 The time has come for you to pay attention to the dangers that you may have to face. We can face in the green-outed state, like the seasons in the water and soil. We must take care of water and soil. Keep our money in our shoes. Keep our money in our shoes. If we spray herbicides along our way, we can take it all back to the cleanest days. Whenever blood is clean and blood is clean, everything that we borrow will be in the ring. Everything that we hold by using pesticides, chemical pesticides, each of which does our greatest need. Okay, legislators, those of us who think they can't do too much, we must protect them. My little mother, in its beating heart, with all its minutes and stars, we spent my green life. Thank you. Who would think we'd be asked to be having to make a choice between which poison we were going to ingest, taking a sip of water, taking a bite out of an apple. And yet, here we are in the people's house to talk about a class of chemical poisons called PFOS. The coalition here today is here to share the threats that are poisoning our people, whether it's in an apple, through our water, in our soil, in our clothes. It's even in the ringing. They're going to share the threats. They're also going to share some of the solutions being offered by legislators who are actually concerned about the health of our people, of Ramoners and our natural world, rather than protecting the interests of the polluters, the people propagating, proliferating these poisons. It was said famously by Margaret Mead that never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. And here today, I'm going to introduce you to the small group of committed citizens who are indeed going to change the world with their advocacy here in the State House. My name is James Ellers. I'm with Lake Champlain International, and it's now my honor to introduce my friend and colleague, Marguerite Adelman, with the Vermont Military Poisons and PFOS Coalition. This past Saturday, Montpelier hosted a climate justice rally. Today, we are bringing you the other half of that story, an environmental justice event focused on PFOS, pesticides, and toxins. As the coordinator of the Vermont PFOS Military Poisons Coalition, I'm pleased that environmental groups and activists have joined together to bring our state representatives messages about toxic substances. And I want to start with a riddle. You can't see, smell, or taste it. You can't destroy or contain it. You really don't know much about it, but it's harming you and your family. What is it? The answer? Purr and polyfloral alkali substances, better known as PFOS or Forever Chemicals. PFOS are a class of 15,000-plus man-made chemicals that do not break down in the environment. They travel in air, dust, soil, and water. And according to recent surveys, very few Americans have the knowledge that they need to protect themselves or their families. Since their discovery in the 1940s, they have been added to more and more products. Today, they are practically in everything. PFOS are linked to thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, high cholesterol, pregnancy-induced hypertension, weakened immune systems, reproductive health problems in both men and women, learning and developmental disabilities in infants and children, and cancer. As far back as 1950, chemical companies like 3M and Dupont conducted studies demonstrating that PFOS chemicals pose health risks. These industry studies and documents detail a history of deception that far exceeds that of the tobacco industry. PFOS is now truly a global problem. There isn't a place on Earth where you can't find PFOS contaminants. And Vermont has done a better job than most U.S. states in regulating PFOS, but we must do more to save our environment and improve the health of our citizens. Vermont has over 200 known, and this is only known at this point in time, contaminated sites, 60 public drinking water systems, many of them in school districts, five military bases, 36 landfills, 173 industrial sites, seven wastewater treatment plants, five airports, five fire protection sites, and eight Superfund sites. Our environmental groups have put together a list of demands that we want to see met within the next five years to ban PFOS as a class of chemicals by 2030. It is not good enough to regulate only five or six forms of PFOS. Chemical companies simply substitute a non-regulated form of PFOS when another one is regulated. We need to end sewage and wastewater overflows. Sewage and wastewater contain PFOS, pesticides, and other toxins. We need to reduce pesticide use by 50% by 2030. Bugs and weeds are becoming resistant to these chemicals, and we need to look for new management systems and practices. We need to ban landfills from releasing leachates into our waterways. Water is sacred, and we aren't yet able to destroy PFOS. All we can do is filter them, and that filter still needs to go somewhere. In other words, the PFOS is still here. We need to ban the use of biosolids on agricultural lands until they are proven safe. We don't need PFOS and pesticides in our food, poisoning us and our children. Consider the cost of health care for PFOS-related diseases, developmental disabilities, and infertility. Consider the cost of testing water, soil, animals, fish, food, and people for PFOS. Consider the cost of remediation to filter out PFOS again and again because no method to destroy these toxins has yet been invented. All of these costs should inform our legislators that the only logical and cost-effective step is to ban the use of PFOS as a class of chemicals, hold industry responsible for cleanup, and support municipal infrastructure improvements to water, wastewater, and sewage treatment plants. If a foreign government, instead of a chemical company, was succeeding in poisoning the American population at the rate we are poisoning ourselves, many would consider that an act of war. We are not on this planet to protect the global chemical industry. We are here to protect people and living things and to protect our planet as well as our future generations. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Marguerite. Next, John Brabant with Vermonters for Clean Environment. Thank you, James. Hi, I'm John Brabant. I'm the Regulatory Affairs Director for Vermonters for Clean Environment. We work on energy issues, environmental issues, and all with an eye towards citizen engagement. All with an eye towards citizen engagement and making sure that the regulatory processes that are available now that allow for citizen engagement are maintained. Vermonters for Clean Environment is a member of this coalition and has been working hard with these folks. Out of concern over PFAS, which for the younger folks who are studying chemistry in the audience is known as perfluoral alkyls, alkyls or polyfluorol alkyls. There are a class of chemicals that is, by EPA, statements and studies, highly, highly toxic to humans and other living species on this planet. And as has been said already, it's ubiquitous. It's in our air, it's in our water, it's in our food, it's in the food-growing soils, not only from atmospheric deposition, but also from the land application of sewage sludge, which has been called biosolids. Don't be fooled by that term. So one focus of our group is to see that legislation that adequately, fully addresses the concerns that Marguerite and James have raised makes it through this body, both the House and Senate and onto the governor's desk, to address PFAS. This PFAS contamination problem. Senate Bill S-27 has passed a Senate... 25. I'm sorry, 25. Not to be mixed up with 197. Has passed a Senate and is now over in the House. There's another bill that has been handed off to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee. There was a joint hearing on both S-197 and S-25 last week and there'll be more hearings on that. There'll be two bills this week in Senate agriculture and hopefully joined by Health and Welfare Committee Senators as well. Our goal is to see that these two bills are merged. The language in them is merged. S-25 addresses PFAS contamination in textiles, et cetera, but 197 is much broader. It requires the Department of Health to develop a database and seek out testimony from individual Vermonters impacted by the presence of these contaminants and develop a database to essentially build a case for why these things are of concern to us. There are a number of other provisions that are important. Also, that deal with drinking water contamination and addressing that more fully. Presently, the Vermont Department of Health's standard for PFAS contamination is a combined level of 20 parts per trillion in drinking water. That's the allowable amount of contamination in Vermonters drinking water that the Department of Health has determined as long as you keep it below that level is healthful. I would like to point out that the US EPA has issued an advisory that's already old. It came out in July of 2022. That is six orders of magnitude below what the current Vermont maximum contaminant level for drinking water is. That is 0.0004 parts per trillion that they advise should not be exceeded in drinking water. We would ask among other things that the drinking water standards arrived at by the Vermont Department of Health at least parallel what the EPA advisories are and they should not be any less strict. In fact, if they go anywhere, they should be more stringent. So that is an amendment we'd like to see to hopefully this combined bill. The bill again being moving the language in S197 into S25. I want to thank folks for showing up today and showing your support. Lastly, I'll let others speak, folks need to be aware, need to be cognizant that we cannot arrive at solutions to our greater environmental problems by focusing on one area of contamination. This legislature has been entirely focused over the last five, six years on our climate crisis. It's real. I think it's 100 times worse than it's been portrayed in terms of the deleterious effects of CO2 on our environment and our weather. That being said, the silver bullet, magic solutions that are being not only proposed but now are being forced upon Vermonters by 2030. You will not be able to buy a vehicle in this state unless it is driven by lithium ion batteries, essentially electric vehicles. Those batteries are heavily laced with PFAS. All these technologies are heavily laced with PFAS. Intentionally, they provide a benefit to their function. These high functioning lithium batteries function at that level. They get the hundreds of miles to a charge because of the presence of PFAS. This is something that the legislature has yet to investigate. We would ask that they look at all the implications of rolling out these renewable energy technologies on our landscape. The solar panels that are populating our landscape, there's called a back plate or a back panel on every solar panel, and they are coated with a PFAS contaminant. I'll let others speak, but just be aware that these single focus efforts at this legislature need to be broadened and we need to look at the entire set of environmental implications of human activity on our planet. Thank you. Thank you, John. Our next speaker with the Vermont Pesticide and Poison Action Network, Sylvia Knight. Thank you, James. Good afternoon. Speak right out. Good afternoon. Bonjour. Buenos dias. My name is Sylvia Knight. I live in Burlington with my beloved husband, Bob Wright. I'm a founding member of Vermont Pesticide and Poison Action Network, a coalition of activists around Vermont. Vermont PAPAN came together in 2022 on the issue of pesticide reduction, engaging with the state on the first vision of pesticide regulations in over 30 years. First revision of pesticide regulations in over 30 years. We declare a citizen's mandate to reduce pesticides because the agency of agriculture has never complied, never complied with a 50-year-old requirement to reduce pesticide use in Vermont and actually instigated the legislature's repeal of that 50-year-old law in 2021. The question arises, to whom are they accountable? Just to who are they accountable? We declare a citizen's mandate to reduce pesticides because every year the agency of agriculture reports use of over 1 million pounds of pesticide-active ingredients, not including the unidentified ingredients, which can be a large portion of the pesticide products used. Nor do the data include pesticides purchased over the counter by individuals. This accounting system must be reformed. Why now? Our pollinators are suffering, and without them we don't have food. International walkers are contaminated. Our food is contaminated. Our health is compromised in many ways, and PFAS are contaminating the pesticides used in Vermont. Once again, pesticides or PFAS are contaminating the pesticides used here in Vermont. We declare a citizen's mandate to reduce pesticides because PFAS and many pesticides are in our endocrine disruptors. They're missing with our hormonal systems at very low amounts. Affecting reproduction, development, immune systems, nervous systems, and causing cancer, pesticides like glyphosate mess with our gut microbiome. Making us more prone to disease and viruses and to other toxins. Many health limits set by EPA are essentially meaningless now due to the toxic combinations of pesticides and PFAS that endanger our creative abilities and our own genetics. And they kill our four-legged and weird relatives and contaminate international waters. This is environmental injustice to us all and to future generations. And it is time to cause systemic, to create systemic change. Our citizens mandate invites you and your neighbors to create pesticide-free lands to work with us to demand accountability and to honor the community of life on Earth now and for future generations. Please contact vt.papan.gmail.com. Thank you. Thank you, Sylvia. Our next speaker, Henry Ko. Henry's with Don't Undermine, Lake Mefremagog, otherwise known as Dumb. Thanks, James. I will read this. I don't have confidence in my own ability to ad-lib. My name is Henry Ko, chairperson of an all-volunteer grassroots environmental organization composed mainly of Northeast Kingdom and Quebec residents of the Northern Flowing International Lake Mefremagog watershed. I'm sorry. We formed in the summer of 2018 as a citizen opposition to the additional expansion of the private Coventry landfill. In spite of broad public opposition and oral and written comments and little public support for the proposal, Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation approved the 51-acre expansion proposed by the landfill's private owner. You know, we have only one landfill. That landfill has the politicians and the regulators over a barrel. There's no other option. So they continue to approve and approve. Dumb appealed the decision, but for lack of funds, entered legal mediation in the fall of 2019. The expansion was upheld, but the environmental court upheld a condition important to citizens on both sides of the border that a moratorium be placed on the disposal or treatment of toxic landfill leachate anywhere in the Mefremagog watershed effective through 2023 and since extended to 2026. Dump is supportive of all citizens and legislators' efforts to prevent PFAS bearing products from India and Vermont, which will constantly contaminate our people, our surface and groundwater, our soils and air as individuals as communities, we must take greater responsibility for the waste we generate closer to home. I'm going to repeat that. As individuals and as communities, we must take a greater responsibility for the waste we ourselves generate. We must reset our mentality of out of sight, out of mind for our garbage waste while the single landfill model may be business-friendly. It is decidedly people and environmentally unfriendly. We live in the Northeast Kingdom. We who live in the Northeast Kingdom live with Vermont's only permitted landfill, poorly sited just one mile up slope from the lake Mefremagog. To that landfill goes the largest portion of PFAS containing materials in our solid waste stream. An average of 100 semi trucks per day ply our state roads and highways each carrying 33 tons of garbage from all over the state and dump their loads unspected into the landfill. These trucks are hosts to PFAS, PFAS, our most toxic and dangerous invasive species, as well as thousands of other toxic contaminants, unable to break down or decompose highly mobile in water. PFAS are a perpetual threat to the purity of water in the lake Mefremagog from which 175,000 Canadians take their drinking water. This is a little known fact. Our neighbors in Sherbrooke, in Mefremagog and the central southern Quebec take their drinking water, use the lake Mefremagog as their drinking water reservoir and we have a Vermont outhouse one mile away from that lake poised on top of it. You can see why the Canadians are upset. This is not allowed in international law to export one's waste across an international border. Nor is it allowed in the Geneva Convention of War articles and associated articles as well. The three counties of the NEK contribute just 7% of the waste at the privately owned Coventry landfill. 73% of the 600,000 tons per year comes from the rest of Vermont. While 20% of our most toxic, toxic, latent waste, sludge and contaminated soils come from out of state. This is classic environmental injustice to those of us living in the Northeast Kingdom in Mefremagog's eastern township, Quebec. Orleans County is hosted Vermont's largest landfill for nearly 30 years. No locally as Mount Trashmore, the 129 acre landfill has less than four years remaining on its current permit to operate. It is time to plan now for modern and equitable solid waste policies for Vermont. We support H48, a bill in the House Energy and Environment Committee as the vehicle to form a solid waste study commission. This study commission will address waste issues comprehensively and recommend updated solid waste policies for Vermont. We at Dump support this coalition of voices for the protection of human health and the environment through joint attempts to prevent the impact, the import of PFAS, bearing materials and products into Vermont. Thank you. Thank you, Henry. We move from the Meagog watershed up north now to the Winooski watershed to the Buzz Ferber farmer from Berlin. Hey there, farmer. So I've been in Berlin for nine years farming. This will be my 10th season coming up. I've been in Vermont for 20 years and I come from Pennsylvania and remember very clearly when bio-solves were starting to be put on the land there. And there was a lot of people that were very upset and a lot of work seemingly went into it and a lot of the vested interests who were going to make money off spreading bio-solves put a lot of time into making sure that program was very well endorsed. And today, one of my good friends who ran that in private industry ran a very large program that is so upset at 90 years old. He just can't believe what he's been part of there with spreading of bio-solves. When I bought my farmer in Berlin, one of the critical things I was looking for was has this farm not had any bio-solves or any bad imports for quite a while? Unfortunately it had not. I would invite every one of you who is any interested in your own life, your own health, and your own safety to do a little bit more looking at what PFAS is due to you and where they are because they are literally in everything. And everything that keeps off water or moisture or grease, they are there. And so we have them all around us all the time and they were unknown or they were known but it was unknown that we would be in this state now 40, 50 years later after spreading all the bio-solves here for all this time. And that's not counting all the PFASs that we were putting in the water, in the air, in the land, and in the soil. And all that, it's a very toxic, very dangerous poison for us to be fooling with and we should definitely ban it entirely. There is no comprehensive list of what products we have that have PFASs in them. We don't have that list. We don't know who's using it where. But we do know it's being used virtually in everything because it's indestructible and it's repellent and extends the life of so many other products that it's in. So for the soil, for the trees, for the water, for the air, let's get rid of PFASs and all this other stuff. The landfill, you know, in nature, there is no... So eliminating the concept of waste is where we need to go. We need to have that as our goal. Not just reducing. Reducing is good. But how do we start to think about emulating nature so that we're not making waste that we have to get rid of or that will haunt us for centuries or millennium or forever? Thank you. Thank you, Buzz. Our next speaker, representing the swarm, Zorian Iqove. Evacue. I want you to say that again. I'm Zorian Iqove Gray, and I'm 13 years old. I've been a guest speaker on the Pollinator Report Radio Show to speak about my certified wildlife habitat garden, rewilding, and a youth's perspective on pollinator decline. I'm also a new member of the Pollinator Activist Group, The Swarm. I'll start with the question that I've been wondering about lately. When legislators make decisions, how far into the future do they think? To their next re-election or to the lives of their grandchildren into my generation's adulthood? How far into the future were they thinking when they allowed the use of under-tested DDT, causing cancer in the near extinction of our national icon, the bald eagle? How far into the future were they thinking when they allowed highly toxic PCB chemicals for over 50 years and then didn't test schools for them for another nearly 40 years after they're banning? I like to imagine what the world will look like when I'm as old as many of you are, but when the future looks scary, I feel betrayed. This dangerous short-term thinking is the unsustainable practices of conventional agriculture. Through monocropping, over-tilling and using harmful agrochemicals, modern agriculture manages to grow more food today by the huge cost of the future's vital pollinators and soil. I can't imagine a world without vanilla and chocolate or a Vermont without apples, pumpkins and blueberries, but without pollinators, these plants won't survive. In some places, like parts of China, pollinators have already been decimated and fruit trees only grow at all because workforces of humans laboriously pollinate them by hand. It's a losing battle. I understand the concern of the dairy industry that relies on GMO pesticide-treated seeds, but only in recent years have cows been eating corn or grain instead of natural grazing. Besides, grain and corn increase the methane cows produce, contributing to climate change and making their meat and dairy less healthy. But if we focus our research on organic regenerative farming, we will create a healthy future, protecting vital soil and pollinators and reducing the climate crisis. Looking at Vermont's endangered species list, I see many animals that I didn't even know existed. Water creatures like legendary lake sturgeons, giant salamanders called mud puppies and spiny soft-shelled turtles are endangered through overfishing, shoreline development and chemicals in the rivers. In land animals, like four species of bumbobees, five species of bats, and many once-common birds like the whipper whale, the nighthawk, menowlark, and upland sandpiper, all endangered through the industrial agriculture and its use of pesticides. The truth is that we have always had these animals in Vermont and our plants have co-evolved with pollinators. We are already losing many of these species and if we don't change our agricultural practices, the next generation may never get a chance to see them. And worse yet, our ecosystems will fail. But what if we do act now to stabilize our ecosystem? With the gradual and just transition, jobs will be created. And when I'm your age, my friends and I will live in a world with a rich diversity of birds, pollinators, and aquatic animals and will have more access to healthy food and water. Our state legislators, to change the trend, have a view that stretches into the future and consider the lives of us youth and all of the other creatures that we share this beautiful state with. Will future Vermonters blame your generation for decimating our essential pollinators and threatening our food systems? Or will they thank you for preserving our land and health? That's up to you. I want to end by thanking those of you who are sponsoring the important legislation we need to secure our future. And I hope the rest of you will too. Thank you. That includes the formal portion of our presentations. In summary, following up Zorian and her extremely powerful remarks, I would like to further call on the politicians. Politicians run and seek office because they're seeking power. And on behalf of all of those downstream, I would ask that the politicians use that power to protect the people and our natural communities instead of polluters. Will happily entertain any questions at this point? And then we have a sing-along. And then we have a sing-along for those who are interested. Thank you very much for attending today. The swarm, I believe, is going to finish with another song with us, the pollinator song.