We're on the record. Okay, so we're ready. Yeah, we are ready. Great. Well, thank you, thank you for having me here. My name is Seth Jensen. I am a professional planner. I currently work for the even planning commission in Morseville, Vermont. Just to begin, I'm also a member of the local planning commission in the town of Westburn and on the executive committee of the Vermont Planners Association. So I wear many hats in planning in the state of Vermont. I'm here to provide some information and background on that experience and that perspective, but the testimony is my own. It's not an official position of either that the local planning commission or my employer. So one of the reasons that I did want to appear before this committee is because it's very important to look at Act 250 from the perspective of our smaller communities that are collectively becoming referred to as the other Vermont. I've spent a large amount of my career working in those communities and the needs and issues are similar but also have important distinctions and unique considerations that really need to be on the table for Act 250 reform to be effective. So before getting into the nuts and bolts of Act 250, I do want to just take a moment to talk about one of the charges of the committee that began meeting 18 months ago, which is the vision of Vermont in the next 50 years and specifically what is the vision of our rural communities 50 years from today. And that is important because many of those communities are currently struggling. They're struggling with the decline of their grand list. They're struggling with the decline of the population. They're seeing a opioid crisis that is tearing apart the fabric of many of our communities. We're hearing every day about challenges of small farms and general stores. But that image is not a complete image as well and it does not fully represent my experience working with those communities. I have had the honor of being able to work with more than a dozen small towns in the state of Vermont and see the ability for well-thought-out planning and community engagement to unlock the potential of those communities. And in every case have seen after planning process new energy and many times new development that is in keeping with the character of the communities while creating opportunity jobs and housing in areas that at one time were passed over as forgotten. Most recently in my own hometown, Westford, the first permit in the last 20 years in our town center was issued for a general store on our common. The story in Vermont is that general stores are closing. That is true, that is the trend. But we have at least one example that is beating that trend. In the Memorial County's County seat, Hyde Park Village, at the same time the general store in Westford opens. There will be a new restaurant on Main Street opening. Again, this is a village that was considered undevelopable for various reasons 10 years ago. That is proven not to be the case. So the question then comes, how do we harness that energy and what role can Act 250 reform play to harness that energy? And this is where I think the important distinction between our smaller towns and the more urban communities come is that much of our current discussion really focuses on do we expand jurisdiction or do we reduce jurisdiction? And for some of the smaller communities, really the better question is how do we make the process more predictable for smaller applicants? Are these are not large developers doing these projects in these communities? They're often very small applicants, often independent people who are only gonna go through the Act 250 process once in their lives. And many of our smaller towns and villages just simply don't have the administrative capacity or the infrastructure or the financial resources to obtain what's required for the exemptions. But we still need to make sure the process works for them. So that's what I would like, I will spend most of my time talking about. And there's an important element of Act 250 to consider here. And that is that in many ways Act 250 has been beneficial for world communities in ways that perhaps we don't discuss enough. Act 250 ensures that smaller communities are unequal footing when there are large projects in their towns. I'll give an example, in Main Street, in Johnson Village, Maple Fields had an application to redevelop the main block of that village. Their initial application was very typical, suburban strip type layout that was not consistent with the community's vision for that area. To their credit, Maple Fields worked with the community to revise that site plan to one that fit with the streetscape that did account for pedestrian access and also accounted for the river on the other side. But you know the fact that there was an Act 250 process that that community would have standing in probably contributed to that decision. Next door in Hyde Park, when the McMahon Chevrolet dealer was looking at expanding Act 250 and the local zoning led that business to redevelop a former industrial site rather than locating in a green field. The result of that was that wetlands that were impacted by the prior development which occurred before we really understood that the benefits and impacts to that development wasn't anything malicious that was done by the prior owner, but it was an impact. We're repaired and the modern stormwater system actually reduced the amount of stormwater and phosphorus entering our watershed and entering the Lake Champlain watershed. You all know that's important for many reasons. And there are of course counter examples of applicants who run into challenges or conflicts with other state permits. Can we have a question? Yes. That's the LaMoyle River watershed. The LaMoyle River watershed, yeah, yeah, thank you. So my first piece that I'd like to just talk about is how do we get to those good outcomes in a more predictable process, especially for the small applicants. Now do I control the screen? Okay, yeah. Okay. You can zoom in if you want to. Okay. Bigger also. Okay. If you're talking about a particular parent. Yeah. If you want us to read it, we also have it on our iPads. You too, okay. I might just refer to you to that because I'm very bad at being a millennial and this stuff kind of freaks me out. It's better now. So you can just slide it where you are if you want. Okay, great. So one of the reasons that, one of the changes that's happened since Act 250 was adopted is that when Act 250 came to be, most communities did not have robust local planning or zoning. That has been a big change over the last 45 or so years and has been beneficial in shaping development. But as that local planning and zoning has become more robust, so have the chances for conflict. One of the right ways several years ago that, that the legislature has attempted to address that is by creating this concept, not a concept, but a definition of an existing settlement. And on the last page, there's a table that I is a generalized partial list or overly simplified of various criteria where whether you're in an area for development or outside an area for development, how different criteria are applied may differ. One of the challenges is that that's not necessarily consistent across agencies. And in some cases, the distinctions may lead to interagency. They don't want to use the word conflict, but it's not a better word for it. So we'll use the word conflict. And it's really better to deal with those issues through the planning process, rather the regulatory process. That way, when you have a small applicant appearing before the district commission or the local board or for a state permit, you kind of know what's expected before going into it. And that can save a lot of time and a lot of resources for a small applicant. And just when I talk about small applicants, bear in mind that in Act 250, if you're doing a commercial or industrial development, the jurisdictional trigger varies whether you're in a community with zoning or without zoning, but it's based on law size. So the result is that in rural communities where lots are generally larger, Act 250 may cast a wider net and capture things like small independent contractor years. It's not a negative necessarily, but it is important to recognize who in these communities may be going through Act 250 so that we make a process that is easy for them to follow. Yeah, we have no questions. Yes. Just a point of clarification, I think the question is what you meant between a planning process versus a regulatory process, that local government process is the planning process as opposed to a local regulation using their bylaws compared to what you're generally using the term regulatory meaning Act 250. Can you just clarify? Sure, sure. So one of the, I guess it's stepped back to the state planning statute which envisions a coordinated planning process at state, local and regional level that encourages citizen engagement. One of the things that the Act 250 reform build attempts to do or interpret their attempts to do through things such as the capability and development plan. The increased review of local and regional plans is to begin coordinating our various planning processes. So I think yes to all of the above that the local planning process, especially on the issue of where the most appropriate areas for development should be is sort of the beginning place. And I think that's really important for structuring Act 250 for smaller communities because it is very possible for some of our smaller smaller settlements to be missed when you're looking at them from a statewide level. There are also important considerations at the statewide level but the local process which has checks and balances through review at the regional level of other neighboring municipalities can be the guide. What we have now though is a disconnect between that process and perhaps the agency comments and review where to use an actual example you might have a situation where there's an area that's been defined for greater intensity of development and there might be conflicts between the agency of transportation review related to requirements of something like a turning lane and the agency of natural resources, 9L review of wanting pedestrian connectivity and then the agency of agriculture review of agricultural soils. And what happens and I've seen happen that is every agency wants their own meeting with the applicant and they're not doing anything wrong. That's how the process is currently structured. They're doing their jobs. So it's not an agency staff problem. If the process was structured where there was the that question happened first of are we in or are we out? All of the agencies are on the same page. The district commission is on the same page and the local review boards are on the same page and the chances for an applicant getting sort of stuck in a jurisdictional dispute between different arms or levels of government are really reduced. And those are the kinds of things that for those small applicants are really frustrated. Hold on, there was a tie. Okay. It'll go to representative Odey and then Nicola. Age before duty. So with the, so if the way it works now if you see each of those agencies and each one says a different thing and what happens and then what you're saying is what could be instead is that all the agencies would meet with the applicant or they would all meet together and figure out what they thought were the best. So that's a really good question. What happens now depends, you know, somewhat from application to application. The larger applicants like the resorts in our region tend to have staff who are fixed costs work for them who coordinate all of that. For the smaller applicants, especially who may be not familiar with the process, may respond to agency questions as they come in. And that can lead to things like multiple site visits with their engineers or attorneys. For them, those are not fixed costs. They're not, they don't have an attorney or an engineer on staff. And so that's one of the things that drives, can drive up the cost. If the capability and development plan that's proposed in the legislation is structured and I think we've been in a way that is functional, that need for every agency to make their own determination is lessened. And there's the potential for more predictability. No, I think how that plan is structured becomes really important. And I do have some concerns that the current structure is more top down than it should be. And provided in my comments, so it's intentionally a provocative alternative and I recognize it's a somewhat provocative alternative, but that was to sort of do the bookends for the committee to start a dialogue about how local governments and regional planning commissions might be more engaged in that. And that's specifically on this question of the existing settlements, because that's really where these interagency issues can get really, really messy for a small advocate. Don't actually go if I answered your question, just confuse the things. So I follow what you're saying, but I still don't see how what some best practices might be. And I still don't see how you avoid, how any applicant avoids agencies making different determinations. They just sit together and just decide So it would be great if you have one time earlier in the life of Act 250, there was a greater tool for policy coordination between the agencies. That would be a great thing to move back to. And there's always going to be some agency review. I don't want to leave you with the impression that we can totally cut that out. It's more, I'll use the Johnson-Naklefields example because it's really illustrative of that. If that was located in the Village Center, the main intersection in Johnson's Village Center, what that means is that for B-Trans, B-Trans would be looking at different standards for when a turning lane is required because they're also taking into account speed, the built environment, all of those things. That Agency of Natural Resources is looking at a different standard for their setbacks from stream buffers. If they all know that they're gonna be looking at those different standards going in, then the discussion is, how do you meet that different standard as opposed to what standard do we need to meet? And so that cuts off a thing, that for a small applicant creates more predictability because they know it also reduces the potential for the dueling engineer problem that happens, should this be a road we're planning as a true road and therefore we need a turn lane as opposed to is this a road we should be preparing or planning for pedestrians. If that is predictable, if that's defined in the planning process, the opportunity for another engineer representing perhaps a competitor to say, we disagree with B-Trans, on this basic level finding is reduced. So what I'm getting is the Act 250 is the agencies which have different things that they're applying and they should be looking at the thing as opposed to their agency. So then maybe the question, you said something like, it's a standard that they apply and then different two questions they would ask, well, wouldn't the question they would ask be, how can we get this project happening? Not what standard they apply because they have three different standards. One's looking at where the turn lane should be looking at the crossing of deers. Right, no, no, no. The agency of Act can provide exceptions if it is something that makes sense. And when you think about farms, think about how many years ago farms were built in many instances and think about where the rules and laws are today as far as restriction. So that's why there's this little flexibility that the agency of Act has to make meaningful and thoughtful decisions on its own. So I'll talk about that and that's in the article. So we talk about management and we talk about structures. We talk about farms and how the agency of Act regulates. So essentially, I'll go through the management stuff first and then I'll go into the structure. So first thing, these rules apply to everybody. So keep that in mind. Who they do not apply to is if you lived in, just make an example of, if you lived in the city of Burlington and your neighbor had a pig in their backyard, we do not deal with your pig, right?  So we work with the town to decide if it's a water quality issue, we can take the lead. If it is not, and it's just a property parcel in Burlington and it butts all other parcels, no water nearby, and they just don't like the pig. We are not going to intervene. That's a local decision on managing nuisance and other factors that might come with that situation. So when we recently wrote the RAPs, what term you use, backyard farming, is often, some people can relate to that in some way, is not what you need to say that greatly. It's we regulate farming as defined. So anyone who is farming can apply too. And in the backyards, the town can come up with what they need to. Because by definition, the backyard farm doesn't fall under the RAP, so therefore they can regulate it. So anyway, so when you look at these, stacking manure, you cannot stack manure in a place where water's going to end in deep. And whatever term you want to say, there's a floodway, which is where when the river's high and it's moving fast, it's going to move in this area, the floodway. And when it's spreading out and it's going slower into the flood plain, that area as well. So in any of those areas, you cannot stack manure. You also can't stack compost. You can't stack through processing residuals material that is a waste you can't put there. And then as far as nutrient management, so all of these farms need to have a nutrient management plan, which is the phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium allocations for the crops. They need to meet the crop uptake. They cannot apply an exceedance where therefore it's no longer useful. So when you think about flood plains, you've got to take soil tests, you've got to figure out what crop you're going to need, you've got to figure out what it needs, and you need that requirement. In addition, that's on all your land, but in your flood plains, you also have more restrictions on when you can apply manure. So the goal that we looked at in the science is a lot of the flooding does occur in the shoulder seasons, right? Not always during the main cropping season. A lot of the spring flooding or even currently, we're probably going to have, we're in flood season in some areas, but there's a lot of ice in the river and it's going to back up. During these times of year, you cannot spread manure on fields or any other waste on fields, unless you get an exemption for us for an emergency situation, which may be instances, and of course we wouldn't choose the flood plain as your first place, right? We would find another place that's more suitable on your farm or a neighboring farm. First, we try and find another storage for where you could put that so you don't put it on the land at all. So, no one should be out there, basically, unless there's a real bind, which I've never seen a situation where we've had to go to the flood plain as a solution. So, beyond that is, we can also then require additional requirements so that the spreading band for the winter applies to everybody. And in flood plain, it's a wider band. So, it starts in October and it goes all the way into mid-April. So, understanding that if you have a farm and you have some flood plain, you need to make sure you address that so that you have capacity to be able to do the other lands later. You cannot wait until the very end of the shoulder seasons to spread manure in the flood plains. It's restricted, right? To give them more protection, to make sure that there's more growth with the crop that's there and incorporation. If you do, in the regular season where you are allowed to put manure, for instance, on a flood plain, you have to incorporate it or inject it pretty immediately so that it is not on the surface sitting there. And that's been in place for a very long time, that restriction. We, in the last RAPs, put a lot of additional restrictions in what I like to call them, sort of, you should have known better, actions. If it's really saturated or if it's full of snow and anyone looking at it goes, if you actually spread anything on that, it will run off. There's no question, right? That is where, and we've had instances, which prompted some of this, where we needed to take enforcement and have a clear rule that said you should have known better. So those are as well in the rule. So if somebody is actively operating on a flood plain and they knew that there was a high level of risk and it was well known, that could be something that we could enforce on if there was an instance of water quality. Any questions on the newer application and storing of waste? Courtney, what do you mean by frequently flooded land? So that is a term that we came, so a statewide, all soils are mapped. Then they have this classification of frequently flooded, occasionally flooded. You know, there's a designation based on the soil type and where it generally falls in the landscape. And that is the designation that we use as frequently flooded based on those NRCS soil maps. So if you look at your farm, you can turn on that layer and then you can turn on the frequently flooded layer. And that's the layer that we use for that regulatory standard. So in typically what my experience is, it's a hundred year flood plain. So, okay, so buffers and setbacks. The agency of ag requires on any river, a 25 pound.  So can you explain nutrient management plans? Like they're not actually designed to reduce, they're not designed to improve water quality. They're designed to maximize output while minimizing cost of inputs. No, they were originally born many, many moons ago for crop production. That part's true. I mean, the fallacy is that since then, there have been more tools that have been piled into what you have to do to build a plan and those are all water quality tools. So like an example would be the phosphorus index. It's all about water quality, that entire tool. So it's about how far away is the water? What type of management are you doing such that the proximity and likeliness that nutrients could get to water would happen? So that whole tool is looking at soluble phosphorus and particulate phosphorus and how it transports and whether the risk of transport is higher or low given all the activities that you were doing. So, well, yes, the idea of applying nutrients and thinking about crops is core, part of it. The water quality and risk assessment tools that are inside of it, the erosion tools, the phosphorus nutrient tools, those are all very specific to water. So that has definitely been something that I've heard people argue and I just want to be really clear, they are really much at this point with the technology and innovation and research water quality focused. I guess I also have a couple more questions. You're talking about manure, can you use chemical fertilizers in these annually flooded places? I mean, it said the term is actually manure or other ag waste, which can include all of those items. So it's really, it's a pretty broad spectrum of things that you cannot be spreading in these areas. So it really doesn't need a fertilizer in any type? It could mean, it could be waste feed, right? It's a very broad term to say you really shouldn't be putting anything in these areas. So it includes chemical fertilizers. And then this is just because I know we've been promoting no-till in these kind of areas, does glyphosate have phosphorus in it? It's a very miniscule amount such that it isn't something, as far as like the operations on the dairy farm should be considered as far as a major risk factor. But it has it in it. Glyphosate. Representative Morgan. Some farms are very large and they're not easily seen from the road. Who monitors, how is it monitored to see that these rules are being followed? Sure, that's our job. We have 11 inspectors that go out on these farms. Traditionally what we're talking about here is mostly dairy farms or large-scale vegetable production farms. All of them either fall under a certification or a permit by us and we have requirements in statute that tell us how often we at minimum have to get there. So you have the right to just stop it and say you're gonna walk your backfields along the river and see if you have fences, buffers, et cetera. Which might be a little more respectful than that. But you can do that. Yes, yes. We give people a call and let them know. We want them to join us so that they can see what we see, so that they can correct what we see if we see something wrong. Representative Dola. Just another question about nutrient management planning. Does nutrient management planning is it tied to the phosphorus in the soils so that if you reach a certain threshold in nutrients within the soils, it may affect your application of manure even during the post-winter spreading where farmers trying to manage their manure after storage for so many months. Would that nutrient management plan limit the application of it in areas that have high amounts of phosphorus? Or does it say that you can re-estimate the amount of uptake that phosphorus can handle? Can you help us a little bit? Yeah, these are very detailed nuances that I'll give you a big picture. So that we can have some confidence in the nutrient management planning process to help manage the nutrients. So essentially the phosphorus index, if we get back to that tool, you put in all your different management. And the output might be because your soil levels are so high in phosphorus that you cannot apply more phosphorus because you have what you need to grow the crop that you said you were going to grow and therefore it'll give you a big red square at the top and say no, which means you cannot apply any nutrients. So you can try and look and see, well, okay, well, what if I did something different? Can I get it out of that no box? And then you actually have to implement that. And that's what we check. We look at your plan, we look at what you're doing in a farm, we look at your records and see are you following that plan. But there certainly are several farms in the state of Vermont due to historic management in the past where one farm has bought the farm next door and they know that they can't apply manure at all to that one farm. That's not the case by previous land owners. So that is a real thing. It cuts you off and says no. In the RAPs, we also put that if your soil test level starts to get above 20 parts per million, you have to have a drawdown strategy. There is some science, but there is no guarantee that just because your soil is high, it actually means you're polluting. It could very well stay in place, but we still want to think about the risk reduction. So while you may not get a red block saying stop, you can't add any more in that instance, we still want you to do something. So we've added an additional state layer to say you need to think about a reduction strategy, which may be cutting your manure applications back, trying different methods of setbacks, for instance. So there's a whole lot of tools that people can use. They put it all in here and it spits out what the outcome would be. But it is a real thing and it does happen that these farms, it's not widespread, but it is real that it will shut you down. We'll just keep you from adding more phosphorus so you could still grow. Absolutely. You could till in an annually flooded land. You can, I mean most, what I've seen with some folks is they're more mindful of that you can till in those lands and they may till to plant, but they won't till in the fall because they don't want it loose. So they'll have more gully erosion or scour, which it doesn't help them at all and they recognize that. The one thing I've noticed about people who manage flood plains, they're a lot more cognizant of their management actions. They think about it. They engage with us a lot more in conversations about it. Because it is, I mean when you live near a river, you know it and you watch it. And you've now had the experience with it. Representative McCullough. So I appreciate your comment that that there's very small amount of phosphorus and glycophate and I'm not doubting that, but what I don't understand is what that amount is or the best way to compare it is would it be by pounds of the total product? But I'd like to know what I'd like to have that statement quantified. Additionally, I need to better understand the role of the phosphorus in glycophate. Does it have a short half-life as well because it facilitates the active ingredient getting into the plant, so that it pretty much within a matter of hours is not in the soil anymore and it's in the plant. And I think that'll help us better understand if the glycophate actually, even though it may be a small amount of phosphorus, may be some kind of small things make a big difference and I'd like to know how that would overlay on a farm nutrient management plan with a red block up in the corner. No more phosphorus, please. So if you guys just kind of poke carry and you may have that information of your own. We do, we have some information we've already developed and I will get to that, but right now I don't want to. No, not now, no, no, no. I mean, this question has come up multiple times throughout the years and we've answered it. It could be just a little catalyst that's insignificant, but we need to thank you. That's okay, education's good. So I'll go back. So buffers, which in the regulations just have to be at least grass. You can also do trees. There is something in statute that says if we require a farm to plant trees, we have to buy an easement. So there's a distinction there that these rules say you have to plant grass at the very least. We have programs that if people voluntarily want to plant trees, we obviously help them and facilitate that and that's called the CREP program or Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. So 10 foot on a ditch, 25 foot on a surface water and if we feel like those are insufficient, the agency of Ag, we have a whole tool that we built that'll run through the matrix, take all the data, the management field in and consider should it be wider. So if we have a concern that we think it might be wider or it needs to be wider, we can run that tool and we have the ability to tell the farm it needs to be wider. Of course, they have appeal rates and we'd go through that whole process as well. That is built in. And then as far as managing stream banks themselves, the RAP, so we spent a lot of time when we were revising the RAPs two times ago, three times ago, geez, which is actually fairly recent. I know we've changed them every year for the last couple of years. I want to say this is probably in 2014, maybe, if memory serves me right. We worked and spent a lot of time with DEC River Management Program. So you'll meet Mike Klein this afternoon from that program to make sure that what we were doing for agriculture was consistent. So in a town, National Flood Insurance Program, for instance, is a really important program for towns, especially Vermont, given our conditions of flooding and being built on top of a lot of river systems. Agriculture, because that zoning piece is with, not always with the town, we do our best to make sure that farms first comply with the town, but if there's an instance where they can't, the agency of AG and our decisions to issue a variance cannot put a town out of NFIP standards, right? So we worked together with rivers to make sure that if we're going to approve something, it can be done based on all the river science. So for instance, if somebody needed to, they had a barn that had burned down and they were trying to rebuild a portion of it, but historically had been built in this area, but they wanted to, when they built it, they wanted to change the design at the end so that the back end of the barn was a little bit different. Technically, they're going to have to do an entire study of the river to make sure that they don't rise the river during that process of changing that floor plan of that barn. And so any foundational infrastructure that might be within the floodplain, you need to prove that you're not going to basically mess up the floodplain, right? And so that is an expensive process. We've only had two instances that I've seen it come up as a question. One was a barn fire up in the Northeast Kingdom and the other was some work down in the river Delta with green houses at the time, but we worked through that. So you have to do a really, it's a pretty intense study to understand whether you would rise the river at that cross section of the stream based on the work that you're doing in the footprint. So it tends to be costly, the farmers are responsible to do that work. So you just don't see that much activity in that realm, but that is the standard that is there, is that if you want to try and, if it makes sense and we approve it because it is the most sensible thing to do and there is no other alternative that then it bears to the farmer to make sure that they do that work to prove that it can be done and if it cannot be done, then it cannot be approved. If they want to work on stabilizing a stream bank itself, so if the river's cutting in, there are sort of two types of projects that I see come in this realm. One is coming at property infrastructure, right? Which our natural reaction as citizens is to protect whatever infrastructure there is, right? Whether it's the city of Montpelier or a barn. And so in order to protect that stream bank from coming farther at it, you have to go through and make sure that you meet all the technical standards and work with your DEC, ADCA bag, and USDA in many instances to ensure that it is done appropriately. Because the last thing you want is one for it to fail, but you also have to make sure that you don't mess up the rest of the river system. If it's just cropland, they couldn't do that process. It's less likely that they would receive any financial support in those instances. But the alternative that I've seen in the past, because it is a property, it is property interest in their land, it is their crop production. It is something that is worthy of protection from that standpoint of view. But we try to work with the farms to explain we have other programs that look at a more holistic approach, which is that river is moving because something else is pushed on it, right? And maybe it's the city infrastructure that then redirected the stream towards the stream bank. If the landowner is okay with it, the idea of letting that river carve a little bit more or giving it more flood plain access and basically buying an easement on some of that land to give the river that access is a program that we work with DEC to create. So it's a river corridor easement program. And typically what we'll do is we'll overlay that crack tree planting program with that easement program and try and create more of a natural habitat and let the river find its balance rather than trying to protect the river and then move the problem further downstream. Representative Lefebvre. Thank you. Whatever you want to call it. Different to Rental Rains we've been having the last couple of years. I'm wondering if the 100 year watermark is still a reliable benchmark in terms of how high you know the water ought to come given whatever season. It seems to me in flux, it seems to me in change. I guess basically it's related to how the climate is changing. I'm wondering how you adjust it or how you kind of still use it. So my recommendation would be you should talk to the USGS. They manage a lot of this data. All the monitoring stations are USGS stations and a lot of that work and data into the flood areas is also done by them in conjunction with FEMA. We then rely on what they do. And so I can't speak to say that but the tools that we've started to look at and I was explaining this the other day, the whole system is dynamic by nature. It's a river system and it's moving because it's where water is going. To have a fixed map to say this is where that line is will never be static because it does move. In rivers like the Connecticut sometimes and some portions of it it's a little more static because it's dam controlled and has been that way for quite a while. But there are no magic layers. Even the FEMA layer, the property I previously owned, they said we were in a flood plain and we were 20 feet high above the highest mark. The math is just wrong and you do a letter of math amendment and you do this whole process to get out of any intensive concerns. So there's the back way to re-correct everything that every example has. There is no magical and so we do our best to use these maps as the regulatory lines but then we all, no matter what you're doing and even if you were thinking about it in Act 250, there will never be a bright line where you could say this is where this falls because it will be dynamic and change. There's LIDAR which is a way that you can take imagery of the ground and it will bounce back and reflect so it'll give you some topography so that you can see it. It can help you sort of understand where the river might go based on elevation but even that as you start, we were trying to do this when we were trying to build these RIPs to try and figure out how can we find a good math layer or create a good math layer to be clear because farmers wanted to know. Like do not tell me that you'll come, let me know after the fact where that line should have been. They wanna know upfront that you're building water behind something and getting the flood plain getting bigger and wider and you think about going from hardwick to the lamoil outlet. There's a lot going on in that system that you just can't predict it especially in these flood plain areas. And all it takes is one break away and everything changes from that point down. So with increased rain and with increased activity, I think that has certainly played out a bit more in some instances, especially as some of the policies have changed over time to not excavate in the river as much as once was 50 years ago. Those activities, many, many different management activities have led us to a different space between climate change and management and now it's everything is, you know, the goal of the state DEC is, and Amy's supporting this through this RAP processes, try to be as natural as we can to find a new balance rather than to continue to put band-aids and shift the dynamics. Is that included acquiring land or sort of in a river that does flow in banks? It's kind of, it's not going to, you know, basically have an economic, well, that's what we tried to create programs. So you'll learn what a river corridor easement is, which is essentially a river is going to move in some fashion, right? And the best predict, the tool that they use is just to say free belt widths, which is how wide is the stream, take three of those on the side and three of those on that side and draw a line. You know, there's a lot of science behind getting there and you've got to somehow simplify things, you know, to really quite amount, all cannot be hydrogeologists in trying to figure where the line exactly should be to develop the program, but you can figure out that generally the river in the next hundred years is probably likely to be in here at some level. And so with farmers, what we will coordinate with DC and our CREP program is they'll essentially buy the ability for channel management rates. So it's essentially that whole flood plain says you can't, if they voluntarily choose it, you cannot put rip rap anywhere along.  So that's the kind of program that we've been working to implement. We've done a number of projects. We do it also with the River Conservancy and BLT because they hold the easements to make sure that this stuff is steward and future. But we've done quite a few of those projects, especially in some of these much more dynamic spaces where again, farmers are aware of the conflict and will actually bring projects to us naturally, but we also have significant. I have a representative Bates and then representative Lillian, that's the question. So I have a question I visit, I frequent a stream that cuts a cattle pasture right in half and cows are out there and everything. So how does the state manage that? Cause it flows right into the Wulumzak. So I'm just kind of curious about all this manure spreading and phosphorus and everything. So how do you keep that from going to the Wulumzak? Sure. So the standard and trying to write a rule for every situation is always a challenge. But the standard is that if those cows are creating such an impact that the stream banks are eroding and they're not just crossing and crossing and it's causing a real mess, that we can enforce on. One of our challenges, and if you've gone up into the hills and think about, I always think about Orange County, so I just hiked a lot there doing lifestyle exclusion work as we call it. Putting fences, trying to design fences in some of those areas there or in Addison County is a bear. You can't draw a straight line through the woods, right? And but the pasture itself may actually include a ton of that. So trying to be thoughtful and saying, you don't have to fence every square inch that a cow might have access, but may not actually be able to physically get there because there's so much vegetation or other things that are in the way. It's flat. But if it's flat and it's open, we have programs that we can help people get into these spaces if it becomes such that they are truly causing a problem and it's chewing it up and especially overgrazing can often cause that where they're coming in and out and the density of animals is really a challenge. But if you've got 10 acres and one animal, that's a small animal, you're not gonna cause a big issue for the cost benefit of if you had 100 animals in a very small size. That's what we're talking. Yeah, so we should probably talk so that we can find out more about that site. It's a good fishing stream by certain parts of it where they don't cross. They cross all over the place, so. Yeah, they've got to have defined crossings and they've got to manage the vegetation and the erosion on the stream bank. If those things cannot happen, we can stop them. Okay, thanks. So we tried to build it that way so that there was some flexibility for sites that it just didn't make sense because actually some sites can be painful and it's remarkable with a few animals having still access. But when you get your density up, it gets to be a problem. All right, thank you. I've done the fuller. So I understand some years ago we prohibited birming to protect agricultural fields from flooding, not just the rivers, but the branches that feed the river and we did that because that practice had been done. Is there a program that helps take those berms away for the obvious purpose of allowing inundation flooding to occur to reduce damage damage? So I strongly encourage you to ask Mike Klein more about this because at this point, birming, there may be instances where they allow it. It's their program, right? Okay. We do not regulate that. If someone said to us, we would like to burn, we would say, you need to go talk to Keith. Okay, good. We'll be talking with him. So, yeah, certainly, but there might be instances where protecting downstream or something. There may be some other situation about the site that it may make sense. And I do know that there was a site after Irene that the berm blew out in Irene and they were able to put it back. So it just all depends on the situation, I think. But as far as removing the berms, again, talk to Mike Klein, but we've worked with agricultural property owners.  And they've definitely done projects where they'll remove or lower the railbed to be able to create more connection to the flood plain. So, you know, those are the type of activities that obviously are really good for water quality. One of the big things in the TMDL is a stream bank balance and trying to get there. And so some of those clean water fund dollars have been used to these projects when they've been identified. And just, we're done on it, but I just want to say I understand that those berms were done with really, it's not any kind of a, in a, yes. There's an evolution. Yeah, that's fine. It's all gone through. Thank you. So, you're not quite finished. Yeah, so basically, if you want to do anything on a stream bank, you know, you need to make sure you follow standards. If you want to do any kind of stream crossing, like a bridge or a Goldberg replacement, you need to communicate with DDC. There's levels where if the watershed is very small, you don't need to report, but if the watershed starts to get bigger, you do need to report. But no matter what, you need to meet basic minimum good practices as you do it. So that is all stuff. You should definitely engage with DDC, but that's where we wrote our RAPs to say you've got to follow the DDC requirements and work in relation with that. And then, so the last one here is the zoning piece. And I've talked a little bit about that, but you know, essentially, we can't put infrastructure in these sensitive areas unless you can show that you're not going to impact that flood stage, right? So they call it a no rise study, is it a general term? And then where you may not be in, you know, this broad floodplain area, but you're near like a small stream that might come through. Because one of the things in Vermont that we'll see is that even small streams coming out of the hillside can do a lot of damage, even though they may not actually flood, right? Which is that so much topography slope, they can still erode and carve which of these colluvial roads in the hazard areas. Staying away from any stream bank is a priority of ours for any infrastructure because we don't then want you to protect it after the fact. So if we can be preventative up front for new infrastructure, we do that. For add-ons to additional structures, we really try and look at it and think is that necessary. So that's the process. We have a team of the agency that'll go through and review the applications. We connect intentionally with the town because we're going through this process. Because no matter what a farmer does, even though the agency of ag can issue them an exemption, they have to tell the town what to do. And the purpose of that is so the town is the one, again, they're responsible for their flood insurance. And they can tell them this is potentially in a floodplain. You need to be aware of that, right? They can have that first level of communication. We've had instances where, you know, people do it, it's not a judgment of a farmer or not a farmer, but started to develop something and did some excavation in the floodplain. And we were notified that they didn't go to the town first. You know, we went through our enforcement process to address this, because that is the requirement, is you have to communicate with your town on step one. They had to stop all construction. They had to cease everything, because you cannot get into that situation when you're compromised for insurance. And there was an alternative and it wasn't done. They didn't do the study, you know, so like those things are where we're able to step in and say, it's not okay. So, there's a lot of restrictions in here as far as how to manage floodplains. And you know, obviously for us, it's an important space because it's really good production, typically. So there's an interest and that's where our fertile land is, is these older floodplains and the newer ones as well. But it's obviously a dynamic space and to be sensitive to water quality, to be sensitive to erosion and other downstream impacts, we tried to build these rules so that we could accommodate all of those things and work it easy to do it a lot of way. Representative Taranzino. Yeah, Laura, how many dairy farms are left in Vermont? The Count, pardon me, Diane, Bob, Phil and Ron, Aging State of Agriculture, as of February earlier this week, 697 commercial dairies, cow dairies, down from 700 in January, so three, between January and February. Awesome, three. So I'm struggling to understand how we're managing the production of annual crops in flooded areas that are on impaired waters. And so I'm sort of looking at this. I guess, can you give me a sense of how much land is in that situation where they're actually doing an annual crop on an impaired water that's in a location that's annually flooded frequently? So let me say one thing before I answer that. I also forgot to mention that in these flood plains, they have to cover crop, if they're growing an annual crop. So that's a new requirement. Or at least if they're growing some crop that can't be cover crop, there's a timing of it, they have to leave a 30% residue over the winter so that it is protected. Of the annual crop. Yeah, so if you're growing some other type of crop that doesn't get harvested, so like some corn can get harvested for grain. So leave a lot of the debris, they'll take the crop, but leave a lot of debris. So that way it's protected. So that was the requirement that we changed in the last one. So trying to keep year-round protection on these sites so that you have some for all time that's connected into the soil and building soil health. But as far as the identification of the number of acres, we could try and review that exercise. I don't have that data and I don't think we've touched it because the popping changes on a regular basis. So we have looked at studies looking at basically, the farm has so much that it needs based on the feed that it's come up with and the balance that it has, but it may flip completely between corn and hay. So to be able to one day snapshot in time, all that data is provided to the USDA. And I've tried, I had to go to Fort Collins to get that data at that mass level, which isn't easy, it's a long process. So we sort of just didn't, we didn't worry about that. We said focus on everywhere just do a better management job rather than dealing with trying to figure out the specifics because it is so dynamic. As soon as you know the answer, it's going to be changed.  I mean, it seems like we're trying to get phosphorus out, but we're putting it in at the same time when we do this. And then we heard testimony two couple of Fridays ago about farmers sort of realizing that it wasn't as productive an area as they thought it would be, or they changed and sort of voluntarily moving out of those areas, but you know, we're trying to clean up the waters. And I just, in our time with having lands that obviously if they're annually flooded, they're going to be polluting that water. And if it's impaired, how do we address that? Well, so there's another backstop that does exist. So with USDA, you know, if you have insurance on your crop, if you were in a flood plain and it actively is flooding and causing damages, emergency conservation programs, what they used to call it, I don't know, I'm starting to state myself that I'm losing track of the program names, but you get three strikes. So if you come to say, I need assistance in this field because the river has done something to scour majorly, you know, it's bad enough that, you know, we've got an issue. By the third time you ask for it, they do not help you. For crop insurance. The amount of payment that they would give you in the assistance it's tied to your crop production and the insurance that you've gotten. So they've got a model there that they've built that says basically three strikes in your out. And so a lot of the programs, and so for instance, think about the wetland protections that have happened to a lot of these lands that have had low productivity, major flooding problems, can no longer get any support to help protect that site because it isn't worth it essentially as, you know, what USDA has sort of said in that instance, they come into these other programs where they're, you know, we've got thousands of acres protected in wetland reserve program right along the rivers down in the Addison-Rutland border because of those types of situations where the flooding is so intense and the productivity and the yields were so low, but it didn't make sense and the farmers acknowledged that. So there is a level of protection that exists amongst the programs themselves to make sure that, you know, we aren't just continually throwing resources in something that isn't functional. And farming, of course, you know, the work it takes to do that, it isn't as well functional to them. So I don't know that I would say either, you know, just we're just loading phosphorus in these areas, annual flood plains is one term, you know, and I think you have to be careful with what are you talking about because there are 100 year flood plains and they're annual year flood plains and they are very far apart in terms of the timing of which they might, and a flood act might happen. And so to work on managing within those lands, I think it's really important to make sure that you're clear because the impact of potential nutrient loading is very different based on the flooding information. And then I just, I'm wondering, we often get questions from constituents on slug spread and can you just remind us what the notification requirements are for that? So I encourage you to talk to DEC, but my understanding is there's very few sites. I want to say somewhere between three and five, there's very few that actually do that in the state of Vermont on agricultural lands. And they regulate that from the nutrient management plan to the activity, to the timing, to the monitoring. They do all of that. Where we have farms that are taking crops throughout the land, the farms need to report the import of that information in their N and P, but it is a separate management of the sludge versus the farm. That's something. Oh, I just, I'm pleased with the discussion you're asking some really good questions and most of them have good answers. And this one, you know, it's from the sludge. That isn't an agency of ag program. That's a program that DEC runs. And, but what Laura was just saying was that even though there is some phosphorus and nutrients going on to that property through the sludge, it has to be accounted for in a nutrient management plan. So. To DEC side, they make sure they do monitoring and testing and reports that. Yeah, but you also do, because all nutrient management plans are under your program, right? Sure, but a lot of times what the situation will be is that the farm might be only responsible to plant corn and harvest corn, but they don't do any nutrient applications. So therefore it would just solely be a DEC situation. Because a lot of times you're not adding manure and sludge, right? I don't think I've ever seen that. And I don't, honestly, I don't know the DEC rules well enough to know that whether that is even allowed to have an additional nutrient source added to where they're already doing sludge management. Maybe you're restricted to just sludge management, which maybe why I've never seen that. Sadly a question for DEC. Do you have one more question? Yep, I do. And actually not much question for you or Diane, but a comment just to build on the paradigm of annual crops in our alluvial soils. You've heard me talk about that at the joint hearing several weeks ago. And we aren't gonna regulate our way out of that, but paradigm changes I believe need to happen. And yes, I totally understand.  And some of my favorite farmers have rotated their crops twice since then. And I get it. But I think we just need to make incentives. For different crops in there, total adjustable nutrients of legumes are actually higher than they are from corn. I understand why we do corn, just the same. But by volume, we need to switch that practice and I'm just whatever into the future. These practices need to change and we hope there wouldn't be a regulatory thing for the future. Yeah, I definitely encourage. Talk to some farmers that manage some flood plain land. I think they'll get some really interesting testimony on what choices they make and why they make them. They're very thoughtful about that. Of course they are. Of course they are. And I've got several personal friends that are doing that and they're doing a great job under the paradigm today. But if you drive from the West Coast to Montpelier or along any waterway, of course we're raising our annual crops in the most arable, level, fertile grounds that we've got. And those by definition are what we're doing. Thank you very much. I know. And that would include grow crop vegetables. But yeah, it absolutely does. Absolutely does. As well. Absolutely. We talk a lot about dairy today, the majority, and if you were starting to regulate produce because of the Food Safety Modernization Act and those produce growers that are over 500,000 and for sales have to be fully regulated. And we find they're all in those lands. Oil lands. Oil lands. That's the most for all. Anything of size and scale are in those lands. And I think the challenge is the only map layer you have is a hundred year flood plan on there. Really. Everything else is an estimate. There is no annual flood plan later. It doesn't exist. So trying to figure out especially what's in between there, there's certainly soil layers. But soil layers are the three acre scale when you come to mapping them. They're not accurate. The fluvial version hazard and the belt width concept, like I said, Mike Klein can talk a lot more about that for you. There's a lot of science behind it. But again, it's dynamic and it's moving and all it takes is an Irene to shift some of that stuff in some instances. So there is no wonderful magic tool to be in this space for regulatory purposes. There are good guidance practices, good management recommendations that people can work with. But to have a bright line where you say that's not allowed because of this, it is more difficult to find that space. Thank you. OK. Quick question. And we have to move on to this. Maybe if you want to get back to me on this. But I'm curious to know if we are building to a standard given that we're vulnerable to climate. And we want to make sure that agricultural production is as resilient as it can be to future flooding. I've learned that some states have adopted, have avoided what they call technical paper, TP40, which is the 1950s document for determining whether your engineering standards are built to a 25-year flood. But relying on TP40 is 1950 data. And so it's already may not be the best most current information for helping when you're building structures, farming structures, whether it's a manure pit or silage-leashate control, whether you're building it towards a manner that helps to ensure resilience. Yeah, so what are we doing in the state of Vermont? So it's somewhat different than floodplain management, because again, you most likely aren't able to build these structures in the floodplain. But as far as climate change and thinking ahead about when we design infrastructure, NRCS is who we, which is the federal partner of the Agency of Ag, who we rely on to make the standards. All of those standards are right now being revised to include new rainfall, which means that storages are going to get bigger, farmers are going to have more water and management there of it. So that's the reality is that those numbers have gone up and they're adjusting it. So the technical engineering standards are all being revised. And what's your time frame? You'd have to ask. Rob Achilles, I don't know. But it's either currently developed and about to be rolled out or still in that development process. And we should wait for that in your mind, because some states have adopted their own time sheet. In our rules, it says you must meet the current NRCS standards. So it'll naturally just when it rolls out, it rolls out. Thank you. It'll be the regular standard. Thank you very much. And thank you for providing this, the English summary. The English summary is great, right? It's funny to read it from the US, how bureaucratic we are. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Next up is Mr. Koster. Sorry. Good morning. Good morning. I'm Billy Koster. I'm the director of planning for the Vermont Agency and Natural Resources. Thank you very much for coming in here to speak to the critical resource area of provisions of your committee bill on Act 250.  But I'll give you just a real brief overview of the Agency and Natural Resources and our work in Act 250. And our statutory party to Act 250, that means that by law, any Act 250 application that implicates the natural resources criteria, we have the ability to participate as a party. So we review all Act 250 applications that are filed with district commissions around the state and assess whether there are significant natural resource impacts proposed. If so, we put comments into Act 250 district commissions suggesting how to minimize and mitigate those impacts. We also are required by statute to provide technical assistance to the Natural Resources Board and its district commissions. That's codified in the Natural Resources Board, Rule 21. So we will occasionally get specific requests from district commissions to address questions that they have for some of the applications that are before them. So that's a separate role that we play beyond being a party. As you likely know, the agency consists of three departments, the Department of Environmental Conservation, which is the primary regulatory body, the Fish and Wildlife Department that does a number of things from regulatory outreach and addressing our game species, and the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation, that is our largest land manager of state forest parks and focuses on the forestry sector and increasingly on outdoor recreation. Staff from all three of those departments participate in a review of Act 250 applications. Each of those departments have regulatory review staff that play their own unique role in looking at activity projects. And that review is all coordinated through my office, the Office of Planning. And we push applications materials out to the agency. We consolidate their review comments. We make sure they are consistent across the agency. And then we work directly with applicants and district commissions in the review of those projects. As you know, the agency also has our own regulatory jurisdiction primarily through DEC. The issue permits addressing impacts to things like surface water, wetlands, stormwater, rivers, a whole range of media. And you've already heard from staff from the Fish and Wildlife Department testifying on this bill. We'll hear from folks from the river's program, lair chair tomorrow, and likely others from our agency. But this is just a reminder that we all are under the umbrella of A&R and work together in review of Act 250. And we play a similar role in reviewing section 248 petitions before the Public Utility Commission. So we're probably the most active city agency in Act 250. And we take great pride in that. It's a really important part of the state's regulatory landscape. It is a gap filler in some ways. And we really rely on it, especially to protect fish and wildlife resources. And I apologize. I'm just getting to the point of my life where I'm having these reading glasses. So I'm trying to figure out how to do that and talk to people at the same time. So your committee bill does a number of things, as you're likely aware. It proposes changes to jurisdiction of Act 250, which controls when Act 250 review is triggered, changes to the criteria, which is kind of what things you're looking at, where the substantive considerations that are being made when Act 250 is reviewing a project that proposes changes to the board structure, appeals, a whole host of things. And the critical resource areas is primarily, in my view, a jurisdictional piece. It impacts when Act 250 jurisdiction would come into play, when district commissions would review different sorts of development. And I also want to say right off the bat that I know that this committee in the bill is very interested in forest integrity and addressing issues of forest fragmentation. That's a significant priority for our agency, as well as has been for many years. And I know you'll hear from Commissioner Snyder from the Department of Forest Parks and Recreation probably next week to talk in more detail on that issue. But that is a big priority for us. We acknowledge that Act 250 currently lacks criteria sufficient to address impacts to forest blocks and connecting habitat. If anything comes out of this process, we would like to see criteria allowing Act 250 to review those impacts, because we believe that that's very important. But it's our position that regulatory protections is only one strategy to address forest fragmentation. It's certainly an important one. Other strategies include planning. And we've made good advances in this state around planning for forest integrity. The legislature enacted Act 171 a year or two ago that required regional planning commissions to address forest fragmentation in the regional plans and authorized municipalities to do so. We've seen lots of progress in that regard. And then probably the most significant strategy to address forest fragmentation is the maintenance of a viable forest products industry. If a landowner can own a large block of unfragmented forest and they can harvest that land sustainably and make a revenue off that land, then it's in their financial interest to keep it undeveloped. If the highest investment use of that property maintains sustainable forest management, it's not going to be fragmented for houses. It's not going to be subdivided into other lots. It's going to stay in forest. And we've been very fortunate that we have many landowners in Vermont who have kept their land in that state while the amount of forest has declined slightly in recent years. We still have a significant amount of forested acres. And that is largely the result of these decisions of private landowners to manage their properties for forest products. And we're seeing a real threat to the viability of that sector these days from global influences, but also the loss of a lot of in-state capacity to process those wood products and to value added products. We're seeing a number of sawmills and other processing facilities go out. Seth Jensen testified earlier this morning to you all that in his county several mills have closed recently. So we would really hope, as he suggested, that you look at the impact of actually 50 on those facilities and do what you can to support the forest processing industry, because that's a real key strategy in fighting forest fragmentation. So now I'm going to turn to the definition of critical resource area, which is in your bill. I'm looking at draft 5.2, which I believe is the latest. And that definition is on page 12. And it's short, so I'll just read it. Critical resource area means a river corridor, a significant wetland, as defined under section 902 of this title, land at or above 2,000 feet, and land characterized by slopes greater than 15% and shallow depth of the bedrock. That is a new definition that the bill adds to Act 250. And that definition is used in different ways to trigger jurisdiction. I'm just going to hit on those different applications of the concept and then talk about our view of that and then take your questions. So the first use of that term comes on page 6 of the bill, line 18. And in that provision, the bill effectively establishes automatic and universal jurisdiction for the construction of any improvement for commercial, industrial, or residential use in a critical resource area, including areas above 2,000 feet. So that basically says, if you're doing any sort of construction of an improvement in these areas, Act 250 is automatically triggered. It doesn't look at the scope or scale of the project, the area's impacted. It just says, if those activities are occurring in these areas, Act 250 is automatically triggered. As you've heard from the Natural Resources Board, Act 250 typically is triggered by the size of the parcel, the number of lots, the scope of development. Except for areas above 2,500 feet, then Act 250 is automatically triggered. This critical resource area concept brings that automatic universal trigger to these areas as well. Going on to page 7, critical resource areas are referenced again starting on page 6, excuse me, line 6. And this effectively, this section repeals the exemption for farming, logging, and forestry in critical resource areas and in areas above 2,000 feet. So currently, farming, forestry, and logging are exempt from Act 250 unless they occur above 2,500 feet. This provision would lower that elevation threshold to 2,000 feet and repeal the exemption in the other areas that are included in the definition. And we've done a chair shelving that's asked us to do some mapping to share information with you all about what those elevational breaks look like and how much land is included, say, above 1,500 feet, above 2,000. We're going to get you that information next week. I do have some preliminary numbers. And changing that threshold from 2,500 feet to 2,000 feet adds another 513,000 acres to Act 250 jurisdiction. 513,000 acres. Under the current law, that automatic jurisdiction is triggered at the 2,500 foot level. In all of Vermont, there's only about 190,000 acres above 2,500 feet. So if you drop that threshold to 2,000, you're going to pull in an additional 500,000. That's almost a quadrupling of the area that would be subject to automatic universal jurisdictions. Let's see. And then the last section I'll point out is on page 10 of the Bill, line 1. And this speaks to subdivisions. So the first two jurisdictional triggers are focused on activities, the construction of improvements or logging or farming. This section talks about triggering Act 250 for subdivision. And what this section does would say that Act 250 jurisdiction would be triggered for any subdivision, including dividing one parcel into two. Currently in Act 250, subdivisions trigger review if you're creating more than 10 lots or more in towns that have permanent zoning and subdivision bylaws or six lots or more in towns that do not have those local divisions. So in towns that have planning and zoning, you have to get above nine lots of Trader 250. In towns that don't, you have to get above five lots. This change would trigger Act 250 for just one subdivision if it's in these critical resource areas, including lands above 2,000 feet. And then there's a couple other references throughout the Bill to critical resource areas that require they be considered in an updated capabilities and development map and that regional planning commissions include them in their regional plans. I'm not going to speak to those. Those are suggestions related to the planning provisions of the Bill. So now I just want to kind of go back to the definition itself and talk about some of the components. The first critical resource area in mentions are river corridors. And there was some discussion of river corridors earlier today with the Ag Agency. You'll hear from our rivers program later who can speak in great detail about river corridors. But I guess my point is that as currently drafted, this provision raises some questions because river corridors occupy a portion of land. So if you own, say, a 10 acre parcel that abuts a river and that river corridor extends 50 feet, 100 feet from the river onto your property, is your whole parcel going to be subject to Act 250 jurisdiction if you propose to build on it? Currently, 250 is usually triggered for the parcel, not by portions of. So it's just unclear to us whether, if you have a river corridor on your property, whether you fall into this critical resource area, an Act 250 would be triggered. Or if the intent is that if you're only planning to build on the river corridor, then it's triggered. So that seems like something that warrants some clarification. And I guess another question we have is whether all of Act 250's 10 criteria would apply in those instances. If your main concern here is addressing impacts to river corridors, inundation and full-deal hazards, and that is going to be triggered for something as small as a single-family home or for forestry or for farming in these areas, does that level of development really warrant the full Act 250 review? Or is the intent just to focus on impacts to river corridors? If the intent is just to focus on river corridors, there may be better ways to do that. There exists a state flood hazard and river corridor rule and permit that is required for some forms of development. It's not currently required for development that goes through Act 250, but that's an existing regulatory program, just like our stormwater or our wetlands programs, stream alteration, that could easily be expanded to address these sorts of impacts without having to pull these small areas of development into Act 250. So that's an alternate approach that certainly exists. The second element of the critical resource area definition is significant wetlands. And these are class 1 and 2 wetlands. The state has broken the wetlands into three classes, 1, 2, and 3. Class 1 being really outstanding, significant resources. There's only a handful of those that have been decimated in the state. Class 2 are state significant due to their size or their functions and values. Class 3 are typically smaller, more scattered, and while valuable, they're not regulated by the state. So this focuses on those two more significant classes of wetlands. The same question applies. If you have a significant wetland on your property, does that automatically pull the whole parcel into Act 250 jurisdiction under this approach? Or is it only if you're going to impact the wetland? That's not clear to us. Another issue is that wetlands are dynamic in nature, and they're not accurately mapped currently across the state. So this approach would suggest needing a wetland delineation before you do any form of development to determine whether a class 2 wetland is a significant well is present on your property so that you know whether jurisdiction is triggered. Wetland delineations, well assessments are typically done for larger developments, but not everyone knows they need to do that, especially if you're bringing the threshold down to a single family house. It's not a bad idea to vet properties for wetlands. We certainly support that, but it could create just additional complexity at the very beginning stages of the Act 250 process just to determine if jurisdiction applies. So that's another consideration for you. And then, similarly, we have state statutory protections for significant wetlands. And there's rules that have been promulgated. And we have a robust wetland permitting program that is already reviewing impact savings resources. So it's not entirely clear what the intent of triggering the full, robust Act 250 review if you're really just focused on protecting wetlands, because we have a wetlands program that's intended to do that. And if that program has gaps, we'd certainly be happy to talk to you about how to make it more robust. But it just raises the question of whether the full suite of 250 process and criteria would be necessary if you're really focused on just wetland wetlands. The next piece I'll touch on is areas above 2,000 feet. As I explained, Act 250 currently has automatic universal jurisdiction for areas above 2,500 feet. That would lower that threshold of 500 feet in elevation. And as I said earlier, that equates to about $500,000 and a little more than 500,000 acres. We're doing some additional analysis to determine what of that half a million acres is actually developable or operable for forestry. And we'll try to have that information for you next week. But it's still a significant land area. And this gets me back to the forest fragmentation conversation. Because currently, landowners are able to harvest timber up to 2,500 feet without getting an Act 250 application. And we see very few applications to harvest above that threshold. We get a few every few years. But there's not a lot of timber management that occurs above 2,500 feet. It certainly happens, but it's not a regular activity. So I think most forest owners and managers are not familiar with the Act 250 process. It would be a big change if they had to get an Act 250 permit to manage some portion of that half a million acres. And it could, frankly, be a deterrent for them to do so. And that seems the exact opposite effect that you would like to have in promoting people to keep large blocks of unfragmented forest and active sustainable management. I think requiring people to get Act 250 permits in that half a million acres for forestry could really work in the opposite direction and encourage people to seek a different use of that property. If they're going to have to get an Act 250 permit, you might as well get it for a couple houses while you're at it to do it for your timber operation. So that's just a concern. You might want to talk to forest landowners and the folks that advise them to get a better sense of how much of a hurdle that could be. But we have real concerns that lowering that threshold to 2,000 feet could have the unintended consequence of deterring forest management, which is our best strategy in preventing forest fragmentation. And I think as others testified, elevation is not always the best proxy for sensitivity. I think it's a pretty coarse one. There may be better ways to determine what areas are more vulnerable from a natural resources perspective. And then the last piece that the definition includes is slopes greater than 15% on shallow bedrock. That sounds reasonable. I know that building on steep slopes is can be problematic. Again, I think there are a number of regulatory protections out there through our state storm water program that does address that issue. And I don't really have a strong opinion on that one. But I think, again, it will be a granular analysis that will be necessary at the beginning of the development process to determine if those features exist on the site and whether they would then trigger activity. So in summary, the agency does not support this approach to jurisdiction, largely due to the reasons that I just summarized. We think that there's some confusion about how the river corridor and well pieces would be applied in practice. If the intent is to apply them just narrowly to those resource areas, it would appear other restrictions and provisions of state law already exist that could do that work easily. Dropping the elevation trigger may have significant impacts on the forestry operations in the state, which is a concern of ours. So that is basically the bulk of my testimony today. I think that we're certainly open to discussing alternate approaches to jurisdiction. But as far as the critical resource areas as proposed, it's not something that we think is the way to go. Representative Forgates and Gold. Yeah, I think the fact that you say you're not supporting these changes kind of answers my question. Well, two questions. One is big because, OK, if one thing is possibly one possible change is too large, how would you answer that to make it not too large? And maybe that is the answer of my second question, which is, well, what do you call this? Sure, so if the committee is interested in expanding Act 250 jurisdiction to address sensitive natural resource areas, the proposal we made to the Act 47 Commission, which was the legislative process that went off in the past year or so that Chair Sheldon and Representative were on our recommendation to that commission, was to establish what's effectively a petition process, where through rulemaking, entities of a town, a citizen, a nonprofit, a conservation group, a regional planning commission could propose to the Secretary of Natural Resources that a discrete defined area had unique natural resource values that weren't higher jurisdiction, so that you would not create a blanket increase across the state, but you would go in on a case by case basis and say, this 100 acres is a regionally acknowledged quarter for wildlife. Even a single home developed in this area could have detrimental impacts on those functions and values. We really feel that automatic and universal Act 250 review in this area is warranted. And here's the scientific and planning argument for why that is. There would be some criteria developed that would inform when those areas would be designated or not. I would be referred to a public process where folks could provide comments and then an issue, a decision would be rendered. There's similar models that exist in the state for outstanding resource waters and class 1 wetlands. These are other ways to identify premier natural resources through a petition and designation process that then enjoy higher protection. So that's our current proposal. We're absolutely open to talk with you all and other stakeholders about different ways to get there, but that's our current thing. What would you ever consider, instead of having people, the kind of anyone, has been anyone for monitors only or anyone? That's one question, but instead of having all this pump up going on, wouldn't you have kind of why not make a proposal for which lands in line and get it done once? Because it's not a simple proposition. I think this concept of increasing jurisdiction for active 50 has been discussed as long as I've been at the agency, which is over seven years now, and no one's come up with that silver bullet. And I think we're absolutely willing to continue to talk with people. I know VNRC has been working hard on this issue for many, many years and I think it was scheduled to propose something to you all yesterday. They're going to come in tomorrow to do so. I'm eager to see what they have to say, and that may be a course that we're able to support. But if the goal is to address forest fragmentation and connectivity, we don't currently have the tools to say right now, here are those places in the landscape that are so critical they need enhanced protections. It's not to say that we can't get there eventually, but we don't have that figured out right this second. So our thought is that this petition process lets the areas, creates a process to identify and protect those areas as they are determined to exist on the landscape. Representative Dolan. Good morning. My question was, earlier in your presentation when you talked about the forest products industry, and you had mentioned that you brought up the case where we heard earlier about in the oil that several mills closed. And so you saw that the threat of how to provide for the processing for forest products industry. And you had some ideas on that. I'd be very interested in hearing from you about how Vermont could go about attracting those types of businesses and scale for Vermont that can help support that industry. I don't know if you have ideas now or at some point, but I just wanted to flag that as a follow-up. I can share one idea right now. And I would suggest you wait, hold off until Commissioner Snyder testifies, because I think you will be able to speak to that in a much more complete and eloquent way. But certainly one piece that we have acknowledged could be addressed through Act 250 is restrictions on the time of operation for forest processing facilities. It's increasingly harder with climate change for loggers, truckers to bring forest products out of the woods safely under dry or frozen conditions. And deliver them to mills and processed. Used to be that you could bank on having a nice long winter when you could freeze up your forest roads and move wood nine to five during normal business days. Now with the weather, we've been having this week as a great example. Sometimes you have short windows of safe conditions, and you have to go all night for days to get that wood out and then get your windows. Similarly, during the winter, during the summer, we have lots of rain. Sometimes you may only have a brief dry spell to move wood. And we've seen some mills have restrictions on when they can receive shipments of forest products in their Act 250 permits. And we'd ask you to look at whether there can be some accommodations made for mills to have some reasonable flexibility to work with the weather and not be constrained by hours of operation when they really need to do the work. So that's one simple one, but I'm sure Mike can give you a lot more ideas. Representative McCullough? I'm not wanting to shoot the messenger bill. Appreciate your coming here and giving us a preview, perhaps, of the administration's approach to modifying Act 250. Frankly, that disturbs me. For our natural resource, this planning division to be not supporting critical resource areas, definitions, and exploration of this is quite troubling. I understand you're willing to keep talking, except that happened over the times today. But with that, I'd like you to just take the word back to the sixth floor that the rest of the agencies need to come out of the woodwork and tell us upfront, yes, we're supporting this section, or no, we're not supporting that, or you know what, this has been a great exercise, but thank you, but no, thank you. This committee needs to know. And we need to know in detail. So you've given us some detail. And I appreciate that. I'd like your planning agency to rethink your position that perhaps planning is not as, as I read what you said today, planning is not as good as each little part, deciding do we need to increase our regulations, or we need to look at this a little bit differently. We're talking about a planning document here specifically for the entire state. So that's my pitch. You don't even need to respond. Thank you very much for listening. I just want to respond briefly and say that planning is critical. And I didn't focus a lot on the planning provisions of your committee bill today, but I think certainly doing more to identify where natural resources are in the landscape and inform people in their development decisions and is critical. And I think Act 171 has been very successful in that. It authorized towns and regions to plan for force blocks and connecting habitat. We've developed a whole curriculum and model bylaws for communities to do that work with. And that's happening all across the state. And these issues are being regulated at a local level. And I think that's a great outcome. And I certainly support planning at the statewide level. So I hope I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I think just the specific language of the critical resource areas that's currently drafted raises some problems for us. This representative would actually be adding some other critical resource areas. Definition scores all the way to the far end is a vernal pool. Is this 250 square foot thing worth protecting? And of course, we have regulations around that at any rate. Thank you. So I guess I'm following up on that. I'm wondering, is it the position of the agency that there are not statewide significant resources that we should be protecting? No, there certainly are. There is statewide significant in African communities. There's also statewide significant wetlands. There's a whole litany of resources that are statewide significant. I think my only comment is that this definition as a jurisdictional trigger has potential issues, unintended consequences. It's not clear how it will be applied to either just that specific location of the entire parcel. What would those resources be? And how would you identify them? I'd have to get back to that because there are a number of resources that through statute and rule have already been designated as state significant. We have a whole ranking system for natural communities that I can get back to you on that one and this class one and two are already considered state significant. So I don't know the answer off the top of my head. I mean, I guess I would just also say that that concept of having things come from the bottom up has been pretty slow on class one wetlands. We have a corridor of protections. It's not something that's proving out to be working that well. And again, absolutely open to talking with folks we're actively engaged with BNRC around this issue right now. How do we come up? Is there a path to increase jurisdiction outside of centers that is workable for all stakeholders? And we're still working on it. My questioning is along that same theme. I was intrigued by your suggestion or identification of alternative models to try to accomplish the same objective. And you mentioned this petition and designation process. Sorry, I appreciate that. Gives us something to think about. I would be interested and maybe you could follow up with us with getting us some of this information. The petition and process that we have in place, if you could provide us some data in terms of how effective it has been in both the wetland class one designation and you mentioned outstanding resource water. How many do we have? The reason why we're kind of concerned is that earlier in this whole process, we heard about climate impacts and how, and we are Vermont and it's various mountain ranges and river systems. How important it is to be thinking about that connectivity issue, about forest blocks and connected habitat and how I think we as a collective in the state are trying to wrestle with that level of live necessary as we think about Act 250 in that next iteration and what that looks like. And the maps I think we're very telling in that much of our landscape as you know is in private land ownership and how important it is to engage the public in embracing that vision of our future being robust and vibrant both ecologically and economically. And so we're struggling with trying to figure out those tools that are going to help us really acknowledge and realize how to bring us forward into aligned in that vision that can protect these forest blocks and connected habitat. So that example is helpful if you have other examples in which we can help acknowledge. And when we get to that whole 2,000 to 2,500, we're fortunate that we have some areas with higher mountain range, maybe not Rocky Mountain version, but certainly our Green Hills are something to embrace. But we recognize in other places in the state we have smaller mountain ranges that may not necessarily even reach that 2,500, but elevation does matter, especially when we're thinking about forest blocks and connectivity. Then I've driven through, I think we all have through the Vermont landscape where we've seen beautiful hills and mountains that with no zoning where they have developed now on the top of the mountain ranges there. And maybe if you think Act 250 is just slowing the inevitable development, that's unfortunate. We want to really be deliberative and those planning processes are critical for us in enabling us to see how again, thinking of forest block and connected habitat throughout Vermont, how important it is for us to be kind of having the tools in place to help us address those challenges. So I'm very much welcome. Your other ideas on how to accomplish those objectives, given the level of that. We'll share those in just briefly. We absolutely support modernizing the criteria to address forest blocks, connecting habitat. We've suggested ways to modernize the floodways criteria to be protective of river corridors and the connectivity that those riparian areas provide. So we share those goals, absolutely. I think this narrow subject we discussed today is a jurisdictional one and I think it just raises some questions for us. And elevation absolutely does matter. What I meant to imply is that 2000 feet is not a magic number. In some communities, you might not ever hit that height but there's ridges and mounds that are significant. Other places 2000 feet is a flat, it's your whole community. It's like Marshfield almost, so that's 500 feet. So it's just picking the number is not always the best way to get there. And our biggest concern with this proposal is the rescinding the forestry exemption in that area between 2000 and 2500 feet. That's what gives us the great cause because that may discourage landowners from doing good forest management in those areas that are appropriate for forestry and may need to conversion to other uses, which is absolutely what we're trying to avoid. Representative Fave. Thank you, Billy. I was very encouraged to hear what you had to say about the forest industry. There's a key role in preventing fragmentation. I certainly see that industry as keeping these small towns and my neck of the woods is viable and I would hate to see any more obstacles put in their way and I would rather have a sense that the two can work hand in hand as far as preventing fragmentation and also having a very healthy forest industry. And I'm hoping that such concepts as location jurisdiction enhance designation, if you will, in these areas will play a role in determining what kind of flexibility we can give in terms of how we relate to the working land. So I was very happy to hear your testimony. Thank you. Pardon? Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment. I'm not sure what the protocol is for witnesses to come in and speak, but I appreciate your candor. I appreciate the issues that you brought up. I appreciate what you're thinking about, the impact of this changes on the working lands.  And so I appreciate the fact that you came and brought that to our attention. Representative Flurgen. Yeah, I just would like to follow up on what Representative Smith said. I see it that we have witnesses in here to give us their opinions on this bill. And this bill, well, this committee bill isn't anything a second stone. It's anything that this committee that I'm aware of has decided this is the way the wording's gonna be. And again, I appreciate the fact that you're receiving your opinions whether we end up agreeing with them or not. That's your opinion. I wonder if you, as a planner, have you put any thought into how we address the sort of cumulative effects of incremental development if we aren't gonna change jurisdictional curves? I have thought about that. I haven't come to any great conclusions. This is a real challenge. How do you create a regulatory structure that can account for that incremental growth that doesn't just kind of swoop in at some point in time? And it's kind of like, there used to be this concept as last person in Act 250 under the transportation criteria where you could build out on a part of a road and the next development that necessitated extracurricular traffic light, they had to pay for all those improvements where it was really the cumulative impact of cars from all that development and the dots of that play that contributed to it. But it was whoever that last developer was who hit that threshold, it was all on them. V-Trans changed that model by charging a small amount from every person along the roadway, anticipating meaning to make future investments and spreading that cost around. But that's harder when you're trying to make land use decisions. So I don't have a good answer to that. It's something that I continue to think about and struggle with. I think it would be great to have some professional planners who have done this working for a long time to discuss this. I know you've heard from them on the F-47 commission process. I think that jurisdiction is a tool to get there. I think our proposal to increase jurisdiction in areas that have demonstrated values and demonstrated risk is one way to do that. The example I like to give is the Shutesville Hill Wildlife Corridor in Waterbury. It's a, you look it on the map, it's a very obvious place, a very obvious linkage. It has discrete barrier or sideboards. It's this place on the landscape that you can point to and say, that's important. And even a small amount of development in an area could be detrimental. And I think that's the exact sort of place we envision for this petition process where someone will come forward and say, this area on the landscape has outsized values. It has high vulnerability and risk from even small amounts of development. Let's have, actually could be applied here, broadly. So that's one way to get a cumulative development. But you're focusing on the areas that have the highest values and the most risk instead of just broadly across the landscape. But again, I think there's a lot of smart people, smarter than I, working on this, and I'm hoping that others will bring ideas forward as, you know, in the course of this debate that we can talk about. Any more questions for Mr. Bouser? Related to that example, what triggered the Act 250 process in the first place in order to give you the opportunity to recognize that this particular example was critical in both what we're trying, you know, as a resource of high values? So, we know that it's important because of a number of studies that have occurred in the area, both by which my life, part of which concerns the others, but currently that area doesn't have any special regulatory protections. Act 250 would only trigger if the current jurisdictional thresholds were met. And I use that as an example for a petition process that I discussed earlier where someone could come forward and say, this area is important. I'm gonna petition for Act 250 to apply university here. So that was just an example of a place where the model I'm suggesting could work well. In this case, it was a cell tower. So that triggered the 248 process. So let's say it was going to be a, this is Waterbury. So it would, they have adopted standard. So they have zoning. And so let's say it would be 10, no, six blocks, six blocks. So what if it was a housing development, high elevation for four houses in that? It wouldn't trigger. It wouldn't trigger. And even if it did, and this is, you know, the biggest issue from higher agency's perspective, there aren't criteria related to forest blocks and connecting habitat. So even if a development area triggered Act 250 review, we wouldn't have the tools to address those considerations. We may be able to get to it through necessary wildlife habitat or some other of the environmental criteria, but there's no lens currently to review these landscape scale values such as habitat blocks that connect. So let's say again, coming to this example, that it was a four lot subdivision. And we had adopted a connected forest block connectivity type standard. And yet it was four lots. So I presume it would still lie under our threshold if we hadn't done anything with jurisdictions. So, and I always think a good working forest, a good working farm is what we strive for. It does less impact from a well-managed forest, to withstand to a well-managed farm. So I think we can all agree that sub-objective land conversion into new housing, you can never undo. And yet here we have, in this situation, the type of development triggered review that gave the state the opportunity to flag it as a absolutely critical juncture. So that's what we're trying to get at is those situations, because nine times out of 10, it's a housing development. How do we, a petition process may help, but you have to be really foresight in determining strategically how to plan on a statewide basis. So that's a huge challenge. So how, welcome your recommendations of jurisdiction that can help us ensure that those areas of absolute critical importance aren't going to be lost. We'll continue working on that, and as ideas come out that we think are good ones, I'm happy to put them back to you and to talk more. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Thank you, thank you. All right, welcome. We are ready to get started. You're on your record. Good afternoon, Chairman, Chairwoman, Sheldon and committee. Thanks for having me here at the Belfast River Four Doors and I have cultural practices in those areas. My name is Rob Evans. I am the River Four Doors and Floodplain Protection Program Manager at the Agency of Natural Resources. Our program supports multiple jurisdictions that regulate development in flood hazard areas in the River Four Doors, including municipal permitting, Act 250 in the State Flood Hazard Area and River Four Doors rule. My prepared testimony will, one, give you a brief overview of the areas regulated and also discuss current authority for regulating agricultural practices in the River Four Doors. So to start, the area is regulated. Direct attention to the screen up there because I have some visuals to test and we will talk about flood hazard areas first. The flood hazard area is a regulatory zone mapped by the Federal Emergency Management Agency with the basis of the National Flood Insurance Program. The flood hazard area depicts the areas that would be inundated by the, quote, 100-gear flood or more accurately, the 1% annual insurance flow. Development and map flood hazard areas is regulated by 90% of Vermont's communities that are enrolled in the National Flood Insurance typically through zoning operations. In addition, the flood hazard area is regulated through Act 250 under criterion 1D floodways as well as the State Flood Hazard Area and River Four Doors rule. Municipalities and the State are required to regulate flood hazard areas in order to maintain access to Federal Flood Insurance and hazard mitigation grounds. Shortcoming of the flood hazard areas that does not account for the fact that rivers are dynamic and that they change location in their river valleys over time. Specifically, flood hazard areas do not account for flood-related erosion, which is Vermont's primary mode of flood damage. Moreover, 80% of Vermont's rivers and streams do not have a map flood hazard area. River Four Doors are mapped by the Agency of Natural Resources, my program in particular, and depict the space a river needs over time to accommodate erosion and depositional processes. River Four Doors are an important planning and regulatory tool to avoid putting new investments in hazardous places and to avoid the need to further channelize our rivers to protect those investments. Here's an image that shows both flood hazard area and river corridor combined. As you can see, they don't exactly line up on the landscape. That's because the methodology that goes into creating those is distinctly different. It's based on calculations to determine what's gonna be underwater during the 100-year flood. That's the red area that you see up there, the reddish pink, the yellow corridor, superimposed the river corridor, defining that lateral space the river needs over time. From Meander migration down the valley, river's Meander in low-field valley settings. That's just plain physics. This image depicts a situation that is common in Vermont, a narrowly mapped flood hazard that under-represents flood risk. In this image, the flood hazard area does not extend beyond the banks of the river. This is due to the river being disconnected from its flood plain. Flood plain disconnection results from channelization practices, typically some combination of dredging, burming, armoring, and straitening. Channelization sets in motion process referred to as incision, where the channel cuts down vertically. And larger and larger flood flows are contained within the channel, setting up extremely the road sub-situation. Floods should start spilling out onto the flood plain during the one-to-two-year flood. Allowing water to spread out, slow down, drop sediment, debris, sometimes ice, like this time of year. This is what we refer to as natural and beneficial flood plain functions. This image shows all of the hundred-year flood being shunted downstream, putting public infrastructure and private investment secretary at risk. The river corridor depicts the space the river needs to re-establish a stable slope. That's that Meander geometry I referred to. And flood plain reconnection. The river corridor is an essential tool to ensure that investments are not placed in conflict with natural river processes. The river will restore itself if we provide the space. 43 communities have voluntarily adopted river corridor regulations. In addition, the state of Vermont regulates river corridors through Act 250 and the flood hazard area river corridor rule. Before I move on to agricultural practices in the river corridors and flood hazard areas, are there any questions about the difference or distinction between these two map areas? One map's inundation risk, one is a tool to manage for erosion risk. Harvey? Yeah, could you explain that a little bit more about the differences between the main and the A&R? Sure, in terms of just on this particular slide. Yeah, in how it works and how it's integrated. Yes, it is interrelated. If the situation we're seeing here where the FEMA flood plain, the red area is very narrowly mapped, it's essentially depicting the 100 year flood contained within the channel of the river. If the river was not disconnected from its flood plain, we expect to see a place showing red as least as big as the river corridor, perhaps even larger. If it was accessing its flood plain, dissipating its energy, causing it to settle. And again, what typically creates that incision process where the river starts to get road downward and then it starts to the road laterally as well as channelization practices. It can also be a combination of upland changes to watershed hydrology as well. The river corridor on the other hand isn't looking at a one flood, it's saying based on the science of morphology, how much space does that river be over time through a whole range of floods to discharge its floodwater, sediment, and be vertically stable. Vertically stable isn't mean it's not gonna move laterally over time, but vertically stable and at least erosive. What we think of that as the minimum valley space that the river needs over time. Does that answer your question? I think so. You said 80% are not mapped of the flood hazard areas in the state. Don't we have all those NFIP maps that are historic and so that when you say not mapped, can you sort of explain what that means? Because the maps are done differently, right? Like they're all mapped, but some were surveyed, some weren't. Actually not that they're actually not all mapped. FEMA, due to just the cost of mapping, doing detailed studies and creating maps for rivers really focuses on our larger main steps and those rivers and sardines that are adjacent to populated areas or are experiencing development pressure. So 80% of our stream miles do not have a female map. Now those are by and large by the number of smaller rivers and streams. You know our big rivers and streams, the Lodder, the Lamoyle, the Winouski and a number of the major tributaries like the Dog River or the Mad River, those are mapped by FEMA. The tributaries to those rivers are not mapped. And flood risk does exist on those, yes. And then we're not working on that on any level, it's mapped by FEMA. FEMA's back in the state after being on hiatus to update maps in the state, but it's still going to be a dark percentage stream. Okay, I'll move on to discuss regulation of agricultural practices in Riverport. The Flood Hazard area in Riverport or Boole went into effect in March of 2015. The rule regulates activities that are exempt from municipal regulation. Those activities, the towns cannot regulate and that are regulated by the rule include state owned and operated institutions and facilities and state buildings. It includes a transportation infrastructure, roads and bridges, culverts that are in these areas. And it also includes the regulation of required agricultural and forestry practices and power generation and transmission facilities that are subject to the public utility commission process. Also known as section 248. The Flood Hazard area in Riverport or General Perm that allows farming as a non-reporting activity. And such activities do not involve the placement of structures or other above ground improvements or birth work that permanently alters ground elevations or fulfill retaining walls, berms or terraces. Required agricultural practices in flood hazard areas need to meet a no adverse impact standard to ensure development does not increase flood elevations, velocities or decrease flood storage volume. In addition, development needs to meet flood plain management standards such as elevation, flood proofing requirements, anchoring, use of flood resistant materials, other base requirements of the National Flood Transport that the state is on the hook for just like today. Required agricultural practices in Riverport always need to meet a no adverse impact standard as well as specifically, development cannot increase fluvial erosion hazards by creating a need to channelize or further channelize the river. River channelization typically in the form of stream bank armoring may increase your water stability which exacerbates erosion hazards and sediment lobing to receive waters. Similar to densely developed designated centers, the rule contains provisions that allow for infill and redevelopment within the farm production area. So long as it's not getting closer to the river than pre-existing development. And lastly, the definitions and regulatory standards in the Flood Hazard Variant River corridor will align with standards in our agency procedure for making determinations and recommendations to Act 250, Criterion 1D. Unfortunately, the Act 250, Criterion 1D definitions and standards and statute are antiquated and do not align with current practice which makes it very confusing for the regulated community and leads to inefficiency in the overall primitive process. I would direct you for further reading to an addendum that we filed with our testimony entitled Rational and Policy Support for Revisions to Act 250, Criterion 1D. It walks through the last 15 years of Supreme Court decisions, legislative acts, et cetera in terms of how we view and use river corridors in light of 1D determinations and Act 250 process. So in closing, the committee bill is currently drafted, modernizes terms and standards and brings them into alignment with current practice. Take questions. Representative Smith. Just working on that, the slide you have up there where you have the farm production area. And so that looks like it's in the Flood Zone. Yes, sir, it would be in the Flood Zone as well. So if that farm wanted to make some improvements or changes over the process period, they would apply for a permit from my program and then they would have to again meet standards. So we'll start with the flood plain area. They would have to ensure that the project does not decrease in flood storage volume as well as no adverse impact standards. So if they wanted to elevate the ground and place fill, that might ultimately be permissible but they'd have to offset that by excavating basically what we call compensatory storage requires that they maintain space for flood water storage and conveyance. So that's the first big test. If you can get over the no adverse impact hurdle, then it falls back to standards that are really tight, but what it is you're doing are you building a barn? If you're building a barn, that has to be flood plain management criteria for elevation of the barn. Wet flood proofing it requires things like having flood vents to allow water to equalize so you don't have collapse of walls due to uneven water pressure. It requires that you have utilities either elevated above the flood elevation or flood proof so they're dry and flood waters have anchoring requirements. Things that are floatable, things that can be moved downstream during floods need to be either enclosed or otherwise anchored to ensure that they don't become part of the debris field that pulses downstream and then we all pay for what the tax dollars to pick up somewhere else. So that's, so before I move on to river corridors, that's the kind of stuff you look at. It just kind of depends on what you're constructing. Oh, there, but you know, they're disparate buildings as well. I mean a lot of them didn't have for a long period of time. So I was wondering if that was destroyed by fire or flood whether it would be allowed to build back or they'd have to find another location. They would be allowed to build back and you know, it's an interesting point to bring up regarding historic designation, historic designation.  It's a building and we're talking about the flood insurance program, the standards we need to administer. So it's really focused on insurable buildings. When an insurable building is substantially damaged, 50% of the cost essentially replacing it or more is the cost that we build back. If you treat that as a substantial damage threshold, normally that requires that you meet current standards. So if you have to elevate it, you can rebuild it but you have to elevate it and flood proof it and keeping it on the requirements. Historic buildings have a specific pass on that. They're exempt from substantial damage on the requirements. So if it truly was on either a state register or a national register of historic places and it was substantially damaged, there would be some additional relief for instance for building that. So what would happen if they were expanded to meet some of the new water quality and practice standards and all put in the most historic area there? Let's, yeah, there is a large fairly new concrete manure up there that replaced an earthen manure that NRCS funded it just a few years ago. And so it's a matter of installing implements to make sure that during floods that they're not gonna have floodwater backing up and further compromising that system and that backflow preventer and things like that. The top of the manure pit needs to be above flood elevation and the design flood elevation with our rule is two feet above the 100 year flood elevation. So again, flood proof, you don't want to have your, the overarching without getting into the very specifics of the new standards is you don't want floodwaters to compromise your investment and you don't want your investment to pollute or contaminate or compromise floodwaters that's a kind of exchangeable point. It's important because we've been really focused on this slide and what's required when we're talking about inundation hazards and inundation standards, but there's also the lens of the river corridor. So the river corridor, you know, infilling within those existing buildings or placing modifying those existing buildings not a problem even behind and further away from the river will be called shadowing would be allowed kind of closer to the road there. But the big test here is we don't want to see a new investment closer because that might engender the need to start channelizing the river sooner or more to protect that investment. So where I'm sitting, it looks like if they have to put in a new facility or add on that so they have to go to the lab. Correct. But it would be allowed. Yes. Representative Morgan. Did you say that FEMA determines the outer boundaries of the boundaries of the flood plain? Yes, the flood hazard area, the inundation flood plain, they do the mapping of the studies. How do they determine what that is? It's basically a combination of hydrologic analysis coming up with an estimation of how large it is the 100 year flood coming through here. So that can be done a number of ways. Typically it's using screen gauging records to come up with a flood frequency as a statistical analysis to analyze stream flow records. In the absence of stream flow records, US Geological Survey has come up with what they call regression equations where they use large data set from all of our gauges in Vermont and Hampshire and even part of New York to come up with predictive equations to estimate flood flows in the absence of stream flow data. Then you can also do, if it doesn't typically do this because it's very expensive, it's rainfall runoff in a lot of ways where you look at precipitation inputs, land cover, land use with perviousness and then you can generate a runoff discharge flow, a flood flow from that. That's the first step. Then once you have a flood flow, then you have to put that into what's called a hydraulic model. Essentially what you do is you survey, or in this case, with high resolution topography like the other state, LIDAR basically shows that high resolution elevation landscape is. So you essentially take cross sections perpendicular to flow of the channel and flood plain so you define the geometry at regular intervals down and upstream. Then you simulate flood flow through that geometry and then you can determine how high or low the flood water gets. You take into consideration, same thing, land cover, land use, is it heavily forested? Is it paved? Is it mowed? All those things have an effect on flood water. Are the boundaries deemed to be pretty accurate? When they do these days with the advent of that LIDAR, that high resolution topography, they're quite accurate. I think where there's the variability as people agreeing on is the flow estimation. With a real 100-year flood, please step forward, please kind of concept, because there's a lot of variability around them. But in terms of mapping of particular flood elevation, it can be done very precisely or it couldn't be done near as well in the past. The reason I asked is a few years back, I live on the shores of the Loma River and I got a letter from FEMA stating that my house was on flood land and that I had to, and I don't have a mortgage on my home, I had a home equity line of credit and I was using it for something. And they told me that my home was on a flood land, flood insurance, and it cost me a lot of money to have my property surveyed, filled out a ton of paperwork. I had to prove to FEMA that I was innocent, I was being guilty by then. And anyway, we wanted to pay off the home equity line of credit at a quarter of a million bucks. I paid it off so I didn't have to buy insurance. So I really doubt that they're very accurate in their process. I, it really depends on the age of the published data. The Lamoille has variable data, a lot of basically right now eight of our counties have variable data, meaning FEMA did a study based on inferior topographic information 30 years ago. If I help you pay, you'll be happy to know that they're coming back to study. I still might bring money back. I can't help you there. But the FEMA is starting to work this spring to restudy Lamoille River. So perhaps folks that were in your situation will have better data to rely on in this situation. But it's a highly variable quality of the information and on a very important reality. So I'm gonna start moving on to the next one. It won't need to. Representative Dolan. Captain. We had heard Dr. Dr. Stoner and I mean that agricultural industry come on. Experienced $25 million, they kept a minimum of damage. So I see the crop loss, disruption, property loss. Are we batter off today? Are our farms more resilient today in preparation for future flooding? Or are we still facing flood risk at farms and a level that should encourage us to work with our farm community, try to improve resilience in the farms? And that's the case of what we do. That's a good question. And I don't know for certain exactly what we stand with our farms, just speculating here. But I would say by and large, the level of flood risk is very much the same. Again, at the time, there was not a state floodplain or a little bit required permits to do anything, which implements flood resilience measures. Generally speaking, came into effect in 2015, as I said, and I think gradually over time, just with our current authorities, in terms of our regulatory authority, there could be some gradual improvement as farms invest in new infrastructure and build a key, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I don't think we're necessarily better off in any measure way. It's not that any way done. You know, and so that's a million dollar question. You know, what should we do? What can we do? And the question is, do we do it through regulation? Do we do it through some form of incentives and grant programs? You know, as I understand it, I'm being an expert on a hag, but a lot of these farms are having a hard time being financially solved. And so I think they would need a lot of assistance if they're really to boost in a significant way in a short period of time. They would need resources to empower them to do that. Representative Lefebvre and then McCulloch. My apologies for coming in here testing when you wait and good afternoon. I just would like you to tell us how with the bill we have in front of us in fact, your job? It's hard to know. I mean, right now it has currently written. I mean, as I said, our rule already covers ag and forestry, which the draft proposal proposes to exempt from that 250 unless it's in a critical resource area. But it's really hard to know right now. I mean, just as written, there's potential for it to have a significant impact on our staff resources through Act 250. If it were to remain as is. There are other opportunities, other regulatory tools that exist, such as the floodplain. Flood has very river coral rule. It's an existing regulatory framework that could address these areas. It really depends on really what the jurisdiction, ultimately what's the jurisdiction. I mean, if every river corridor has triggers Act 250 or regulation, in respect to our program, it could be very significant. It's just hard to know right now without getting it more into what the real jurisdictional triggers are. It seems as written right now that it's substantial increase in Act 250 jurisdiction. It was raised this morning, testimony, that the question that, if you had, say, 50 acres and some of that acreage was on a river corridor, in this building, into effect, would that mean the entire 50 acres would now be under Act 250 jurisdiction? I have not enough of an expert on Act 250 jurisdiction. I'm still surprised sometimes, again, that anyone wants to exist with what triggers Act 250 jurisdiction. It really depends. I mean, that would be significant if it's just a parcel being in triggers it. Also, I think a key question is, does it bring in the full suite of Act 250 criteria for review or are we just triggering certain criteria because it's in a river corridor or are we gonna even look at it through the lens of river corridors and flood hazard areas? It's hard to know what the overarching intent is at this point. One last overarching question. Are there shortcomings now in the work you do that you see this act feeling? Absolutely, and I've tried to close without my testimony, which is the clarification in terms, standards, definitions, and statute. Really, the language and statute that refers to floodway and floodway fringe is very narrow and it confuses the regulatory community when oftentimes they'll come in with a permit application and they'll say, hey, we did everything right by the FEMA floodway, we're all set. We'll say, oh, wait, we determine the Act 250 differently. We look at the entire flood hazard area and river corridor, it's a larger area and we have higher standards than just base federal minimums. And so I think that can cause a lot of inefficiency and back and forth working with our Office of Planning and ANR and the District Commissions and consultants for the applicants that can be very iterative and drawn out in time consuming. So I think just the modernizing of definitions, terms, and standards, and statute to align with the way we do business now would be very helpful. And we are a river corridor and flood lane protection program, so I think that it is a very important discussion that's taking place and needs to continue regarding what the options are. I think the most sense from the hands protection of these areas up and downstream of our built environment. So this is what I add definition into what poverty is happening? Absolutely. Representative McCullough. So from the thing you're gonna get there next based on something you said, but you said a bunch of other things that I think we need to pass. The common denominator is infill. And we have at least one other state agency encouraging infill in river corridors and one or two planners. And we spent a fair amount of time this morning talking about the crystal balling that needs to happen, what's gonna happen in the future. And I'm not thinking you were even talking about that at the years from now. And so, if I'm even close to that, then deductive reasoning would say then, why would we want to infill in our river corridors, even if done carefully to the standards we have now considering the vast rate on home land. That's a fantastic question in my best answer. We talk about infilling and we really tried to accommodate infilling in densely developed areas through a number of mechanisms. So to be clear, our procedure that dictates Act 250, our rule, our model regulations we recommend for municipality all have these provisions. So the thinking within infilling really has to do with the river corridor and providing that space. And if you think of a place, a context or setting like Montpelier, we have tremendous amount of investment built right up to the edge of the river. While the river might want to wiggle over time, we're not gonna let it, right? We have a huge vested collective interest in managing the river to protect our existing investments. So with respect to river corridor regulation, which is all about providing space for the river, it's really acknowledging that in our built environment, we've really lost that opportunity for the river to wiggle over time. And in a lot of cases, the river's actually become stable. It's not a depositional range where you have sediment accumulation that's transporting us down the street. Big ditches. Big ditches. So on one hand, we relax with river corridors, the standards, so provide for infilling in these areas since we're already managing the river in these spots. But when it comes to the flood hazard area, standards are very high. We want to build in a flood smart way. So for example, elevation or flood proofing of buildings, the federal minimum standard is to elevate or flood proof to that quote, 100 year flood elevation. Our standards and rule and Act 250 procedure require two feet above that. So that's what we're trying to do is think about, okay, well, here's the regulatory design, elevation of the feds one, but we realize there's a changing climate. Tomorrow's 100 year flood might be larger than yesterday's 100 year flood. Back to your question about how this stuff is estimated, the floo