Association of State Climatologists. In 2020, she was appointed by the Vermont House of Representatives to the Vermont Climate Council as the member with expertise in climate change science. She continues to work with Vermont State agencies and municipalities and they're planning for adapting to climate change. She is an expert in floods, droughts and severe weather and the ways in which these affect Vermont's landscapes and people. She has worked extensively with K-12 teachers and students bringing the use of satellites, climatology and climate change to all levels of the pre-university curriculum. She is the lead editor of historical climate variability in impacts to North America. The first monogram to deal with the use of documentary and other ancillary records for analyzing climate variability and changing the North American context. Nationally, in 2022, Dr. Dupini Jerome was nominated to serve a three-year term on the board of atmospheric sciences and climate in the National Academy of Science Engineering and Mathematics. She was invited by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy program to be the presenter on the Climate Change Lead in the Way panel and the COP26 meeting in Glasgow, Scotland in 2021. She served as the lead author for the Northeast Chapter of the 2018 4th National Climate Assessment of the U.S. Climate Change Research Program and is an author of the National Water Chapter of the 5th National Climate Assessment. So, I just want to start off with a few questions for our panelists and then we'd really like to open it up to the crowd. We have Simba over here with a microphone so we can start passing that around. So, one of the questions that I have when I watch something like this is there seem to be a lot of focus on flooding disasters when people talk about the effects of climate change on Vermont. What are some of the other effects of climate change that we can anticipate in Vermont and do you see anything having the disruptive or destructive effect to our daily life as the recent catastrophic floods have had? So, do you mind if I start with you? Sure. So, first of all, thank you to everybody for coming out on this cold and rainy Saturday afternoon. In particular, thanks to those of you who live in Montpelio. I know there are a few of you here in the audience and before I answer, Tom's a really long question. I just wanted to say my heart goes out to you. I wasn't able to visit until about a month ago and just driving through Montpelio and going to the State House, it was really surreal. That's the only way I can come up with for that. The humidifiers are still going and I can only imagine what you're still going through as you drive through, as you look at your homes, as you look at your businesses. So for me, on a personal level, I just wanted to say my heart goes out. My heart really does go out. And in thinking about that and thinking as a scientist, what are some of the other things that we are looking at in terms of our change in climate? Yes, floods are one of those pieces and we'll talk maybe a little bit more about what does it mean to have one in a hundred year event, possibly more than one time in a given year? What does that physically mean? But also remembering that just before the floods in July, we were dealing with drug conditions. And our farmers were probably about to ask for a drought disaster declaration because of how severe that drought was. And it's not only this year, it's in previous years we've seen it. So we're seeing how the ways that droughts are creeping upon us are actually changing. And so that's one of the hazards that we're always looking at. And if you think back even a few months before, we were dealing with frost conditions. And we know that our apple crop produce is actually very affected by the frost that were taking place in the spring. And so as we think about what do we do as people in Vermont, and we think about all the various hazards, there are so many effects affecting different parts of the state differently. One that did affect the entire state was wildfire and smoke. And as a climatologist looking at these events sort of unfolding, and trying to make sure that we're looking at this from a system-wide perspective so that every hazard does not catch us by surprise, doesn't catch our economics, doesn't catch sectors by surprise, just making sure that we are trying to capture how these events are changing so that we know how to pre-state and pre-plan for the next particular hazards coming out of the fight. Always hard to follow up after Lesley Ann. I have very little to add, although I've been an asterisk, especially on the way that we do talk about flooding in this state. The images that we just saw, the drone footage, I'm also a Montpelier resident and they are still striking to see these three and a half months later, two and a half months later. We think of flooding like that often as a species. We think of flooding as inundation style flooding where the rivers spill over their banks and they come up in a really vertical type of manner. In Vermont, actually, even though this is what we're talking about today and those are the images that we just saw, that's actually not our number one natural hazard. Our number one natural hazard is fluvial erosion flooding and that's the really violent, quick, extremely dangerous flooding that we see because of our steep topography and our very narrow river valleys and that's what the majority of our flood damages upwards 75-80% of flood damages in Vermont typically come in that style. And then one more thing to consider just the lasting impacts of how strange this year in particular has been is that we're right next to Lake Champlain right now, which is at a pretty high level for this time of year. If you look at the hydrograph, you'll see it typically starts to really decline starting in July and drops before we go into the winter months, which is actually really important because then when the lake levels lower, it's able to receive a lot of the snow melt coming in March, April, May and June of next year and because it is so high now, if we have a really snowy season, which we love to have as Vermonters, that will have huge implications, lasting implications on our lake shore here. So it's not over yet even because of how much water we received after being in a drought, as we said. So the even flooding in Vermont, I want to say, is there are a lot of different types of hazards, hazards of planning and how we consider how we live along our waterways. And just to add one more piece, because I'll already brought up that Lake Champlain, the amount of water that came down to Lusky and made it to Lake Champlain was so much, we actually set two new records on Lake Champlain as a result of the July floods. So again, it's something that we're looking at because it's critically important as a kind of an experience. See, there's a question. Yeah, do we have, were you saying it's just erosion when it's down slow or is there actually a loop back in here too? Yes, we also have quite a bit of landslide hazards in the state. Yeah, we have a hydrological problem in the state that is multi-passive and depending on where you live, rural, urban, upstate, downstate, it looks a little bit different in all of our towns. So I'm really looking forward to this. Just to jump in before we take a good question, I see a lot of familiar faces here, but some of you may be new to the Nature Conservancy and maybe just talking to zero-lives for aerobatics. Tom, do you want to just really quickly speak to, really quickly speak to some of the things? Really good. And the zero is not cool, of course. Who we are is what we do at the Nature Conservancy. Yes, yes. Thank you for that introduction. I was so excited to introduce our panelists. I forgot to introduce ourselves as the Nature Conservancy. Yes. So the Nature Conservancy is a global organization. We're actually the largest global conservation organization in the world. We currently exist in 77 countries and in all 50 states we have chapters. In Vermont here, we have protected 300,000 acres of lands and waters in Vermont. And 90% of that has been turned over actually to public lands. So a lot of the state wildlife management areas, state forests, things like that, that you all know and love, Camelson, Green River Reservoir, Regie Glory, a lot of those areas were protected by the Nature Conservancy. And we are, as we evolve, are in so many different realms now, not just in direct land and water protection, but we also work closely in our policy work in Lawrence. They'll be talking today. Working with our legislators to really propose robust legislation that can really help protect nature here in Vermont. And I also want to introduce just a few people here that are with us today. We have a couple of our board members and advisory council members. So we have Lucy Landon, who is on our advisory council there, and Beverly Whittle and Linda McGinnis, who are both on our board. And I hope I'm not missing anybody else that popped in in the last minute. Oh, yes. And Rhonda Bergman, Dr. Rhonda Bergman, who is our director of science and freshwater, is here. She did pop in the last minute, so I didn't miss anyone. So she works among our staff at the Nature Conservancy. So I just want to, before I turn it over to more audience questions, I just want to ask one more question for you all, which is, you know, the bike shop over there mentioned the 1927 flood. And it's something that I've always kind of wondered about the context of the 1927 flood. I assume no one in the audience was around for that one, but I'm sure many of you were around for the 1992 flood in La Puyo here, that hit Montpelier in particular really hard, and it was, from my understanding, not dissimilar to what we saw on the video today. And then there was, in 2011, a tropical storm like me, Irene, which was less devastating per se, to Montpelier than maybe water barriers to other communities, and now these new floods. Can you talk a little bit, kind of, about some of these patterns that we're seeing in these floods, and in particular, what was different about the 1927 flood and do we have any of those same conditions that are set out today? Well, the 1927 flood is what we call the flood of Reca, and it stayed like that until Irene came in 2011, and Irene was really concentrated in some part of the state, and so that eight plus inches that we saw in Irene actually set up the flood of Reca conditions for the south, but the 1927 flood still remains north. And the 1927 flood was interesting because it occurred in a year that there was a drought here, and then we see like 200% of the November rainfall in two days. And so we went from drought to this massive amount of flooding as a result of how much rain fell in a short period of time. So it starts to sound familiar with what happened this year as well. And I think one of the things that is important to remember, it's not how frequently it occurs only, but how much rain actually fell, and how quickly that got into the lakes, ponds, rivers, and streets. So when you hear that 100-year event and you hear folks say, oh, but we had a 100-year event in my life, and it's not going to happen again, I think the understanding needs to shift a little bit that the one in a 100-year event is an actual amount of rain that falls. And so let's say it's 8.2 inches, right? So if 8.2 inches fell today and that considers a 100-year event, if two weeks from now 10 inches falls, then that also exceeds that 100-year event. So calling it 100-year storm is a little bit of a misnomer because it makes us think as humans that it can't happen again. When it shifted that a certain amount of rain falls and it's large enough and it falls quickly enough and it's concentrated enough that yes, you will get a point. And after you. The only thing that I'll add to that is actually, since we're referencing back to the video, one of the notes in the video said when these business owners are considering whether or not they want to rebuild, rebuild in kind, change the way or place that they are going to rebuild, they said, you know, especially in a place that might flood again and I would just say again as a Montpelier resident, as a Vermont resident, it will flood again. That is something that we all have to really come to terms with. And 100-year flood is a misnomer. It's easier to really understand, especially for statistically challenged people potentially like myself when we say the 1% annual chance flood, that's just, it feels very academic and isn't necessarily accessible to the general public. So we really need to figure out a better way to communicate what the true risk is to flooding in our communities. But, yeah, I would change that little piece that I'd say to in a place that will flood again because Montpelier will flood again. Linda, before I get to you, I'll ask you a question next, but I lied before when I said I'm going to open up the question because I'm so curious about some of these things myself and I'm directing my questions at the end that I have a question that I want to ask Laura which is, so what do we do about this and what are some of the things, especially from a policy perspective, what are some of the changes that we can make? I'm so sorry if that was a question. What are some of the changes that we can make and what are some of the things, I mean, conservative advocating force that we can both kind of use nature to adapt to our new climate reality but hopefully start to steer the course of our new climate reality. What's the end? Are you sure you don't talk about policy? It's a good question and it kind of, coming off of your question for Lesley, I don't just focus on what we have learned from the past from the 1927 flood from the 1992 flood from Tropical Storm Irene, so much of what we experienced during those floods should and must inform how we're going to experience the next floods as a state. I mentioned that different towns have different types of flooding, so how those towns choose to plan for, develop and respond to disasters, especially flooding, will look different. And yet there are things that we know that we could and should be doing differently. We inherited, all of us in this room here today, we've inherited Vermont's historic settlement pattern of close-knit communities largely very close and snug to our rivers, which on drier and drier seasons and drier years is actually really quaint. It's part of the eucolic nature of Vermont that generally feels really great to be so close to our water, it keeps us connected to nature, it keeps us connected to one another. However, because of the way we built and because of how closely we built, we're going to continue to have these disasters. So looking forward, we need to think differently about where and how we develop. So there are places like Montpelier that have any, any, you all know is Montpelier, right next to me, any road you take, within a mile and a half, you're going to start climbing up a steep hill, and we just, all of that water catches in downtown Montpelier. That's different than other towns in the state. We all have a different topography and different relationship to where the nearest hill is, but we do know that there are places where we have an opportunity to allow our rivers to slow down and store their waters both before and after they hit our communities. And so we need to find places where we can reconnect our rivers to our floodplains. 75% of Vermont's Mack rivers are actually disconnected from their floodplains. And what that means is all that water is getting forced into hyper-managed and very fast, quick, dangerous water conditions. We don't have access to their floodplains where they naturally spill out and release their energy. Our villages are often our floodplains. And so in the future, we need to find those areas that we have not yet developed and protect them from development. Not only so, the people who would otherwise inherit those problems that we created for them don't, but so that we have those spaces to store water and protect our existing other advocates. We have great representation within our Vermont legislature. They now have a mandate because of these floods, truly to reconsider our mandate's patterns and policies. And so we'll be working on making sure that those areas of highest value for river and flood vulnerability will be protected in the future. And the only thing about it is that we consider this as being a really local area who works primarily on a watershed scale. And when we think of a watershed scale the things that we do are going to affect folks downstream. And you would like folks upstream to be also thinking of us. So one of our joint colleagues always says do unto the folks downstream as we would have the folks upstream do unto you. Once again. Your question was what I wanted to ask but I can go a little further than that and ask you to give a couple of examples of where those watersheds have been protected and what happened in this flood. Just to give an example of positive action that we'd like to have a lot more of and then to just give a shout out to some of the policies and things that we've been talking about. Thank you Linda. I have two great examples in different parts of the state. First many of you have maybe heard of how well Middlebury fared during Tropical Storm Irene. Middlebury was one of those places that downstream in Addison County which was severely impacted. They did pretty well even though they are close to the Otter Creek because prior to Irene they invested as a town, as a community in doing quite a bit of restoration work and protection work for their Otter Creek swamps and flood plain. As a student whose name is escaping me and maybe you've ever been or less than I can remember at UVM did a study to understand what was the lost value add. What did Middlebury because they did that proactive work to avoid damages and she had found through doing that work that businesses alone in Middlebury actually avoided $1.8 billion in damages or is that right? That's right. That doesn't include public infrastructure damages which are incredibly expensive it didn't include damages to private homes and a couple of business owners talking about prohibitive flood insurances for FEMA. Middlebury is a really positive success story for figuring out places to store and protect natural spaces that act as sponges while protecting their development downtown. As is Browbro who is a more recent example they have invested it's a pretty densely packed which is unlike a lot of places in Vermont area and they still are able to find along the highly erosive Whetstone Brook a couple of places for flood pay restoration and reconnection. They moved out of the Melrose Terrace community which was a community of five or six buildings and over 100 residents who are 55 plus in a really dangerous area that experience repetitive flooding they moved them out to higher and drier land and used the vast area to drop the flood plain and allow more of the waters to store there and they found a spot just downstream to do the same and they found that the engineers who worked on those two projects together found that those two projects are going to reduce flooding in downtown Browbro by 6 to 12 inches during future flood events. So non-trivial there are places that we can do these types of projects elsewhere in the state that would have a lot of conditions on not only reducing flood but also reducing the need to move people out of where they currently live where they created their communities. Why don't I go to the other person? Yes, I'm sorry. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to hear your critique. I do have an eight questions. One is the part of the community I've been meeting with and they're distressed with this exact negative approach to the future and then with the extent of the run-off that came down with Lucy into the flood in Champlain how is that going to affect our water quality in the future? I'm not talking about E. Cola that's what they measured here but I want to go back to the general questions of phosphorus loading and all those other questions. Thank you. Okay. That's a good question. I'll answer them to the best of my knowledge. First by saying one of my colleague on the Vermont Climate Council is a farmer and the three of us have worked very closely on trying to help develop policies and plans and just creating more conversation around the impacts that our agricultural community is going to face. A lot of our flood plans and river corridors are in agriculture and a lot of our prime agricultural soils are also in our flood plans because that's where historically we have deposition and nutrient turnover which is actually long-term very healthy for crop management but in those flood years is really meaningful and detrimental and because of other policies that I do not work on but support that really try to protect and keep businesses that are in agriculture a float in these trying times our farmers are really living on the edge they live day to day to keep their livelihood and this flood and floods that they've experienced in the recent couple of decades have been really devastating to them we need to figure out places where they can continue to graze cows or grow vegetables but they also need to be investing in both durable but also sustainable approaches to how they're managing our land and making sure that they have a diversification of crops as they had mentioned earlier late freeze in May devastated apple crops across the state and just making sure that we're empowering them and supporting them because in a changing climate we need to make sure that we're also getting a lot of our food more locally and that we are bringing all up from Mexico or Florida or California so policies to support that will be really important in changing climate and that's the question I'm forgetting just give me like nutrient load nutrient load and yes well well from a policy perspective you just really served it up thank you so Lake Champlain has a TNDL which is a total maximum daily load plan for phosphorus runoff into the lake and that plan has a whole bunch of actions policy mechanisms that can be taken and the number one policy mechanism to reduce phosphorus loading in Lake Champlain and therefore allow the state to meet its EPA environmental protection agencies required minimum or maximum rather daily loading is to protect our river corridors from development and so there's it does and there is a difference between building our hardened infrastructure undersized culverts, undersized bridge homes, propane tanks etc etc than a feel that isn't well buffered and not managed if you implicate tile drains and I'm starting to lean into a space that I know a lot less about I know other people in the audience might so if anybody wants to jump in on agriculture please feel free to but yes there we need to look at our river corridors and as you said whole watersheds when we're thinking about nutrient runoff and how it eventually makes it to the lake do you know that the water quality do you want to talk about that I was going to come down to Mike Beverly here we've got a lot of experts in this field it sounds this quiet put it very close thanks for the question I will just answer by saying there's quite a lot of research going on at UVM and the water quality today so we know that when we get these big events there's a long term legacy that can last for hundreds of years with sediments and the plundering that will end up well I will also say that maybe a silver lion is in about 2018 the basin program to quantify the depositional benefits of connected floodplains and we have a study that has sites across the entire lake and we've been lucky enough to get flood events and see the quantity of material that's actually deposited in the plains during floods and it's quite substantial and so it's part of what's motivating us and the former director of our rivers program and Mike really pioneered this work of let's give our rivers room to move and let's take advantage of this natural infrastructure for both the flood mitigation impacts but also the water quality benefits and we have real data that shows that we can trap a lot of material on these connected floodplains and mitigate those downstream impacts and what she's talking about I just want to ask Mike if there's anything you want to add as the director of our rivers program for more than a few years to the possibilities thank you I think the good news is some of the same things that we've been talking about in terms of actions their co-benefits that work hand in hand and they can go with each other the key word is storage I think it was mentioned a couple of times here that many things have happened in our watersheds to reduce the amount of storage both water and sediment and it does mean giving up some room for the river both in the urban setting in hopes that by doing so we reduce the energy of the river the place to spread out the plant life on those river quarters and floodplains can absorb sediments and nutrients and then the lands that are outside of these river quarters but yet still in our valleys might be accessible for our other community needs including the department the policy goals that we pursued with our partners in the river's program and I think the water quality work that we've done has been part and parcel with our efforts to reduce flood damage thank you two people waiting for information I'll go with you can we speak to the sailor can I also switch? this is pretty short for any statistically challenge I think this coming year is just as likely to flood as it was to happen this year so the fact that it occurred doesn't mean now you have another 100 years until it happens again every single year is just as likely and that's before you account for any climate change so it's just going to multiply and at least in other states FEMA is notorious for having poor flood maps the first street foundation I believe and risk factor have developed some further information that's more accurate I don't think it has anything to run off but hopefully you guys are also working with them to see your maps and your validation strategies thank you for waiting patiently thank you I very much appreciate what you're saying about the watershed and the flood plains and the significance of doing work in those areas but I'm also curious about the built environment for example in Montpelier they had this history of flooding there and what steps have they taken in advance of this latest flood to make some changes to the built environment in order to make the built environment more resilient to the flooding I understand that the transportation center worked fairly well the new transportation center and down-screen housing did as well I'm just wondering what things you've seen that are really working for the built environment so for Montpelier a couple of things have happened since the 1927 flood which was very devastating for the town first was actually the development of the dam through a very massive dam that was built there there are all sorts of implications to dams and how they change our river systems in the state and they change the water habitat there are a lot of implications to dams but that dam was built primarily as a flood retention mechanism it nearly was breached which I would say there was a miscommunication but it does not mean the dam is going to fail in July it just means it was performing as it should and holding back as much water as it could before a spillway would have been used which would have exacerbated flooding in downtown but would not have been catastrophic as a dam breach would have been so a dam was built and that was one of the reasons why Irene Montpelier did okay but beyond that it's really about what we're doing in the future for flood inundation we have opportunities to you mentioned the transportation center which is right down our river in downtown Montpelier too but they built, they elevated to where their first floor in livable space was so the first floor is really the transportation where buses come in you can build in things like flood proofing like flood vents that allow river that allow flood water to actually flow through and under almost like across states you allow the property to flood essentially there are safe ways to do that that reduce hydro-static pressure too so you don't have to worry about structural integrity in any buildings I think and hope that a lot of businesses downtown really is not to store much of anything in their basements now because basements will continue to flood even at first floor stop so it's while you need space to house that you should not put your utilities down below the flood plain and those are small things small elevation flood proofing that can't be done and those are things that when we consider places like Waterbury which is also largely a town that's impacted by that inundation style flooding that's what they've done they invested in some home elevations so the homes have been built at a higher grade and therefore can withstand future flood damages on that there are places that are kind of regularly damaged the first floor is several feet below the flood plain that could be cost prohibitive to do flood elevations and that's if there's an opportunity for a buyout there or you can purchase the home demolish it and allow that space to just be flood plain in the future we can't do that at mass scale I think you probably have something like a buyout that we would need to do across the state and we already have a housing crisis so where will those 10,000 families move so we really need to look at different opportunities for storing flood plain or storing flood waters so that those areas that are already built were you able to attend the three different sections in Montpil have you been involved in that experience I don't know there were three sections in Montpil to actually, I think the first session was a reading session. The second session was, OK, let's go up to see what we can talk about. And then the third session, let's get some solutions on the table. And it was interesting to hear a lot of ideas before. Like, should we move to high school, for example? It's not in the middle of the function itself. Should it not even be there? And then another interesting suggestion was, let's learn from other places that are either the low C level, that have done creative things to manage more of them, or have been funded in the past. And that's sort of learned from that. So I think that was a sort of critical time to really get all these ideas on the table to make some really, really hard decisions. I don't live in Vermont, but what we see around the country is that a lot of these kind of climate crisis events are impacting marginalized and minoritized communities, more than everybody else. You know, they're impacted most and harm the most when a crisis happened. They're less able to rebuild and then less able to invest in the future and kind of future proof. So I'm just curious, locally here, what are the examples of those disparities have you seen, and what kind of policy solutions are there? So I was able to base the testimony of the Senate's Economist Committee two days ago. And that sort of came up as one of the things that we put in front of the center, because this is October, so it's ready on the October. We're getting into winter. And we have a large population of on-house or housing insecure members of our population. And I think when we think about some of the peoples who are marginalized, but the front end, front line, are vulnerable. I think now's the time to actually really think about what are the strategies that we need. And some are more immediate than others, right? But all of it could be important. I really appreciate the question. Thank you for asking it. Two discrete examples. First, hearing Leslie and I say it's an all-hazards approach I'll back it up for flooding and say that the Vermont Health Department has done a lot of work around the public health impacts of climate change in Vermont. And actually I found that there are other hazards that we're experiencing, and it might be surprising, maybe especially as a non-Premontor, but the Premontor is two to hear that one of our most problematic to vulnerable population hazard is prolonged heat events. So it's actually not that like, whoa, we had a random day, or it was 95 degrees, and it was really hot, it's, we had a week and a half that never got below 78 at night and was topping over 90. And those prolonged heat events have a significant demonstrable impact on ER or emergency department visits, especially for our elderly population. We are the first or second oldest state in the country. So that is a disadvantaged group of vulnerable group to that climate hazard. And the other to bring back to flooding and a discrete example, you're right, especially the financial vulnerable Premontors among us. We have 12% of our mobile homes, mobile homes and mobile home parks are located in our flood plains over the corridors and only 4% of our single family homes are. It's a threefold increase in the vulnerability that demographic experiences of the month, which is really troubling, not only because, well actually, for exactly the reasons you said, they're the least financially and socially able to prepare for or respond to the color from flooded events. So looking at how we work with those mobile home parks especially and the dynamic that's really hard often, which is mobile home parks themselves, the land is owned by a mobile home park owner, but the structures that are owned them are owned by individual property owners. And that creates a huge, really problematic and really unfortunate bureaucratic problem in accessing a lot of federal funds. And that's a problem that Central Premont Office's economic opportunity has been working on quite a bit to figure out how to reduce the vulnerability of those groups and make sure that the policies that we advocate for really consider them first and foremost. Hard stop into this 158. Is there a lot of movies to show in 215? Okay, let's push a little bit that way. Why don't you go to next question or contribute to the policy? Yeah, thank you. Thanks for all these good questions and wonderful responses. I just wanted to contribute a little to the point about putting solutions on the table. And a lot of the dialogue around how are we looking forward to where and how our towns are developing into the future. One of the things that Mr. Klein has contributed to our thinking around is how and where we help our individual municipalities and towns make those decisions. And right now, as you know, it's really in their hands to decide how we develop within what we're called our river corridors of that area where the river likes to move. So one of the things that we've been working on together with the Vermont DEC is to say, let's help municipalities figure out this mapping to say where is it safe and where is it really gonna be hazardous and difficult for our communities to rebuild. And let's put that into some more robust maps that then can be used for zoning and land use planning. And also let's help municipalities who currently have the authority to decide whether or not they're going to adopt regulations to protect those river corridors. To do so, this is another equity issue in that municipalities that don't have the staff or the money or the time or the expertise to work on this, their communities can be disadvantaged because of that. So while we're working at a state level to say how can we support state-wide some of these decisions, let's also reach out and engage with our municipalities. So if anyone's interested in that, feel free to reach out to us as well. And I wanted just to say one more thing about the dams. So thank you for the comment about the dam. I just want to remind us ourselves that we only have a handful of dams in our state that are actually flood water retention dams. Very, very tiny fraction of our nearly 1,000 dams in the state. And so in many of the dams that are in the state are actually at risk of causing more flooding and damage during heavy rains because they have not been updated or they need repairs. Vermont Dam Safety has recently gone and looked at all of that and found many that we need to look at. So it's just important to bear in mind that not all dams are here for helping us to be safe from floods and we need to advocate for the ones that are helping us and also work on removing the ones that are causing risks. Yeah, thank you. That's a really good point. I'm so glad you clarified that on that. So with that, it looks like we are ready to turn this room over. So I just want to thank everybody so much, especially our panelists. Oh, Lauren's gonna say one more super quick thing. Very good. Our mom would be so proud of me for doing this. I have a cut out in seven days that I really wanted to read. Just to tie back to the video before we turn over, the very end, the business owner mentioned that we're living at war with our river and that's how we have treated our river historically and the only way we're going to change our flood water building together is that a community of communities is to live with our river and not against it and I'm really kind of pardoned by this poem from a 13-year-old that I'm just gonna be very quickly that shows that we are changing as a species and how we live. The river speaks. There's a web and it holds us. Pieces come apart so we help rebuild it. We are a species that has forgotten our place on the web so the earth reminds us. It shows us that there are some lines that we do not cross and if we do cross them, the water rises, pushing us back. The water comes back and it takes. It's the destruction of what we've built but also the reconstruction of the natural world. The water roars, it cries and it heals even when we feel hurt. That's Ursic Olmrose from Hardwick. She's 13, which is so inspiring. I think we can say that we can talk about that. So I'm getting it right there and thank you all.