COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
PUBLIC HEARING
OF THE
AGRICULTURE & RURAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA 205 RYAN OFFICE BUILDING
TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 2018 9:00 A.M.
BEFORE:
HONORABLE MARTIN CAUSER, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE EDDIE DAY PASHINSKI, MINORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE STEPHEN BLOOM HONORABLE KAREN BOBACK HONORABLE RUSS DIAMOND HONORABLE MINDY FEE HONORABLE MARK GILLEN HONORABLE MARCIA HAHN HONORABLE RICH IRVIN HONORABLE MARK KELLER HONORABLE KATE KLUNK HONORABLE JOHN LAWRENCE HONORABLE DAVE MILLARD HONORABLE DAN MOUL HONORABLE RYAN WARNER HONORABLE DAVID ZIMMERMAN HONORABLE PAMELA DeLISSIO HONORABLE SID KAVULICH HONORABLE MAUREEN MADDEN HONORABLE PAM SNYDER
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2
1 COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT:
2 KERRY GOLDEN, REPUBLICAN EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 3 MICHELE MUSGRAVE, REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSISTANT II 4 DESTINY ZEIDERS, 5 DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
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25 Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 3
1 I N D E X
2 TESTIFIERS
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4 NAME PAGE 5 RUSSELL C. REDDING 6 SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE...... 4 7 DR. RUTH WELLIVER 8 DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY...... 15 9 MAREL KING 10 PENNSYLVANIA DIRECTOR, CHESAPEAKE BAY COMMISSION...... 33 11 ANN SWANSON 12 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CHESAPEAKE BAY COMMISSION...... 39 13 MATTHEW JOHNSTON 14 SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM OFFICE...... 51 15 GREGG ROBERTSON 16 PA LANDSCAPE AND NURSERY ASSOCIATION...... 62
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18 SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
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20 (See submitted written testimony and handouts online.)
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1 P R O C E E D I N G S
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3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Good morning,
4 everyone.
5 I would like to call this meeting of the
6 House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee to
7 order and ask all of you to join me in the Pledge of
8 Allegiance.
9 (Whereupon, the Pledge of Allegiance was
10 recited.)
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Good morning,
12 everyone.
13 We have a number of meetings going on
14 this morning and our time is constrained, so I think
15 we need to get going. Today's meeting is a public
16 hearing on SB 792, sponsored by Senator Alloway.
17 It's the fertilizer law legislation.
18 I'm going to have Michelle keep track of
19 attendance, and we'll move forward with our agenda.
20 Welcome to Secretary Redding, the
21 Secretary of Agriculture. And with him is
22 Dr. Ruth Welliver.
23 You may proceed. Welcome.
24 SECRETARY REDDING: Mr. Chairman, thank
25 you. And good morning to each of the members. It's 5
1 good to see you.
2 Thanks for your support of agriculture
3 always and the opportunity today to talk about
4 SB 792 before you. You have my testimony. I will
5 not deliver that. I will just try to provide some
6 overarching comments and a few highlights, and then
7 we can proceed.
8 The process of arriving here is over
9 three years in the making. We really appreciate the
10 good work that has been done. We have engaged in a
11 very collaborative, transparent process with our
12 stakeholders. And they've include many, some who
13 are with us today as witnesses, but also many in the
14 agriculture community, as well.
15 We have moved from a previous bill that
16 did not look like Pennsylvania, or for that matter,
17 work for Pennsylvania, to what we have today in
18 SB 792. This bill respects the fact that we have a
19 strong Fertilizer Act and have had that since 1956.
20 It creates a professional certification for
21 commercial fertilizer applicators.
22 It builds on existing training programs
23 for the lawn care business, and that has been one of
24 those points of request from the Pennsylvania
25 Landscape Nursery Association. It addresses the 6
1 urban fertilizer use for the first time as part of
2 our commitment to water quality in a court mandated
3 TMDL for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.
4 We've provided several graphs, one that
5 looks at Pennsylvania Nitrogen loads, and the other
6 being Pennsylvania Phosphorus loads. If you refer
7 to the pie charts for Nitrogen and Phosphorus, what
8 I'm referring to is the yellow portion, which is the
9 developed land. And included in that, is the urban
10 fertilizer.
11 The proposed nutrient restrictions and
12 application rates for lawn fertilizer will be an
13 integral part of the success of our Phase III
14 watershed implementation plan, presently under
15 development, to achieve the reductions. It will
16 require everyone to do their part.
17 We have had this conversation in other
18 contexts with agriculture and certainly the same is
19 true here for the urban fertilizer use. Each of us
20 have heard repeatedly from the agriculture community
21 -- and again, that's the blue portion of the pie
22 chart -- that there needs to be equity in the
23 treatment of nutrients on the farm and in the towns.
24 This legislation provides equity and
25 appropriately allocates responsibility for reducing 7
1 our State nutrient loads. Let me highlight just
2 several points. Number one, importantly, we have in
3 this legislation a certification program for
4 commercial and public fertilizer applicators. It is
5 purposely designed to mirror the Professional
6 Pesticide Applicator Program that we currently have,
7 in which 3500 of the same businesses that will be
8 covered in this legislation are already licensed and
9 registered as a business in the pesticide applicator
10 business. The same requirements of recordkeeping,
11 training, continuing education will apply to the
12 commercial fertilizer aspect, as well.
13 Further, any licensed pesticide
14 applicator providing professional fertilizer
15 application will be grandfathered initially. And
16 then, their renewals -- as the renewals are done, do
17 the training and certification for fertilizer.
18 And again, this was done at the request
19 of PLNA, to make sure that we're not duplicating the
20 efforts on the fertilizer and pesticides. We tried
21 to mirror it up and make good use of the
22 Department's time and certainly the time of the
23 individual businesses, as well.
24 You will note that there is a fee, a new
25 fee in here. And we can talk more about that, but 8
1 there's $100 per business, just to point out that
2 that's not for the individual applicator, that's on
3 the business, per se. So you can have any number of
4 applicators under the one business.
5 There's no new separate business unit
6 number required. And if you referred to, again, one
7 of the attachments in the PLNA letterhead, that came
8 to the Department as one of the conditions of
9 support, the BU number, business unit number, they
10 can use the one that's already assigned to them for
11 the pesticide application. Okay.
12 This will also assist the PDA staff with
13 some of the administration duties. The product
14 labeling language proposed changes are recognized by
15 industry on the national level. They are compatible
16 with other States' requirements, as well.
17 This will facilitate, we believe, sort of
18 the interstate commerce and shipment of fertilizer
19 products across State lines and in the region. We
20 have allowed 18 months for transition of new
21 labeling once the law is enacted to give the
22 business time to transition.
23 The education and the outreach, we think,
24 is one of the real critical points of this. It is
25 not just about the professional community who is 9
1 applying fertilizer and the application. We also
2 think the larger public has a responsibility to be
3 aware, number one, of their own sort of application
4 to their private lawns, homeowner lots, just as we
5 expect sort of the farm community to do the same,
6 but for the first time, we have a direct, very
7 intentional public education outreach program as
8 part of this.
9 So we're anxious to do that, and we think
10 that will pay real dividends for us, as well. We're
11 going to use the Four R Model. Again, we've talked
12 about that within the agricultural context. But for
13 those familiar with that, that's the right source at
14 the right time at the right place that has paid
15 dividends in the agricultural community and we think
16 it has great application to the public, as well.
17 Importantly, there is preemption in this
18 bill. Preemption, meaning that we believe it's
19 important to have one statewide standard for
20 application of fertilizers and not to have any
21 number of jurisdictions with their own sort of
22 restrictions in place, and that is occurring around
23 Pennsylvania. We've had that experience on other
24 matters of agriculture.
25 In this case, we believe it's important 10
1 to have one standard. This would prohibit the local
2 jurisdiction from having restrictions that are more
3 prohibitive than the State, as well.
4 The fees. The fees are there for several
5 reasons. One, certainly to address the
6 administrative costs that the Department will have
7 in administering this, just as they are there on the
8 pesticide side, as well. Right. That is not a
9 GGO-funded effort.
10 This will be -- the expectation would be
11 that these fees will cover the administrative costs
12 to run the program. And they're there, too,
13 particularly on the outreach and education, for the
14 homeowners. We think that will be an important
15 part.
16 The fee increase, it's the first time in
17 34 years. The last time was in 1984 that there was
18 any fee increase for the program. And then, again,
19 the exception being the $100 that's a new fee per
20 business.
21 The application rate, we provided a
22 letter from Dr. Landschoot at Penn State, who has
23 helped to guide us. I will simply point out that in
24 that letter, you will note that the recommendation
25 that they make, historically, the research has been 11
1 done at the one pound of total nitrogen per thousand
2 square feet. The legislation will require that to
3 be a .9, and of course, allowing for any changes in
4 research that would guide us.
5 But it's also important for the homeowner
6 and commercial application that if there is a
7 separate soil test and site specific plan, that you
8 can vary from that rate, as well. And the intent of
9 that is to change that and demonstrate a decrease in
10 nitrogen application.
11 We are consistent on the available
12 Nitrogen rate. The .9 is total nitrogen. The
13 available Nitrogen rate is .7. We are consistent
14 with Penn State University on that. We're also
15 consistent with them on the Phosphorus rate, as
16 well.
17 There are some other changes or
18 amendments that we'll need to make. They were
19 simply oversights on the Senate side, one in
20 particular. And significant though, it's the issue
21 of the labeling provisions. The labeling provisions
22 as they're presented here would apply to all
23 labeling and not just the new provisions. That
24 would have to be addressed, as well.
25 So in summary, we've worked hard to 12
1 develop a Fertilizer Act and amendments that build
2 on Pennsylvania's 62 years of experience in
3 fertilizer oversight. We think that's important.
4 We have worked hard to find that equilibrium between
5 sort of the challenges of doing this and the
6 opportunities with it, as well.
7 This bill takes a holistic approach to
8 manage Nitrogen and Phosphorus that flows off the
9 land. We believe there's equity in the
10 responsibility for homeowners as well as
11 agriculture. And everyone, again, has a
12 responsibility here.
13 You'll note in one of the expert studies
14 that's attached, the pervious surface. And every
15 time I look at that, we're talking about a million
16 acres in Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake Bay Watershed,
17 that are pervious surface. That is actually more
18 acres than grain for corn that's grown in
19 Pennsylvania. It's actually a lawn.
20 So when we talk about equity, trying to
21 have equity, both in terms of what we do for
22 agriculture, as well as the homeowner -- so we can
23 talk more about it, but again, very much appreciate
24 the Committee's hearing and the consideration of
25 this important legislation. 13
1 Thank you.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Does
3 Dr. Welliver have comments or are you here to answer
4 questions?
5 Okay. Thank you.
6 Thank you for your testimony,
7 Mr. Secretary. We'll turn to questions from the
8 members.
9 I guess I'll start off by saying, you
10 know, any time we impose regulations, fees, things
11 of that nature, that's certainly concerning to
12 legislators. We've heard concerns voiced from some
13 in the industry concerning fees, regulations, things
14 of that nature.
15 The question always recurs, are we really
16 accomplishing through this legislation, you know,
17 what we're setting out to accomplish?
18 Because if the overall effect is to cut
19 back on fertilizer use, if that does occur from
20 this, are we actually hurting ourselves by not
21 having nice, green, luscious lawns out there that
22 can filter water?
23 I mean, is that a concern?
24 I know some members of the industry have
25 voiced that concern to me. 14
1 SECRETARY REDDING: Yeah. We've spent a
2 lot of time, you know, trying to construct this in a
3 way that we think, you know, finds sort of that
4 balance between the desire to have a nice, luscious
5 lawn, right, that's green and well cared for. In
6 this sort of approach, what we are doing, I think,
7 is saying that we've got a, you know, opportunity to
8 short of change the Nitrogen rates and reduce that
9 by one-tenth on the recommendation.
10 Available Nitrogen is the same and
11 Phosphorus is the same. But to get to this sort of
12 need for Pennsylvania to meet the water quality
13 goals that we've established for the State, we know
14 we've got 19,000 miles of streams that are impaired.
15 They don't know if the molecule comes from the farm
16 or from home or out of the sewer plant. Right.
17 So all of that is part of the
18 conversation caught in this and represented in the
19 pie chart. But we think, through having an
20 intentional labeling change, application rate
21 change, a professional certification for folks who
22 are applying it, to have pretty aggressive outreach
23 and education to homeowners who are making these
24 applications, that we can actually change the total
25 use of Nitrogen fertilizer, typically Nitrogen 15
1 fertilizer.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: And I
3 understand that. I just -- I understand the
4 concerns, some of the concerns that are being
5 voiced. I don't think anyone wants to overfertilize
6 because fertilizer is expensive.
7 SECRETARY REDDING: Sure.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Whether you're
9 an agricultural operation or a commercial
10 applicator, you don't want to overfertilize because
11 of that cost.
12 So I think that the question does come up
13 from time to time, does this actually help us?
14 DR. WELLIVER: I just want to mention
15 that the fertilizer bill is a pretty complicated
16 thing. I don't think the intent of our fertilizer
17 bill is -- I know it's an intent of the
18 Chesapeake Bay model. The intent of our bill is not
19 to cut fertilizer usage; it's the responsible use of
20 fertilizer.
21 In some cases, that may mean that more
22 fertilizer needs to be used to prop up plant health
23 to prevent runoff. And in some cases, it may show
24 that there's an overuse of fertilizer. We have to
25 be ready to look across the gamut and, you know, use 16
1 science to really make sure that we're doing the
2 right thing in each case.
3 And hopefully the Chesapeake Bay will get
4 the reduction that they want to see, but that's not
5 our primary, first intent.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Well, an issue
7 that's on the mind of the legislators, is how do we
8 get -- if we were to pass this -- how do we get
9 credit?
10 Because we hear a lot about getting
11 credit for the Bay situation. And we have a letter
12 from the EPA that says there are two ways we get
13 credit. Number one is overall reduction in tracked
14 fertilizer sales. So that's one of the ways we get
15 credit, is by reducing fertilizer sales. That's why
16 I asked that question.
17 SECRETARY REDDING: I will just add,
18 Mr. Chairman -- and Matt Johnston, I know, is here
19 and he could talk to those two points. But
20 importantly, in our planning, I mean, we can't sort
21 of claim credit for something we didn't actually
22 plan for. Right.
23 So in this case, we're actually planning
24 for, you know, tracking, education, you may see some
25 reductions, maybe not. But the only way that we can 17
1 sort of say at the end of the process that we get
2 credit in Pennsylvania is if we actually plan for it
3 on the front side. Right. And we think that's --
4 again, the parallel being on the agriculture side.
5 Right.
6 We can't claim reductions if there's not
7 a nutrient management plan and the agriculture
8 aspect. So we think that parallel sets up for
9 Pennsylvania, particularly this conversation about
10 reductions and meeting water quality bills, that
11 shouldn't fall solely on the shoulders of
12 agriculture. Right.
13 So if you're applying those somewhere
14 else, you usually have the same responsibility to
15 manage them, so --
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Everything is
17 a balance.
18 SECRETARY REDDING: It is.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Mr. Chairman,
20 comments, questions?
21 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Thank you
22 very much, Mr. Chairman.
23 Thank you to both of you for being here.
24 I apologize for being a bit late. I had another
25 event this morning. 18
1 The fact of the matter is, we're trying
2 to protect water. Water is valuable. We need that.
3 We've established already that our water sources can
4 be degraded if improper chemicals are placed into
5 that.
6 So as Chairman Causer says, we're looking
7 for this balance. So when you're talking about the
8 education, is it going to extend, let's say, for
9 example, to Granger, Home Depot, Lowe's?
10 Will there be more discussion with the
11 homeowner relative to, this is the kind of issue I
12 have, what kind of fertilizer do I need, that I'm
13 not buying the improper kind?
14 Which, you know, then could cause further
15 problems.
16 How far are we going to go with this
17 education?
18 SECRETARY REDDING: Yeah. Mr. Chairman,
19 it will be pretty comprehensive. We're not looking
20 at this as solely a Department responsibility. It
21 would be the manufacturer, it will be the retailer,
22 it will be the applicator, the commercial
23 applicator, the public applicator. We see this as
24 being on the same par as we've done with pesticide
25 education. And we've seen a significant change in 19
1 habit there and awareness of.
2 We can borrow from any number of
3 education and outreach campaigns. You know, take
4 even the currents by the -- right, as an example,
5 where there's an awareness and people are thinking
6 about what they're sort of doing and habits. So
7 with this, it's going to have to be really from, you
8 know, all the way through the channel, not just as a
9 public education.
10 Our expectation is to use Penn State
11 University and Cooperative Extension to help do
12 this, again, as we do on the farm side and as we do
13 on the pesticide application side; but it's going to
14 be a pretty grass roots campaign.
15 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: It just
16 seems like a lot of common sense. I think the
17 fertilizer companies are worried about the loss of
18 business.
19 You know, how can they balance their
20 sales and so on and still provide, you know, quality
21 fertilizer for the proper condition and then still
22 protect the water?
23 So I thank you for your good work. And I
24 would be interested in that education myself, to be
25 honest with you. Thank you. I've got to work on my 20
1 own lawn.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Any other
3 questions from members?
4 Representative Bloom.
5 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Thank you,
6 Mr. Chairman.
7 Thank you, Secretary Redding.
8 SECRETARY REDDING: Good to see you.
9 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Good to see you.
10 Question for you on the fees and
11 penalties that can be increased in the bill. It
12 gives authority to you or your successor, as the
13 Secretary, through just simply publishing it in the
14 public record, the new fees. So you have this power
15 to raise fees.
16 I guess my first question is, the fees
17 and penalties that may be collected, what are they
18 used for under this?
19 Are they already designated to go
20 specifically to this program, if increased fees and
21 penalties are collected?
22 SECRETARY REDDING: Yeah. So any fee
23 increases or penalties, you know, from this are
24 actually for the purpose of and restricted to the
25 use of this program. 21
1 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Okay. So I guess
2 I just wanted to voice a concern as a legislator,
3 that giving you or your successor -- and it's no
4 reflection on you, but just --
5 SECRETARY REDDING: No. I understand.
6 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: -- the idea of
7 giving the Secretary the power to unilaterally
8 choose to raise fees and penalties and the actual
9 use of those fees and penalties is already
10 designated -- essentially gives away or usurps what
11 I would believe would be a legislative function of
12 deciding when and where fees are raised and
13 certainly where taxpayer dollars are utilized.
14 Making those allocations as priority
15 decisions should be the legislature's job, I
16 believe, more so than simply any particular Ag
17 Secretary's job.
18 Any thoughts on that?
19 I'm concerned about that aspect of the
20 bill.
21 SECRETARY REDDING: Yeah. I mean, I
22 would share the concern. We've talked about this
23 before in other programs. You know, we feel like in
24 this case, the way we've used the Fertilizer
25 Advisory Board, it's been a public process. Right. 22
1 I mean, that has the representation. That's a board
2 that establishes, as part of the original act, you
3 know, to provide the guidance on the fertilizer
4 program in Pennsylvania.
5 And through the years, I mean, that Board
6 has been pretty judicious in guiding us, in
7 sensitivity to any of the fee increases or
8 penalties. Our goal here, as we state, would be a
9 public process. We would have to give public
10 notice. We could do it, but it's not a unilateral
11 move. Right.
12 I mean, certainly opportunity through the
13 budget hearing process to come back and share with
14 the House and Senate sort of what we're doing, why
15 are we doing it, an opportunity for public process.
16 So I think there are some checks and balances in
17 there. If it simply gave the Department, without
18 requirement of public process or an advisory board,
19 I would be more concerned about it, but I feel like
20 there's, given the history, a pretty good balance
21 there of public input in, you know, transparency
22 around the need to do it.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Okay. Thank you.
24 Still a concern for me.
25 Thank you. 23
1 DR. WELLIVER: Can I add a little?
2 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Yes.
3 DR. WELLIVER: I just wanted to say that
4 it's not -- we didn't put in, simply, publication in
5 the Pennsylvania Bulletin. There's a fairly robust
6 procedure, even before the public, that we
7 demonstrate that we've lost money for two years
8 running the program before we even ask for an
9 increase. And that has to have a public meeting, as
10 well.
11 So there is a pretty substantial process
12 that people would see, that the legislature would
13 see, before we would even try to make any kind of
14 change.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BLOOM: Okay. Thank you.
16 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you,
18 Representative Bloom.
19 Representative Keller.
20 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Thank you,
21 Mr. Chairman.
22 Thank you, Secretary, for being here.
23 Can PDA provide the data on lawn
24 fertilizer sales in the counties that are affected
25 with the Chesapeake Bay? 24
1 Do you have that information?
2 SECRETARY REDDING: I think the answer is
3 yes. I don't know if it goes to county level.
4 DR. WELLIVER: We have county level
5 tonnage reporting that is already available on the
6 website.
7 Can we separate out the non-farm, at
8 least?
9 (Speaker not at microphone.)
10 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: All right.
11 DR. WELLIVER: And that is showing, from
12 the manufacturers, what counties they have sold
13 into. That doesn't necessarily mean it was used in
14 that county. They sent it to a Lowe's, you know, in
15 Harrisburg, how many counties might that have been
16 distributed --
17 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Well, I will
18 use an example -- to interrupt you -- as an example,
19 there's no Lowe's, Home Depot or any place like that
20 in the county that I represent, the main county that
21 I represent. So I would assume it's going to show
22 Cumberland County has a bigger sale, but Perry
23 County would have nothing. Okay.
24 DR. WELLIVER: That's true for now.
25 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Can we look 25
1 at, has there been an increase, has there been a
2 decrease, you know?
3 Do we have past records on that?
4 (Speaker not at microphone.)
5 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: We do not?
6 Not on use.
7 (Speaker not at microphone.)
8 DR. WELLIVER: There's the general trend
9 of an increase in non-farm fertilizer sales.
10 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Okay. All
11 right. Thank you.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER:
13 Representative Moul.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Thank you,
15 Mr. Chairman.
16 Good morning, Mr. Secretary.
17 SECRETARY REDDING: Good to see you.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Good to see you
19 again.
20 SECRETARY REDDING: Great to see you.
21 Thank you.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: I'm trying to wrap
23 my head around the same thought process the last two
24 Representatives asked on.
25 How would you -- first of all, if we're 26
1 going to put fees on the manufacturer of fertilizer,
2 how would you not pass those fees on to the
3 agriculture community?
4 SECRETARY REDDING: Well, the fee
5 structure right now, in both ag and non-ag pay that.
6 Right. I mean, that's the way the Fertilizer Act is
7 set up. So the addition, in this case, of the per
8 ton fee would apply across the board. Right.
9 The individual business fee -- the farm
10 and the agriculture -- the farmer is not identified
11 as an applicator. It's a private applicator, not a
12 public applicator. So the $100 per business would
13 not apply to the farmer.
14 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. So the fee
15 would not be put on at the factory?
16 Or the fee would be put on at the
17 distribution level or the fee would be put on only
18 at retail?
19 I'm real unclear on that.
20 DR. WELLIVER: So there's a --
21 manufacturers pay a product registration and they
22 pay a tonnage fee already. So those are not new
23 fees. We're asking for an increase.
24 So currently, 15 cents a ton, when you're
25 manufacturing and selling fertilizer into the State. 27
1 It would go up to 17 cents, which is not unusual.
2 It's not high compared to other States.
3 So --
4 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: So --
5 DR. WELLIVER: So they're already doing
6 that.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. So what
8 you're telling me is the increased fee would not be
9 a financial burden to our farming community. That's
10 my number one concern, is what you're telling me.
11 But then I also hear that the Department of
12 Agriculture would be able to publish any increases
13 and then follow through with them, which doesn't
14 require a vote here.
15 Which that part in itself is a little
16 scary. You can't even raise hunting licenses or
17 fishing licenses without a vote here. So I'm a
18 little queasy on that, if you know what I mean, but
19 my concern was that any additional fees get passed
20 on to a farmer, which then get passed on to all of
21 us at the grocery store.
22 DR. WELLIVER: We -- I can understand
23 your concern from your side. From our side, it's
24 been pretty difficult to get enough -- our bills
25 aren't flashy. They aren't politically exciting. 28
1 It's very difficult sometimes to get people to say,
2 hey, those fees from 1984 probably need updated.
3 The law is basically solid, you know, but we don't
4 have time right now.
5 So we were looking for a mechanism that
6 would be public, that you would see, but that we
7 could do a little bit more quickly, but with
8 responsibility. And that's why we required the two
9 years of loss data before we would even put out a
10 public call for a change in fees.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. Thank you.
12 Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Any additional
14 questions?
15 Representative Diamond.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you,
17 Mr. Chairman.
18 Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
19 Dr. Welliver, I just want to go back to
20 one of your comments. You said that sometimes this
21 might mean putting more fertilizer on, using more
22 fertilizer.
23 So how would -- and I understand how that
24 would be smart and that would be reasonable, but why
25 would that happen, if we're not going to get credit 29
1 for overall reduction in sales?
2 I mean, if we end up, on average, we're
3 using more here or using less here and we don't
4 reduce anything, we fall into that same trap of, you
5 know, trying to chase these credits from these
6 non-Pennsylvania authorities and we're seeing that
7 in other areas of watershed law, watershed policy.
8 So I just want to clarify, get a
9 clarification from you, why on earth would we want
10 to do the smart thing if it's going to impact our
11 ability to receive those credits?
12 SECRETARY REDDING: I mean,
13 Representative, I would say a couple of things.
14 One, with the -- the application rate is
15 going to be part of this conversation. So just the
16 move from the one pound of total Nitrogen per
17 thousand square feet to a .9 is a change. So if we
18 just take the tonnage reports today and simply apply
19 a .9 versus 1, there's an immediate sort of change
20 in what's going on in the ground.
21 Two, at the end of the day, yes, it would
22 be like credit for it. Right. We want to have a
23 pretty strategic and holistic approach. But I think
24 for all of us, I mean, the concern about what are we
25 putting on the land, are we being judicious with it, 30
1 you know, is that sort of governed by good science
2 and is it making an impact in water quality?
3 I think that's the overarching need,
4 which we sense to what we're doing, and can we
5 improve that aspect. At the end of the day, like a
6 lot of the conversations with Chesapeake Bay, if it
7 works for the local creek and the local tributaries,
8 it will be -- the bay is a beneficiary, but that's
9 not why we're doing it. Right.
10 There's a benefit to the bay. There's a
11 benefit to Pennsylvania, as we look at the long term
12 plan for how you meet every pound of Nitrogen
13 reduction. We're trying to say, in this approach,
14 that the fertilizer piece and everybody who has been
15 in the agricultural community, the farm community,
16 has heard them say, well, what about that lawn, what
17 about that area?
18 All of the pressure, look at the pie
19 chart, is on the agricultural community. So every
20 pound that we could reduce on the urban side is a
21 pound less we've got to find in the agricultural
22 community. That's an important overarching goal.
23 We'll track this. We'll try to, you know, influence
24 sort of public behavior through the outreach and
25 education. We'll try to change the formulation 31
1 rates, the pound.
2 But at the end of the day, it's about
3 what's happening with water quality and are we
4 making a difference by way of this legislation?
5 I think we are.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you,
7 Mr. Chairman.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER:
9 Representative Gillen.
10 REPRESENTATIVE GILLEN: Thank you,
11 Secretary. Good to see you.
12 Good to see you, Doctor.
13 SECRETARY REDDING: Good to see you.
14 REPRESENTATIVE GILLEN: We don't have the
15 problems that most people have. Our sheep and
16 alpaca mow the grass and then fertilize it at the
17 same time.
18 A question on fees. A fee would be a
19 cost of governance consumed in goods and services,
20 you know, versus a standard tax.
21 So is there a document that we can refer
22 to, maybe to assuage some of the concerns about what
23 lies beyond the horizon with regard to fees?
24 Is there some seminal document we could
25 look at that tells us, here is the relationship 32
1 between moving from 15 to 17 cents per ton under
2 792, that tells this body that we've got an increase
3 in cost here that needs to be covered?
4 Are you using some formulary that you've
5 come up with that arrives at these particular
6 numbers?
7 How are these numbers gotten to?
8 SECRETARY REDDING: Yeah. We can
9 provide, certainly, some of the history of the fees
10 and the use of the fees, I think, would be helpful.
11 Right. How have we used what we've generated, I
12 think, that would be something we can provide.
13 We have a projection on how the fees, the
14 revenue would be used, you know, meaning what's the
15 administration, what's on public outreach and
16 education, we can provide that, as well.
17 REPRESENTATIVE GILLEN: I think if it's
18 provided up front, it would be fairly predictive of
19 what to expect in the future, which is one of the
20 reasons I'm asking the question.
21 SECRETARY REDDING: Okay.
22 REPRESENTATIVE GILLEN: Thank you,
23 Mr. Chairman.
24 SECRETARY REDDING: We could do that.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you both 33
1 for your testimony. It's very helpful for the
2 Committee as we further consider this bill.
3 SECRETARY REDDING: Yes.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: So thank you
5 for joining us today. And thank you for your
6 testimony.
7 SECRETARY REDDING: Sure. Thank you.
8 A pleasure. Thank you.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Our next
10 testifier will be Marel King, the Pennsylvania
11 Director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission.
12 Welcome.
13 MS. KING: Good morning.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Good morning.
15 MS. KING: Thank you for the opportunity
16 to testify. I am Marel King. I'm the Pennsylvania
17 Director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission. With me
18 is Ann Swanson, the Executive Director of the
19 Commission. The Commission is a tri-state
20 legislative commission. We are advisory to the
21 General Assemblies of Pennsylvania, Maryland and
22 Virginia.
23 I just want to say thank you to everyone
24 who showed up today. It's great to see all the
25 interest in, and the questions on, this topic. We 34
1 appreciate that we are here at the Agriculture and
2 Rural Affairs Committee.
3 The Fertilizer Act is codified under the
4 agricultural title. The fertilizer program is
5 housed at the Department of Agriculture. But
6 ultimately, why we are here today is to talk about
7 urban storm water and, specifically, the runoff from
8 turf and lawns in the urban and developed sector.
9 That is the only sector in the
10 Chesapeake Bay Watershed that is increasing its
11 loads to Chesapeake Bay. Agriculture, waste water,
12 air deposition, they're all decreasing their loads
13 to Chesapeake Bay, but the urban sector is, in fact,
14 increasing. And to further complicate the matter,
15 urban storm water best management practices to
16 control those loads are some of the most expensive
17 that we can apply, again, compared to the other
18 sectors.
19 So we, as a Commission, have been
20 investigating for several years opportunities to
21 cost effectively make reductions from the urban and
22 suburban sector. Source reduction happens to be one
23 of the most cost effective ways to reduce those
24 loads. In other words, don't provide that input
25 into the system to begin with. That is much 35
1 cheaper, much more cost effective than trying to
2 manage and control that load once it's already in
3 the environment.
4 It's not an appropriate approach across
5 the board, but in certain areas it is. We've seen
6 that in Phosphate detergent bans, as one example,
7 but this is another example where it appears to be
8 very appropriate. We are not anti-fertilizer. We
9 are not anti-lawns.
10 Actually, healthy lawns -- and this was
11 brought up earlier -- healthy lawns, actually, are
12 very pervious. Unhealthy lawns can be rather
13 impervious. Therefore, healthy lawns promote
14 infiltration, reduce runoff. And we are trying to
15 find that balance between increasing infiltration
16 from a healthy lawn and reducing any excess
17 nutrients that might be applied to that particular
18 lawn.
19 So achieve the healthy lawn, reduce any
20 excess. Therefore, there are two sections in the
21 bill. So that's why you're seeing it in two
22 different places, that .9 number.
23 The first place has to do with the retail
24 product. So that do-it-yourself product that you're
25 going to buy at the hardware store. That is where 36
1 that .9 number comes in to reduce by 10 percent from
2 the typical industry standard. Again, managing the
3 risk from an untrained do-it-yourself situation.
4 The second place is later in the bill that applies
5 everywhere. And that is where it is a default rate
6 of .9.
7 Now, if you have a trained professional
8 that is preparing a site specific plan that looks at
9 many different things, soil type, the species that
10 you're planting, a recent soil analysis, the slope,
11 you know, all of these different factors, climate,
12 if that site specific plan is being prepared by that
13 trained professional -- and that relates back to the
14 certification requirements, as well -- then you can
15 apply whatever that site specific plan is leading
16 you to apply.
17 And we feel that's very important because
18 rather than trying to take business away or harm
19 business of these, you know, trained landscape
20 professionals, we feel that this is actually
21 emphasizing the value of a trained professional and
22 the site specific plan. And you'll hear from the
23 Bay Program later about how those plans, those site
24 specific plans, are another way for the Commonwealth
25 to get credit. 37
1 So not just the reduction in sales, but
2 the actual number of professionally developed plans
3 that are out there. Again, these rates, while a
4 reduction from the typical industry standard are
5 still within the scientific range, many of the large
6 regional companies are already moving in that
7 direction, but it is not universal.
8 You can still go to your local store and
9 find a 10-10-10, quote, all purpose product that
10 still has lawns on the label. So this is not
11 universal.
12 This legislation would instead create a
13 universal standard providing some predictability for
14 the industry. It also provides preemption from
15 local ordinances, balancing the credit that we're
16 providing to the urban storm water sector through
17 this legislation with the preemption that provides,
18 again, some predictability and certainty for the
19 industry.
20 And as far as I know, several of you have
21 questions about the fees. And I don't really want
22 to get into that as part of our testimony today,
23 other than to say that the administration of the
24 program and the ability of the Commonwealth to carry
25 out the law and the reasonable assurance that 38
1 provides to EPA is as much a part of the crediting
2 and the ultimate reduction that we will receive as
3 the law itself.
4 So at that point, if Ann has anything
5 else to add, I'll -- I know we're running low on
6 time, so I'll welcome any questions you have.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you for
8 your testimony. We appreciate you both being here
9 today to answer questions.
10 In reviewing the legislation, there's a
11 definition of fertilizer application business that I
12 was looking at. And the definition in the bill
13 includes government, schools, universities and golf
14 courses.
15 My question to you is, have those
16 stakeholder groups been engaged in negotiations or
17 discussion on the drafting of the bill?
18 Because I know you've been very involved
19 in the drafting of the bill for, I think you told me
20 eight years, unfortunately.
21 MS. KING: This is our eighth year. Yes.
22 Appreciate that Secretary Redding
23 mentioned the Department has been actively engaged
24 for three years -- and they certainly have -- but we
25 actually first got engaged back in 2011. So this is 39
1 our eighth year.
2 We first met in 2011, actually, with the
3 Fertilizer Advisory Committee to the Department of
4 Agriculture, that involved a wide range of
5 stakeholders regarding fertilizer and remained
6 engaged with them throughout the process. Things
7 quieted down a few years ago, but appreciate that
8 the Department has got the dialogue going again and
9 has been regularly meeting with different
10 stakeholders as this latest version has developed.
11 But a lot of the early feedback that we
12 got from those stakeholders is in this particular
13 bill, specifically, for instance, golf courses and
14 the small dosing, you know, that they provide,
15 athletic fields and the fact that they are used
16 year-round and might need repair, for instance,
17 year-round. So we couldn't completely deny
18 applications, although we might be able to reduce
19 those applications over the winter months, things
20 like that.
21 MS. SWANSON: Just to add, because we've
22 been at this a very long time and across the
23 watershed, we have sat down with all of those
24 groups. And it was a real eye opener in the process
25 because you can't put a bill like this together 40
1 without that kind of understanding as what are the
2 variables, what are the unique needs?
3 So in schoolyards, as Marel was
4 mentioning, where you have big game days, you have
5 trampling, intentional trampling, essentially. And
6 in those kinds of situations, you really need
7 different kinds of products, and also the need to be
8 variable, depending upon certain conditions.
9 And that's how they maintain a healthy
10 lawn, because if that lawn is really sparse, then of
11 course, it's allowing for runoff. It's allowing for
12 storm water, so you want it thick. So this
13 language, in this piece of legislation, will allow
14 for that variability. But what it does is, for the
15 homeowner who is going to the store and buying a
16 product and just wants to do the right thing,
17 they're not a stream expert, they want to do the
18 right thing, what we've done is put the level in the
19 bags at the level where, if you went to the store
20 and you bought your product for your lawn because
21 you want it green, it will trigger green up. It has
22 sufficient Nitrogen. It does not have the
23 Phosphorus, which is no longer needed because of the
24 science. And it will do a perfect job in exactly
25 what you want. 41
1 In the end of the day, Russell mentioned
2 it's all about these four Rs. He talked about the
3 right source, the right place, the right time and
4 the right rate. And what this is doing is, it's
5 making sure that the rate is right. It's, you know,
6 discussing timing in terms of application. And it's
7 also making sure that it's the right source, the
8 right type of fertilizer being used for maintenance
9 fertilizer.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: I guess my
11 direct question is, when we think about fertilizer
12 application in this context, we're thinking about
13 professional lawn care. That's what I think
14 probably a majority of members are thinking about as
15 we look at this. And when you look at the
16 definition of fertilizer application business, it's
17 much broader than that. It includes government
18 units, schools, universities, golf courses.
19 So my direct question is, have they been
20 involved?
21 Are they aware that --
22 MS. SWANSON: Yes.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: -- they're
24 going to have to become certified, they're going to
25 have to comply -- 42
1 MS. SWANSON: Yes.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Or has there
3 been an analysis done of what it's going to cost
4 these entities?
5 Are our local governments very much aware
6 of what their responsibilities are going to be under
7 the legislation?
8 That's the heart of my question.
9 I, for one, have not heard from any of
10 those groups, so --
11 MS. KING: Well, like I said, this, at
12 least the earlier iterations of the bill, have been
13 around now for eight years and each session since
14 then, first introduced by Senator Brubaker back in
15 2011, where these certification requirements to that
16 breadth of stakeholders, as well as the content
17 limits have been out there now for eight years and,
18 yes, we have met with industry throughout that eight
19 year period, including -- I can recall very clearly
20 conversations with golf course folks and athletic
21 course folks and institutional folks.
22 The reason why those folks are in
23 there --
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: You realize
25 that's important for us to know -- 43
1 MS. KING: Absolutely.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: -- the
3 opinions of all of the stakeholders?
4 MS. KING: Absolutely. And the reason
5 why they're in there is because, as an individual --
6 say a university campus -- manages a lot of turf, or
7 an institutional campus, a school district, manages
8 a lot of turf. So as a single individual entity,
9 they manage a lot more turf than even an individual
10 homeowner.
11 So it is important that they are covered
12 under this, as well.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you.
14 Chairman Pashinski.
15 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Thank you,
16 Mr. Chairman.
17 Thank you very much for your eight years
18 of hard work. This is a fascinating place. Before
19 I came here today, it's how can we prevent type 2
20 diabetes. Now, what does that have to do with
21 fertilizer?
22 Absolutely nothing, other than the fact
23 that we're learning new things about how we can take
24 care of ourselves, have a healthier life, you know,
25 with fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, make it 44
1 accessible to the people. So it appears here that
2 the more professional applications that we have, you
3 said we might even get some credits. Right.
4 So by a show of hands, how many in here
5 have professional applicators that take care of your
6 lawn?
7 Okay. There are only a few. Those are
8 the rich people.
9 (Laughter in room.)
10 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: No, I'm
11 only kidding. I'm only kidding.
12 So in other words, we have a chance, if
13 all of us use professional applicators to take care
14 of our lawns -- and I'm very seriously considering
15 that because I'm contributing to the negative side
16 because my lawn is not green, it's more dirt than
17 anything else. So I'm obviously doing things wrong.
18 But the concept of making sure that the
19 lawns, the greenery, the vegetation, the growth, if
20 done properly, does filter that water to provide the
21 more pure water. So I think it's a matter of
22 balancing whatever this cost is going to be, the
23 education process, but it sounds like there's a good
24 plan here. Hopefully we can put it all together.
25 So good job to all of you guys that are 45
1 working. And if any of you have any recommendations
2 for professional lawn applicators, I'd be happy to
3 take that.
4 Thank you.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you,
6 Mr. Chairman.
7 Representative Millard.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MILLARD: Thank you,
9 Mr. Chairman.
10 You know, as I read over all of the
11 paperwork that's been submitted here by the
12 Chesapeake Bay Commission and PDA, Bureau of Plant
13 Industry, the question in my mind is, obviously,
14 there's a genesis to have arrived at, you know, how
15 much can be put down per thousand square feet and
16 all of that. I also read in here, the recordkeeping
17 that would be involved by the certified applicators
18 to be made available to the PDA on request.
19 So my question is, is there actual
20 testing, how often is the testing done or is all of
21 this analysis based on the application only and a
22 verification through an audit or paperwork?
23 MS. KING: I'm sorry. I'm not quite sure
24 I'm following your question.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MILLARD: When we're 46
1 looking at whether there's going to be an
2 improvement in a reduction that we're trying to
3 achieve, is there physical testing of the waterways,
4 is there physical testing that is ongoing in the
5 Chesapeake Bay to ascertain whether there is, you
6 know, more going into our waterways than we would
7 prefer?
8 As the chairman of Tourism and
9 Recreational Development, you know, we always like
10 our families to have clean waterways for fishing and
11 recreation and all of those types of things, but my
12 question becomes, is this just a paperwork look, a
13 paperwork audit to determine whether we're exceeding
14 our goal or not?
15 MS. KING: So there is actually extensive
16 water quality monitoring, I know for sure, in the
17 Susquehanna River Basin, I know for sure, conducted
18 by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, USGS and
19 others, that helps inform our understanding of the
20 Chesapeake Bay and its watershed. So yes, we can
21 tell, not only from what the models tell us, but
22 from the actual water quality monitoring that is
23 going on throughout the watershed, that reductions
24 are occurring in some places, not occurring in other
25 places. 47
1 So yes, there is monitoring data to back
2 up our understanding of what's going on in the
3 watershed.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MILLARD: And I want to go
5 back to what Representative Keller was involved in
6 when he said that, you know, different counties have
7 different levels of industry that would have this
8 product available.
9 So again, my question is, what's the
10 frequency of testing?
11 Obviously, in the springtime is when a
12 lot of applications, I would think, would be put on,
13 you know, for the growth of crops to encourage that.
14 So is there testing only three months of
15 the year, water quality testing 12 months of the
16 year, what waterways?
17 I'm just curious how extensive it will be
18 to verify, you know, whether we're meeting goals or
19 not.
20 MS. KING: I'm going to defer to Matt,
21 who is going to come after us, to answer those
22 technical questions because I know he can answer
23 that question for you.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MILLARD: Okay. And you
25 may not necessarily have that available at your 48
1 fingertips today, but I would think that this
2 Committee would probably be interested in, you know,
3 an analysis of that type.
4 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
5 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you,
6 Representative Millard.
7 Representative Moul, briefly.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: I'll do this -- I
9 know we're running short on time.
10 Curiosity, you said about site specific
11 plans to be approved.
12 Who approves a site -- now, are you
13 talking about a professional that comes to do my
14 lawn?
15 MS. KING: Yeah, a trained professional.
16 So they --
17 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: He's got to submit
18 that plan --
19 MS. KING: No. He prepares the plan
20 because he is a trained possessional. He or she is
21 a trained professional who is going through the
22 certification program or has expertise to be able to
23 develop that site specific plan, based on several
24 factors.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: And who will he 49
1 submit that plan to?
2 MS. KING: That would be part of the
3 record -- that would be part of the recordkeeping
4 that potentially could be submitted to the
5 Department, but the Department would not necessarily
6 review that plan because the plan was prepared by a
7 trained professional.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Well, if they're
9 not going to review it, what's the point in
10 submitting it?
11 MS. KING: The submission, as I
12 understand it, is for the recordkeeping purposes, so
13 that we know how many plans were developed over how
14 many acres, those sorts of things that relate back
15 to the crediting.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. And just
17 very quickly, are people that work on golf courses
18 considered professionals --
19 MS. KING: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: -- or are they just
21 considered employees?
22 MS. KING: They are professionals.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. So they
24 would be --
25 MS. KING: They're not a 50
1 do-it-yourselfer. If you're not a do-it-yourselfer,
2 essentially, you're --
3 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Even though they
4 work for the golf course, they're not an independent
5 company -- so if I do my own lawn, I can put twice
6 as much on, thinking it's going to do me a better
7 job and there's no plan, no regulation, no
8 oversight, no anything. And I can go buy twice as
9 much as I need at Lowe's and throw it on.
10 MS. KING: If you want to buy twice as
11 much, but because of that theoretical possibility,
12 that's why there's 10 percent less in the bag.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. Then I'd
14 just buy more, but okay.
15 Thank you.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you,
17 Representative Moul.
18 Representative Keller.
19 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Marel,
20 welcome.
21 MS. KING: Hi.
22 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Good to see
23 you.
24 Hey, a quick question on the line of
25 Representative Moul there. 51
1 If it's submitted to the Department, are
2 we going to be getting credit then?
3 Are credits going to be accounted for,
4 you know, as the plans are submitted?
5 MS. KING: So again, I will defer to
6 Matt, but yes. He can explain exactly how and why,
7 but the answer is yes.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you,
9 ladies, for your testimony. We're short on time,
10 but the information that you provided is very
11 beneficial for the Committee members, so thank you.
12 MS. KING: Thank you.
13 MS. SWANSON: Thank you.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Our next
15 testifier is Matthew Johnston, Senior Policy Analyst
16 with the Chesapeake Bay Program Office.
17 We are short on time, in that the House
18 is going into session at 10:00 a.m. We have
19 permission from the Speaker's Office to continue,
20 but I would ask the members to be brief.
21 Thank you.
22 MR. JOHNSTON: Understood. Thank you.
23 Thank you, Chairman. Thank you,
24 Chairman Pashinski for having me here today.
25 I'll be brief. You have my written 52
1 testimony, but I will summarize it for you and also
2 answer a couple of questions that I've heard today
3 so far. I'm here because, as policy analyst for the
4 Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership, the whole
5 purpose of my job and my team is to do exactly what
6 we're doing today, look across various policies and
7 use the model, hate it or like it or love it, to
8 answer what could you possibly gain water quality
9 wise from this legislation, from this policy.
10 We're trying to give you an estimated
11 answer, what can you plan for. So I will also
12 answer a question that I heard, you know, how do we
13 verify this? How do we test for this?
14 The modeling tools and the water quality
15 monitoring that the Partnership does, I would
16 categorize it in three big categories. First, we
17 plan. Today you're considering legislation. And if
18 passed, then that could be put into a plan. It
19 could receive a model credit. You are planning for
20 a future credit.
21 Then we verify. We ask to look at the
22 fertilizer sales data and we ask to look at the
23 acres of urban nutrient management plans that
24 certified applicators submit to the Department.
25 That's verification every year going forward. You 53
1 continue to receive the credit in the Bay Program
2 model.
3 Then, at the last step, we test. And
4 that testing, at some locations in the Susquehanna,
5 the Pequea or the Conestoga, the Juniata, in some
6 cases, that's 365 days a year for the last 35 years.
7 We've taken the fertilizer sales data over the last
8 35 years, plugged it into the model with a lot of
9 other assumptions that are out there from the
10 scientific literature about not only agriculture,
11 but urban lands and what's called calibrated it to
12 that water quality. So we have all of these records
13 of how the Susquehanna, Juniata, Pequea is doing in
14 terms of Nitrogen and Phosphorus.
15 We do our best guess at what's happening
16 on the landscape. And then, we try to see if our
17 model matches the water quality data. And when it
18 doesn't, the model gets adjusted a little bit. So
19 we plan, we verify, and then we test. And that will
20 continue going on for many, many years past now.
21 Just to complete my brief testimony here.
22 The two things you can take credit for in the model
23 right now are that reduction in fertilizer tonnage
24 sold, but I think that we're talking a lot more
25 about that and a lot less about the plans. The 54
1 plans are extremely important. That's a big portion
2 of the credit that I'll describe in a moment. So
3 you can also take credit for the plans the
4 commercial applicators would submit to the
5 Department of Ag.
6 We were asked -- I was asked by the
7 Phase III WIP group to estimate, what could this
8 possibly get us?
9 If we assume there's a 10 percent
10 reduction in Nitrogen applied and a 70 percent
11 reduction in Phosphorus applied because of this law,
12 and then we assume a very -- what I think is
13 conservative -- that 10 percent of all of our turf
14 grass will be under commercial application. So
15 think all of the institutions, all of the homeowners
16 who are going out there and having commercial
17 applicators apply it. Ten percent may be low.
18 If we do that, then we see 180,000
19 pounds, about, of Nitrogen; 220,000 pounds of
20 Phosphorus reduction. And to put that into
21 perspective, that's equivalent to planting 16,000
22 acres of forest buffers on urban land to receive
23 that Nitrogen credit or 240,000, which I would say
24 is not even possible, acres of forest buffers to
25 receive the same Phosphorus credit. 55
1 So that's what we're here to talk about
2 today. We're planning for those two reductions.
3 And then, we'll verify, using the reporting
4 requirements in the law. And then, we'll test the
5 water quality afterwards.
6 Thank you very much for the time today.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you very
8 much for your testimony.
9 One question that always comes up and has
10 come up repeatedly is getting credit. We're all
11 concerned about getting credit, it seems.
12 A question that comes to mind is, is it
13 the EPA that's directly giving us credit, supposedly
14 credit, or is it this Chesapeake Bay Partnership?
15 Where's the credit coming from?
16 MR. JOHNSTON: Yeah, good question.
17 I will not speak for EPA, but I can tell
18 you what one of their document says. The TMDL
19 requires reasonable assurance. Reasonable
20 assurance, one of those pieces is using the
21 Chesapeake Bay Program Partnership model, of which
22 the partnership built, not EPA, to plan and verify
23 that practices are going down in the watershed,
24 applications are changing in the watershed, and
25 we're seeing reductions in the water. 56
1 So EPA says we want reasonable assurance.
2 And the partnership said, okay, well, we can build
3 you a model. Is that reasonable assurance?
4 And the answer is yes, that is reasonable
5 assurance. It's my understanding -- again, I will
6 not speak for EPA -- but it is my understanding that
7 the end goal, the Chesapeake Bay TMDL is lifted once
8 the water quality shows the reductions are all
9 there. But you build the model to give everyone
10 reasonable assurance and the EPA reasonable
11 assurance that we're going to get there with the
12 policies we put in place.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: So it's
14 reasonable to say that you're providing information
15 to EPA, and EPA is relying on what you provide to
16 base their opinions on whether we're getting credit;
17 is that --
18 MR. JOHNSTON: Absolutely. The EPA
19 actually -- it's a great example of -- EPA is the
20 leader of the Chesapeake Bay Program, but it's a
21 partnership and the States actually do most of the
22 work. We have 12 people that work on these modeling
23 tools and do these technical analyses. Two are EPA.
24 One is USGS. And the rest are Pennsylvania State
25 University, University of Maryland, and Virginia 57
1 Tech University.
2 So your technical experts at the
3 Chesapeake Bay Program are not your Federal experts.
4 They're your land grant universities, and they do
5 defer to us.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you.
7 Questions from the members?
8 Representative Keller.
9 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Mine is a
10 two-part question here.
11 First of all, over the years, can you
12 tell me if the numbers in the Bay have gone up or
13 gone down?
14 And the second part of the question is,
15 if this piece of legislation is enacted, can you
16 tell me how much decrease the numbers are going to
17 be created because of this piece of legislation?
18 I think that's important that we know
19 those things.
20 MR. JOHNSTON: Representative Keller,
21 thanks for the two questions.
22 The first one, yeah, we have a great new
23 story to tell. We have monitoring at Marietta,
24 which is above the Conowingo Dam. It contains most
25 of the drainage area of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed 58
1 within Pennsylvania.
2 Things look really good for Nitrogen and
3 Phosphorus over the last 30 years. We've seen large
4 reductions. We attribute the reductions in Nitrogen
5 to everything that you've done in the past,
6 including reductions in Nitrogen falling from the
7 atmosphere because of the Clean Air Act, just a lot
8 less Nitrous Oxide emissions from power plants and
9 things like that.
10 Phosphorous, we see -- for the first
11 time, the Partnership said, go use this fertilizer
12 sales data. And thank goodness we did because we
13 never knew why we were seeing Phosphorus trends
14 improving in the water quality. Now, we see
15 Phosphorus fertilizer sales data has plummeted about
16 50 percent since the '80s. And we don't know
17 exactly why, but we can only attribute that to the
18 great efforts undergone on the agricultural side for
19 nutrient management, the P-Index tool and things
20 like that.
21 The second part of your question is, yes,
22 in my written testimony, we used the model to
23 estimate that number. And for the State of
24 Pennsylvania, again, that number would be 180,000
25 pounds of Nitrogen is what we think you could reduce 59
1 in your local waters; and 220,000 pounds of
2 Phosphorus is what we think you could reduce in your
3 local waters. And if you want more information, I
4 could put that into perspective in terms of what
5 total you need, after the hearing.
6 Representative Keller, you had one more
7 question that I will hit on. We do not use
8 fertilizer sales directly. Because we looked at the
9 Baltimore City sales, and it would be the highest in
10 the entire watershed. We said, well, we can't use
11 fertilizer sales directly because there's nothing in
12 your county and Baltimore City, which has all of it.
13 That's because of the port. The port is there and
14 everything goes out from the port, but we tax it at
15 the port.
16 So instead, the Partnership got together,
17 realized that and said, we've got to do better. So
18 we have a method to estimate use instead of just the
19 sales. We take all of the sales over the entire
20 watershed in the State of Pennsylvania and look at
21 how urban turf is changing across the State of
22 Pennsylvania, work with the USGS partners who do
23 this for a living and come up with an average rate
24 of application across the whole State of
25 Pennsylvania and hopefully, as we get more data, we 60
1 change that up or down throughout time.
2 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Thank you very
3 much. Appreciate that.
4 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER:
5 Representative Moul.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Thank you,
7 Mr. Chairman.
8 Thank you, Matt.
9 Across Pennsylvania, at least in the
10 Basin, we spent literally billions and billions of
11 dollars retooling our water treatment facilities to
12 go to denitrification. I think we're probably well
13 over halfway because it's been many years. And it's
14 cost our communities tons of money. We've got debt
15 to our eyeballs on that one.
16 Now, we're looking at fertilizer, okay,
17 which is going to affect our professional
18 fertilizing companies out there and lawn care
19 companies. It's going to affect our golf courses,
20 which a lot of them are already hanging on a thread.
21 You know, what's next after this?
22 MR. JOHNSTON: Luckily, I don't think
23 that question is directed towards me. I think
24 that's directed towards the rest of the legislators
25 in the room. You are the ones who do the value 61
1 judgments. I come here, asked to present to you
2 what we think could happen in the water quality
3 reductions -- or improvements in water quality based
4 on this specific legislation.
5 So that's what I can provide. I can also
6 provide, as I have for the Phase III WIP planning
7 effort, here's the opportunity -- well, this is one
8 opportunity. Other opportunities are forest
9 buffers. Other -- there are other opportunities out
10 there.
11 But we never say at the Annapolis -- at
12 the Bay Program Partnership Office, this is what you
13 have to do. That's why it's a State plan. It's up
14 to you.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. You work out
16 of that office. I'm just going to ask you a very,
17 very rogue question. Okay. And a lot of people are
18 going to say, well, is this guy nuts? The answer is
19 probably yes.
20 Tell me about caffeine showing up in the
21 Bay.
22 Any truth to it?
23 MR. JOHNSTON: I have absolutely no idea.
24 REPRESENTATIVE MOUL: Okay. Thank you.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: A rogue 62
1 question. Thank you.
2 Any other questions from the members?
3 Thank you so much for your testimony. We
4 appreciate it, and we'll thoroughly review your
5 written comments also. Thank you.
6 Our next testifier is Gregg Robertson
7 with the Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery
8 Association.
9 Mr. Robertson, welcome.
10 MR. ROBERTSON: Thank you.
11 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: You may
12 proceed.
13 MR. ROBERTSON: Chairman Causer,
14 Democratic Chair Pashinski and members of the
15 Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, thank you
16 for the opportunity to offer testimony today on
17 SB 792, legislation to regulate the application of
18 fertilizer.
19 I represent the Pennsylvania Landscape
20 and Nursery Association, the leading trade
21 association representing Pennsylvania's $6.8 billion
22 green industry. Its member landscape contractors,
23 retail garden centers, wholesale nurseries and
24 greenhouses produce outdoor living environments that
25 improve economic value, air quality, water quality 63
1 and human health.
2 At the outset, I want to recognize the
3 efforts of Secretary Redding, Deputy Secretary
4 Strathmeyer and the other professionals at the
5 Department of Agriculture for working with the
6 industry to craft legislation that minimizes the
7 potential impact on the professional lawn care
8 industry. The amendments that were incorporated
9 into the current bill by the Senate were the result
10 of a cooperative effort by the Department and the
11 industry. We commend PDA for their openness and
12 willingness to work with us in smoothing out some of
13 the more objectionable parts of the legislation.
14 While we now have a bill that is less
15 objectionable than the prior bill language, our
16 Association continues to question the need for this
17 bill, particularly those parts that regulate turf
18 grass fertilizer and the professionals who apply it
19 for a living.
20 There are three major reasons for our
21 concerns:
22 First, based upon the scientific research
23 regarding turf grass fertilization and EPA’s own
24 Expert Panel Report, the bill will have no impact on
25 water quality in the Bay watershed and may even make 64
1 conditions worse.
2 Second, the bill will impose real costs
3 in the millions of dollars on Pennsylvania’s lawn
4 care industry, which is comprised mostly of small
5 businesses.
6 Third, given the recent statement of EPA,
7 Pennsylvania is unlikely to receive any credit for
8 this legislation in meeting Pennsylvania’s 2025
9 Chesapeake Bay goals.
10 I go into a lot more detail in my written
11 testimony to back those up, but I won't go into that
12 now since you have my written testimony.
13 I'll summarize by saying that we have
14 several recommendations for the Committee if this
15 bill moves forward:
16 One, keep Subchapter B, Fertilizer
17 Manufacturers and Guarantors. Contained in this
18 section are increased fees that PDA requires to
19 maintain this program. These increased fees will,
20 no doubt, be passed along to those using fertilizer
21 commercially and privately. We think it's a small
22 price to pay to maintain PDA's capacity to manage
23 and enforce this program.
24 We suggest that you drop Subchapters C
25 and D relating to Applicator Licensing, 65
1 Certification and Recordkeeping. Most of what is
2 covered in this section is already a part of the
3 current Pesticide Control Act. Operators who apply
4 fertilizer are already covered since turf grass
5 fertilizers typically contain pesticides that
6 require applicator certification, training and
7 registration.
8 Few professionals, if any, apply only
9 turf grass fertilizer. These chapters are redundant
10 of what and who PDA currently regulates.
11 Third, we are ambivalent about
12 Subchapter E on Application Rates, Requirements and
13 Prohibitions. The industry broadly is already in
14 substantial compliance with this section. A recent
15 survey that PLNA conducted of bagged fertilizers
16 available in central Pennsylvania, all bagged
17 fertilizers we surveyed are now labeled for
18 application rates below the 0.9 pounds per thousand
19 square feet in the bill, the average .8 pounds per
20 square feet.
21 All except those for new lawn development
22 have no Phosphorus. All meet the minimum slow
23 release Nitrogen set at 22 percent in the bill. If
24 this section is implemented, there will be little or
25 no impact on the current marketplace. The section 66
1 does contain lawn fertilization best practices that
2 we support.
3 Four, we agree with Subchapter F, that a
4 program on agriculture and homeowner education could
5 be a good thing. However, the Committee should
6 recognize that the EPA, in its Expert Panel Report,
7 could find no research that supported the efficacy
8 of a public or industry education program.
9 Five, we support Subchapter G,
10 Administration and Penalties, Section 6887,
11 Exclusion of Local Laws and Regulations. This
12 section will prevent a patchwork of local ordinances
13 from springing up regulating fertilizer use.
14 The Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery
15 Association thanks the Committee for your
16 consideration of our concerns.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you.
18 Thank you for your testimony.
19 In looking through your written
20 testimony, one thing that stuck out to me was the
21 cost of compliance. It says the bill will cost the
22 lawn care industry as a whole $5 million per year in
23 compliance costs. These costs are balanced against
24 a bill that provides no environmental benefit and
25 perhaps even a negative benefit. 67
1 Can you explain a little bit more on how
2 you calculated that compliance cost?
3 MR. ROBERTSON: Sure. I'd be happy to.
4 I took a look at the time that would be
5 required in a company, from management all the way
6 down to the people that actually are buying the
7 fertilizer to comply with the components of the
8 bill. We broke those out based on what their hourly
9 rates were. We figured that somewhat, a company
10 would have to pay those employees, so you've got a
11 cost right there.
12 Second of all, they're not doing
13 productive work, which is revenue that would be
14 coming into the company, if, in fact, they were out
15 there and the company was billing for their time.
16 So you've lost twice there. You've got a cost and
17 no revenue to offset it.
18 And we looked at, you know, basically the
19 registration fees, which overall were a minimum part
20 of the overall $5 million, actually. It was the
21 time that's required to spend with the
22 recordkeeping, the training and that sort of thing
23 that's required.
24 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: And that's
25 just for professional lawn care companies. That's 68
1 not universities and local government agencies.
2 MR. ROBERTSON: That is correct. We use
3 data from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture
4 to figure out how many there were in Pennsylvania
5 and took the numbers from there.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Thank you very
7 much.
8 Chairman Pashinski.
9 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Thank you
10 very much, Mr. Chairman.
11 Thank you very much, Mr. Robertson.
12 Could you take us through what you do at
13 the present time in establishing a plan and how that
14 plan is administers and facilitates within your
15 organization. And as a result, you determine a cost
16 factor.
17 And then, I'd like to know, if this was
18 implemented, how that would affect that operation.
19 MR. ROBERTSON: Are you speaking about
20 the Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association
21 itself?
22 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Well, you
23 made a statement based on the fact it was going to
24 cost you $5 million more, and you're attributing
25 that to time in educating your participants, your 69
1 employees, the company has to educate --
2 MR. ROBERTSON: Right. Our members.
3 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Okay. So
4 I'm just trying to get an idea of there is a process
5 now by which you document what you do to a
6 particular area of land. So that's already in the
7 plan. You identify the materials you use. You
8 identify the time. You identify the equipment, et
9 cetera. And therefore, you're able to determine a
10 cost, which you pass on to whoever is purchasing
11 that.
12 So if this was passed, how does that
13 change that application form?
14 How does that change that billing cost?
15 How does that change that plan?
16 I'm having difficulty in seeing that, you
17 know, 15 cents as opposed to 17 cents, a $25 fee as
18 opposed to a $50 fee. I'm not sure how you get the
19 $5 million bucks.
20 MR. ROBERTSON: The fees for the
21 wholesale distribution aren't included in my
22 estimate. The estimates that are included in my
23 estimates are simply the time that it would take a
24 company and an individual to comply with the law.
25 In other words, what training would be required, 70
1 what management oversight would be required to make
2 sure that the company was complying with the law.
3 Those are the sorts of things that went
4 into that $5 million figure.
5 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: But how are
6 we complying now?
7 How are you complying now?
8 How does this change it?
9 MR. ROBERTSON: You're adding additional
10 compliance requirements, adding additional testing,
11 adding additional testing requirements, training
12 requirements to the employees.
13 It's a brand-new bill. People are going
14 to have to take time to read it, understand it,
15 understand what they need to do in their companies
16 to comply.
17 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: So it's the
18 first time -- after that first time, that's it. And
19 then after --
20 MR. ROBERTSON: No. There's ongoing
21 monitoring --
22 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: You don't
23 do monitoring now?
24 MR. ROBERTSON: -- and recordkeeping. I
25 do, but not of this particular law. 71
1 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: How much
2 more time would be involved by just -- if you're
3 monitoring?
4 How much more time would be involved if
5 this were to pass?
6 MR. ROBERTSON: Well, I figured it would
7 take the owner of a company about an hour a month.
8 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: That's it?
9 MR. ROBERTSON: That's it.
10 MINORITY CHAIRMAN PASHINSKI: Okay. All
11 right. Thank you.
12 MR. ROBERTSON: Those numbers add up.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER:
14 Representative Boback.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Thank you,
16 Mr. Chairman.
17 Do you by any chance have any idea how
18 many municipalities have ordinances regarding
19 professional lawn care services in their
20 municipality?
21 MR. ROBERTSON: I'm aware of none right
22 now in Pennsylvania.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: I thought I was
24 aware of one, but okay, thank you.
25 MR. ROBERTSON: I'd like to know that 72
1 if --
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER:
3 Representative Zimmerman.
4 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: Thank you,
5 Mr. Chairman. And thank you for your testimony.
6 Question relating to your formulas.
7 Are they regulated somehow by someone or
8 is that industry?
9 MR. ROBERTSON: When you say formulas --
10 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: Like your
11 fertilizer mixes and, you know, you were talking
12 about what's in this bill is pretty much what you're
13 doing already.
14 MR. ROBERTSON: Well, in speaking about
15 the bag fertilizers that are available in garden
16 centers and Home Depot and places like that, the bag
17 fertilizers that are out there now are generally in
18 compliance at or below the application rates that
19 are specified in the bill.
20 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: Okay. But
21 you're saying that you're pretty much meeting those
22 asks in this bill already.
23 MR. ROBERTSON: Yes. Absolutely. Yep.
24 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: So just as a
25 follow-up question then, this would add considerable 73
1 paperwork, as well, to the industry.
2 MR. ROBERTSON: Yeah. It's one more
3 thing. If you look at it just by itself, maybe it
4 doesn't seem like a lot, an hour a month for a
5 manager, but that's added onto all of the other
6 things that they have to keep track of and comply
7 with, the Pesticide Control Act, for example, the
8 Nursery Dealers Act. All of those things are things
9 that add up.
10 REPRESENTATIVE ZIMMERMAN: Okay. Thank
11 you.
12 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Representative
14 Keller.
15 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: Thank you,
16 Mr. Chairman.
17 I'm a bit confused.
18 MR. ROBERTSON: Okay.
19 REPRESENTATIVE M. KELLER: In the
20 Secretary's testimony, there's a letter from your
21 organization stating that, you know, you weren't
22 objecting to the bill. I'm assuming as long as two
23 amendments go in that you're talking about in that
24 letter; is that correct?
25 Because your testimony today doesn't 74
1 sound quite as glowing as the letter sounds.
2 Can you clear that up for me?
3 MR. ROBERTSON: I will try. This has
4 been a very difficult thing for our association.
5 One is we have a very good relationship with the
6 Department of Agriculture, as I mentioned. They are
7 the main organization, State organization that
8 regulates us. And we enjoy a good working
9 relationship with them.
10 On the other side of that are our
11 members. Recognizing that this bill is going to
12 impose real costs on them, there was an internal
13 debate within the association. And at first, we
14 thought, you know what, we'll just keep our heads
15 down. We don't even want to testify.
16 But as that got kicked around within the
17 organization, we said, no, we really can't do that.
18 We've got to stand up for our members and speak. So
19 that's why we came here today. I do admit that we
20 probably have some relationships to patch up with
21 the Department, but the PLNA Board ultimately felt
22 that, you know, we're here to represent our members.
23 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: Any other
24 questions from members?
25 Thank you, sir, for your testimony. 75
1 MR. ROBERTSON: Thank you.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: It's helpful
3 as we further consider this bill.
4 Thank you.
5 MR. ROBERTSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN CAUSER: I want to
7 thank all of the members for all of the great
8 questions today. I do think that the information
9 that we have gathered here today is helpful, and
10 we'll continue to review the written testimony. So
11 at this point, this meeting is adjourned.
12 Thank you.
13 (Whereupon, the hearing concluded at
14 10:20 a.m.)
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25 76
1 CERTIFICATE
2
3 I hereby certify that the proceedings are
4 contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by
5 me on the within proceedings and that this is a
6 correct transcript of the same.
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9 ______
10 Tiffany L. Mast, Court Reporter/Notary 11
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