March 8, 2004

car ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE 11:00 A.M.

PRESIDING CHAIRMEN: Senator Williams

Representative Widlitz

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

SENATORS: Handley, Coleman,

McKinney, Cook

REPRESENTATIVES: Chapin, Bernhard,

Caruso, Collins,

Davis, Fontana,

Guiliano, Hetherington,

Jarmoc, Kalinowski,

Lewis, Megna,

Moukawsher, Mushinsky,

Piscopo, Roy,

Sharkey, Urban,

Stillman, Willis, Wilber

REPRESENTATIVE WIDLITZ: I'd like to welcome all of you. The first hour will be reserved for elected officials and we will -- I'd just like to remind you, when you come to the desk, please make sure your microphone is on. This is being taped for Connecticut Television Network, CTN, and we'd like everyone's testimony to be picked up for the benefit of the public, so we will begin with Senator Edith Prague. Is Senator Prague here? Okay, moving right along, Representative Amann is not here yet. David Leff, Deputy Commissioner. We surprised them. We started on time.

DAVID LEFF: Good morning, Representative Widlitz, Representative Collins, Representative Piscopo. I'm not used to batting leadoff, so if you'll just bear with me a minute here. I'm here to testify on SB547 and HB5614, both of which deal with the same section of a Public Act passed last year concerning invasive species.

Now, invasive species is a serious problem to our ecosystems, to agriculture and I look at more like biological pollution. I think that probably sends the message a little better than invasive plants, which sounds like aliens from another planet, at least that's the way my kids look at it when they hear me discussing it.

These bills are well intentioned, but they're a little premature. Last year, Public Act 03136 created the Invasive Plants Council of which I am the Chairman.

It's a nine-member group composed of people in government, academia and the industry. That council has since September, met nine times. It's meeting again this week, very earnest about its mission and in fact, we just recently published a list of invasive and potentially invasive plants, which was the first duty of the Council.

That report including that list went to the Environment Committee just recently. The problem with these two bills is that these are matters that are more complex than they seem at first.

They deal with banning particular plants and the penalty for plants, for possessing and other wise using plants that are banned. These are complex issues because they involve matters of interstate commerce. They involve matters of plant culture and also, are -- some of them are important to the nursery industry.

The Invasive Plants Council is involved in a deliberative process reviewing the pros and cons of plant bans as required by the statute. What I would ask is that you hold off until the Council can make a report to you on these issues.

The Council hopes that it can make some recommendation on certain aquatic plants in the not too distant future but some of these issues will have to remain to another legislative session.

For example, I point out to you that among the plants proposed to be banned are Norway maples. Norway maples, while they might not be an ideal tree from some perspectives because they're brittle, and because they cast a lot of shade under which nothing grows, for other folks, they actually have some advantages because they grow fast and they're easy to plant.

Some people don't like them because the leaves hand on till about Christmas time and they're a pain in the neck to rake in the snow, but those are issues, the economics of that plant. It's advantages and disadvantages that really should be weighed by the Council.

If this bill were to pass, the possession or the movement of a Norway maple, which as I say, is a full-scale forest tree, would be illegal and subject to penalty. I would not be surprised; in fact, I would be surprised if there wasn't someone in this room who has a very large Norway maple on their property.

Now, if it's against the law to possess it, then you've got to do something with it but if it's against the law to move it, you're kind of in a Catch-22 cause if you take out the chain saw, sharpen it up and cut it down, well then, you've got move it.

So, the -- again, I think the issue is just a matter of timing. I would ask you that you allow the Invasive Plant Council process to go forward as Shakespeare said, using a little language from the plant world, that ripeness is all. I would say that this bill is not quite ripe.

However, I'd also be remiss if I didn't point out that there are some recommendations that the Invasive Plants Council made to the Environment Committee that we would urge you to put in a bill.

First, we feel that a little funding would be helpful to allow us to publish the list of invasive plants, where using the Internet and low-cost means but to really get the word out, we need some hardcopy distribution and some better marketing of the concept of invasive plants and why they're not a good thing.

We also would like some funding for the Department of Environmental Protection for emergency response to invasive plant infestations. The Department has used some supplemental environmental project money to act quickly and hire contractors or do the work ourselves to remove aquatic plants that appear on in ponds because our best bet is to eliminate new invasions since a lot of these other plants are ubiquitous and difficult to remove.

We'd also like to authorize the Department of Agriculture, when they're inspecting pet shops and other facilities such as nurseries, to inspect for invasive plants and to be able to enforce any violations of law.

We'd like to extend the prohibition on municipal ordinances governing retail sale under Section 8B of Public Act 03136, to allow more time to examine the issue. If we do not extend that, then municipalities will be able to implement their own ban.

I think we can all agree that without some further analysis, a hodge-podge of potentially 169 different rules and requirements are probably not something that's a wise idea.

And finally, in the very section that you're dealing with here in these bills, Section 8A, we would ask you to delete the words, "move" and "possess" because people may unknowingly own property where some of these plants are and shouldn't be subject to the consequences of law and moving them may involve removing them so we certainly don't want to penalize someone for doing the right thing by removing them.

We would instead, for those two terms, substitute the word, "transplant" to transplant these plants is obviously an act that would involve their cultivation and that's really what we ought to be looking at. I'd be glad to answer any questions about these two bills and invasive plants, in general. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony and we do appreciate the many hours and the hard work and the research that's gone into the work of the Invasive Plants Council. I know you've been working diligently and trying to meet our deadlines and we thought maybe this would give you a little incentive to try to do that.

There is a question I have for you on the first bill, SB547, about the fines? Were you opposed to that as well?

DAVID LEFF: The Council has not had an opportunity to discuss the issue of fines in any depth. It is an issue that we have talked about, just in general.

I would like to be able to provide you with a comprehensive set of recommendations that also involves fines for various conduct. In theory, if you want to charge per plant, there's really nothing wrong with that except that it's one thing if you've got a few plants. It's another thing if you perhaps have thousands of them and that's an issue that we need to discuss, especially if the language remains in there that took the -- possessed the plant or to move it, involves the consequence of a penalty, then certainly you would be compounding the difficulty by having a per plant penalty.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, when we were discussing this and what we wanted to bring forward, because there already is a list of plants, aquatic plants that are banned, some of the them are very lucrative to sell and we wanted to make sure that the fine for selling a banned, aquatic plant is -- becomes a disincentive, actually, to sell it because if someone makes a tremendous amount of money selling a plant, a $100 fine may be on a $3,000 sale, would not be a disincentive and so, that's why we were addressing the idea of each plant because it's a serious, as you know, it's a very serious problem for our lakes and our waterways.

DAVID LEFF: Absolutely. If you were to make that change to address as a separate offence, each plant, I would suggest then you would take the language recommended by the Council and eliminate the words, "possess" and "move" and substitute the word, "transplant", because as it's written now, a person innocently having these things growing on their property, through no fault of theirs, would be subject to a penalty.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much for your testimony and for all of your work that you've done with this Council. Are there questions or comments from Committee members? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, David, and --

DAVID LEFF: Good morning.

REP. CHAPIN: -- thank you for being here. I see written testimony here on RHB5610 and I realize you're not the Commissioner of Cognizance, as the case may be, but I certainly wanted to thank DEP for making helpful suggestions to this bill and look forward to working with you to tighten it up even further. Thank you very much.

DAVID LEFF: Thank you. I think it's a bill that has some merit and will eliminate some -- perhaps mischievous litigation and I think it will be helpful.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you very much.

DAVID LEFF: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions or comments? Representative Piscopo.

REP. PISCOPO: Thank you, Madam Chair and good morning, Commissioner.

DAVID LEFF: Good morning.

REP. PISCOPO: I read your testimony on HB5609, biodiesel. I've been doing a lot of research into it over the past few years and I appreciate any effort the DEP can be in helping this industry along. It just -- it sounds like just a great alternative fuel and pollution is cut by a good amount and so, I'd appreciate any help the Department could be on helping us get this going in our state. Thank you.

DAVID LEFF: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions, comments? Okay, thank you very much.

DAVID LEFF: Thank you very much for the opportunity.

REP. WIDLITZ: Is Senator Prague here? We'll go back just now -- Mike Bzdyra, followed by Representative Spallone.

MIKE BZDYRA: Good morning, Representative Widlitz, Senator Williams and other distinguished members of the Environment Committee. My name is Mike Bzdyra and I'm here today on behalf of the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority. I help manage the Electronics Recycling Programs we have there and I'm here today in support of RHB5375 and I've provided copies of the testimony to the Clerk.

As you all know, Connecticut residents are concerned about the environment. They recognize the value of recycling and they understand that electronic devices such as computer monitors, TV's, VCRs and similar electronics devices must be recycled using specialized methods. Methods that are rather costly sometimes.

CRRA has been in the forefront of electronics recycling in the last several years in our state. We held our first series of electronics collections back in the fall of 1999 and since then we have collected more than 700 tons of used, obsolete electronics but as I mentioned earlier, electronics recycling is costly and while items collected in curbside -- in weekly, curbside pickups may cost CRRA on the order of about a dollar a ton to recycle, the 700 tons of electronics recycling have cost almost a quarter of a million dollars since the Programs began back in the fall of '99 and that cost comes out of the member tip fees paid by all of our member towns.

We know there is a significant demand for electronics recycling. We know that old TVs, camcorders, stereo equipment, et cetera, are piling up in basements, garages and attics across Connecticut. In fact, of all the questions we receive by phone or email or through our website, most people ask us about when our next events are going to be and where they're going to be, more so than any other topic.

For these reasons, we encourage passage of HB5375, funds raised through this electronics recycling account will help defray the significant costs associated with responsible handling of electronics devices. Thank you very much for the chance to speak before you and I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much for your testimony. Are there questions on this bill? On the testimony, rather? Or comments? Okay, thank you very much.

MIKE BZDYRA: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: David Carey followed by Representative Spallone. I'm sorry, Representative. I had skipped David Carey. You're next.

DAVID CAREY: Good morning, Chairs. I'm here on behalf of the Department of Agriculture as the Director of the Bureau of Aquaculture to give testimony on HB550, AN ACT CONCERNING THE MANAGEMENT OF STATE SHELLFISH GROUNDS.

It's basically, this is administrative bill and with some changes pertaining to it and the Bureau of Aquaculture administers the Shellfish Program in Connecticut. The Program includes 291 leases and 545 franchises or which are taxable grants and it totals about 33,000 acres for the leases and 22,000 acres for the franchises.

In addition, the Bureau manages 6,000 acres of the state natural beds for seed oyster transplant and some of the administrative changes in this bill are in an effort to reduce the administrative burden on the Bureau and the 836 individual parcels require annual administrative work and many of those parcels are historically very small. The smallest actually being .3 acres and through the right of transfer, shell fishermen have acquired adjacent and contiguous parcels and in some situations, individuals have four or more parcels of random sizes that total even still a small amount of acreage such as 35 acres.

The Bureau maintains four separate parcels on our records. License requirements, water monitoring data, and shellfish maps. The four lots are required to be individually buoyed when the shellfish area work is conducted and the combination of four parcels into one would result in one lease for us to handle on a three-year basis and when working the lots it would only require four buoys, so in addition to reducing the administrative burden on the Bureau, we would in a sense, increase the esthetics of Long Island Sound by the elimination of 12 buoys in the situation of a four lot combination.

The second change in that bill under Subsection A would set a four dollar minimum lease rate per acre, replacing the current two dollar minimum rate which was established and hasn't been changed since 1992.

The current average dollar value for the 291 leases is $17.87 an acre, so the four-dollar minimum rate is still much lower than the average to date.

In addition, under Subsection A, this change includes a four-dollar minimum fee on all existing lease renewals. The change -- this change would result in a financial gain of $26,751.08 per year to the State from approximately 147 leases.

The average burden to the shell fishermen per lease would be an annual increase of approximately $181.91. Additional facts supporting this is that the most recent 81 leases that have been executed since 1995 have a $46.69 per acreage average cost which is dramatically higher than when compared to the $7.49 average value for the remaining original 210 leases.

Many of these leases are small, near shore parcels dating as far back as 1960 and of course, they run through the 1994 cutoff. The areas tend to be the most productive seed and grow areas due to the high level of nutrients and annual lease rates are as low as one dollar to two dollars and acre below the current minimum of two dollars.

The current market value for a bushel of clams is $50 and oysters is $100, so the change would not have a significant hardship.

The final change under Subsection A requires the adoption of regulations in accordance with provisions of Chapter 54 regarding shellfish ground rental rates at the time of the lease renewal.

The regulations would specify the use of an economic determinator or indicator in order to adjust the rate uniformly over time, therefore to prevent the existence of leases that are 30 years old and continually operating at the original agreed-upon rate. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, David. Are there any questions? Representative Megna.

REP. MEGNA: Thank you, Chairperson. Do the -- isn't there a bidding process with the leases?

DAVID CAREY: Yes.

REP. MEGNA: So, does that get the lease value up to market?

DAVID CAREY: A new lease, yes.

REP. MEGNA: But not an old lease?

DAVID CAREY: No, historically the policy has been that when a lease was signed, that's the rate that it has stayed at for --

REP. MEGNA: The leases are for how long, generally?

DAVID CAREY: Oh, three years but the language in Subsection A allows them to renew it on the same terms and so we are changing -- we're attempting to change that to say that at renewal we'd be able to use some kind of economic indicator or determinator to adjust that up for inflation, but presently, the policy, they've remained the same since the inception and now rather than do it as a policy change, we'd like to put it --

REP. MEGNA: At the -- say, one of those leases, at the end of the three years, is other shell fishermen able to bid on it? Or --

DAVID CAREY: No, no. As long as they abide by the conditions, they would renew the lease because most shell fishers say a five-year maturity, if you planted something small, it would take five years, so to not give them that opportunity --

REP. MEGNA: Right.

DAVID CAREY: -- they would stop the planting and cultivating and they would just be harvesting what was there and we'd -- we don't want to do that. So, most leases do not change hands.

REP. MEGNA: Right. Right.

DAVID CAREY: And so, so in order to have them re-bid it, it would probably discourage that but what we're attempting to do is change it so that over time, the value does go up at the rate of inflation. We have -- of course, that's what they -- we said, by regulation.

REP. MEGNA: Should the life cycle of the lease be changed, like you mentioned, it normally takes five years?

DAVID CAREY: Right. Well, we can lease them as long as ten years according to the law, but primarily we do them as a three-year renewal.

REP. MEGNA: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Chairman.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any further questions, comments? Thank you very much for your testimony. Representative Spallone followed by Tom Griwold -- Tim Griswold.

REP. SPALLONE: Good morning, Chairman Widlitz, Chairman Williams, members of the Environment Committee, Representative Chapin, it's good see you this morning and I'll be very brief considering you have a room full of people here to testify on these bills and we can speak privately during the Session.

Thank you for raising HB5613 and other bills this year directed towards improving safety and quality of life on the waters of our state. I had a brief housekeeping matter in my written testimony, which I'm not reading to you, on page three where I refer to SB588, I meant to say, HB5612.

SB588 is the school buses and diesel fuel, so that was a mistake. I did not mean to refer to that one in that testimony. Last fall, Representative Guilliano and I met with over two dozen constituents in the DEP office in Old Lyme to discuss boating issues.

The DEP, some DEP staff joined us and we had a follow-up meeting with them this winter and that was very helpful. Also, over the last three years in my area of the state, the lower Connecticut River Valley, we've had a series of River Roundtables where citizens and stakeholders have discussed the future of this important resource.

At both those Roundtables and the meetings that Representative Guilliano and I had with constituents, the issue of noise was brought up, repeatedly.

Noise from loud watercraft that can be disruptive to a peaceful day on the water or even disruptive to shore-side activities and also have effects on wildlife.

HB5613 will, at least, remove an incentive to decline the noise test and therefore, result in more tests but importantly, in more compliance with existing law, so I think this is a great start in addressing the noise problem.

We might, in the future, want to consider looking at the fine structure itself, considering harsher penalties for repeat offenders involving the safe boating certificate or even revising the noise standards, themselves.

It's hard to look at a piece of paper and know what 80 decibels means or whatever they are and we might want to consider approaching those to see if they're reasonable and if reasonable means can be made to lower those through appropriate mufflers.

This bill dovetails nicely with SB444. Your Public Hearing was last week regarding penalties for boating law violations. I support that legislation and would be happy to work with you toward its passage.

Funding for boating enforcement, of course remains a serious concern. Representative Guilliano and I learned directly from the Enforcement Officers how thinly stretched they are on a busy summer weekend.

So, I certainly support efforts like SB5612 to set up a reliable stream of funding for DEP's efforts. I refer you to my written testimony and would just wrap up by saying; I look forward to working with you to pass legislation to improve the river and shoreline experience for all Connecticut residents and visitors. Thank you for your time and attention.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Representative. Just one question. Are you aware that the DEP has asked in one of the bills that we have before this Committee, to be relieved of the enforcement authority -- not authority, but the enforcement for noise violations and if that bill should pass, who would actually be out there enforcing these ordinances?

REP. SPALLONE: Right, well, that's a good question. My understanding from our meeting with Office Smutnick and others at DEP was that they do this, now, so that would mean that it would rest with either state police or local police authorities and not all of the towns have marine enforcement on the water. So, I think that would leave somewhat of a vacuum.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Okay, thank you very much. Tim Griswold.

TIMOTHY GRISWOLD: Representative Widlitz, Senator Williams, members of the Committee. Good morning. My name is Timothy Griswold and I am the First Selectman of the town of Old Lyme located at the mouth of the Connecticut River.

Despite the good efforts of state and local law enforcement officials, boating noise continues to a significant nuisance to the residents in the communities which border Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River during the boating season.

The primary violators are the cigarette-type boats and jet skies. On a sunny, weekend day or holiday during the summer, the noise from cigarette boats will actually cause conversation to come to a halt until the offending boat passes by.

Along the beaches of Long Island Sound, in certain coves of the Connecticut River, and other larger lakes there are often loud mosquito-like noises associated with jet skis' zooming around that seems to persist all day long.

The noise is the direct result of improper use of these watercraft. The callous disregard of the regulations by the offending operators has a harmful effect on the quality of life of our citizens.

Apart from the noise pollution, the wakes of these watercraft cause damage to our beaches, riverbanks and floating docks. Improper operation has also caused injury and even death to operators and passengers of these vessels.

Cutbacks in state and local funding have contributed to the elevation of noise level because there is simply not enough law enforcement. This situation will likely not improve in the short-term, so the proposed change to increase the fine as outlined in RHB5613, will send an important message to violators, via their pocketbooks.

Increasing the minimum fee from $100 to $500 will have a positive effect on reducing noise. I respectfully urge the Committee on Environment to approve this change. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Thank you very much. Senator Prague is not yet here, or Representative Amann? Okay, then we will go to the Public part of the Hearing and please, I will ask that you limit your testimony to three minutes and we have written testimony from many of you and we certainly will follow-up with questions. The first person, Brian Freeman followed by Chuck Dubois. Brian Freeman? Okay, we'll go on to Chuck Dubois. Okay, moving right along, Cathy Barber, followed by Cathy Flaherty. Do we have the right list for the Public Hearing? Okay, you are?

CATHY FLAHERTY: Cathy Flaherty.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, Cathy. Okay, would you please come forward?

SEN. WILLIAMS: And again, I just want to note that you do have three minutes, when there's a bell, when the bell goes off, your time is up, so please conclude your testimony at that time. There are about 48 people or so, signed up and so we expect to be here for another three or four hours and out of respect to all the folks who want to testify and get their testimony in, we do ask that you confine your testimony to that three minute time period. Thank you.

CATHERINE FLAHERTY: Good morning. My name is Chairman Williams, Chairman Widlitz, members of the Committee. My name is Catherine Flaherty. I am the executive director of the Connecticut Chapter of the New England Convenience Store Association.

The Connecticut Chapter represents more than convenience stores. We also represent gasoline operators in the state and over 80 percent of our members sell gasoline. We are opposed to SB543, the legislation that will continue to prohibit the underground storage tank petroleum clean-up account Review Board from accepting applications for reimbursement from the commercial, underground storage tank petroleum Clean-Up Account through October 1, 2005.

Since the moratorium was created in September 2003, clean-ups in progress have been halted and no clean-ups have started. Perhaps of even greater concern is the fact that the moratorium may have placed the state's gasoline stations in great jeopardy.

Without the Fund, gasoline stations cannot comply with the federal requirements for one million dollars of financial responsibility in the event of a spill or leak from underground tanks.

Unless the Fund is restored, the state's gasoline stations will have to go out and purchase private insurance to cover the cost of any pollution resulting from a leak in their underground storage tanks.

In the current insurance market, this type of coverage would most likely be very difficult and expensive to purchase. In the absence of this Fund, or private insurance, the federal government could shut down stations in Connecticut.

If the stations close, jobs will be lost and consumers will suffer because fewer stations will lead to less competition and higher prices at the fewer stations that do remain open.

Our members are very responsible and concerned about the environment. They invested millions of dollars over the last decade to upgrade their properties and to bring them into compliance with very expensive environmental requirements.

If our members are forced to close stations because of an underground storage tank leak, the environment will suffer because no one will be left to clean up the site. I urge you to oppose SB543. Thank you for your consideration. Any questions?

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: It's my understanding that presently or last summer, we instituted this moratorium, which began September 1^st --

CATHERINE FLAHERTY: Correct.

REP. CHAPIN: This bill would change that so the beginning of the moratorium would be July '04.

CATHERINE FLAHERTY: It's my understanding it would just continue the moratorium and what we would like to see is have the moratorium lifted.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you very much.

CATHERINE FLAHERTY: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Other further questions or comments? Okay, thank you very much.

CATHERINE FLAHERTY: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Jonathan Bilmes followed by Paul Larson.

JONATHAN BILMES: Good afternoon, Senator Williams, Representative Widlitz, members of the Environment Committee. My name is Jonathan Bilmes. I'm the executive director of the Bristol Resource Recovery Committee and the Tunxis Recycling Committee, representing ten percent of the State's population in managing in a safe and environmental and cost-effective manner, municipal solid waste and recyclables.

I'm here today to urge you to support RHB5375, with some technical corrections as submitted with my testimony. The bill will establish an infrastructure for recycling consumer electronics, via a point-of-sale fee.

This bill is virtually identical to the bill that the Environment Committee passed last year by a 27 to nothing vote. Since last year's Environment Committee vote, the state of California has passed the law, very similar, requiring an advanced fee on computers and the nearly 50 participants representing a wide variety of stakeholders in the debate have come to the consensus conclusion that an advance disposal fee is the best way to get consumer electronics going on a national scale.

So, the bill before you is consistent with what you did last year and also legislation being proposed and enacted across the country and in other states.

E-waste remains the number one recycling problem today. There's a proliferation of e-waste products. They have a short lifespan. They contain toxic materials constituents and there's no cogent strategy for end-of-life management.

Just to remind you, there's three ways we can reduce the environmental impacts of electronic goods. One is in design. One is how we use them, like Energy Star and so on, and the third is the end-of-life impact and that's what this bill would assist.

Manufacturers, mail-back programs are woefully inconvenient and expensive. For all the above reasons, we urge you to support E-waste legislation modeled after the other state and national bills.

A bill that assesses a ten-dollar advance disposal fee to be used to support local E-waste recycling efforts is the best way to address quickly and cost-effectively, the E-waste problem.

I also want to mention that the funds from the bill will be more than adequate to cover any computers and CRTs that we collect. I can provide additional details on that and to address any concerns that large users have, we could also suggest that we may incorporate language that if you're buying more than five CRTs or TVs, that you would be exempt from the fee providing that the retailer agrees to take back one unit for every unit you buy. That completes my testimony. Again, I've submitted some substitute language and also submitted written testimony on SB549. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. We'll take those suggestions under consideration to fine-tune this bill. I appreciate your testimony. Are there any questions, other comments? Okay, thank you very much. Paul Larson.

PAUL LARSON: Good morning, Senator Williams and Representative Widlitz and other members of the Committee. I do have a written copy of my testimony, which I'm not sure if that's been distributed to you, yet, but I'm sure it will be.

I was anticipating a few more moments to testify, so I'll briefly summarize the first part of my testimony. I'm here to speak to you this morning regarding the proposed invasive plant bills that are part of this Hearing, SB547 and HB5614.

The first one, I'll just kind of summarize my testimony for you. It basically, as you may well be aware, leaves the existing language of the invasive plant Act, intact with the addition of the clause, per plant, regarding to the application of fines.

There's -- I feel that the -- although it may soon simple on the surface, identifying a plant with the types of aquatic species that are being listed in that Act is not as easy as it first seems.

Most of them are floating aquatics with no characteristic root structures and a very small piece of them could theoretically be considered a plant, so I think that in summary, the existing language in the Act is sufficient to deal with providing a punitive charge against anyone illegally growing or selling those plants and really ought to be left intact.

The Invasive Plants Council, of which I'm a member, has discussed this portion of the Act and may very well be making recommendations to your Committee in the future, on that.

My second concern actually focuses on the HB5614, AN ACT CONCERNING A BAN OF INVASIVE PLANTS. From our perspective and my perspective and that of the Connecticut Green Industries, this bill is totally unacceptable in its form.

It is a broad-stroke attempt to deal with a very complex issue. According to this bill, as of this coming October 1^st, 2004, mere possession of any of the plants on this extensive list would subject the owner to the sanction of law and the stipulated fine.

I would ask you to consider, for example, how many of you personally might have a beautiful Norway maple or perhaps the very popular and colorful plant, Winged Euonymus, also known as Burning Bush as part of your landscaping?

Perhaps, if you have some perennial Pepper Weed or Spotted Knapweed growing on its own, out behind your garage. Incidentally, would any of you or any of the rest of the citizens of the state of Connecticut even be able to identify these and other plants on the list?

If these scenarios apply to you as they would to the vast majority of residents in our state, we all better get our shovels and chainsaws out before October comes. Perhaps the bill is a veiled attempt to eliminate the state budget deficient, because if enacted and enforced, it would do just that.

All the humor aside, I hope you see my point. I've got further testimony in my written text and I hope you have time to consider that. Thank you. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, and again, we do appreciate all the work that the Council is doing and certainly look forward to a final proposed list that you will bring before us, hopefully, very soon. Are there questions or comments? Representative Davis.

REP. DAVIS: Hi.

PAUL LARSON: Hi, Jeff.

REP. DAVIS: So, if I -- do I understand your testimony on HB5614, that you agree that the current list and law is correct?

PAUL LARSON: Yes.

REP. DAVIS: And that maybe there should be some additional plants put on there but this isn't the right list.

PAUL LARSON: Exactly. Yes. That's spelled out in more detail in my written testimony, which I think the copies are --

REP. DAVIS: Yes, I'm looking at the copy.

PAUL LARSON: Okay. Yes, basically, in my closing paragraph there, if I could be given the opportunity to just state that, I think it's imperative for this Committee to not act favorably on these two bills. In the last session, you voted to create the Connecticut Invasive Plants Council and that Council of nine committed individuals have been meeting twice monthly, here in Hartford, to address this issue in a fair and science-based manner. To pass these bills that are before you now, would totally undermine the Council that has been created. If you give the process time to work, we'll all be able to get the results and achieve our goals.

REP. DAVIS: Great, and I'm sorry, I missed part of Commissioner Leff's testimony. When are you expecting to have a report?

PAUL LARSON: That report -- actually, I have a draft of it with me, right now. I believe that has been -- well, I know it's been approved in its final form by the Council, so maybe it's just a matter of the reproduction of that report.

REP. DAVIS: And in that is the list of the plants that you think would be acceptable to add to the existing list?

PAUL LARSON: That report contains the list that the Council has approved as the list of invasive and potentially invasive plants. That report, we have not reached the point, as a Council, of coming up with a list of plants that would be proposed for additional banning. That's our next step, but even despite our fairly intense meeting schedule, and a great deal of cooperation among all the parties involved, due to the complexity of the issue we just aren't at that point, yet.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

PAUL LARSON: So, we will be there.

REP. DAVIS: Okay, keep up the good work.

PAUL LARSON: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Just by way of background, my understanding is where we were last year, we were looking at passing an invasive plants bill and we were looking at banning a fairly comprehensive list of plants. We were also looking at allowing municipalities to, on their own, ban specific plants and folks from the horticulture industry requested the ability to have a year to come back with a list of -- a comprehensive list of plants to be backed -- to be banned, and that if we gave them the time, then you'd be back here this time next year, we'd have that comprehensive list and we could move forward. Otherwise, last year we would have passed a bill, a comprehensively banning invasive plants and allowing municipalities to in addition, ban further plants.

So, I just want to lay it out there as background, that's where we are. We're waiting for the list. We've given folks a year to come up with it and we sincerely hope that in the very, very near future, because this is a short session, that there is agreement because if there's not, I can't speak for other members but as for myself, in good faith we've given folks the time and we didn't move forward last year and now is the time to act, either with the comprehensive list from you all or with legislation resembling that of which we were ready to pass last year.

PAUL LARSON: May I respond to that? The vote of the Council, which you know is made up of a pretty diverse group of interests, was unanimous in the recommendations in our report that both request this Committee to authorize a one-year extension of that preemption provision in the Section 8, paragraph B and it also provides for that list as I mentioned to Representative Davis, excuse me -- that the list of plants that are identified as invasive, potentially invasive.

We're on the threshold of coming up with a list of recommendations for further banning and that is what we're doing, but it is certainly as we've gotten into it, pretty much everyone on the Council has come to the same conclusion that this is really a much more involved, much more complex issue than it at first seems, so we're working on it and we certainly hope to get there as quick as we can.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Well, we anxiously await your progress.

PAUL LARSON: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Were there any other questions? Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you for working on this Council.

PAUL LARSON: You're welcome.

REP. WILLIS: Unfortunately, my co-chair, the Senator, stole my question or comments because as you remember, when we were discussing this bill and negotiating it last year, we just -- we were very clear about coming back this year with a list and that was the whole purpose of where we were coming from last year, was the expectation that this Council was going to be giving us a list based on science, so thank you for -- Senator, for asking that and I appreciate your answer but I just wanted to reiterate that.

The other thing, on the penalty, we did discuss that last year and we did get it down to, per plant, but as I suggested last year and I may throw it out to you this year, is a penalty --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 1A to 1B.)

REP. WILLIS: -- lakes and woods that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove this from our community every year. So, think about that as a penalty. Thank you.

PAUL LARSON: Okay. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any further questions? Okay, thank you very much.

PAUL LARSON: You're welcome. Thank you, again.

REP. WIDLITZ: Bob Heffernan, followed by Sandy Breslin.

ROBERT HEFFERNAN: Good morning, everyone. Bob Heffernan of the executive director of the Connecticut Green Industries Council which is all the companies in Connecticut, 2,500 companies that produce, sell, grow flowers and plants.

We operate in every town in the state; have 41,000 employees and sales of almost a billion dollars. On the two invasive plant bills before us, today, first we do have problems with the two bills before the Committee but we do fully support the Invasive Plants Council's recommendations and we hope that the Committee will implement those as described by Deputy Commissioner Leff, to you, and we ask that the Legislature honor and defer to the process that it created last year when it set up the Connecticut Invasive Plants Council.

That process is ongoing, you have nine very capable distinguished people, experts, scientists, green industry professionals, all working together to come up with a real solution to all of this, the invasive plants problem.

The problem with HB5614, is that it is proposing to ban many plants without any regard to the economic or fiscal impact of doing that and the Council, Invasive Plants Council, has only started to look at that. For example, two weeks ago, the Council heard from a water gardening company in North Haven, Connecticut who really awakened all of us with information we didn't even know that one of the plants, water hyacinth, used a lot in water gardens, is a tropical plant that doesn't even survive Connecticut's winters, but on the other hand, it's $30,000 a year in sales to this one particular company.

So, that kind of information needs to come out before the Invasive Plants Council so that we fully know what we're doing before the Legislature goes ahead and starts banning plants. There are all sorts of economic impacts.

We have predicted that between $15 and $20 million a year are involved in the growing and the retail selling of particularly, Norway maple, Barberry and the Burning Bush in the state of Connecticut and that alone has tremendous impacts in terms of the payroll, the people who work to produce and sell those plants.

Many of those plants are subject to Connecticut's horticultural sales tax, the six percent sales tax, so we -- there's a lot of impact here and that needs to be noted before we go forward with banning.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony, Bob. One of the reasons you mentioned the economic impact. That's one of the reasons we'd like to really move forward with a list as soon as possible to alert people to the fact that they should start planting some thing else. I mean, we don't want to hurt anyone's business, but at the same time, growing and continuing to grow and market plants that are invasive and are doing harm in our communities is not really economically feasible for communities in the long run either, so you know --

ROBERT HEFFERNAN: Well, there's a couple of answers to that and the Chairman has sat in on some of the sessions. One of the issues that has come up in this process is the issue of cultivars. We do agree, take the example, Barberry. We do agree with everyone in the environmental community that the Green Barberry is invasive. We agree.

However, the industry over the years has developed many cultivars of that plant that are the red and the burgundy cultivars and those are extremely popular in the state in gardening and we have not anecdotally seen those cultivars spread in the environment.

Our industry is funding, right now, a study over at the University of Connecticut that is to get under way this year to do some genetic fingerprinting to find out what plants of the Barberry are the ones that are actually loose out there, so we need to know this information before we just go ahead and ban them.

Same thing with the Euonymus, which is the Burning Bush, which is very popular, turns bright red in the fall. There again, the plants that are loose in the woods, if you've even seen them, have a soft pink leaf to them but the Burning Bush that we sell as an industry and produce, is compact and that gives that bright-red leaf.

So, we've got to know what plant we're talking about here and we've got to understand whether, indeed, cousins of some of these plants are invasive or not.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. I just want to note that this is at least, I think, the third year running, or third session running, that we've been dealing with this issue in one form or another and it may be longer than that and again, as I mentioned before, we in good faith, put off action for one year.

I am familiar with the process because I helped come up with the process and the process is that we're supposed to have a comprehensive list of plants from you all, going into this session and not just a tepid, timid list of two or three little things, but we really are looking to deal with this issue and not to delay and delay as has been the case in previous years.

So, it has been a good faith effort on our part. I know it's been a good faith effort on your part, showing the research that you're talking about and we are very hopeful that there will be something that we can work with that everyone agrees with, as opposed to our going forward, regardless, with legislation of this sort. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there any other questions? Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: Just one comment on the Water Hyacinth. I hope we can do something. Certainly, that could be added. Of course, if you come to our Hearing next week, we're doing climate change, so maybe the Water Hyacinth could survive in the future.

ROBERT HEFFERNAN: True. With that -- and we agree. I mean, that's probably why we have problems with invasive plants to this state is that there are all sorts of environmental factors like that, yeah.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions? Thank you, Bob.

ROBERT HEFFERNAN: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: We are still in the first hour of the Public Hearing and I see that Representative Amann has joined us who had earlier signed up to speak and he's accompanied by Senator Smith, so if they would come forward? Thank you.

REP. AMANN: Good morning, Representative Widlitz, Senator Williams, thank you for allowing Senator Smith and myself to come before you today. We're running a little late. A lot of activity going on today but again, thank you also to the Environmental Committee.

Senator Smith and I are here today to offer our support for HB5611, AN ACT CONCERNING NOTIFICTION OF MUNICIPALITIES OF CONTAMINATION. In Milford, as in many communities around the state, we have had a share of our problems with contamination. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that knowledge of the contamination was not shared with area residents who bathed, drank and were otherwise exposed to contaminated water.

In addition, according to construction workers at the Milford Power Plant, they were never notified of the discovery of the contamination on their worksite.

Because of this lack of communication from the Department of Environmental Protection and the owner of the contaminated property, we believe the situation has been made worse.

From the time the DEP was made aware of the contamination until it passed along to the public, at least four years went by. This is unacceptable. We cannot allow this to happen when the health of our families are at stake.

Action could have been, and should have been, taken much sooner. It was only when a worker filed a lawsuit because he believed he acquired a rare form of cancer from the site, that the existence of this contamination become known to the public.

It was only when the public became aware of this and area elected officials such as ourselves, got involved that residents who had well water for drinking and bathing were hooked up to the city water supply.

The safety of Connecticut residents and workers is too important to keep this type of information secret. We need to put into statute the protocols that were for reasons no one seems to be able to explain, ignored by the DEP, so that there are no more excuses for why local officials, residents and workers were not informed.

These protocols dictate that the municipal chief executive and health officials are notified upon the discovery of the contamination. We have to respectfully request and ask this Committee to expand the notification process to include local state representatives and senators as well as workers at the site of the contamination.

Again, we only found out by accident. I wonder how many of you might have the same situation in your town, but you're not aware of it. I'm glad to see the DEP `fessed up, that they made a mistakes, but it's caused huge problems in our area, in Milford, and Commissioner Rocque, has had the courage to come forward and admit they made a huge, huge error.

I have to tell you it also, now it's personal. It's not only my district, it's not only my neighbors, guess what? It's me. They contaminated my home. I've known it for four years -- I found out about it four years ago. Our -- my neighbors could have taken care of this problem if we had an opportunity to know about it. That is absolutely unacceptable and again, if we didn't know, maybe it's you. Maybe it's you.

So please, notification, sitting down and resolve a problem when there's contamination at a site, to let you local and state officials deal with it, like we all deal with all problems, to sit down, it could have been taken care of four years ago and I hope that you'll find it in yourselves to pass this bill. I think it's extremely important for all of us. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, Chairman Williams.

SEN. SMITH: Following up in concurrence with Representative Amann's remarks, I would hope that all of you would look seriously, both on this bill and as well on the language that was submitted by the Carpenter's Local 210, they had some additional, I think, thoughtful provisions that might be added into the bill that would include notification of the Department of Labor perhaps posting on the property, itself, that certain types of contamination had been found and then they also had some ideas with respect to enforcement mechanisms which would be, it seems to me, appropriate in this context.

As the nightmare scenario has unfolded in Milford, and continues to unfold, we're doing everything that we can in conjunction with the DEP and others but the fact that at least seven or eight other professionals that are supposed to deal with this type of problem in this area knew about it years in advance and said nothing, is really adding tremendous insult to tremendous injury. Thank you for the Committee's time and if you have any questions, we'll do our best to answer them.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you and the two of you are to be commended for your leadership on the investigation looking into all of this and to see how we can prevent this from ever happening in the future. I accompanied Representative Amann and Senator Smith to the hearing in Milford and I think for me, the part that really left me absolutely speechless was when a little girl came forward and burst into tears and said, why didn't you do something about this before my daddy died? And that really hit home with everybody. That's what it's all about. So, anything we can do to improve this process certainly is well worthwhile. Are there questions or comments? Representative Collins.

REP. COLLINS: I would just in agreement with your notification. We get notified on every dock permit that comes down the line. I don't see where this is a really hard thing for the DEP to be doing here.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions, comments? Thank you very much.

REP. AMANN: Thank you, thank you very much.

SEN. SMITH: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, we'll go back to the Public list. I think Sandy Breslin is next followed by Jenny Gitlitz. Okay, Jenny Gitlitz? Followed by Betty McLaughlin.

JENNY GITLITZ: Good morning, Senator Williams, Representative Widlitz, and members of the Committee. My name is Jenny Gitlitz. I'm the research director for the Container Recycling Institute. We're a 501 C3, non-profit organization headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. For over a decade, we've served as the only national clearinghouse for information on beverage sales, beverage containers sales recycling and wasting in the United States.

And I'm here to register CRI's enthusiastic support for RSB549, which would update Connecticut's Bottle Bill by adding non-carbonated beverages to it. The Bottle Bill is a huge success for a number of reasons. It achieves great recycling rates at no taxpayer expense.

It keeps a lot of litter off the streets and provided income to a wide range of people involved in collecting the recyclable containers. It's also very popular with the public, not just here in Connecticut but elsewhere and I'd like to just briefly tell you about a poll that came out in January that was conducted in New York State which has a Bottle Bill very similar to Connecticut's.

That poll found that 85 percent of registered New York voters surveyed supported New York's Bottle Bill and 74 percent supported expanding that Bottle Bill to non-carbonated containers and I think if such a poll were conducted in Connecticut, you would find similar public support.

So, we think the Committee's doing the right thing by considering an expansion and an update to the Bottle Bill. The Bottle Bill's in Connecticut and nine other states were enacted during the `70's and the `80's as visionary early examples of extended producer responsibility.

It was about manufacturers taking financial responsibility for the end-of-life management of their containers. The Bottle Bill in Connecticut is not an outdated concept that needs to be thrown away. Rather, we need to look at it like an old treasure that needs to be refurbished in order to increase its value and its utility to the State.

Simply put, Connecticut's Bottle Bill works. Since 1980, this pioneering piece of legislation has kept over 20 billion beverage containers out of Connecticut's landfills and incinerators, saving over one and a half million tons of valuable aluminum, glass and plastics.

The deposit system has also kept untold millions of bottles and cans off of Connecticut's streets, roadways, beaches and other public places where they might have been littered.

So, this bill is an opportunity to expand on the success of the Bottle Bill. When Connecticut's Bottle Bill was enacted two decades ago, the so-called, new age beverages just simply didn't exist.

The juice, the sports drink, the bottled water and now they represent about 25 percent of the beverage market in Connecticut and across the United States and these non-carbonated beverages that used to be barely a blip on the radar screen, their sales are skyrocketing and will continue to do so.

Right now we estimate that over five hundred million of these containers are exempted from the current deposit law in Connecticut. That comes out to be about two a day, per person for everyone in this state.

And, they will grow because the beverage industry itself, has identified a cola fatigue that the consumers experienced in the sales of these teas and waters and sports drinks and health drinks are growing rapidly with no end in sight.

The bottles look the same. They're made out of the exact same type of plastic, the same mold at the factory, the same shape. The only thing different is the contents. The same distributors, so we are asking to do the sensible thing by subjecting the producers of these to the same requirements that the carbonated producers have and we want to just point out the litter reduction benefits will be dramatic.

In New York, the group Scenic Hudson found that 61 percent of container litter came from non-carbonated containers even though they only represented about a fifth of the market there. In Massachusetts, the State Agency Mass Riverways did a study last year and in their report, they said, a non-carbonated container in Massachusetts is 14 times more likely to be littered than a carbonated container.

So, in conclusion, I just want to point -- reiterate that this will reduce litter in Connecticut. It can also generate revenue for the state as other people have pointed out, if you elect to take the unclaimed deposits that could be about $25 million in as cheated revenue to the state and we support that as well.

So, in closing, I just want to say that Connecticut would be setting a very important example for other states to follow if you adopt this law. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Jenny, for your testimony. Are there questions or comments? Representative Fontana.

REP. FONTANA: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good morning, or afternoon. One quick question just so I'm clear, it would apply not only to non-carbonated beverages in plastic bottles but it applies to non-carbonated beverages in glass and tin cans? I mean, because right now we're --

JENNY GITLITZ: Right, it would also -- aluminum cans.

REP. FONTANA: Right, sorry. Aluminum, correct.

JENNY GITLITZ: Yes.

REP. WIDLITZ: Well, you date yourself.

REP. FONTANA: Yes, that's right. I still call them fireplugs. But anyway, right. So, it would be --

JENNY GITLITZ: Yes, Representative, you're correct. It would apply to aluminum and glass as well. The reason I, in my limited time, I chose to focus on plastic because plastic represents about 75 percent of all the containers that are eligible under expansion, so that's why I focused on that.

REP. FONTANA: No, I mean, I guess we've got a difference between -- we got plastic and then we've got aluminum and glass --

JENNY GITLITZ: That's right.

REP. FONTANA: -- and we've got carbonated and we've got non-carbonated so --

JENNY GITLITZ: Right.

REP. FONTANA: -- what we're talking about is expanding it from carbonated in glass and aluminum to all four categories.

JENNY GITLITZ: Well, no. No. Plastic's already included. In other words, this soda bottle that's a Pepsi, this is already part of the Bottle Bill.

REP. FONTANA: Okay.

JENNY GITLITZ: This is not. So, but the --

REP. FONTANA: We're expanding into non-carbonated beverages --

JENNY GITLITZ: Yes.

REP. FONTANA: -- whether they're in glass, aluminum or plastic.

JENNY GITLITZ: Let me tell you why I singled out plastic during my testimony. Because if you're a municipal curbside operator, this is a very bulky item to handle and it's expensive to run a curbside program. It's very voluminous in comparison to how much revenue it brings in so to take all of these things out of the load that the curbside trucks have to collect, represents a savings to municipalities and in terms of litter, it's important too, because it is persistent and it blows around and it's in some ways more of a hazard but the big thing is that it's 75 percent of the expansion containers.

REP. FONTANA: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions, comments? Thank you very much.

JENNY GITLITZ: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Betty McLaughlin followed by Richard Weisberg.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Good morning. For the record, my name is Betty McLaughlin. I'm director of environmental affairs for the Connecticut Audubon Society. We're the statewide Audubon and Independent Audubon. We have about 8,000 members representing about 25,000 Connecticut residents.

There are four -- I have submitted written testimony and there are four bills on your agenda today that we are speaking in support of including both of the invasive plants bills that you have already heard testimony on this morning.

We do favor clarifying that it's a per plant fine and we are in support of the ban as written and as has been pointed out the preemption, the municipal preemption that was meant to last one year was something that was a compromise last year and we went along with that last year but we think it's not a good idea to continue that municipal preemption, so we would like to be on the record as being opposed to that.

With respect to the recycling of electronic devices, we were very much in support of this because of the notion of consumer responsibility, producer responsibility, retailer responsibility.

The shared responsibility of taking care of the product after the end of its useful life is a concept that we think it's time has come and we would love to see this enacted and I said in my written testimony and I will say it here, we see this kind of producer responsibility, consumer, retailer, shared responsibility legislation as having been birthed by things like our Bottle Bill where producer responsibility was at the forefront of that. The idea that some of the manufactures would take these products back and find another use of those materials is kind of the brainchild behind the deposit legislation for the Bottle Bill and of course, we have been proponents of expanding the Bottle Bill for about as long as the need has arisen.

I've been doing this for 15 years and I feel like I've been talking about expanding the Bottle Bill for 15 years. Jenny had the two bottles that look exactly the same and they are exactly the same and I'm in the building all the time and I know people know that the Connecticut Audubon Society has been pushing expansion for along time, so I don't want to take up a lot of your morning but again, these things didn't exist when they -- when the Bottle Bill was originally passed and they do now and they would have been included in 1978 if they had been on the market but they weren't and they are now and it really is time to update it.

Lots of times people will -- you will hear comparisons of, oh, it's a very expensive way to return and recycle these materials and these bottles and cans, but I would point out to you that it's privately funded and a tax is going to be publicly funded and keeping something privatized when it's not an existing government function is a good idea and we would encourage you to expand the deposit to these other containers, and my perennial favorite, we would be very interested in seeing the unclaimed deposits come back to the state so, with that, I will stop.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Betty.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: For stopping?

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there comments or questions? Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: Hi, Betty.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Hi.

REP. WILLIS: Thanks for coming today. We know you as the queen of the (inaudible) here --

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Oh, thank you. I love to be queen.

REP. WILLIS: I have a question if you might mind. This seems like a slam-dunk to me. It makes such common sense that it's hard to understand how you could rationalize another position but if for a minute you could pretend to be a lobbyist for the other side, could you try to explain to me what would be the rationale to not move forward with something like this?

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: No. Give me a couple of weeks. I have no idea.

REP. WILLIS: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any further questions? Comments? Representative Urban.

REP. URBAN: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Good morning, Betty.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Good morning.

REP. URBAN: It's great to see you.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Thank you.

REP. URBAN: I think from an economic perspective, I grew up on a farm and back then we were delivering milk and the bottles came back. You got your milk bottle, you brought it back and then we had a revolution after World War II where plastics came in, et cetera, and as in the `50's and `60's, were able to produce these and the costs just weren't captured and that's the issue here. The issue is closing the loop.

We need to recapture that cost because the private industry has no incentive to capture that cost and by doing this, we capture the cost, we close the loop and we also have, I hope, an excess of $20 million to come back to the state.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: I hope so.

REP. URBAN: I do, too.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: And you're right about it's not just about capturing the cost, it's about capturing the actual stuff because the things that we recycle best in this country are aluminum and PET and the reason that we do is because of the Bottle Bill. In ten states, which recycle more of those materials than all 40 combined, they get back a much cleaner product and so that's why we're able to make cans out of cans.

And, sleeping bags and carpeting and stuff like that out of the PET plastic, because it comes back cleaner. Because of the reverse vending machines and because of Bottle Bills. People clean them out before they bring them back and it's just a better stock and it's a raw material that's better for reuse and without the Bottle Bill that did those kinds of markets would never have come into being because the industry, private industry, still owns it.

They never took possession of it. I mean, they never lost possession of it, only temporarily, and they got it back, versus trash when the municipality takes it back, I mean, municipalities is not capable of creating markets and to them it's all just junk where you're much better off if you just always keep it in the possession of the private industry. So, that works best.

REP. URBAN: I absolutely agree with you and in essence, what you're talking about is creating more of an economic weft.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Absolutely.

REP. URBAN: That's the best of all possible worlds and I have to say, I have a pullover made out of plastic bottles, which is phenomenal.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Excellent.

REP. URBAN: So, thank you, Betty and thank you, Madam Chairman.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Betty, just one question. If we were to pass this and the Bottle Bill were to be expanded, would you still think that the grocery stores could handle all of this additional material coming back into the stores and I'll give you an example of what happened to me a couple of weeks ago on a Sunday evening.

I actually -- I was in Stop and Shop and I was at the deli counter and I bumped into my dentist who had a bag of dirty soda bottles -- well, they weren't dirty, I'll say they were used soda bottles, --

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Your dentist drinks soda?

REP. WIDLITZ: He'll kill me for this. Empty soda bottles in a plastic bag in his cart and I said, gee, why didn't you redeem those before you put them in the cart and came to the deli counter? He said, I can't get near the machines.

There's a college fraternity with bags and bags of beer bottles and or whatever and they were up there and as I checked out, I kind of laughed and I thought, oh, he's got to put the food in the cart with that stuff and as I checked out of the store, maybe half an hour later, they were still there and there was filth all over the floor and they were -- you know, you could smell beer all over the store after the hours where you could no longer buy beer, even, and I just wondered if we were to look at expansion, would you consider another way of redeeming all of that extra materials so that it doesn't come into our food stores? It just seems counter-productive, somehow.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: I think it's important that the retailer still play a role in the return and in whole process because of the shared responsibility aspect of it. You know, they're making a profit by selling it and I think that everybody needs to be part of the solution, but I would talk to anybody and everybody who has an interest in this who sincerely wants to find a way to make it work, not just obstructionist and delay tactics, but somebody who sincerely wants to talk about how we're going to make this work. I'm all ears, you know? Fifteen years is a long time.

SEN. WILLIAMS: I'm sure the members of the fraternity were all over age 21.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: I'm sure they were.

REP. WIDLITZ: I didn't check. Any further questions? Representative Fontana.

REP. FONTANA: Thank you, Madam Chairman. One quick question?

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Sure.

REP. FONTANA: How many states currently have the kind of bottle recycling that you'd like us to enact in this bill?

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: You mean, the expanded version?

REP. FONTANA: Yes.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: California has it. New York is working on it. Maine has a bigger Bottle Bill than we have and there are only ten states in the country that have Bottle Bills that are actually working at the moment and Hawaii's is going into effect in a year or two, I forget exactly when it's going into effect, but as you know, the industry works really, really hard against enacting Bottle Bills and Hawaii -- when Hawaii put theirs in, three or four years ago, it was the first state to do it in 20 years because they -- they're just a very powerful lobby and they don't like to do this and it's very difficult to get it passed. It's not that it's not a popular idea. A lot of people love the idea, but they just can't make it through.

REP. FONTANA: No, I was just curious and the experience those states had had with this idea because I think you're right. Maine has something --

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: It's difficult.

REP. FONTANA: -- similar and I was just curious how well it was doing in terms of controlling litter and the logistical issues Representative Widlitz was talking about --

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Reports are, it's doing very well.

REP. FONTANA: Okay. Good. Thank you, Madam Chairman.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further comments? No? Thank you, Betty.

BETTY MCLAUGHLIN: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Richard Weisberg followed by Scott Bradley.

RICHARD WEISBERG: Chairman Williams, Chairman Widlitz and members of the Committee. My name is Richard Weisberg. I'm the State Legislative Director for the Recreational Fishing Alliance of Connecticut, an organization dedicated to fisheries conservation representing the recreational marine community.

In Connecticut, the recreational marine community is comprised of approximately 300,000 individuals and consequently, is a primary economic force within the state, particularly in its coastal regions.

However, expenditures on marine recreational fishing are a function of opportunity if the community is denied opportunities, its expenditures are reduced with consequent economic damage.

One way to curtail our opportunity is to deny access to marine recreational fishers to the state's waters. That leads directly to RSB551, which we're here to support.

The purpose of this bill is to assure marine recreational anglers access to marine waters unless the best available science indicates a need to curtail such access for purposes of fisheries conservation.

This bill is also a response to an ideological campaign by a few environmental groups to close totally, marine waters to recreational fishing, even catch and release fishing which I'll refer to as the closure campaign.

Closed marine areas are referred to generically as marine protected areas or MPAs and are a traditional tool of fisheries and management in conservation.

There are approximately 300 such MPAs of various types in the United States; for example, Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts is closed to commercial mobile gear net fishing.

The Stellwagen Bank Sanctuary is an EPA because it's closed to oil drilling and mineral mining. A total close to fishing is commonly known as a no-take MPA.

Now, it's important to note that the recreational community strongly supports marine protected areas as an effective tool for fisheries and management in conservation.

There are, however, limits to our support. In a nutshell, we support marine protected areas that are properly designed. A properly designed marine protected area is one that's based on biological need as determined by the best available science and not only tailored to deal with discreet, identifiable conservation problems at the site of the proposed closure.

Conversely, MPAs are a bad idea when they're improperly designed in which case they're apt to be ineffective and to cause unwarranted economic and social harm.

No-take MPAs that sought by the Closure Campaign fall into the latter category since they are the Closure Campaign is an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all program that seeks to impose the most draconian managed measures in the first instance instead of a last resort.

Bill SB551 seeks merely to prevent the imposition of no-take MPAs unless they are biologically necessary. In concluding, let me say that the Act does this primarily by providing Connecticut's marine waters cannot be closed to marine fishing unless there is a finding that less severe, traditional management measures, including size -- minimum size requirements, catch limits, and seasonal closures will not suffice to cure the problem.

I want to emphasis that SB551 does not preclude the establishment of no-take MPAs or any other closure. Rather, it merely creates an objective standard rooted in science and biological need that must be met before Connecticut's fishing public can be excluded from Connecticut's waters. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Dick, and thank you for your testimony. Let me just ask you, do you think there is -- is there a problem that we need to address in Connecticut? It's my understanding that basically DEP takes all of these issues into consideration before they close an area to recreational fishing.

RICHARD WEISBERG: Well, this is a prophylactic bill. It's looking forward to the avoidance of problems that can occur and it's -- I think you're right.

I think currently it would tend to codify DEP's current practice. DEP's current practice will not necessarily remain as such and we feel, for that reason, it's important to codify that practice and I might add that we have had experiences where parties have sought to impose these no-take, MPAs and the recreational community has had to resort to litigation to defeat them and that's sort of an unwarranted outcome and we don't think it's appropriate to manage fisheries by committing a recreational community to litigation and the expense and trouble that that entails.

All this does is, it sets up an appropriate standard by which these things can be handled by DEP and codifies it for future purposes.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for that clarification. Are there questions? Okay, thank you for your testimony.

RICHARD WEISBERG: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Let's see. Scott Bradley followed by Michelle Bryan.

SCOTT BRADLEY: Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you about SB552. I am strongly opposed to this bill.

My name is Scott Bradley and I'm an outdoor wood furnace dealer from Stafford Springs. I'm a self-employed tradesman and I now support my family primarily off of the outdoor wood furnace dealership.

Last year, I paid over $34,000 to the state of Connecticut, in taxes alone, through this business. Please allow me to inform you as to what an outdoor wood furnace is.

An outdoor wood furnace takes the age-old idea of burning wood and modernizes it. Wood heat offers many advantages. Not only do conventional sources of heat such as propane, natural gas, fuel oil, and electricity deplete our irreplaceable fossil fuels, they also have -- they are also subject to constant price fluctuations.

On the contrary, wood is a renewable, inexpensive free source of heat. An outdoor wood furnace can be installed up to 500 feet away from the home and or building that needs to be heated.

These units can work with any existing heating systems. The furnace's firebox is completely surrounded by a water jacket. The water jacket is heated and then piped underground to your home or building.

Through the use of heat exchangers, or by means of direct circulation, the heat is conveyed then through your existing systems, forced air furnace, boiler or radiant system.

This allows for normal, thermostatically controlled temperature for a safe, even, comfortable heat. By keeping the fire outside the home, it eliminates the dangerous and the mess associated with traditional indoor wood stoves.

As a dealer, a local dealer in Northeastern Connecticut, I can tell you that my customers usually consist of hard-working, blue collar workers, tradesmen, and farmers who have modest incomes, most of whom live in rural areas and have enough land to reap the benefits of inexpensive and or free wood heating.

I personally go through the owner's manual in-depth with each of my customers to assure that they are completely educated to the most efficient operation of their unit.

I, myself, own an outdoor wood furnace and for the past seven years have never had a single complaint, not to mention completely eliminating all of my heating costs.

I ask that you please take your time, consider the positive aspects of this outdoor wood furnace system and that it can offer the hardworking people of Connecticut. Thank you for your time, any questions?

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Scott. Just what is the opposition to these stoves? You know, what are you hearing as far as complaints about the use of them that has elicited the reaction that we're getting?

SCOTT BRADLEY: Smoke issues.

REP. WIDLITZ: Smoke.

SCOTT BRADLEY: Yes, which, if you figure an indoor fireplace, an indoor wood stove, an outdoor barbeque, an outdoor campfire, any of which wood and fire makes smoke.

REP. WIDLITZ: Could these be used for pool heaters? Year around?

SCOTT BRADLEY: Absolutely.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, so that --

SCOTT BRADLEY: You can heat pools, hot tubs, barns, garages, shops, basements, houses, you name it. Anything.

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there questions? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Are there any requirements as far as the height of the stack? I know that's a concern that's been expressed to me. Obviously, the higher you get it, the better it dissipates?

SCOTT BRADLEY: Exactly. It dissipates quicker. It also ignites the fire quicker which the most amount of the smoke that comes out of the stove is when it first calls for heat after it's been dampered down for a period of time, then when it's trying to ignite, that's when it smokes the most and then normally cleans right out after that. So, the higher the stack is, it will definitely reduce the visible emissions.

REP. CHAPIN: Is there any minimum height that's recommended either by the manufacturer or --

SCOTT BRADLEY: We, now, are recommending two stacks which is eight feet which would raise it's approximately -- Rodney might be able to help me with this, better, but it's going to be approximately 12 feet off the ground. They -- the stack starts at approximately four feet, so add another eight feet onto that. That's what's being recommended, now.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for your testimony today.

SCOTT BRADLEY: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: You know, I think what we're looking at and I'm looking at some testimony from the Department of Public Health, which has registered in favor of this bill and they've pointed out that there's small particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and they cite a report of emissions from outdoor wood burning residential hot furnaces, the Environmental Protection Agency put this out in 1998 and found that wood burning, a wood burning furnace can produce up to 143 grams per hour of particulate matter and the smoke is released at a height usually, and I think you just indicated, where it can have a direct impact on nearby residents and apparently, these furnaces produce more smoke and particulate matter than traditional wood stoves. This is all according to our own Department of Public Health.

So, I appreciate what you're saying in terms of wanting to give people an option and the hardworking people of Connecticut certainly we try and do our best to support the hardworking individuals and families in this state but everyone also deserves clean air and regardless of their income, regardless of their background and we're starting to make progress in terms of fuel oil with large power plants and now we're looking at home heating oil as well as diesel fuel and the industry is moving toward the lower sulfur content to make the burning of that fuel much more environmental friendly and to cut down on particulate matter and cut down on pollution and so, I guess my question is, how can this industry clean up what's going out of the stacks so that we don't have a situation where just at the time we start to make progress in cleaning up further pollution coming out of power plant stacks and out of our own chimneys in our homes that burn oil, how can we make progress in terms of your industry so that we don't have a new source of significant air pollution?

SCOTT BRADLEY: Stack heights will definitely make a difference but on technical issues such as that, I would definitely want to refer you to Rodney Tollefson from Central Boiler. He knows a lot more of the particulate levels and all the different information on efficiencies and all that.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Are there further questions? Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: I'd be interested in seeing a brochure, an explanation of it because I'm not familiar with these outside wood furnaces so I'm trying to get a handle on it. I'm from northwestern Connecticut. We have a lot of people who have wood stoves, who heat with wood furnaces and I've never heard of this, so I would appreciate seeing something --

SCOTT BRADLEY: We can certainly get you a brochure.

REP. WILLIS: Thank you.

SCOTT BRADLEY: We have brochures here, now.

REP. WILLIS: Thank you.

SCOTT BRADLEY: Sure.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Further questions? Thank you very much.

SCOTT BRADLEY: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Michelle Byam followed by Chuck Gagner.

MICHELLE BYAM: Hi. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you. My name is Michelle Byam. I am opposed to the ban on outdoor wood furnaces. I'm here today to ask you to please reconsider SB552.

It's been brought to my attention that I am probably the reason that we're brought here today. I have neighbors that have complained about the wood smoke odor from our wood boiler furnace.

We have many neighbors, letters of support, stating that they have no problem, whatsoever, with our outdoor wood furnace, one of whom is definitely closer to our wood burning furnace.

The two households complaining actually burn wood in their own homes as well. They've never had any complaints about smoke, unfortunately, until our daughters had a dispute on the school bus and their daughter was reprimanded and also until our cat had eaten a baby bird in the presence of their children which upset them.

I don't think it's a coincidence that once we did purchase an outdoor furnace, the dispute began. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, a disease called Anti-phospholipid syndrome.

This resulted in multiple blood clots to my brain and to my lungs, which caused me to have partial loss of one of my lungs. I was hospitalized 13 times for the better part of two years and was not supposed to live, so I have significant lung damage, which was one of the reasons that we purchased this unit.

My two children also have severe asthma. Sixteen months ago, we moved our wood-burning unit from inside to outside. My children and I have gone from needing one to three nebulizer breathing treatments a day, to absolutely none. In sixteen months, and since the installation of our outdoor wood furnace, my health and that of my children, the air that we breathe has improved 100 percent.

I cannot over state the necessity and the benefit of this system for my family. My children and I spend a great deal of time outside of our home as do many of my other friends and neighbors. There are absolutely no ill effects, at all. I thank you, any questions?

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony, are there any questions? Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: I just have one other question.

MICHELLE BYAM: Yes?

REP. WILLIS: Do you use regular hard woods? Or do you use --

MICHELLE BYAM: Yes, we --

REP. WILLIS: -- you don't use old lumber or --

MICHELLE BYAM: No, we don't burn any --

REP. WILLIS: -- pressure-treated wood or anything like that?

MICHELLE BYAM: No, no. We use hardwood.

REP. WILLIS: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you --

MICHELLE BYAM: We also have three stacks on our unit, which brings it --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 1B to 2A.)

REP. WILLIS: -- do you have?

MICHELLE BYAM: Three and a half acres of land.

REP. WILLIS: Okay, thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: How far away from your home is your stove?

MICHELLE BYAM: Our stove, from the complaining neighbors? From our home? Gosh, I'm not sure.

REP. WIDLITZ: Is it, I guess it's a problem --

MICHELLE BYAM: It's a great distance.

REP. WIDLITZ: -- very far away from your home and closer to your neighbors home that --

MICHELLE BYAM: No, it's very far away from our home and a great distance from our neighbor's home.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Any further questions? Thank you very much. Chuck Gagner followed by Chris Phillips. Phelps.

CHUCK GAGNER: Good morning, members of the Committee. My name is Chuck Gagner. I'm the owner of Wood Master Outdoor Furnaces and I'm opposed to SB552. Through the Hearth Patio Barbeque Association and the Outdoor Woodstove Manufacturers Organization, we have put together some number of furnaces sold in your state, only to help you understand the impact of this bill that will have on the people, the small businesses and businesses.

To date, we know of at least 750 furnaces sold in your state since 1990. These customers are now saving if not all their heating bill, a large percentage of their heating bill.

Daily, we see growth because of these savings. These customers are now calling back adding to their existing system because they've either purchased a hot tub, a pool, an addition to their home or a shop.

The small businesses for example, a saw mill, who used to pay to have the waste materials hauled away are now heating their buildings with that same material and creating a better work environment for their employees.

I think the most important aspect of these furnaces is removing the fire hazard from the home, shop or business. Customers are overwhelmed knowing their family or their business is safer because no fire hazard no longer exists inside.

We deliver heat safely and efficiently and the fire hazard is outside. The insurance industry acknowledges outdoor wood stoves as a safer way of burning wood and reduces rates from burning indoors to burning outdoors.

Because we are a small industry, most people are unaware of these very important benefits, however, word of mouth is kept our business growing and that tells me customers are happy and they are sharing with their friends, family and neighbors, how these outdoor wood furnaces can benefit them.

Some day, you may have a friend or family member wanting to install an outdoor wood furnace for its' safety features and benefits. This bill would not allow that.

In conclusion, please do not allow a few bad apples or people who misuse our product to ruin it for the rest of us. Please allow us to provide you with information for a bill that will treat all the people in your state, fairly. Thank you for your time today.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, are there questions? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. It's my understanding that the traditional types of wood furnaces in recent years have started to use catalytic converters. Is that -- do you know if I'm correct about that?

CHUCK GAGNER: I guess I couldn't answer that accurately.

REP. CHAPIN: So, are outdoor furnaces, are they equipped with any sort of similar device?

CHUCK GAGNER: Not that I know of, no catalytic converters.

REP. CHAPIN: And, if one assumes that through -- when you start the fire you have the most particulate matter coming from the smoke pipe. These furnaces are generally bigger than the one that people might have on their living room hearth, is that correct?

CHUCK GAGNER: They are larger. They will produce more heat. It may take four to five of those small ones to produce the same heat our larger one would produce.

REP. CHAPIN: So, I'm assuming then that you have to fill them less and --

CHUCK GAGNER: You'd have to fill them more often, more often.

REP. CHAPIN: You'd have to fill them more often? Than you do a conventional one?

CHUCK GAGNER: The small, indoor ones.

REP. CHAPIN: Right.

CHUCK GAGNER: Yes.

REP. CHAPIN: The outdoor furnaces would be --

CHUCK GAGNER: We recommend to fill an outdoor wood furnace is twice a day. Morning and evening.

REP. CHAPIN: And I assume that would be in the colder weather and perhaps in April or May when people may still be running them, they're probably filled even less?

CHUCK GAGNER: Our recommendation is to fill twice day, no matter what the climate. You adjust the amount of wood you put in. Filling twice a day is going to reduce the visible smoke. Loading a furnace to last three or four days is going to make it dirtier.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. I'd just like to refer to some testimony from the Department of Environmental Protection, talking about the abuses of these particular furnaces.

To quote, while such furnaces are advertised for operation with wood fuel, they are often additionally fueled with yard waste, packing materials, construction debris and domestic waste. Neighbors of homes using such furnaces have filed complaints with DEP in response to unpleasant emissions of thick smoke.

Complainants allege owners regularly burn domestic waste including tires, so I think that's unfortunately, many times that's what happens. People abuse something and it becomes a problem but it is a problem that we need to address, so thank you for your testimony. Any other questions? Thank you.

CHUCK GAGNER: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Christopher Phelps followed by Phil Sherwood. Christopher Phelps? Okay, Phil Sherwood? John Shamanski followed by Rick Kezar.

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Hi. My name is John Shamanski. I'm an independent business owner in the state of Connecticut. I own a company called, Connecticut Outdoor Wood Furnaces. Last year, we paid $16,000 in sales tax to the state.

I also own another company called, Shamanski Land Clearing. The Land Clearing company produces somewhere around 2,000 cords a year of firewood. That firewood is sold primarily to people burning in about 95 percent of those people are burning in fireplace or a wood stove.

Less than five percent of the wood I produce in my other business goes to the outdoor wood furnaces. It's a very limited amount of people that are burning wood with a furnace.

I -- each time we have a customer come out, we show them a furnace. We explain to them not to burn any household garbage or waste. Very few customers that I have are burning any kind of waste like that.

There might be a select few people out there that are ruining it for others but our sales persons, they go out, they review the site, they make sure that the stack emissions are not going to be offensive to other people.

We do, at times, refuse a sale. I can think of a couple of sales in the last month or so that we've refused where we thought that they were going to be intrusive upon other people, so we just denied the sale. We told them that you know, you don't have the application, you don't have the property.

Again, we always tell them to never burn trash or plastics or petroleum products, virgin wood, no treated woods, no railroad ties, nothing of that nature.

You know one of the other things that we take into consideration when we place a stove in somebody's yard is wind direction. We try to place it in a manner that it's going to again, be non-invasive to anybody's other residence and we recommend people to -- we had a gentleman in Shelton who wanted a furnace and we told him he didn't have a good location for it, so he ran 35 feet of stack up and he's burning about the same cord wood, about the same amount of cord wood as anybody else would be.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Representative Moukawsher.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Thank you. I'm not familiar with these outdoor wood-burning furnaces. I'm getting a little better idea but you said that you'd turned down a couple of locations because you thought that the furnace would be obtrusive or intrusive. Is that due to the appearance or the size of the unit? I get the impression that it's --

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Well, one person in particular that I'm thinking of is -- was in the city limits of Danbury, so we don't know. We go out there, drive out, take a look around and it was pretty difficult to place it there.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes, is that -- is it the emission from the stack or is it the site of the -- I mean, the very visual aspect --

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Just the size of it. I mean, you're talking about maybe a 75 by 100 building lot with two family homes, something to that effect, you know?

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes.

JOHN SHAMANSKI: So, it's just downtown Danbury.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I -- there might have been some testimony about the size of these. How big are they? Or, how big would one be if it was going in Danbury?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: The footprint is probably six by six on the average unit, six foot by six foot.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I mean, as far as the smoke emitter or emissions, how does that compare with home wood stoves, the average home wood stove?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: I see no difference. As a matter of fact, I see a stove in someone's basement tends to smoke longer, even -- it smokes all day, the same consistent amount, where our furnaces will clean up and be a very transparent blue smoke.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And when you install one on a property, there's a stack, which I suppose, would be the equivalent to a chimney? You want the smoke to be above the level of the house, is that the idea?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: That's correct. At that point, if you have that situation going on where you don't have the room, you're going to want to create a chimney that's a couple of feet over the peak of that house.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I mean, I -- I'm just part of what troubles me is I think that we have a lot of people that use woodstoves and I'm not sure what people burn in them or in their fireplaces, but the visual aspect, the fact that there's an outside unit -- I don't know what they look like, I'm not sure how esthetically pleasing they are. I imagine it's quite obvious, though, when someone has one. Do you think that has something to do with the reason that there's some opposition to them?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: I'm not really sure about that, whether the esthetics of how they look in someone's backyard and in a high-end subdivision in Southbury would, whether or not they would think they don't want to look out the fence and see that other person doing that? I guess that could be possible.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: There's a lot more obvious to someone that there's an outdoor wood furnace than a wood stove, I would --

JOHN SHAMANSKI: I'm sure you've been by several of them and thought they were just a shed.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I just got a brochure and had a picture of it.

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Yes, yes.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Is there some regulation of these units? It seems like the concern is the type of product that might be burned in them. Is there some regulation short of an outright ban that would -- I mean, is there any suggestions you might have or is there any equipment that could be placed in these to prevent burning of something other than wood, or --

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Well, I don't know about placing some piece of equipment that would stop them from burning something other than wood, but we're -- we are instructing all of our customers to only burn virgin wood, not treated wood, not lumber, wood, and if you got a guy burning garbage, I mean, that same guy probably burnt garbage in his stove in the basement, you know?

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Right.

JOHN SHAMANSKI: I mean, it's --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, I was just trying to pick up on why these -- there's such an effort to eliminate these and they're a lot more visible, I think, than a home wood stove and I mean, I know people burn paper and other products in their furnace, or their fireplace and I'm just trying to get a feel for what --

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Yes, I know. I think there's plenty of them you probably drive by every day and you don't even realize they're there.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Alright, so again, when you were talking intrusiveness, it's just a matter of the unit itself on a small lot? Is that the idea?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Personally, myself, I've been a dealer for seven years and I have -- I know of no complaints that I have with any of my customers with their neighbors complaining about smoke or -- so, I don't have the experience.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Right, but in Danbury, you felt like it wasn't appropriate on the lot?

JOHN SHAMANSKI: Well, there really was no place to put it, you know what I mean? It was a very small lot and it was the typical duplex housing neighborhood.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, thanks.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Further questions? Thank you very much for your testimony. Rick Kezar followed by Rodney Tollefson.

RICK KEZAR: Madam Chairman, members of the Committee. Good afternoon. My name is Rick Kezar. I work with Central Boiler Outdoor Wood Furnace Company. Thank you for the opportunity this afternoon to speak with you about outdoor wood furnaces and why you should reconsider SB552.

Our industry is just is committed with the environment as you are. This past December, we heard some rumors and some complaints about outdoor wood furnaces in your state so we immediately came out here from Minnesota and met with the Department of Protection and the Environmental people.

They told us that they had received numerous complaints. We asked them of all these complaints how many were about outdoor wood furnaces and they told us at that time, that there were hundreds.

Upon further investigation, and with the cooperation of the Connecticut DEP, that total number complaints about outdoor wood furnaces, was actually ten confirmed, registered complaints.

Obviously, the majority of the complaints that they receive are from other than outdoor wood furnaces. Of the ten complaints registered, it is our understanding that as of today, all but one have been resolved.

This issue isn't necessarily an air-quality issue. It's a local, neighbor issue. Again, in the past years in Connecticut, the DEP has only received ten complaints about outdoor wood furnaces. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of outdoor wood burning fireplaces, and furnaces in the state.

If a neighbor plays a radio too loud, the solution isn't to have -- or the solution is to have the neighbor turn it down, not to ban radios. Same with outdoor wood furnaces. If a neighbor has a complaint, the solution is to get the issue resolved.

We believe that education and information is the answer, not a broad-based legislation. The solution for outdoor wood furnace neighbor nuisance issue isn't to ban the sale and the use of an outdoor wood furnace, and punish a broad constituency and the industry.

We have committed industry resources to owner education, proper installation and the use of the furnace with every outdoor furnace sold. This bill would punish responsible, law-abiding citizens of Connecticut by taking away a viable alternative means of heating their home, not to mention the impact on the industry and the people that it employs and the sales tax generated from them.

We would welcome your support and participation to achieve our common goal. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, are there questions? Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: I want to ask you about plans of the industry to retrofit these devices with something that would reburn the particulate matter in such a way that we completely break down the organic chemicals and not produce dioxins or other half-cooked organic molecules, because I quite frankly am not as worried about the esthetics of the complaints as I am about the fact that when you incompletely burn fuel, and these complaints indicate that they're talking about a heavy, dense smoke, in that situation when you're incompletely burning fuel you are, in many cases, creating more dangerous compounds such as dioxins.

So, I'm actually worried, not because of the esthetics indicated in the complaint, but because the thick smoke indicated in the complaint means there is probably partial cooking and recreating of molecules in that smoke stream and that is a risk, a public health risk, to anyone in that area.

RICK KEZAR: Yes, and we're not saying it isn't. As an industry we're working towards different things to make them even cleaner than they are in comparison to burning wood and open fire pit or anything else.

The gentleman who will come up behind me, he'll give you some very good numbers that you can compare to such as what you're talking about, basically, grams per kilogram, and you'll see that we are -- it's virtually the same. We're such a small industry, which somebody had mentioned earlier, that to ban the sale of outdoor wood furnaces or the use of them is -- you know, it doesn't make sense. I mean, it's so small and when you see the numbers that will come up behind me here, now, I think you'll be able to understand that and see a clear picture of it.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Is small in terms of sales or units?

RICK KEZAR: Small in sales of what they are. I believe somebody had mentioned earlier that there was about 750 in the state --

REP. MUSHINSKY: Okay, but if there's no control over them and they will continue to be sold, especially if the price of fuel changes in the state, so that's what the concern is. Unless you have technology to clean up that heavy smoke problem, consumer education or technology, but something to deal with that, then you're probably producing, most likely, if we were to go out and test it, you're probably producing dioxins just because of the incomplete burn that's happening in that device.

So, you know, you have to come up, if we don't do a ban, you have to come up with another way of reducing that public health threat.

RICK KEZAR: When you say the "heavy smoke", in comparison, everything is burnt with an outdoor wood furnace. That's one of the benefits of it. You don't have a burn that's not complete. When the damper or the fan is not turned on in an outdoor wood furnace, it is shut down and there is no emissions at all that come out of the outdoor wood furnace.

When it is ignited again, that's when you have a plume of smoke. The amount of emissions that come out from that plume of smoke, when you base the amount of BTUs that it is compared to the amount of BTUs from a fireplace, for instance, it is not a larger number, at all.

We are doing things and we are moving forward to making these things even better and a better cleaning furnace then that they are. Obviously, we can't say that about anything else that burns as far as an open fire or something like that.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Well, I'm not going to keep you here, going back and forth, but I just want to express to you a concern. When the Environment Committee, when we went through the whole permitting of waste to energy plants, this whole issue came up and we had to go through strenuous work to make sure that the burn was oxygenated and it was at the proper temperature so we wouldn't end up with more molecules than we originally started and we put extreme pressure on the industry to get us a clean burn before we would allow them in Connecticut and you have a miniature version of the same thing, your product, and as long as it's not doing a clean, oxygenated burn at a high enough temperature, you're going to be, in a miniature way, generating the same type of thing that we prohibited in Connecticut.

RICK KEZAR: Yes, like you said, not to go back further, I think when the next gentleman comes and he's able to show you what those grams per kilogram are in comparison, you'll see what I'm talking about. Okay? Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions? Representative Moukawsher.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Your company manufactures these and your based in Minnesota? Is that right?

RICK KEZAR: Yes.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: What other regulation or prohibition have you run into in other states? Have you had any other legislative --

RICK KEZAR: Yes, there were two other states, Connecticut and that was addressed --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Well, this is Connecticut. What --

RICK KEZAR: -- height, and we worked with them. We welcome working with the state of Connecticut to get something that was good for everybody.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Well, wait a minute. You -- no. I asked you -- this is Connecticut. What other states?

RICK KEZAR: Oh, I'm sorry. Vermont. I'm sorry.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Alright, yes, they're also --

RICK KEZAR: And New York, also, is brought it to our attention and we've visited with them, of course, right away as well and brought different ideas and things with them and we're working with them, so anything that's brought up, as an industry, we want to be right there working with you to make sure that it's done correctly.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Are you prohibited from selling these units in any states?

RICK KEZAR: No state in the United States, at all.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Have you looked at any of the Environmental Protections, the DEP's handouts on this or -- because what it says, it talks about the formation of air pollution such as particulate matter and there's also one from the Department of Health in the state of Connecticut, it talks about particulate matter but it basically talks about wood burning --

RICK KEZAR: In general.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: -- in general.

RICK KEZAR: Yes. Yes, I've seen that.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Do you know of any difference in the wood burning characteristics of your furnaces?

RICK KEZAR: No.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: There is one other mention in the Department of Health report. It says, there is a report by the EPA in 1998, emissions from outdoor wood burning residential hot water furnaces and talked about 143 grams per hour of particulate matter being -- are you familiar with that report?

RICK KEZAR: Yes, I am.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Is that up-to-date in terms of what your units do?

RICK KEZAR: Yes.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay.

RICK KEZAR: That report was two different furnaces. One obviously was much cleaner than the other one and again, the gentleman who will follow me will reference those numbers for you.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, thanks very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony.

RICK KEZAR: Thanks.

REP. WIDLITZ: Rodney Tollefson followed by Susan Rivard.

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Hi, my name is Rodney Tollefson, greetings to all Chair people. I'm vice-president, Central Boiler. I've been with Central Boiler since September of 1990.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. The Central Boiler is one of the larger manufactures of outdoor wood furnaces and has manufactured a significant amount of outdoor furnaces that have been sold in the state of Connecticut.

Outdoor wood furnaces do not pose a threat to the environment. I oppose the bill, SB552. Heating with wood does reduce emissions of SO2 and NOX, which I know are very high on the priority list as compared to using fossil fuels for heating.

Central Boiler was directly involved with EPA by providing one of the outdoor furnaces and other heating equipment that EPA used in the Emissions Testing Project that evaluated outdoor wood furnaces.

The EPA conducted this Emissions Testing from June of 1995 through October of 1995. The results are published in the February 1998 report identified as EPA-600R-98-017.

A project summary about this testing states, compared to a wide range of residential heating options, these furnaces' emissions were of the same order as other stick wood burning appliances, meaning other wood stoves or other wood heating equipment.

I've included other information that you'll see in my written testimony that I'll refer to. To our knowledge, EPA has not conducted any further testing of outdoor wood furnaces.

For years, Central Boiler and other manufacturers have clearly instructed in written installation manuals that chimneys are to be extended to a height above the roof of the surrounding buildings, if installed in areas of higher populations.

These instruction manuals also clearly state, burn wood only. Our review of the very small number of complaints actually filed on outdoor wood furnaces, indicate that each and every one of these furnaces involved in the complaint did not have chimneys installed to proper heights.

Central Boiler has constructed a well-equipped emissions laboratory which we have been using for the past two years, through testing of many different combustion technologies, we're pleased to see a number of possibilities for future heating appliances that can perform with even greater efficiency and improved emissions control.

Other outdoor wood furnaces and wood stove manufacturers are also actively testing for emissions and seeking improvements for better performance. I'm presenting this testimony with copies with some of the information I have included. Thank you for your attention and I invite any questions.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. What -- how close are we to having pollution-controlled devices installed on these stoves?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: There are a number of technologies that we have looked at and we expect inside of a year or maybe even less, but a year to two years, there will be significantly different technologies used that can create even a more efficient burn.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Because, I'm looking at the written testimony that was submitted by our Department of Environmental Protection and they're suggesting that in the interim, that there be a ban and they're endorsing this legislation and I wonder if you have any reaction that they state, that if outdoor wood burning furnaces are installed and operated in Connecticut, the emissions from such furnaces automatically violate a long-standing DEP regulation that requires the operation of all fuel burning sources to meet standards for opacity in visible emissions, and they also state, prohibiting the future sale, construction and use of such furnaces protects unsuspecting buyers and all residential owners from making an investment in technology that cannot be utilized in compliance with State Environmental Regulations.

I take it, and we can explore this further with DEP, that it's theoretically possible that they could just simply into those who purchase these and shut them down. I mean, that may be a theoretical outcome for purchasers of these products and how do we address this, so that folks are aware and more, ideally, so that these comply with air-quality standards?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: The air quality standard that you're mentioned about opacity, it's very true that many of your fireplaces and wood stoves indoors would also fail the 20 percent opacity rating that is being suggested here.

It isn't true that no outdoor furnace can operate within those realms and the information that I did include on the second page does show what the emissions are from outdoor wood furnaces when the EPA tested. The grams per kilogram on the Central Boiler outdoor furnace and others are somewhat similar.

Our 10.8, 13.3, 9.5 and 9.2, four different test runs and in tests that were performed on EPA certified phase two stoves in a Portland, Oregon study shows the very same emission levels, 10.8 and 9.23 grams per kilogram and there are different emission rates that can be looked at for different appliances but EPA's statement they made that they're similar to other stick-burning appliances, are correct, and there are -- there really isn't any other information out there that refutes that.

SEN. WILLIAMS: In terms of -- I mean, again, as far as the DEP testimony is concerned, they do note that the federal government regulates woodstoves, indoor wood stoves through a certification program, emissions standards but they say no such federal requirements apply to outdoor wood burning furnaces, so I guess that is a difference between the indoor furnaces and the outdoor, but they also raise other questions in terms of what if household trash of any kind is burned in these furnaces and you know, I, like most people or many people, I have a fireplace in my home and I'd certainly think twice before I threw in some Styrofoam peanuts or --

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I would hope so.

SEN. WILLIAMS: -- or plastic materials or anything like that into the fireplace. I wouldn't do that. I'd like to think I wouldn't do that because I want to make sure that we don't add more pollution into the air, but one other reason would be that whatever you burn in your fireplace inside your house, in the back of your mind, you're thinking you know, some of that, regardless of how great the draft is, some of those emissions are going to stick around and they may come back in to the room and the rooms in the house where I live.

So, that certainly is a deterrent as well, but with an outdoor furnace, I'm wondering if people aren't tempted to put, especially since we've heard testimony that many folks are looking at saving money and getting their costs down to zero and we certainly know that trash-hauling expenses are significant and if folks believe that, you know? We could save a little extra money by burning -- just not a lot of trash, but just a little extra trash in there.

I'm not sure they would understand that dioxins could be released into the air which are highly toxic, even in small percentages and these are an invisible health threats. This goes into the atmosphere and into the air and surrounding areas and unlike say, power plants where we have certain governmental accountability and oversight, and unlike oil-fired furnaces, or natural gas-fired furnaces where you can't throw in extra Styrofoam or anything like that, into those systems, people can put household trash into this system.

What can we do other than an instruction book that says, don't burn anything except wood? What can we do to have greater accountability?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Well, I can tell you that Central Boiler and other manufacturers very explicitly instruct not to and also, I'll let you know that the economics of supposedly, if you're suggesting people will burn trash in them, it gets to be a very short economic cycle because if you burn plastic or other refuse like that, there's sulfurs and there's materials in there when mixed with moisture from wood, will completely destroy the firebox in a very short period of time, different than if you burn wood.

So, when you burn garbage in your wood stove, your economics are going to get much less valuable and we stress the fact that if you burn garbage in your furnace, you're going to wreck the furnace, so don't do it.

Besides, it's against most every state law that I know of. You can't burn garbage so I think this should be removed from the consideration of the bill. I would be all in favor of suggesting that there should be no garbage burned in any wood heating appliance, anywhere, and the economics is just completely against doing it.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Well, and finally, would you be amenable to working with the Department of Environmental Protection to have some kind of moratorium until there are the pollution control devices that you described that they're looking for, in place?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I would not see a moratorium as being an acceptable means of dealing with this and the fact that there are ten complaints since 2001, there have been ten complaints and if you were to take all of the people that may use these furnaces from now until there's something that somebody describes as being acceptable, I think you're penalizing a lot of people and taking the choice away from a lot of people to have a wood heated home, very safely wood heated home and removing the combustion by-products from inside their home when they burn wood in their home. The indoor woodstoves are one choice. Outdoors are another and I think it would be a very poor thing to remove that choice.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, are there other questions? Representative Moukawsher.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: There was mention of people potentially burning tires in these furnaces? Is that -- have you every tried that with one of yours or do you know what would happen?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Yeah, I know what would happen. The sulfur, the high sulfur content in the tire would mix with the moisture in the wood, it would create extremely high corrosion rates and destroy the boiler in a short period of time.

It's not economically feasible and it's against the state laws so I would suggest we continue to uphold the law that says we can't burn those kinds of things, whether it be an outdoor furnace or any other fashion.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Another question is, I imagine people buy these furnaces because there's an economic benefit to them. Do you have any idea what -- say, I don't know if you can say, an average home, what the cost is to heat it?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: An average home gets to be a really wide thing to describe, but there's people that save anywhere from $600 to $6,000 a year on their heating bill and even beyond that.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: So, you would say it's -- I mean, how much is the initial investment on one of these furnaces?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: It's the same situation would be with depending on the application. The furnace itself can be in the neighborhood of $5,000 on up to maybe $10,000 for a very large unit.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Do you have any idea how long they last?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I guess we have units that are currently 20 years old and still operating with just normal maintenance. There's no reason they shouldn't last at least 20 years and beyond.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Thanks.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Further questions? Representative Sharkey.

REP. SHARKEY: Thank you, Madam Chairman. Just a quick question. What -- we know that on domestic, internal wood burning stoves that there's a federal standard for that construction. What -- are you familiar with that --

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Yes.

REP. SHARKEY: -- and what are the requirements in terms of emissions on stoves that are inside the home that would not apply to one that's outside the home?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: In the Federal Register, the regulation requires that they be certified to a specific standard and it has to burn at -- meet a specific emission rate for certain different burn rates and I don't know how much time you want me to take on this.

It's somewhat complicated, but the rates that are listed in this handout that I've given you, the 10.8 and the 9.25 grams per kilogram are not what they're rated by but there's a range during the burning cycle, what they can or cannot exceed and in the end, they have a gram per hour rating but they also are -- they can't go over so many grams per kilogram.

REP. SHARKEY: If I may, I want to learn more about this but just briefly, why is it that the federal requirements are not applied to outdoor furnaces and why couldn't they be?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: We asked the same question back in 1995, we were actually requesting that the federal government give us a test standard that we could test and certify to and they told us straight out that it's not a large enough emission factor in the United States that we can't spend the money to do anything about it.

It's a very small quantity compared to indoor wood stoves and it's a different burning operation because it's thermostatically controlled. We would welcome a standard by which we could certify to.

REP. WIDLITZ: Actually, in the DEP testimony, it refers to if in the future EPA adopts emission standards that they would be willing to life any kind of moratorium or prohibition, that's obviously a problem. Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: I wanted to ask about the ten complaints. Are they -- is that ten just from the DEP? Because there were also complaints made to the Department of Public Health and to local health departments. Does that include all of those three categories?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Well, we requested through the Freedom of Information any and all complaints whatsoever, involving different odors and the only numbers that we can come up with are the ten that we have seen that are related to outdoor wood furnaces, so to quantify it, we believe that there are only ten. If there's any more than that, we certainly have not been made aware of it.

REP. MUSHINSKY: When you did the FOI, were you just addressing it to DEP or to DEP Department of Public Health and the local health departments?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I'm not certain. I didn't send in the request.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, further questions? Thank you. Representative -- I'm sorry, Representative Kalinowksi.

REP. KALINOWSKI: Thank you, Madam Chair. Do you know if any of these manufactured units have a different fuel assist for starting fires in the firebox, itself? How do you know some homemade types of devices that at least one person sprays in used crankcase oil to get their fire going and it makes a mess, not only the emissions that result but the models that you make or refer to, can they be modified to jury-rig some type of different fuel assist?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I'm certain that any mechanical person could do many different kinds of modification. Central Boiler currently produces what we call a duel fuel option, available and it's very specifically designed and listed for propane natural gas or heating oil and one of the things that we actually can create there is a cleaner burning unit where it can burn for anywhere from three to fifteen minutes on the start up to create a quicker combustion temperature and actually, make the start up emissions slightly less than without.

REP. WIDLITZ: Representative Megna.

REP. MEGNA: Thank you, Chairwoman. Is Central Boiler the only manufacturer of these units that are sold here in the state?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: No.

REP. MEGNA: How many others are there?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I would have to -- I shouldn't be guessing here, but there'd be in the neighborhood of ten --

REP. MEGNA: Ten?

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: -- manufacturers.

REP. MEGNA: Ten manufacturers. Do you have any idea of how many are in use out there in the state? Just curious.

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: I think Mr. Gagner testified to the fact that there are -- can't remember what the number was, over 750. Yes, I'm sure that's not an exact number but there's -- that's the number we could come up with.

REP. MEGNA: Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, Chairwoman.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any further questions? Okay, thank you very much for your testimony.

RODNEY TOLLEFSON: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Susan Rivard followed by Gary Bambara. Is Susan here? And she is accompanied by Senator Prague.

SEN. PRAGUE: Representative Widlitz and Senator Williams and members of the Environment Committee, for the record my name is Edith Prague and I'm the Senator from the 19^th district which includes the small towns of Hebron and Andover where we currently have a major problem with an outdoor wood burning furnace or two or three.

I want to thank Mrs. Rivard for letting me speak. I do have to go to Appropriations for a Hearing, but I want to take the opportunity to support RSB552. This past fall, Mrs. Rivard brought to my attention a problem in Hebron, Hebron and Andover, border each other, of a wood burning furnace that was causing really, health problems.

There's no doubt that we have one of the highest asthma rates in this state of any state in the country and the particulates and the emissions that are spewed forth by these wood burning furnaces have created some health problems and I'm really very appreciative that this bill is before you.

My only concern is, it doesn't address the already established installed wood burning furnaces --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 2A to 2B.)

SEN. PRAGUE: -- furnaces to add some kind of addition or pipe or something or scrubbers or what have you, would make them less harmful. I know you can't ask people to take them down because they've invested so much money but perhaps there's some kind of mechanism that could be installed that would reduce the smoke or reduce the particulates that are emitted.

Maybe the manufacturers might have an answer to that but it seems to me that would be an important issue. Anyhow, having said that, Mrs. Rivard will tell you the story of what's going on next door to her and again, I thank you for this opportunity.

SUSAN RIVARD: Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Susan Rivard. I reside in the town of Hebron, Connecticut with my husband. We have two children, ages nine and seven. We would like to thank you all for this opportunity to share this testimony concerning these outdoor wood-burning furnaces.

We come before you, today, to ask that RSB552, be enacted to prohibit the sale, installation and use of outdoor wood burning furnaces in the state of Connecticut and to please assist the Department of Environmental Protection in their efforts to effectively remove those that are presently in operation.

In this regard, I would like to refer to paragraph C of this bill. It refers to the systems already in use. We would suggest one further sentence to add to the language. It reads as follows; no such existing furnace shall be allowed to operate in violation of the applicable regulations documented entitled, 22-A of the Abatement of Air Pollution Regulations.

We believe this addition to paragraph C supports the notion to abate, not sustain, the level of air pollution in our communities. We feel this is critical in order to protect the health and quality of life for the citizens in the state of Connecticut as we have experienced the ill-effects of these furnaces, first-hand.

These furnaces do not combust completely and have not demonstrated compliance with visible emission opacity regulations per Connecticut General Statutes. There currently is no retrofit solution to make these furnaces burn with an acceptable opacity limit, nor will the skill or technique of the operator effectively control total suspended particulate emissions within regulation limits.

With this in mind, I would like to share my experiences with you. In October of 2002 to the present, our family has been frequently exposed to harmful smoke and odor emitting from a nearby wood-burning furnace.

Our home is in direct, parallel contact with the low stack and is approximately 100 to 150 feet from the source. Prevailing winds, weather conditions, and outside temperature are all a factor when documenting frequent exposure to this smoke and odor.

The emissions are a concern in the winter, spring, summer and fall, as mentioned previously; the unit is designed to heat water all year. The following are ways in which this has affected our quality of life and will show that our concerns are legitimate.

First and most important, and I will choke up a little here, is that our children have been forced to move indoors while playing to escape smoke and odor. The smoke and odor emitting from this furnace entered our children's bedrooms through open windows while they slept, the entire month of June 2003.

We have all experienced eye and throat irritations. We have had to curtail the use of our attic and exhaust fans during hot weather conditions as our home filled with smoke and odor upon use.

We have had to keep our windows closed during spring and summer months to prevent smoke and odor from entering inside our home. Unfortunately, closing windows doesn't correct the problem as the odor enters small openings where there is not a complete seal.

The odor enters the house at these locations in winter months as well. Again, this has occurred in every season. Try to imagine this situation at the place you call home. Finally, and in the past year, I developed a bronchial irritant-type cough, which concerned my primary care physician.

I am presently being evaluated by a pulmonary specialist and am being treated with a medication called, ADVAIR, an asthma inhaler, for and as quoted directly from my medical records, a non-specific bronchial irritant exposure associated with nearby wood burning furnace.

With all this in mind, it has been essential for us to gather the necessary information from DEP and to formally make our complaints. We learned that the scope of this problem is significant.

Not only across our state, but other states as well. New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, are a few examples of other states experiencing this same problem. The owners of the furnace close to us have been issued more than one notice of violation.

They have failed to correct the problem while following corrective recommendations by the manufacturer. We have been told by the DEP that the process is still active. Presently, this furnace is still in operation.

This Committee has the ability to prevent further propagation of such pollution sources as an outdoor wood burning furnace and the opportunity to remove non-compliant systems currently in operation.

No offensive act, which poses a health risk in our communities, should be granted automatic immunity under the so-called, grandfather clause. With consideration to the owners of these units, they have put forth a large investment, perhaps $10 to $20,000 for a system that will not comply with air pollution regulations.

Perhaps a reimbursement fund could be established similar to those created for owners of underground oil tanks and asphalt batching plants. Once again, we ask that you please pass this bill to prevent future installations of these devices and develop the appropriate language to retroactively ban the use of those currently operating in violation of the law. I respectfully thank you for your time. I'd welcome any questions.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Susan. Susan, with the smoke, is that something that's a constant? Because we heard testimony earlier that it's just when the furnace is ignited and then it burns very clear -- very clean.

SUSAN RIVARD: It is a daily event in the life of the Rivard family. I experienced smoke and odor from this furnace daily, frequently.

REP. WIDLITZ: Do you suspect that materials other than wood are being burned in the furnace?

SUSAN RIVARD: No, I believe that they are doing -- I believe that they are working hard to just burn wood. I'm saying, that it doesn't matter because the wood that is posing the problem. I think they've always burned wood, but the wood is creating this. Burning wood is creating this problem for us.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Representative Moukawsher.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: You said that the stack is -- I get the impression you thought the smoke stack was not high enough?

SUSAN RIVARD: It absolutely is not high enough. It's level with the first floor of the windows of my home and they have raised it and it still isn't effective.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Do they have a multi-story house?

SUSAN RIVARD: They have a raised ranch.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, and how high is the stack, now? Is it the height of your roof or --

SUSAN RIVARD: Oh, gosh, it's to the first floor of the windows of my home. The topography definitely creates the problem and their yard slopes down. That stack is right level with the first floor windows of my house. I have a two-story house. The stack -- I don't know? Eighteen? Twenty feet? They --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: No, I was just trying to get an idea in relation to your house.

SUSAN RIVARD: Sure. Sure, I don't have a picture, but --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Are you pretty much downwind of it or --

SUSAN RIVARD: Absolutely, daily. We are downwind, prevailing winds.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Today, you're downwind --

SUSAN RIVARD: Every, single day I smell the smoke and odor from this furnace. Every day.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And, I'm going to take it that you're the complainant --

SUSAN RIVARD: I'm one of them. I'm one of them. There are several in the state of Connecticut.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: No, no, I mean --

SUSAN RIVARD: I didn't read this whole testimony because I only had three minutes, but I would hope that the Committee would take the time to read my entire --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes, I did, and that's why I'm asking --

SUSAN RIVARD: Oh, great, sure.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: -- they were -- your neighbors received two notices of violation.

SUSAN RIVARD: Yes, they have.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And was that a result of your complaints?

SUSAN RIVARD: Yes.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, and then you mentioned that they failed to follow the recommendations by the manufacturer --

SUSAN RIVARD: They have failed to comply.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: What is -- what are these recommendations?

SUSAN RIVARD: From the manufacturer? Well, they have talked about putting it -- raising the stack. Let's see, burning dry wood as opposed to wet wood, I don't think --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I mean, the reason I'm asking you --

SUSAN RIVARD: That's okay.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: -- I imagine you're observing them and --

SUSAN RIVARD: I -- I have observed that they have put two more stacks on. The thing was about 12 feet off the ground. They've now put two more stacks on which still hasn't helped this problem. It doesn't put the emissions -- it's not above their roofline. Their roofline is lower than my roofline, so, it's as far as what they've done, I can't answer that for you.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, no, because I wondered -- I mean, I wasn't sure what the DEP complaints involved would also be similar to what the manufacturer recommended or in other words, did the DEP say, follow the manufacturers recommendations or what were they told?

SUSAN RIVARD: The DEP -- the DEP has a law on their books. It's Section -- it's titled, 22A.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes, I saw that.

SUSAN RIVARD: They have a law saying that this cannot put out over 20 percent opacity. That furnace, I want to say, registered 45 and their high was like 78. I don't know exactly because I don't have those -- I don't have that information in front of me when they were cited these violations.

Now, they have to comply. They have to give them the opportunity to comply, which they have tried to do. DEP has come out again and they have given them a second notice of violation saying, sorry, but you have not complied. The point I'm trying to make is that they can't comply. They can't.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I just wondered. When was the first notice of violation?

SUSAN RIVARD: When was it?

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes.

SUSAN RIVARD: December, beginning of December.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Of 2003?

SUSAN RIVARD: Uh-hmm.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And the second one?

SUSAN RIVARD: The second was the middle of February.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And I think in some earlier testimony you heard that there have been ten complaints, state-wide, and --

SUSAN RIVARD: Yes.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: -- this is, I guess, this is the only one that isn't resolved. Is that right?

SUSAN RIVARD: Well, I think the DEP would have to answer that question for you.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Well, I'm just asking you if you know.

SUSAN RIVARD: I have -- I have -- I know of three families in my own neighborhood who are very concerned with this and we have two other ones that are operating in our -- in the town of Hebron, as well, one of which I think, they're using it as an incinerator because there is black stuff shooting out of this thing, I can't -- you know, I mean, we pass all three furnaces on the way to work, my husband does, every day. I'm --

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Do you know if there have been any complaints concerning those other two?

SUSAN RIVARD: Oh, absolutely, there's been a violation issued on one and there have been three complaints, now, put in on this other.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Alright, thanks.

SUSAN RIVARD: Yes.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Ms. Rivard, thank you for your testimony today.

SUSAN RIVARD: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: I'm less interested in the details of your complaint or of the number of complaints whether there's one compliant or a hundred complaints.

I'm much more interested in trying to get a handle on controlling pollution from furnaces that are apparently a new way of heating homes and even though from our testimony today we've heard that this is an industry that supposedly, in its infancy, in Connecticut, I think that that's probably a good thing.

Now would be the time to work with the industry to figure out how we can curb the pollution because you know, I mean, I'm not sure how many complaints from residents the DEP received from residents of Bridgeport concerning sulfur dioxide emissions from the power plant.

It may have received no complaints whatsoever, because they can't see it, but it's there and before this industry grows in Connecticut, I think that there should be some mechanism, some process where the industry works with DEP and very quickly we get the type of pollution controls that will prevent the circumvention of what we've been trying to do for years which is to clean up the air in Connecticut. So, I would hope that that's what occurs and I appreciate your testimony.

SUSAN RIVARD: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Representative Willis.

REP. WILLIS: I'm sorry, you may have covered this or a previous -- may have covered this. I stepped out of the room for a minute; I assume that these systems have to get a building permit?

SUSAN RIVARD: That's a whole other story in itself, another Public Hearing perhaps, but --

REP. WILLIS: Because, if you have a building inspector out and you've got to get a permit --

SUSAN RIVARD: Exactly.

REP. WILLIS: -- if you were building a chimney you'd have to have it at a certain height, so how do these things get building permits in town?

SUSAN RIVARD: Well, you know, it has been my experience as Senator Williams mentioned, because it's in such an infancy phase, that when we first made our complaints with our own town, the answer to that was, gee, I'm not quite sure.

Just as I've heard some of you say, gee, I'm really trying to get a handle on what this thing actually is. Okay, let me give you some information about what this thing actually is and these -- this particular wood-burning furnace was put in without a permit. Without a permit.

It was installed without a permit, initially, without a permit from the town of Hebron. It wasn't until we inquired about trying to get some information that our town official went out to try to figure out what was going on. Well, he says, if they've done plumbing or if they've done anything electrical they need a permit. And I said, well, what about this air problem that we're having? Well, you'll have to contact Air Quality or something, for the state, is what I was told and he issued them a permit.

Now, he issued them a permit and without investigating further that the stuff coming out is in violation of our own regulations. Issued them a permit -- it's just the whole thing is been very interesting, a learning experience. The town is aware, I think, that probably that wasn't the right thing to do. The town is working on their own amendment to prohibit these but again, it's the grand -- they're telling me, this grandfather clause, it's not helping our situation.

We have to live next to this. Who's going to pay for -- if I have to move out of my home because I can't live next to this thing, who's going to pay for that? I have to get some kind of reimbursement. I don't want to be pushed out of my home. My children have little lungs, little tiny lungs. This is unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable.

REP. WIDLITZ: Further questions? Thank you so much for your testimony and for sharing with us your personal experience.

SUSAN RIVARD: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: I hope we can find some way to resolve this, quickly.

SUSAN RIVARD: Thank you, very, very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Gary Bambara followed by Wayne DeFeo.

BRENDA BAMBERA: Good afternoon. I'm actually Brenda Bambera. Gary can't be here. On the table today is RSB552, which would prohibit the sale and installation of outdoor wood burning furnaces in the state of Connecticut.

There are a large number of these furnaces already located in Connecticut. Three are known to exist in our town of Hebron, one of which is located at a home directly across from our property.

One manufacturer of these burners list on their website many sales and demonstrations events across the country and in Canada. There is an open house scheduled in Stafford Springs, Connecticut for September 2004.

These furnaces will continue to be sold and installed in Connecticut unless something is done to stop them. It is noteworthy to mention that this problem is not only being experienced here in Connecticut, but it's being dealt with in various ways in other states as well, including New York, Washington, Wisconsin.

It is also extremely important at this time to address the issue of the wood burning furnaces that are currently in existence. RSB552 should be amended to include a ban on any existing furnaces that prove to be in violation of Connecticut's air pollution standards, Title 22A.

Please note that the outdoor wood-burning furnace that is located directly across from our property has now received two notices of violation from the Connecticut DEP. It is still allowed to operate.

According to Connecticut's Opacity regulation, visible air pollutants are not permitted above 20 percent except they may measure 40 percent or less for a period of not more than five minutes out of 60.

In both opacity violations, the wood-burning furnace across from our property never measured below 45 percent and measured as high as 70 percent.

Outdoor wood burning furnaces are not federally regulated, as are in-home wood stoves. These furnaces are designed to be used year round to heat homes, hot water, swimming pools and out buildings.

Once the resident has sufficient heat or hot water, the air supply is shut off to the burning wood. The resulting low heat does not allow for proper and complete combustion and causes a high load of toxins and fine particulate matter to be emitted into the air, causing localized air pollution.

Particulate matters are small particles of solid and liquid matter found in the atmosphere, including carbon compounds, soot, dust, organic matter, smoke or smog. The particles in wood smoke are too small to be filtered by the nose and respiratory system.

They are so small that closed doors and windows do not stop them. According to the DEP, the number of complaints regarding these furnaces has substantially increased. The American Lung Association of Connecticut tells us that asthma is on the rise.

It's the number one chronic illness among children. Right here in Connecticut, there are 277,000 people who suffer from asthma, including 75,000 children. I would like to share with you some of our personal experiences following the installation of the wood burning furnace directly across from our property as it has adversely affected the lives of my family in the discomfort caused by the hazards and noxious pollutants and odors it emits.

Noxious odor permeates our yard while we play, swim, work on our lawn and our garden or shovel snow. Our dog's coat and our own clothes carry it into the house. Our garage frequently fills with odor than carries into the house.

It sometimes fills our car as we drive up the driveway. One Sunday, last June, we were painting out in the garage for ventilation and were forced to close the doors, due to the smoke and odor, yet these complaints of odor and visible smoke are not our gravest concerns, whereas smoke and odor are a tremendous nuisance, the silent killers are the microscopic particulates that you can't see, doing irreparable damage to your respiratory system.

In this day and age when we can scientifically prove what a detrimental effect smoke has on the human body and our environment, banning these environmentally horrendous outdoor wood burning furnaces is only common sense.

On June 27, 2003, the Hartford Courant weather forecast --

REP. WIDLITZ: Excuse me. Could you please summarize? Thank you.

BRENDA BAMBERA: Sure. We had a weather forecast last late June for a high in the 90's. This thing was still burning. We were looking in the paper. There was an article about how to reduce effects of air pollution on your neighbors and outdoor grilling was mentioned and yet, we have an outdoor wood burning furnace in late June in the 90's. We greatly --

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you --

BRENDA BAMBERA: -- appreciate your attention.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Brenda. Are there any questions? Representative Moukawsher.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Thank you. I think I might have mixed your name up with the last speaker, so I might have confused a little bit of the information, but I did read your letter and you were talking about the odor. I think a lot of us are familiar with the smell of wood smoke and fireplaces and is this different? In other words, is this a different smell than what you might smell coming out of someone's chimney if they had a wood stove, or --

BRENDA BAMBERA: This is much more frequent. These things burn all day and all night. They get into your home and I think when -- hopefully, you'll read my entire testimony but when we first started to look at this, we thought of it as a nuisance but the way these things combust, they -- you shut down the air when you have enough temperature and so they don't combust fully and it causes a higher load of particulate matter than another regulated type of wood stove would normally do.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, but I mean, you don't --

BRENDA BAMBERA: So, it's more frequent. We smell it, we see it.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Right, right. Okay, but the smell, is it different than a wood stove or a wood burned in a chimney? I mean, when you --

BREND BAMBERA: Does it smell differently?

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Yes.

BRENDA BAMBARA: No, it doesn't smell differently.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, because you're saying, noxious odor and I just wanted to know if there was something particularly --

BRENDA BAMBARA: Well, it's always there. It's always there.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: So, is it kind of like being standing next to a campfire and getting that on your clothes or is that what you're saying?

BRENDA BAMBARA: It's always there, yes. It comes into our home. It comes into our windows in the beautiful nights.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay --

BRENDA BAMBARA: I don't have central air in my house. We use our windows and our attic fans. It comes in.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: I might have missed something. How far away are you from this?

BRENDA BAMBARA: I'm directly across the street.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: Okay, and how high is the stack on that property? Do you know?

BRENDA BAMBARA: I can't see the stack over their house. It's in their backyard. It doesn't -- I cannot see the system from my house.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: You can't see the stack or anything?

BRENDA BAMBARA: I cannot.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: So, it's behind the house across the street?

BRENDA BAMBARA: Yes, it is.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: And it travels over their house into your house?

BRENDA BAMBARA: Only when prevailing winds bring it that way. I guess I'm one of the luckier ones.

REP. MOUKAWSHER: So, you don't have -- yeah, okay. I understand what you're saying. Thanks.

BRENDA BAMBARA: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, further questions? Thank you very much. Next -- where's the list? Wayne DeFeo followed by Grant Westerson. Wayne DeFeo? Grant Westerson followed by Chris Herb.

GRANT WESTERSON: Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Mr. Chairman, Committee members. With your permission, I will not offer any testimony on wood stoves. I certainly learned an awful lot, myself; it's been a long day.

I'd like to speak in favor of two bills that are before you, today, HB8612 -- excuse me, HB5612 and HB5613. HB5612 is AN ACT CONCERNING THE DEPOSIT OF TAXES RELATED TO THE SALE OF MOTOR BOAT FUELS.

My name is Grant Westerson; I'm with the Connecticut Marine Trade Association for those of you I've not spoken to, before. The intent of this bill is to try to keep taxes collected on the sale of gasoline at least somewhat near a recreational venue.

As you know, right now, those taxes go directly to the Highway Trust Fund and there's been on roads and most boats can't take advantage of what those taxes are spent on, so we certainly would support motor boat fuel tax going into the Conservation Fund although we do recognize that once it gets into the Conservation Fund, there's no requirement that it be spent for conservative efforts and frequently, it goes elsewhere but it -- recognizing that we can't get it to go into the Boating Fund, we'll take the Conservation Fund as a shortstop.

The second bill, HB5613, is really of two parts. The first part is about raising the fines and the expenses for violating noise pollution on boats. I think it's an effective way to perhaps prevent future loud boat exhausts. There are other ways, I think, that this issue can be addressed, however, we certainly wouldn't object to higher fines. I just don't think it's as effective in this form as it could be in others.

The second part of this is more parochial to my industry regarding the MTBE additive. As you're well aware, you passed a Public Act last year to ban the sale of MTBE fuels after January 1. Our industry was thusly notified shortly after filling up all our underground storage tanks.

So, recognizing the logistics of selling fuel, there's little fuel sold during December, January and February. This would give us an opportunity within the first two quarters of this year to clear our inventory of MTBE and of course, there's no other fuel being sold at the wholesale level with that additive.

So, it's a self-curing problem and we certainly hope that you support this issue. It will at least take the threat of a hammer from over our heads, away.

REP. WIDLITZ: Good timing.

GRANT WESTERSON: How's that for timing?

REP. WIDLITZ: Very good. Thank you, Grant for your testimony. Are there questions? Thank you very much.

GRANT WESTERSON: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chris Herb followed by Mark Blackmer.

CHRISTIAN HERB: Good afternoon. My name is Christian Herb. I'm the Associate Director of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association. We represent over 400 petroleum marketers and their associated businesses in Connecticut. We are -- members employ over 11,000 people.

I'm here today to speak on SB543. We, ICPA would like to suggest that we agree with the concept of removing the September 1, 2003 moratorium date but we are against placing a July 1, 2004 moratorium date, part of the reason for that is when the first moratorium date was placed, the DEP was receiving between 30 to 40 applications a month, supplemental applications a month, and two to three new applications a month.

When the moratorium date was proposed, DEP saw an explosion in applications and they went from, like I said, 30 to 40 a month, to 255 a month. The tank owners had feared that there would be no coverage for their tanks so all this bill is going to do is further complicate an issue that ICPA is been working with OPM and some of the legislators on this Committee, fixing.

The Commercial Tank Fund, as you know, provides financial responsibility coverage for tank owners and without the Fund, they would be left uncovered and it could cause tremendous disruption.

Originally, the July 1, 2004 date was put in place at the end of last Session, I believe, Secretary Ryan sent a letter to the leadership asking to -- in a fix-it session which never occurred to put that July 1, 2004 date on so that we could continue to process, DEP could continue to process applications and that we could sit down and fix some of the problems that surround the Fund.

Right now, there's approximately a $60 million backlog that we don't believe is an accurate number because tank owners were forced to get applications in so that they didn't lose their coverage.

I would ask that the Committee repeal the 2000 and -- September 1, 2003 moratorium date, remove the language. I've placed in my testimony some substitute language that would help get the ball rolling to fix some of the other problems surrounding the Fund.

We have several people here today that will be speaking to some particular things. If you'd please, we'd like to sit down with anyone on the Committee to review this information so that besides the moratorium date, all the other issues can be addressed adequately. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Are there questions? Thanks very much. Mark Blackmer to be followed by Jack Goldman and Bob Crook.

MARK BLACKMER: Senator Williams and members of the Environment Committee. My name is Mark Blackmer and I'm an owner of an outdoor wood furnace for the past three winters and a dealer for them for the past two and I'd like to be on record as strongly opposing SB552.

With the furnaces that I've sold, I'm just a small business with limited advertising and most of it is word of mouth. Example, the first is there's a lot of negative misinformation about these furnaces out there and word of mouth is why people want to look into it, they do their own investigations on them first.

My first year, I sold one furnace in Voluntown. They said a lot of neighbors came, everybody was checking it out. The following year, five more were sold and installed within a couple mile radius.

In Thompson, installed one in a house, woman couldn't afford to heat, was an older farmhouse, couldn't afford to heat the house strictly with oil, so they supplemented with a wood stove in the kitchen. The kitchen stayed 90 degrees, rest of the house not quite so comfortable.

Her dilemma came when her insurance company came to visit her, her chimney needed to be replaced or repaired or they would cancel her policy. Her solution was to install the outdoor wood furnace.

This is outside the house, insurance company is very happy, the house is -- the entire house is very comfortable, she's very happy and there's no fire danger in the house coming from the furnaces.

Again, lot of people travel by that and seen the one in Thompson, three more have been sold since that time, one of the them to the town of Thompson has installed one.

Previously, the town heated their highway garage with heating oil at a large cost to the taxpayers or they also have a waste oil furnace and we want to talk about which one smokes, swing by and look.

The town generates a large amount of firewood in their everyday operations, whether from roadside cutting or after storm damage. They can't get rid of their wood. There's already laws in place governing burning of that in open fires or burying it.

So, they decided to go with burning it, getting the heat from it and they can't have the fire inside the building. This allows them to have the fire, flame, smoke, mess, everything outside the building and again, no complaints from any of the neighbors around there.

People have stopped by to look at it, comment what a great idea. Most of the people that are purchasing outdoor wood furnaces are people who are already burning wood and they will continue to burn wood.

The outdoor furnaces just make it a lot safer. It eliminates the chimney chance of a chimney fire, which is the leading cause to house fires and it eliminates the bug infestations, or helps to eliminate bug infestations, by not bringing bug infested wood into the houses.

SEN. WILLIAMS: You can finish and summarize if you'd like.

MARK BLACKMER: The point is, burning wood and other biomass matters is an effective alternative American energy source. It reduces our dependency on foreign oil and it enhances the quality of life by reducing homeowner heating costs. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Mr. Blackmer, I appreciate your testimony. You come from my neck of the woods up there, at least some of your sales certainly do. And you know, I think your testimony really highlights why there needs to be a burden of some sort on the manufacturers to take care of the pollution that comes out of the stack.

I mean, you're obviously finding success. You're finding that there are folks who are interested in this and even without doing a lot of advertising by word of mouth and people just seeing these furnaces and checking them out, people become interested in them and that's all to the good in terms of finding alternatives to other heating forms, but there really needs, as this catches on in popularity and it appears to be doing so, now there really needs to be a greater effort on the part of the manufacturers to take care of the pollution problem that our own Department of Health and our own Department of Environmental Protection have pointed out.

So, ideally, what we should be able to do is to figure out a way here where we can find a way of controlling the pollution so that you can continue with what you're doing but that the air quality is also protected in the future. Are there questions? Representative Bernhard.

REP. BERNHARD: Just a quick question. Your closing comment was that this is a support for quality of life issue. Those were the words you used, I believe.

MARK BLACKMER: Yes.

REP. BERNHARD: Improves quality of life. What would say to the people who spoke here earlier about their quality of life and experience with your product?

MARK BLACKMER: Again, these -- the furnaces are not fit in all applications. The -- hopefully, any problems like this can be resolved by lifting the smoke, the stack of the height, the height of the smoke stack, the height of the chimney on this and in instances where there have been problems, if the stove pipes on these are raised to the same height as the stove on the chimney, on your house, and the people are just okay, if these are banned we go back to burning the -- with the indoor stoves, it depends on the air flow, damp days, smoke coming out of your chimney in the house, it still drops right to the ground.

REP. BERNHARD: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Other questions? Thanks very much.

MARK BLACKMER: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Jack Goldman, to be followed by Bob Crook.

JACK GOLDMAN: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of the Committee. My name is Jack Goldman. I'm General Counsel and Director of Government Affairs of the Hearth, Patio and Barbeque Association. We represent manufacturers of outdoor furnaces and we oppose enactment of SB552.

Our Association is committed to responsible wood burning of fireplaces, wood stoves, and outdoor furnaces. We believe in two facets to safe and responsible wood burning.

One is, safe installation and operation of these appliances and two, is the most practical reduction of emissions from these appliances. We also will demonstrate in this testimony that the industry is looking at means for making these appliances safe and to undertaking measures, which are reducing their emissions and making them safe for their users and for your neighbors.

Our Association formed a caucas in 2002 and we have been undertaking recent efforts in implementing responsible wood burning that I will now describe and we will show that SB552 is not necessary for outdoor furnaces.

As other speakers earlier have shown, most problems have been involved in installation and operation and are stemming from complaints and that the scope of these complaints is narrow and can be addressed. I'll now describe two efforts of the caucus to resolve these complaints and that will show are not necessary for a ban.

The first is, and this has been attached to my testimony, we have produced a flyer that is been given to all dealers and in turn, is being given to all purchasers of outdoor furnaces.

It is entitled, Outdoor Furnace, Best Burn Practices, and it covers five specific areas. One is suggested chimney heights and distances. Two is recommended fuels. Three is prohibited fuels. Fourth is prohibited starters and five is the best way to load fuels.

We feel that the majority of problems are prevented if the items in this flyer are followed and I'll also add that the first item is specifically being considered by the Legislature in Vermont in a bill, right now, that's being -- is under active consideration.

Secondly, we are currently preparing trouble-shooting guidelines. This stems from a meeting with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation in Albany, this summer, to deal with complaints in the state of New York.

We found that again, most of the issues involving outdoor furnaces had a local source and that the issue was how to deal with these quickly and help the local department of environmental conservation staff, enforcement staff, find solutions to these sources of pollution.

We are about to issue this to the state and we would be happy to provide copies of this to either this Committee or to the DEP in Connecticut, also. Finally, the caucus continues to work on other projects including a protocol and standard for outdoor furnaces.

We would be eager to open a dialogue with officials of the state to keep state officials apprised. Because of the narrow scope of the problems and the available solutions, we feel that a ban is an extreme and unwarranted way of addressing limited violations and complaints and instead, we ask the industry to -- the Committee, to let the industry find ways and work with the state to prevent smoking problems and to address the complaints in a way that will allow the industry to keep selling and for people in the state to keep operating these appliances in a way that will solve everyone's problems without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Thank you very much.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you and we certainly would be interested in any extra information that you have and whatever Vermont is up to in that regard. Are there questions? Representative Collins.

REP. COLLINS: Thank you. I'm just curious, you list the kinds of starters that should never be used. What would they be? Just for my own information?

JACK GOLDMAN: I'm sorry. Kinds of?

REP. COLLINS: What kinds of starters should not be used? I burn a fireplace in the house. I would like to know what you think is good or bad.

JACK GOLDMAN: Well, this would be for specifically for outdoor furnaces. But, obviously, they would include oil, gasoline, things like that.

REP. COLLINS: Would you be supportive, then, of -- from your testimony, of the Commissioner making regulations about outdoor furnaces that are subject to the routine regulation process that we have?

JACK GOLDMAN: You mean in terms of like banning certain starter fuels or something?

REP. COLLINS: The whole bit of what you've listed here.

JACK GOLDMAN: Well, certainly, we'd be willing to talk with the Regulatory Agency here in Connecticut and to work with them but certainly, yeah, I mean, we are -- things which we feel are improper for starting an outdoor furnace, I mean, yes. It just shouldn't be used and if the state feels that's a way of putting some teeth in that prohibition, we would be in favor of it.

REP. COLLINS: And it may have been said before but I didn't hear what -- do you know what the fine or penalty is for a violation?

JACK GOLDMAN: Here in Connecticut?

REP. COLLINS: Yes.

JACK GOLDMAN: No, I don't.

REP. COLLINS: Okay.

JACK GOLDMAN: Okay.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Usually when DEP comes in for a ban, they're at the end of their rope. Usually, when they're negotiating with an industry, they'll come in and say, it's premature for a ban, we're working on something but this year they came in and said, we don't have any other tools; we're going to have to ban. So, the question in my mind is, have you been working -- has your industry been working with them to work out some way of regulating the pollution? Or, have you not had any negotiations with the Department?

JACK GOLDMAN: To be honest, the first we heard about the ban was last week when this bill was -- came up on the tracking system. We had not heard anything until then and like with New York, we would be willing to meet with them and see if there were some ways to explore.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Any other questions? Thank you very much.

JACK GOLDMAN: Okay, thanks to you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Bob Crook. Is Bob Crook here? Ginny Walton. Then, after Ginny, Paul Molson and Anne Peters.

VIRGINIA WALTON: Good afternoon, Senator Williams and member of the Environment Committee. I'm here to provide testimony in support of RSB549, AN ACT CONCERNING THE EXPANSION OF THE BEVERAGE CONTAINER REDEMPTION PROVISIONS and I am the Recycling Coordinator with the town of Mansfield and I'm also a member of the Connecticut Recyclers Coalition and I'm speaking on both of their behalves.

We'd like to express our support for the expansion of the state's Bottle Bill. The current system of placing a five-cent deposit on beverage containers serves the best interest of the citizens of Connecticut.

It provides a strong incentive for recycling bottles and cans generated at home and away from home. The Bottle Bill was originally created to combat littering on roadways and other public areas. It has been successful in reducing the litter of redeemable beverage containers and has also provided a successful recycling incentive.

Municipal curbside recycling programs are not able to capture the growing number of plastic, glass and metal containers consumed in our increasingly on the go society.

Students, workers and families drink beverages on the road at events, in public areas and the best way to ensure that these containers are recycled in compliance with state law is to expand the redemption provisions to include non-carbonated beverages.

In addition, Connecticut can advance the cause of recycling and its many benefits by taking two further steps. One, recovering the estimated $20 million in unclaimed nickel deposits, escheats, and two, increasing the deposit charged from a nickel to a dime.

We can provide much needed capital to our troubled state budget by recovering approximately $20 million in unclaimed bottle and can deposits each year.

Even with the benefit of increased recycling due to the nickel deposit, many containers are never returned. In Connecticut, unclaimed deposits have remained in the coffers of beverage distributors.

In Massachusetts and Michigan, however, unclaimed deposits are used to support government programs. We advocate following this wise example. The state could put a mere 25 percent of the escheats into the currently unfunded DEP recycling program.

The remaining 90 percent or $15 million could go towards General Funding. By increasing the deposit from five cents to ten cents per container, Connecticut will offer added incentive for recycling.

This will bring us closer to the state mandated goal of 40 percent recycling, give added life to resource recovery facilities and provide more income to needy individuals and non-profit organizations.

We can enjoy further environmental and financial benefits by expanding the Bottle Bill to include not only soda and beer containers but also the increasing variety of juice, tea and other new beverages.

This would reduce litter and pollution and curbside collection costs. We support RSB549 and ask you to consider including it in its language and increase --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 2B to 3A.)

VIRGINIA WALTON: -- program. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you very much. We appreciate your testimony today and you've also been before our Committee on a number of other occasions and we appreciate that commitment on your part. Are there questions? Thank you very much. Is Paul, and I'm -- I can't tell from the Xerox copy here, whether it's M-O-L-J-O-N or whether it's something else. Paul Moljon?

PAUL MOLSON: Paul Molson. My name is Paul Molson and I represent myself. I'm here to tell you a story and I'm here to encourage the Committee to reinstate the tank Fund and I don't have any notes in front of me because I can tell you what happened to me, personally.

It's what I lived through, the whole experience. In 1970, I live in Bethlehem. I bought a two-acre piece of land that was a Gulf Station, a five -- four bay Gulf Station.

I bought it in 1970, the Gulf Corporation abandoned the station, we bought it from them and fortunately, we never sold a gallon of gas at that place.

My sister was a widower and we decided to make the gas station into a package store. Well, we ran the business from 1970 to 1990. We had an opportunity to sell the property to a bank. Well, the bank did some testing of the property and they found that the property was contaminated quite severely.

We had a consultant come in and he told us that the clean up the site would be close to $600,000. Well, that kind of shocked the both of us pretty badly, being a tradesman, I don't have the money to -- $600,000 to spend to clean up this property.

I went to a lawyer and he said, well, you've got to sue Gulf Corporation. Well, you know, he said, that's like trying to blow smoke up a chimney because it's a big corporation and one little person like myself has no chance to get anywhere with them.

So, he suggested the Tank Fund and thanks to the wisdom of the Legislature, years ago they created this Tank Fund, which saved my life financially and took an awful lot of burden off my shoulders.

We applied to the Tank Fund, took us four years to get acceptance of the Tank Fund. We became a third party status, which meant that all my bills would be paid. It took us four years to get to that point and took us another three years to get the property fairly cleaned up.

Right now, we -- our total cost has been up over $400,000 and we're about 96 percent done. Unfortunately, in Bethlehem, we have wells and the property has polluted -- the contamination has got into the wells.

My property was contaminated with old gasoline, which we cleaned up which was our responsibility but down the street there's a gas station that had a leak and now my property's contaminated with MTBEs, which I have to consider cleaning up.

Unfortunately, the Tank Fund is not -- they don't have any money left so they're thinking of disbanding it. Well, where does that leave me? I don't have the funds to finish cleaning up this property, so I -- this is an experience I lived through.

It's been ten years now, and we're still not completely done with it and we should have this problem of funding. I certainly hope that the Committee will consider reinstating the Tank Fund to help people like me and people who don't know they got a problem yet, to help them also. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Excuse me, there's a question. Representative Mushinsky.

PAUL MOLSON: Oh, I'm sorry.

REP. MUSHINKSY: I just didn't know if you knew that even if you get the support of this Committee which is likely, you still have to lobby the Finance Committee to make sure the Fund is reinstated. So --

PAUL MOLSON: I will lobby anywhere I can.

REP. MUSHINSKY: -- I just wanted to through you, tell everybody here that's interested in the Tank Fund, that they also need to contact the Finance Committee and make sure they put it back in the budget.

PAUL MOLSON: We will do everything we can because believe me, it's been a lifesaver to me.

REP. MUSHINKSY: Okay, thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you very much. Ann Peters, to be followed by Kevin Huff and Evan Griswold.

ANN PETERS: Chairman Williams, members of the Environment Committee. My name is Ann Peters and I'm here today to read a statement by Ms. Victoria Caroline who could not attend today's Hearing.

Her statement opposed SB543 and supports the continuation of the underground tank commercial clean up fund and you'll forgive the name of the wrong person on this.

Good morning, my name is Victoria Caroline. I have been working with the Commercial Underground Storage Tank Clean Up Fund since its inception in 1989, first with my former employer, and now as the Environmental Director for Alliance Energy Corp.

Alliance is a regional petroleum marketer based in Branford, Connecticut. Alliance Energy has worked hard to develop and maintain an effective spill prevention program.

We can do a good job preventing spills going forward but unfortunately we cannot undo Connecticut's history. For better or worse, Connecticut has been a developed industrial and urban state that has relied on the automobile for transportation for almost 100 years.

Many of Connecticut's gas stations have been in existence for 30 or more years, some as long as 70 years. In those days, tanks leaked. Leak detection methods were crude, at best, there were no spill buckets, piping could become loose and no one would know it and as a result, much of the contamination at those properties is very old.

Many of the companies that ran those old stations are out of business, like my former employer, the individual operators are long gone. In those cases, the owners of the land end up being responsible for the clean-up of this historic contamination whether they caused it or not.

The cost of cleaning up contamination of the soil and ground water at a service station is very high. Without a program like the Clean-Up Fund, many of Connecticut's old service stations would be abandoned.

Their owners could not sell them, except at an extreme discount. They could not get bank loans to upgrade or improve them. No one could buy them to convert them to pharmacies or shopping centers or simply upgrade the tank equipment because the cost of cleaning up those old service stations is too hard to estimate and often too high compared to the value of the land.

Many of those properties would become abandoned blights in our towns and cities. You may ask why service stations cannot simply buy environmental insurance to deal with the risk. I believe that other speakers will talk more about the insurance products that are and are not available now.

I can relate some personal experience with insurance; however, because when the Connecticut Legislature created the Fund it was possible to buy such insurance. It was expensive but it was available through a company called, Petro-Mark.

By the time the Clean-Up Fund first began processing claims, Petro-Mark was in receivership. My old employer paid its premiums, but I do not know that Petro-Mark ever covered the cost of cleaning up any of their sites in Connecticut.

Fifteen years ago, the EPA announced that it was imperative that owners and operators of underground tanks have the equivalent of an insurance policy to clean up contamination.

EPA was right. Unfortunately, most environmental insurance will not clean up historic contamination and in a state where ground water is the source of much of our drinking water and nearly every crossroads has it's old gas station, historic contamination is a critical problem.

The Commercial Underground Storage Tank Clean Up Fund should be fixed and should continue to operate. Thank you for your consideration.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you.

ANN PETERS: And I understand Ms. Caroline can provide 60 copies of this, in writing, to your Office.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much.

ANN PETERS: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Kevin Huff to be followed by Evan Griswold.

KEVIN HUFF: Good afternoon. My name is Kevin Huff. I'm a farmer in Pomfret, Connecticut. I've heated wood my whole life. I have two houses on my property. One, I live in. Three bedrooms that has been solely heated with a wood stove for the last nineteen years.

The other, three-bedroom house is heated with oil and I got a three-bedroom mobile home. Six months ago, I installed one of the Central Outdoor boilers. I now heat the three places with that one boiler and I'm just here as a interested party that I'm a strong supporter of these wood stoves and I strongly oppose the bill.

My -- I heat three places now, with a little more wood than what I heated one home with prior to installing that wood stove. I think I had a big investment to heat the three places; I probably invested $10 to $12,000.

I think there should be a tax incentive for anybody who puts one of these in with the amount of fuel that is saved with oil that I'm not burning and the lesser amount of wood that I am burning because I put this in instead of my wood stove. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions of the wood stove versus the boiler, technical questions I can't help you with.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. Huff. We appreciate your taking the time to come up here and testify today and you've heard the testimony before and you've heard me ask questions in terms whether the manufacturers can do a better job in the future about controlling the air pollution and I don't think we're talking about trying to eliminate wood burning stoves in any wholesale kind of way, but just trying to get a greater sense based on the testimony of our Department of Public Health and the Department of Environmental Protection of what can be done to help cut down on the pollution of these units, but we appreciate your testimony and --

KEVIN HUFF: Well, I do think that the boilers burn cleaner, the ash is a lot finer in the outside wood burner than it is on the -- in the wood stove in the house, so --

SEN. WILLIAMS: Are there questions for Mr. Huff? Thank you very much. Thank you for coming up. Evan Griswold?

EVAN GRISWOLD: Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. Thank you for allowing me to testify today. I'm here to give testimony in support of RHB5613, the ACT CONCERNING BOATING NOISE AND GASOLINE SOLD AT MARINAS AND BOATING FACILITIES.

I'm testifying today in support of this bill for -- because for 57 years, I've lived on the shores of the Connecticut River in Old Lyme at the mouth of the River.

For most of those years, the River and its surroundings were relatively quiet and peaceful, broken only by the background hum of I-95 after that was built.

Then, in the 1980's, boat manufacturers decided to put sleek, powerful and noisy racing boats in the hands of the general boating public, together with personal watercraft commonly known as jet skis. As the number of these crafts multiplied, so the noise level rose, sometimes to a deafening, conversation-stopping roar.

Residents of the river towns, even those who lived several miles from the river, inland, began to complain that they could hear the monster craft all day and sometimes into the night during the summer months and well into the fall.

In addition to the roar of the muscle boats, was the chain saw whine of the jet skis. The decibel level rose to a crescendo, the noise on the Connecticut River has continued unabated.

I make my living as a realtor representing residential properties on and near the river. Many times in the last 15 to 20 years, I have been told by potential buyers of waterfront property, that they had second thoughts about purchasing a home on the river because of the constant bombardment by speedboats and personal watercraft.

I have also been associated for nearly 30 years with the Nature Conservancy as a researcher, as a staff member and as a member of its' Connecticut Board of Trustees.

In 1993, the Nature Conservancy designated the lower Connecticut River one of the western hemisphere's last great places. One of only 40. This was in recognition of the River's astounding biological diversity as well as its scenic beauty.

That diversity and tranquil beauty is under assault. Just as a few thoughtless, adrenaline junkies have lowered the quality of life for all the rest of us, it must stop.

Years ago, an acquaintance of mine who owns a very successful auto dealership and is a resident of the lower Connecticut River, put it to me this way. Quote, if I ever let a vehicle out of my showroom sounding like those boats, I'd be arrested. Unquote.

I'm supporting this bill in the hope that it will spur the state of Connecticut to get serious about cracking down on the full-throated roar emanating from boats and personal watercraft.

I believe that creating a no-wake zone from Middletown to the Sound would go a long way to solving the problem. Let the boaters enjoy the river, just at a lower speed. Then all of us, boaters and non-boaters alike, can enjoy the wonders of this great river. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Are there questions? Thanks very much. Glenn Sliker, then Rick Hosley.

GLENN SLIKER: Good afternoon, Senator Williams and Representatives. I'm here to oppose SB547 and HB5614, invasive plants. Briefly, Millaine Nurseries, my employer, has been -- have been growers of nursery stock and plants for over 85 years.

We are located in the fertile Connecticut Valley, farming 350 acres in the towns of Cromwell, Portland, Rocky Hill and Middletown. We employ between 125 and 135 seasonally, in our wholesale yard field operations, propagations, retail and corporate operations, yet we're still a small, Connecticut business.

We recognize the intent of the Committee on Environment to address an invasive plant situation, however, we wish to emphasis that Millaine Nurseries, has in the past, and will continue in the future to be good stewards of the land.

We have been proactive in addressing the invasive plant problem designated by the Committee. However, you should be aware there are some plant varieties on the proposed bill that are from a three to five year old production cycle.

Although we have already ceased propagation of most of these items that Millaine Nursery -- propagation of the items that affect Millaine Nurseries, eliminating them from our plant palette, completely, by this October could utilize substantial losses from costs that we have already incurred.

The immediate financial impact on Millaine Nurseries could reach as high as $390,000, six percent of our gross revenues. I am sure you can realize that this has the potential to impact us financially and economically with devastating consequences to our Nursery.

We honestly believe and recommend that all parties concerned with the subject be objective to the economic and personal ramifications by not implementing a phase-out plan.

Over a period of time, our industry consisting of landscapers, gardeners, nurseries, garden centers, et cetera, in the state of Connecticut could suffer huge amounts of revenue losses that could not be easily absorbed.

This legislation must be phased in over a period of years, not months. We appreciate your consideration.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Are there questions? Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Coincidently, I just spent the entire weekend working on a report on invasive plants for my other job and a government funded grant and reminded again that part of government is spending money to get rid of these plants while some of these very same plants are still being sold in Connecticut. It makes no sense to me, as a taxpayer, but anyway, you -- the --

GLENN SLIKER: In my testimony --

REP. MUSHINKSY: -- the one's you just referred to that you're not growing anymore, can you sell those plants to other parts of the country where they would not be an invasive problem? Where they would not propagate?

GLENN SLIKER: We do at this time. We market three of the plants on your list anywhere's between Illinois and Atlanta, Georgia and the whole northeast. This is not just a local garden center, geographical situation we're talking about. This has a nation-wide impact.

REP. MUSKINSKY: I'm sympathetic to the fact that you have an inventory at your place and I would not like to see you lose that investment. On the other hand, some of the plants on this banned list are just all over Connecticut. They're part of the work I was working on had to do with Burning Bush, Euonymus, and how that is running rampant along the ridge lines in Connecticut.

Loose Strife, I was working on that, too, and Loose Strife actually, that word has gotten out to the industry. The industry is not selling it, which is terrific but they're still selling Euonymus, they're still selling Barberry, and these are two plants that are running rampant in Connecticut.

GLENN SLIKER: Well, and I agree 100 percent with what you're saying and there's -- we, at Millaine Nurseries and I think you would find a majority of the industry would agree, whole-heartedly with bans on certain vegetation. I am positive, though, that you have to be careful and this is why we say, all parties involved, listen to some of the biologists and the experts.

You're aware, you probably will not be buying hybrid roses in the state of Connecticut, if this passes. Hybrid roses are pretty much budded on multiflora rose. So, there are ramifications that obviously really have to be looked at and that's all we're requesting.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Well, on those two items in particular, which are rampant, Barberry and Euonymus --

GLENN SLIKER: Barberry and Euonymus, yes.

REP. MUSHINSKY: -- can you --

GLENN SLIKER: And, Norway Maples, by the way, too.

REP. MUSHINKSY: My town is still planting those. Have to work on that one, but --

GLENN SLIKER: We've stopped growing them.

REP. MUSHINSKY: That's good. Can you -- but are you able to sell Euonymus or Barberry to other states where the plant may have more difficulty propagating in the wild?

GLENN SLIKER: Well, yes. The answer to that question is yes, however, I'm going to be losing approximately half of my marketability with those in losing the Connecticut market and obviously, and you folks are probably well aware of, that the same thing is happening in the states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, all in New England states, are coming up with an Invasive Program.

However, to my knowledge thus far, they're recognizing the fact that there is terrific investments up front, all ready and to just cut it off at the legs is not really a very equitable way to treat the industry.

REP. MUSHINSKY: I know I'm trying them. I'm sitting here thinking how you could sell these somewhere else where they wouldn't cause harm to the environment. That's what I'm sitting here thinking about, was there any other market --

GLENN SLIKER: You have a vacation home up in Vermont?

REP. MUSHINSKY: Pardon? Do I have -- no. I have a tent when I go to Vermont. Do -- are there other red plants that you can sell to the public to wean them away from Euonymus and Barberry?

GLENN SLIKER: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. There are substitutions for every plant that would be on your list. However, it will leave us a terrific market disadvantage outside of the state of Connecticut, which is probably at Millaine Nurseries, pretty close to 75 percent of our market, is outside of the state. We would then be at a market disadvantage.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Okay, I'm not following you. If you can sell these proposed banned plants outside of Connecticut, then why would you be at a disadvantage?

GLENN SLIKER: Probably because it sounds like we're threatened with $100 a plant fine for growing, possessing, harvesting, shipping.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Because one solution would be to allow you to sell your remaining inventory but just not here where we already know it's a problem. How many years would it take for you to sell off your current inventory of those banned plants?

GLENN SLIKER: We have not propagated Euonymus Latiscompacta or Euonymus Ileitis in two years, now, and so what we're looking as we're looking at about an additional six years, five to six years and those costs are upfront already, pretty much.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Further questions? Thank you very much. Rick Hosley to be followed by Frederick Crosby.

RICK HOSLEY: My name is Rick Hosley. I'm a resident of Lyme, Connecticut and I'm here to speak in behalf of HB5613, specifically in noise enforcement on the Connecticut River and in all maritime pursuits.

My testimony that has been submitted is fairly lengthy and I'm not going to go over that. I was trying to think of a way to try and get you to understand what's going on.

And I would say, the best way I could try to explain it is if we introduced three new vehicles to our interstate highway system, one of them being a foot pedaled bicycle, second one would be a dragster, and the third one would be dune buggies and we put all of those on Route 95 and let them all mingle with the normal traffic, that would be somewhat of an analogy about what's going on in the Connecticut River.

And on top of that, the DEP is not enforcing it. And the local towns don't have the money to have a boat on the river to chase all these people down and on top of that, the DEP is wasting their money telling the public how they ought to come to the area and kayak with cigarette boats passing their kayaks at 40, 50 miles an hour and jet skis jumping off the side -- the back of the cruisers, you know, to catch air in the middle of the Connecticut River.

What's wrong about what's going on here is you're not doing enough. You should ban jet skis on the lower half of the Connecticut River altogether, purely for environmental reasons.

Other states, such as the state of Washington, ban jet skis in the San Juan Islands. In Florida, they're banned from the Florida Keyes. In Rhode Island, they're banned from a lot of different ponds and sensitive areas and we have no such bans in this state and Wood's Hole research and all the scientists in the world have already proved about how detrimental it is to the environment.

We need the DEP to enforce the rules. There is none and it's dangerous.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Further questions? Thank you. Frederick Crosby to be followed by Bill Smith.

FREDERICK CROSBY: Good afternoon, Committee members, representatives, ranking member Chapin and guests. Whereas the Connecticut River exists as a source of recreation for boating, kayaking and camping -- am I breaking in without introducing myself? Excuse me, I'm Frederick Crosby from Old Lyme. I live alongside the river.

Whereas the Connecticut River exists as a source of recreation for boating, kayaking, camping, hiking and biking and more, there's a significant cross section of Connecticut residents that live along its banks.

The concentration of bank dwellers, I call myself one as well, have come to find this habitat to have an unsavory passerby. One that uses the water almost with impunity.

I refer to the unmuffled, unsilenced, largely under-regulated and just plain obnoxious noisy motorboat.

Extraordinarily vehicular noise usually is associated with jet planes, trains, war machinery, and the occasional police, ambulance or fire engine siren.

What is not expected on a leisurely boat ride, conducted sometimes with friends aboard, is a close encounter with 30 to 50 feet of fiberglass machinery traveling well in excess of the average rate of 10 to 15 miles per hour and emitting 80 to 100 decibels of pure noise as it passes within yards of everyone in the narrows of the river channel and entrances.

Whereas the federal government and state of Connecticut both have standards setting noise limits for all engine equipped vehicles, boats included, and the work place has EPA and OSHA standards for permissible sound levels for the work place, this recreational waterway is apparently not maintained -- a maintained area for noise or for speed.

Since 1970, I've lived along side the main channel of the Connecticut River between navigation marker 22 on Calves Island in Old Lyme and the marker 25 in Essex, Connecticut.

Daily exposure to the day-in, day-out river traffic is only disrupted during the recreation season. Apart from shotgun blasts during the hunting season from the Lord Cove marshland, the year passes in relative solitude.

However, from May to November, noisy boat traffic is omnipresent. In this instance noise and speed happen together. If my wife and family and I dare to sit on our deck facing the river for a meal or simple conversation, it soon becomes the place not to be, as the frothing mass of boats soon distracts our attention and we are forced inside.

Furthermore, if we choose to take a boat ride on weekends, holidays, the situation just escalates into a survival of the fittest and the loudest boat always wins. I've boated on the river since the `50's when my parents first put up the house I now own. Where are the standards that you have carefully studied, drafted, passed into law, being put to use?

Moreover, where are your law officers? The lack of budget this past year has been the demise of many enforcement actions. We commend those DEP officers for a job well done, having rescued countless mariners over the year, having witnessed two such incidences.

I watched as DEP officers crossed jurisdictions to save lives of three youngsters being carelessly towed up and down the river by a recklessly speeding towboat, while another personal watercraft speed-related incident resulted in a fatality due to decapitation. Thank you for listening.

SEN. WILLIAMS: (mike off)

BILL SMITH: Good afternoon, Honorable Committee. My name is Bill Smith, Durham, Connecticut and I'm here to support HB5375. EWASTE proposes two core problems, the volume of electronic equipment improperly disposed of in municipal landfills and the toxicity of the electronics and CRTs as waste products.

It is estimated more than 22 million computers are sold in each year in the United States, most of them become obsolete in a little more than two years.

Thousands of computers become obsolete each day, most are stored in backrooms and warehouses but increasing numbers are finding their way into the waste stream.

EWASTE represents two to five percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. An estimated 300,000 tons of e-waste went into landfills in the United States in the year 2000 and the problem is expected to grow four-fold.

E-waste contains significant qualities of toxic materials. These computer or television display monitor contains an average of four to eight pounds of lead.

Monitor glass contains about 20 percent, by weight, of lead. About 70 percent of the heavy metals, including mercury and cadmium, found in landfills come from electronic equipment discards.

These heavy metals and other hazardous substances found in electronics can contaminate groundwater and pose other environmental and public health risks.

According to the National Safety Council, an estimated 315 million computers will be obsolete this year, containing a total of four billion pounds of plastic, one point five billion pounds of cadmium, one point two billion pounds of chromium, one point one million -- excuse me, one billion pounds of lead and unknown amounts of mercury.

Because of the above, I urge this Committee to pass HB5375. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Are there questions? Thanks very much. Kelly D'Aprile. I apologize if I'm not pronouncing that correctly, to be followed by Norbert Mitchell.

KELLY D'APRILE: Representative Williams, Committee members. I'm here in regards to SB543 and I'm in favor of the program for reimbursement. I'm going to just give you a little history of where I come from.

I live in Hartford and I have two businesses in Hartford. In 1932, my father started a market on Windsor Street, a food market. In 1960, we were in the redevelopment area so we had to relocate.

We found a piece of property on Franklin Avenue in the south end of Hartford and we relocated the market in 1960, to Franklin Avenue. Back in the late `80s, we flourished and did very, very well.

We have at present, 32 to 38 employees, but at the time back in the late `80s, early `90s with the things that were happening in the cities, such as the riots and so on and so forth, we got hurt, tremendously.

Our business was off probably 40, 45 percent on weekends. We were floundering and we didn't know what to do because we had a piece of property we were lone-standing, the market was lone-standing.

We didn't know whether we should leave the city, or we try to relocate and leave a piece of property valueless. So, what we decided, what I decided to do was take a chance. I still felt very good about Hartford. I still do.

I needed to make my area a safe shopping area to make people comfortable coming in and feeling safe that everything would be okay and in doing that, my thought was to make it a busy shopping center.

So, I went out and I got a CVS and a Dunkin Donuts as tenants and needless to say, we signed leases and I started construction. Well, history came back to haunt me.

Back in the 1920's, there was a gas station on the property, I guess and the tanks were not removed. According to City Hall, they were removed, but they weren't. We hit two gas tanks and we hit contamination.

Thanks to the Fund we were able to survive that tremendous loss and were able to put up the building and complete. We took, in contamination alone; we took out over 100 truckloads of contaminated soil at a cost of close to $300,000.

The shopping center is surviving. It's been actually a start in the south end, I was the start of a lot of people if they were thinking of leaving, didn't leave because we started something and it's been getting stronger and stronger.

We are now in the process of refinancing and we had to refinance, they found more trouble, we found out the DOT was on the building property previously and we had to last year, in order to get the refinancing, go forward with refinancing and also have it done and pay for it out of our pocket which we had to borrow money for.

We are now looking hopefully for the Fund to help us out in that particular case. Thank you for listening to me. If there are any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you for coming today. Are there questions? Thank you. Norbert Mitchell to be followed by Bob Crook.

NORBERT MITCHELL: Good afternoon. My name is Norbert Mitchell. I run a family-owned business in the Danbury, New Milford area for the last 50 years, with my dad.

I'm here today to support the concept in SB543, AN ACT CONCERNING THE COMMERCIAL UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANK FUND. I support the language in the bill that appeals the September 1^st, 2001 moratorium on applications, but I am opposed to the proposed July 1^st, 2004 moratorium date.

And I'll explain to you, why. When they put the moratorium on in September, they did it to slow down the applications and the catch-up to the Fund, where there was so much paperwork and so many applications the DEP, in their Office, couldn't handle it because you put an application in and sometimes it was two years, three years before you even got it even acted act on it.

What's happened since September is, it's no better than it was before, by not taking applications. What's happened is, I still have things that I submitted in the year 2002 that were acted on and in the middle of 2003, it approved and still not received any funding on it.

So, what I see is happened is even though they have a moratorium on it, they did it to catch up, they're still not catching up. That's why I can't see -- we need the Fund, we have to have the Fund because in order to have our federal financial responsibility, we have to have a Fund in place but we don't. We have to have one that works. We have to improve the Fund. We have to make it so it's something that's viable for everybody in business to be able to use it because the way it is now, it doesn't work.

I mean, I take money out to do what the DEP tells me, in a location I might have, to clean it up and everything else, expecting the money to be reimbursed to me. The DEP approves the Programs. They say, okay, your stations are all in compliance and everything, you can turn around and we'll pay for this, okay?

But, it doesn't happen. It's too many years down the road when we put the money out and it hurts us substantially. So, I appeal to you people that it has to be changed. You know? You have to do something to make it work better and it's whether it's outsourcing it or however you do it with DEP, but they haven't been able to handle it properly and just by stopping, putting a moratorium on it, it's not doing any good to make it work. You have to fix the problem and that's what the problem is, not put another moratorium on. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Questions? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you for your testimony today. Just out of curiosity, how many times have you remediated a site?

NORBERT MITCHELL: I have three sites that I've remediated over the last -- since the Fund came in effect.

REP. CHAPIN: And how many sites do you presently own?

NORBERT MITCHELL: I have control of 25 sites.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you very much.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Any other questions? Thank you. Bob Crook.

BOB CROOK: Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. My name is Bob Crook, I'm representing the Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen, speaking in support of RHB5612, AN ACT CONCERNING THE DEPOSIT OF TAXES RELATED TO THE SALE OF MOTOR BOAT FUELS.

We strongly support the transfer of all motorboat fuel taxes from DOT Road and Bridges Fund to go in the Conservation Fund. Simply put, boats don't use roads and bridges. As a user fee, the tax should go to the appropriate users and that's fishermen and boaters.

A lot of us have worked hard over several years to gain the current two million dollars currently appropriated. It was traumatic last year to see the reduction of over one million, plus, that was supposed to be allocated to the Conservation Fund.

Loss of these funds has had a severe impact on current DEP Fisheries Programs and future planning. It was noteworthy, the Commissioner recently in a briefing here, said a higher percentage of department funding are user fees and dedicated funding.

I can tell you that almost close to 90 percent of Fisheries programs are funded by user fees, federal fees or motorboat fuel tax. Hunting is the same thing.

These funds are program funds. But what they're being used for is they're being used for positions which should be funded by the General Fund. When we fund the General positions, 60 percent of the fees that it costs, are available. Forty percent, the other 40 percent has to go into perks, retirement, fringe benefits, et cetera, that the General Fund should be paying for.

So, what we're not only paying for the positions, we're also paying for their retirement and everything else. The Conservation Fund is in serious trouble due to inflationary costs, about to run deficits and without adequate funding, more program reductions, eliminations and probably personnel layoffs are probable. Something has to be done to support the DEP.

You've heard it here all day today. We need law enforcement. We need programs. We need noise, we testified about that last week. We need people in the DEP and they can't be all funded by dedicated funding.

We're asking here today though, is to continue dedicated funding and increase it so the DEP can survive. This is a stopgap measure. It always has been. All dedicated funds are stopgap measures to the DEP.

They only get 60 percent of what you give them, these dedicated funds, and then invariably, those funds are always cut back. I don't know -- I've testified on this bill now for about seven years.

We've never gotten the total five or six million dollars that we're entitled to. I think it's time we did that and I think it's time we applied it to Fisheries and Boating where it belongs. Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Thank you for your testimony. Are there any questions? Representative Collins.

REP. COLLINS: That's been my bill for seven years and it's motherhood and apple pie. I'd like to ask to have you join me in lobbying the people on Finance and Transportation and maybe OPM and try to get this done because it is the right thing to do. You hear the parade of people complain about the Connecticut River, they're all right but there's nobody out there. I sail on the Connecticut River and there's nobody out there maintaining anything and maybe we could get some funds out of this and do that, so --

BOB CROOK: Well, we'll certainly try and this is a priority issue both for sportsmen and I think probably for the newly established Legislative Sportsmen Caucus and we'll push as hard as we can. You've been doing it, I've been doing it for about seven years now, it's unlikely we'll get the six, five or six million dollars, but any increase, any increase would be beneficial and it has to come in order to save DEP Fisheries and Boating programs.

REP. COLLINS: Thank you.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Jim Kirtopoulis, to be followed by Michael Fox and Albert Barr.

JIM KIRTOPOULOS: Close enough on the name, by the way. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the Committee. I'm Jim Kirtopoulos, president of Building Concepts. I'm here today to support SB543, AN ACT CONCERNING THE COMMERCIAL UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANK ACCOUNT, particularly the language that supports the repeal of the September 1^st moratorium and -- on applications, but I'm also opposed to the July 1^st moratorium and I'll tell you why.

The UST Fund makes possible the reclaiming of properties that have been contaminated and abandoned. This is a growing issue in Connecticut as it is nationwide.

When a contaminated site is restored, the environmental impact is obvious. Not so obvious are the benefits that go beyond the scope of the environment.

The UST Fund also has a positive, economical effect, often off-setting the cycle of blight associated with abandoned sites and infusing local economies with revenue. Tax revenue, for instance.

On this site, on 308-310 East Main Street, alone there has been an increase of $11,000 in annual property tax. There's also been a 30 percent in increase in sales tax from Building Concepts, alone.

It's also created new jobs. Building Concepts is added three new full time positions with salaries ranging from $25,000 to $80,000. There's a need to fill one additional sales position and one lead carpenter position by mid-2004.

This will result in over $180,000 in new wages. Shoreline Buffet, which is a tenant on that same property, has created 18 new jobs, for a total of 23 new jobs created because of the UST Fund.

There's an infusion of capital in the economy because of the development over $1.2 million of private sector money was put into Connecticut's economy, further benefiting the job market at a time when commercial building was floundering.

It's also beautified the community. The development is also spurred investment in the area. For example, the property to the right was paved, the owners are planning a new façade -- excuse me -- the property across the street will be developed into a Holiday Inn.

None of this would have been possible if the blighted property wasn't reclaimed. In fact, very little investment was made in the immediate area for the five years that the property was vacant.

Some more positives of the Fund; because of the state's investment of under $400,000 in the clean up of 308 and 310 East Main Street in Branford, the Grand List will have increased by approximately $3 million.

Job creation will continue and sales tax revenue will continue to increase. Connecticut has achieved a tremendous return on investment. If you multiply --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 3A to 3B.)

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much. Michael Fox followed by Gilbert Barr -- Albert Barr -- Albert Barr, sorry.

MICHAEL FOX: Good afternoon, Chairman, members of the Environment Committee. My name is Michael Fox and I'm the executive director of the Gasoline and Automotive Service Dealers of America, whose members locations account for over 57 percent of all the gasoline sold here in Connecticut and I come before you today to discuss SB543, AN ACT CONCERNING THE COMMERCIAL UNDERGROUND STORAGE TANK ACCOUNT.

I will try not to be redundant on all the testimony you've already heard about the wonderful work that the Underground Tank Fund has done, but what I can tell you without hesitation is, this Fund has resulted in the clean up of many contaminated sites in Connecticut that would not be cleaned up today if not for this Fund.

When I attend national association meetings regarding our industry, many other states continually bring up the Underground Storage Tank Fund as model to be used in their states.

In the past, we had been considered to be the best of the best. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the dirty, dark secret that no one wants to talk about, so I'll take the heat for talking about it.

The Gross Receipts Tax Fund, since 1990 to 2003, has generated $1,168,000,000. Of that, $347,176,762 by Legislative amendment was supposed to be transferred to the Underground Tank Fund.

I'll be politically correct and refer to tweaks in amendments as only $147,100,000 has actually been transferred to the Fund. To put this into perspective, 58 percent of the tax revenue that you tell the people of the state of Connecticut the reason you tax them for is then transferred into General Fund and literally disappears and no one has any idea of what it is used for.

This sounds all too familiar to gasoline retailers, just like when the state gas tax revenue had over one billion dollars not allocated to the Special Transportation Fund over a period of ten years and now we're hearing today about all the problems of a lack of funding.

The funds themselves have no problem, except when they generate extra revenue needed for future allocations; funds are redirected by legislative amendments.

These types of raiding of funds has gotten the state into trouble in the past and will continue to do so if we do not have the support to stop this type of action.

If we do not fix this Fund, retailers will be required by federal law to go out and obtain underground tank insurance. You've already heard testimony about the problems of underground tank insurance and you're going to hear some more in future testimony.

Not fixing the Fund will also reverse ten years of cleaning up contaminated properties that are now returned to tax rolls, created jobs, and in essence created profits out of tax burdens.

Additionally, if retailers are required to go out and get insurance the retail price of gasoline would currently increase somewhere between five and seven cents a gallon and I don't think any legislator in an election year wants to be responsible for that.

We certainly understand lobbying the Appropriations Committee to make sure that the Fund gets reinstated, moratoriums are removed, but more importantly, we need to lobby every individual legislator and every individual committee to make sure the raiding of dedicated funds stops, and stops now.

Tax payers are tired of being told that a tax is put in for one good and intended purpose, the purpose is being served and then as properties and things are being cleaned up, future funds that are going to be needed to reinvest are then taken away because we supposedly get into a budget crisis.

What's personally frustrating for me is over eight years ago I came before members of the Appropriations Committee, trying to fix the Fund and was told at that time, don't worry. There's plenty of money. Thank you for allowing me to come here and speak today and I'll answer any questions that you might have.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony. Are there questions? Representative Roy.

REP. ROY: It's just a comment, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mike, good to see you again.

MICHAEL FOX: Thank you, Representative.

REP. ROY: I notice you had some help here from Milford this morning and obviously they had to get back to work but we appreciate what you've got to say and look forward to working with you in the future.

MICHAEL FOX: Thank you, Representative Roy. As you know, we'll do anything we can and our members in supporting any effort to fix this.

REP. WIDLITZ: Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: Thank you. I think the raid took place in Finance, so again, that's the Committee that you should keep an eye on and some of us are on Finance and we will, as we have before, try to prevent the raid but you have to get to more than the few people that are on this Committee and the Finance Committee.

MICHAEL FOX: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any further comments, questions? Thank you very much.

MICHAEL FOX: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Albert Barr followed by Chris Canavan.

ALBERT BARR: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Albert Barr and I have been a member of the Underground Storage Tank Board since its inception in 1988. I believe I'm the only person that started in 1988 and is still on the Board.

When we started, we started because Congress said if you have an underground gasoline tank, you have to be called financially responsible. That was defined as having a net worth of $20 million or having a state fund or having insurance available and insurance was not available in the state of Connecticut. We started the Fund the first meeting the Board sat around and looked at each other and said, well, now what do we do?

We had no idea, we had no regulations. I followed it through the 15 years and then probably the 150 meetings that I've attended driving up from Stamford for these meetings once a month.

We developed into a Board and a program that was the envy of the United States. I represent a lot of service station dealers throughout the United States. Connecticut's Board functioned well, it was the best and I don't know what happened but all of a sudden, we decided we're going to put a moratorium on it.

Why were we concerned about cleaning the environment in 1988 and today we're not concerned about cleaning the environment? I don't know what happened. All of a sudden, we're told, well, there's going to be a moratorium. The moratorium is a, as someone said before, that the moratorium has -- was to catch up. The moratorium is doing nothing but creating a further and further backlog.

As someone who has sat on the Board and has again, involved in the service station business, I can tell you these allotted sites are not going to be able to be cleaned up without that Board.

There are an awful lot of, and more recently, individual service station dealers buying their site. I've had countless cases where clients bought a site believing it was clean and then they go and they find old, abandoned tanks as someone testified earlier.

I mean, we can find tanks from 20, 30, 50 years ago that no one ever knew that they were there. How are we going to clean this up? I mean, we have to do away with this moratorium. We have to go back to where we were a few years ago. We were starting to run this properly, everybody was on board and all of a sudden, for financial reasons apparently, we decided we don't care about cleaning up the environment any longer and I would just urge you and I know a lot of this deals with finances, but I would urge the Environmental Committee to look and say, why did we care in 1988 about cleaning up the environment and today, we don't care. Thank you. Any questions? I'd be happy to answer.

REP. WIDLITZ: Representative Mushinsky.

REP. MUSHINSKY: I've been following the Fund since I was Chairman of this Committee and I'm also on -- I've been on Finance for that long as well and it's not that we don't care about the environment. I still have people in my district that are on the waiting list that need this help.

What happened was, the Fund began to be abused. Some of the contractors that came in and their job was to dig up the tanks and repair the environmental damage, they abused the State Fund to the point where the Fund was temporarily halted and the Finance Committee has been -- part of it is financial pressure on the Fund and state deficient, but part of it was that some of the contractors began to abuse some ready, taxpayer money and that's really when the screws came down on this program, so please don't say or think that the Legislature doesn't care about cleaning up the environment. That is not the case.

Many of us want to restart this program and take care of the people on the waiting list but the Finance Committee has to be assured that this is just -- I'm repeating to you what they're problem was with the bill, the Finance Committee has to be assured that contractors will not soak this Fund by ordering work before it's even arranged with the homeowner and just basically taking advantage of a good thing. They see that State money there and they try to take advantage of it.

So, when the Finance Committee is assured that that will not happen, they will once again be more sympathetic to the needs of all these people in my district and other districts that are on the waiting list who need help, as you have said. So, we know the problem is still there. We know people still need help, but the Finance Committee just got really sick and tired of paying out to people that were making work for themselves and abusing the Fund and that's really what happened.

ALBERT BARR: Well, as you say, you followed it from the beginning. I've actually been on it since back when I used to have red hair, but I would say that the -- what you're saying is, is there were some unscrupulous contractors.

I think that's directed more to the home residential. You had said that the homeowners were being taken advantage of. This Fund, I think, has become more sophisticated over the years, not less sophisticated and I'm a taxpayer also. I don't sit there, freely just throwing money away because it impacts upon me.

I think the Fund has gotten a whole lot better now than it was years ago because we do understand where we're doing -- we now have our own attorney, we follow precedent and I think that any objections whereas they may have been founded ten, 12 years ago, I think have gone away.

Now, is there an objection that things are taking too long? Yeah, there is. And that's a function of staffing, but I don't think that you do away with -- you say, well, we have a problem so we're going to do away with the Program. That's my concern.

REP. MUSHINSKY: I'm not saying that that's the case. I think there's a lot of legislators, myself included, that want the Fund to be reopened again, but I think that the industry folks have to sit down with the Finance Committee leadership and make the case that the house has been cleaned up, that the problems of the past have gone away and now is the time to reopen the use of the Fund.

Some of the work that was happening was that the -- trying to remember the sequence, here. The contractors would go in and do some very expensive work, even prior to the homeowner signed off on what had to be done so this is the kind of thing that caused the Finance Committee to yank the cord on this program, but it would be really helpful if the commercial haulers --

REP. WIDLITZ: (mike off)

REP. MUSHINSKY: -- okay, it would be good though if a few folks from your industry were to sit down with the Chairman of Finance and just give him a briefing on where it is now, the controls that are on now, and you know, just reassure them that the program is now -- the problems of ten years ago are not true anymore and the program is now operating in a clean way and we're ready to resume and if you could reassure them, I think it would go a long way to restarting this program.

ALBERT BARR: Yes, ma'am.

REP. WIDLITZ: Okay, any further comments? Thank you very much.

ALBERT BARR: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chris Canavan followed by Joseph Mikulka.

CHRIS CANAVAN: Good afternoon, remaining Committee members. My name is Chris Canavan, I own Exxon-Mobile and Shell Stations around the state of Connecticut and I have two property transfers that are currently held up over environmental issues.

The properties are contaminated, the issues of who's going to pay for it remain. I think it should be clear by now that oil -- the major oil companies as we've known them over the years, are selling off their real estate and moving out of the state of Connecticut.

They may still have their brand of distributors still having retail outlets in the state, but they are making -- they're beating feet to the environmental doorstep, so this is an important fund for our industry.

These sites do need to be cleaned up. We appreciate all of your attention to these issues. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much. Any questions, comments? Thank you. Next is -- okay, Joseph Mikulka.

JOSEPH MIKULKA: Mikulka. Good afternoon, my name is Joseph Mikulka. I am someone who is grown up in the gasoline industry and can think back to 1950's and what it was like to be in the business.

After graduating from college, my second job was to work for a major oil company. Subsequently, I wound up back in the business that I started in and have been self-employed in the gasoline industry for 28 years and am a member of the Board of GASDA.

About two years ago, I was asked to volunteer my time to be a member of the Underground Storage Tank Review Board. I considered it and I thought I had some experience and knowledge of the industry to bring to the table at the Board and prior to joining the Board, I confess, that I had a preconceived notion of what went on, on the Board.

And I have to tell you now that I was wrong. That much of what was discussed was my opinion. It was wasteful and it was bureaucratic and what I found was a group of men and women who were dedicated to what they did.

The staff of the EPA and the people on that Board who volunteered their time and go up there and take the time to review these cases, really, really were very dedicated and very productive.

I was surprised at how well it had evolved and how well it was run. In fact, I'm willing to say that I am proud to be a member of the Board and when I leave, I feel that we will have done a good job for the state of Connecticut.

I definitely do not believe the direction to go in is to try the insurance route. I think that will be wasteful, non-productive and will not accomplish what you want which is to cleanup these sites.

I absolutely support the continuation of the Board and I can support that we would bring the moratorium to an end. If you have any questions I'd be more than happy to give you this Board member's perspective on what's going on, if I can.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much for your testimony and for waiting to deliver it. It's a long, it's a long day. I know all of you signed up early and we appreciate your taking the time to do this. Any questions, comments? Thank you. Okay, next is it Larry Anchor followed by Michael Aurelia.

LARRY ANCKER: Good day. My name's Larry Ancker. I'm a Shell retailer in Norwalk, Connecticut. I'm also co-chairman of a large group of Shell and former Texaco dealers throughout the state.

There's been a lot of good things said about the continuation of the Tank Fund. I just want to give you my perspective from where many of my fellow retailers come from.

I've been in the business for 35 years and we used to pay rent for our service stations, now I'm paying rent, I'm paying taxes, I'm paying for maintenance for my location. My costs have gone up quadruple from what they were years ago.

The elimination of this Tank Fund with the moratorium on it, the oil company dictates how much insurance I have to have on my property and if they dictate that I have to have tank insurance, it's not available or the costs are so prohibitive that we can't afford to stay in business anymore.

As you well know, there's probably 40 percent of service station locations left in the state then there were when I first got in business back in 1969, so I hope that you will bring this back to your Committee members and I want to support the continuation of the Tank Fund. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for your testimony and we will do our best. Thanks. Next, Michael Aurelia followed by Michael Doobley.

MICHAEL AURELIA: Good afternoon, Representative Widlitz and members of the Committee. My name is Michael Aurelia. I'm representing the Connecticut Conservation Association. I'm actually surprised to be here again this week, having been here last week and that was, I thought, going to be my annual testimony on wetland bills but one popped up that I must speak in opposition to for the Connecticut Conservation Association.

I've submitted some written testimony but briefly, I think, this problem of routine maintenance activities for highways should be addressed administratively and I've suggested some ways, there are hundreds of ways that they probably could be dealt with at the local level.

I was a wetland director for the town of Greenwich for 28 years and I never had this problem because we worked administratively with our highway department and never had to issue a permit to repave an existing road, so I'm amazed that this could be a problem in a municipality.

I'm concerned because we shouldn't be adding exemptions to the Act. I know I testified against one of them in 1996 and it popped back as a rat in 1997, the Drainage Provision that Representative Laughlin from -- former Representative Laughlin, put in, from my area of the state and we just shouldn't be weakening the Act by attaching exemptions.

I'm particularly concerned about the broad nature of the exemption. It's limitless. Just what are maintenance activities and I can get into the confusion that one causes there and I'm also -- I don't -- if this is a municipal exemption, why is the Connecticut Department of Transportation getting the benefit of it?

They already have General Permit possibility for routine activities in the Act that could probably even our municipalities, if necessary, do but I think many municipalities already have routine processes for these types of administrative activities.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Representative Chapin, do you have any questions?

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your testimony, Michael, it's -- I don't think we're very far apart in what we're trying to achieve, here. I think it's the mechanism that is really the best way to go about it and I would certainly would be more than happy to sit down and talk to you, further, about it and hopefully we can find a way that is satisfactory to the municipalities who are trying to just do what really is literally, routine maintenance without the requirement that they have to go to their inland wetlands commission each and every time something such as a General Permit or some other mechanism through Regulation is satisfactory as far as I'm concerned, but I'd be happy to work with you further on that.

MICHAEL AURELIA: Okay, and I will talk to Mr. Furlong --

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you very much.

MICHAEL AURELIA: -- and see if we can figure out his problem.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Thank you. Michael Doobley followed by John Hollis. John Hollis, followed by Joseph Roberto.

JOHN HOLLIS: Good afternoon, Representative Widlitz, members of the Environmental Committee or is it General Law or is it Planning and Development?

I really am confused as to where I am. I've not seen a Session such as this where we had our bills coming in so many different directions. It's nice to get to know other legislators on other committees but again, my name is John Hollis.

I represent the Connecticut Teamsters. We have about 17,000 members. I come before you, today, to support RSB549, AN ACT CONCERNING THE EXPANSION OF THE BEVERAGE CONTAINER REDEMPTION PROVISIONS.

We represent the employees of TOMRA, the Reverse Vending and Recycling Company located in Stratford, Connecticut and we also represent the drivers of the soda trucks, beer, albeit Coke, Pepsi, Miller, all the fine drinks and the expansion, to me, is about jobs.

I mean, that's what I do. I represent my membership and we like to talk about the employees, the working people. You know, you can talk about so many aspects of this bill but you know we've been able to preserve Teamster jobs with the Bottle Bill.

But let's not mistake this all, it's all about repeal. I mean, we're talking expansion this afternoon, but it's about appeal and it's about escheats. These seems to be the wheel that's driving this particular bill, but as I -- the more I looked at this, I can see where we could -- our members could increase their pay by maybe 30 percent.

When the bill was first enacted, it was not a real large amount of sport drinks, as we know it. Maybe Gatorade was out there but I don't believe it was the water drinks and all these trendy drinks that we have, fruit and so forth. I think they make up about 30 percent of the beverage containers at this point in time.

So, if you take that 30 percent, it stands to reason that we can see an increase in our jobs, so I would support this bill and I would ask this Committee to advance it along and see how we do. But again, if there's any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer them.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. I guess we've been keeping you busy testifying in before other committees.

JOHN HOLLIS: Well, Representative, I've got to commend you and this Committee because you guys, you guys got it down right because those other committees, we didn't get out until like eight, eight-thirty and I perceive you're going to get out a lot sooner than that, so you're kind of moving it along and boy, I'll tell you, we really appreciate that but this is such a significant piece of legislation that's been working, you know? I mean, I keep saying this but it's not -- I can't say it enough, you know?

We had a saying the Navy, if it ain't broke, don't fix it and if it's tied down, paint it. That was the other part of it but you'd have to know the story, but really, it's really a great piece of legislation.

So I just hope that we can continue to do something and I know you guys have a tough task before you in the short Session, there's so many other things going on. So, I thank you if you'd consider this and move this along.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. I think it's actually been beneficial for members of the Legislature in other committees to understand this whole issue and how complicated it tends to get. Planning and Development has heard various forms of recycling bills, as had General Law, and I think it was a new experience for many of the legislators on those committees, so it takes a lot of time but it's an important issue. It's a complicated issue and I think it's been beneficial for everyone to have the benefits of all of that good testimony that you've given us. Thank you.

JOHN HOLLIS: With your permission, if I may add to that? They truly, some of them had no concept of it and I, for that point, I agree, but you know, we didn't have to go there and reinvent the wheel but we had to educate them and I think it kind of fine-tuned us, as well, because it made us do our homework.

We know when we come before Environment, this group truly, truly has a great understanding of this bill, but when we got to the other ones, huh? You know, what's this and what's going -- they didn't have some of the information and only what we were providing them so it was a great opportunity to give them an example of something and I think everybody's really realizing now that it works, so I got a feeling we're going to be okay for this Session. Thanks, again.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Any questions, comments? Okay, thanks.

JOHN HOLLIS: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: Joseph Roberto followed by Mick Schum.

JOSEPH ROBERTO: Good afternoon, Representative Widlitz and members of the Environmental Committee. My name is Joseph Roberto. I'm the president of the Connecticut Redemption Centers Association and a member of the Redemption Coalition.

I'm very elated to be here today and excited about talking about a subject that I didn't really quite frankly think it would make it to the floor, this year.

I was here twice last week, testifying in the defense of the Bottle Bill as we have so many times in the past. It seems we've been defending the quality of the Bottle Bill and it's ability to function and the great progress we've made in the state of Connecticut with the Bottle Bill and here we are, talking about expansion.

Well, everybody in the business is excited about it. This is something we've looked forward to. We've done a great job in the past, we've helped the state clean up and we've maintained that cleanliness through our efforts and to add these products will even remove more of the bulk from the waste streams and litter from the streets, parks and the rivers and streams.

I don't have a written testimony. I didn't have the time to prepare one but I would like to say that we fully support SB549 and we'll do anything in our endeavors to make this bill come through fruition. Thank you. Any questions?

REP. WIDLITZ: Any questions? Thank you very much.

JOSEPH ROBERTO: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Any questions? Thank you very much.

JOSEPH ROBERTO: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: And thank you for waiting to testify. Jim Kirtopolous. Okay, Kathleen Conway. Kathleen Conway?

KATHLEEN CONWAY: Good afternoon, Madam Chairman and Committee members. I'm an environmental attorney representing a client before the Commercial Underground Storage Tank who could not be here today on such short notice and I've been asked to read her testimony.

This was an applicant, a third party applicant, a homeowner who was impacted by a release from a gas station that was up gradient. The Underground Storage Tank Clean Up Fund was the only immediate resource that was available to us to address significant environmental pollution affecting our drinking water well in our home.

In 1998, our children complained that the water tasted odd. Shortly thereafter, the Health Department tested our water and we were notified that it was contaminated with MTBE.

Subsequently, benzene was detected along with MTBE levels that rose up to 20,000 parts per billion. We were advised to take showers with the window open and only use cold water.

While we were provided with bottled water and later with a carbon filter to treat the water, our daily lives changed dramatically.

The MTBE levels were so high that the system had frequent breakthroughs, sometimes as often as twice a month. Because of the frequent changing of the filters, the system developed bacterial contamination.

As a result, the well had to be chlorinated and the system eventually had two carbon filters followed by a UV filter to treat the bacterial contamination.

The water frequently smelled bad, tasted bad. Soil they were testing detected soil contamination, testing in our home detected benzene and MTBE in our indoor air.

We were fearful of eating the vegetables grown in our garden. At one point, consultants who were in our home a total of seven times in one month doing various testing and working on the system.

During this time, there was also substantial news coverage concerning the potential health effects of drinking MTBE contaminated water, contaminations through the skin and breathing it.

We were particularly worried about the effects on our ten and 13 year old children. After nearly two years of constant apprehension and stress, we reached a settlement with the entity that was the source of the release in a mediation process.

After four years, we moved into our home. What made this possible was the Fund. It gave us an opportunity to regain control of our lives, to return to some measure of normalcy, to assess our problems and find some resolution.

We did not have the money nor the ability to finance the cost of the testing and the health risk assessment that was required. Specifically, based on the Fund, we were able to retain an environmental consultant to assess the extent of the contamination in our water and in our home.

We had immediate access to specialists, maintaining the water treatment system to ensure that the filters were changed before a breakthrough occurred.

We worked with the consultant with schedules that allowed us to go back to our daily routines of work and school with less disruption to our lives. We were able to retain an environmental attorney that guided us through the process of applying to the Fund, obtaining appropriate consultants and determining the source of contamination.

We were able to enter into an earlier resolution through mediation rather than extended litigation against the entity that caused the contamination.

Most importantly, we were able to eliminate exposure to known and potential carcinogens in our home to us and to our children. Without the Fund, we would have been forced to live in a home with constant uncertainty about the water we drank, the air we breathed and the water that we washed with.

The Fund offered a speedy response to significant environmental exposure issues. And the client apologizes because they could not be here to testify.

I think that the important thing to recognize here is that the Fund is -- was, the primary purpose was to clean up the environment but equally important was to deal with the potential human exposure and in this case, there was significant health risk.

There were three families that were infected by the contamination and their wells and contamination within indoor air. Without this, these people would have had no avenue.

If they would have gone through litigation to a jury by trial -- to a trial by jury, it would have been seven years. Their children would have been 17 and 20, respectively, and that's assuming that there were no appeals.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much for your testimony and for waiting. Thank you. Questions? Okay, Mike DeFeo followed by Kachina Walsh Weaver.

WAYNE DEFEO: Representative Widlitz, my name is Wayne DeFeo, Michael DeFeo could not be here this afternoon and I was to testify with him. He is not related and it's just an absolute coincidence that we have the same, exact last name. Although, if he was rich I would tell him that he was my cousin.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today on SB549. I am here, as you know, I've been retained by Coca-Cola to look at recycling in Connecticut and compare it against some other states and make recommendations.

I'm here to dispel some of the myths that you may have regarding the Bottle Bill and its efficacy. Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, we refilled bottles. That was fine. We don't do that any longer.

Comprehensive recycling has taken over in the country. We've changed the way we bottle materials in this country. The fact is, Bottle Bills have limited impact on recycling.

If you recycle -- if you put a deposit law to expand this bill on all the beverage containers you can find and if you got 100 percent of them back, you'd recycle four percent of your waste stream.

Connecticut currently recycles about 19 percent of its municipal solid waste, with the Bottle Bill that goes up to maybe 20, 21. You might go to 22. You would be using the equivalent in what we used to call in teaching, of an elephant to teach the color gray.

It is overkill and it is cost-ineffective. Bottle Bills can cost as much as $700 per ton to process -- to collect their materials, a second point regarding recycling.

Bottle Bills are a form of collection. They do nothing to guarantee the material is recycled. I'd point out to you that at best, this expansion bill would add 1.6 percent to your recycling rate if it was 100 percent successful.

I think that in our debate we are losing sight of the goal, which should be source reduction and increased recycling. I've used New Jersey's example. I have been questioned on it and I will still use it.

New Jersey recycles about 38 percent of its municipal waste stream. We did not have a Bottle Bill. We currently recycle about three times the tonnage of glass, as Connecticut, on a per capita basis, without a Bottle Bill, because we attack the whole stream. We look at recycling from the whole stream not as a competitor.

The Bottle Bill has lost popularity. Yes, there are surveys that say everyone supports a Bottle Bill, until it is explained to them that are you aware that you can recycle these materials in a more convenient way?

Then, overwhelmingly, they say, well then, why do we have a Bottle Bill? Litter is simply not an issue when it comes to the Bottle Bill. Bottle Bills address, at best, in some 37 studies performed in 20 states, Bottle Bills address it best, eight and a half percent of the litter stream while the other 91 -- 92 percent is still out there.

Studies also indicate in those same states that comprehensive litter abatement programs are as effective after five years as any Bottle Bill in reducing the number of bottles, beverage containers, as well as litter on the road.

The key thing is, Bottle Bills are expensive. They also cost your consumers 78 cents for every case of material they buy, for no good reason. Economically, they do not pass the environmental sustainability tests and to be environmentally sustainable, one must have limited environmental impact, one must enhance the environment and one must be able to sustain oneself economically as a business.

A Bottle Bill simply cannot do that. It is artificial. Accordingly, I would obviously urge you not to go forward with this and not to loose sight of the fact that what we're trying to do is enhance recycling. I believe that was a bell, but I wasn't sure. But I'll answer any questions you may have.

REP. WIDLITZ: Chairman Williams.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Thank you, and thank you for your testimony. I'm just not sure about some of the claims that you're making. I'm looking at a study done by Freedow and Perry in 1995 and they say that the refuse that's captured under Bottle Bills, through Bottle Bills, while it represents a small percentage of total municipal solid waste, which is what you may be referring to, it represents the fourth largest category of products in packaging in the waste stream and approximately half of all types of litter, nationally.

In addition, there was a recent survey by a group called, Businesses and Environmentalists Allied for Recycling. It came out in 1997, and I'm sorry, the report came out in 2002 and it stated that container deposit systems result in the highest rate of recovery of all recycling systems and in terms of those cost figures, $700 versus $150, they say that -- they call those figures into question but they do say that when one counts unredeemed deposits as a revenue produced by Bottle Bills, the recycling cost per container is more than twice as great in curbside programs as in traditional deposit systems.

So, you know I think there's certainly plenty of room for debate in terms of some of the claims that you've made and how effective Bottle Bill and deposit programs are, some of the literature that I've seen suggests that they are extremely effective, the most effective in terms of recycling and in terms of cost. So, I am not persuaded that this is overkill or an elephant, as you said before.

WAYNE DEFEO: Did you want any kind of response to that at all?

SEN. WILLIAMS: Sure. Sure.

WAYNE DEFEO: Okay. In regarding the efficacy of a Bottle Bill to enhance recycling overall, the bottom line is, according to the EPA's latest surveys on waste stream composition and according to any composition study I've done, and according to the number of bottles and cans I've processed off a conveyor line in my lifetime, and looking at tonnage from counties, very specifically, if I capture 100 percent of every beverage container made of all the materials according to the waste stream composition for municipal solid waste, and I am looking at the MSW Waste Stream, I capture four percent.

If I went after, for example, yard waste, if I want to really have an impact on recycling, yard waste would account for over 13 to 14 percent of the waste stream. On a dollar basis, it's more cost-effective and less per ton to attack a 13 percent component of the waste stream that a four percent component, that's just basic math.

Regarding the price per ton, you'd --

SEN. WILLIAMS: But, if I could interrupt there --

WAYNE DEFEO: You may always, any time you like.

SEN. WILLIAMS: -- you don't take a bag of leaves with you to the beach, you know? You don't take the grass clippings along with you to the local park. What you take are the beverage containers and that's why I'm persuaded that when the surveys show that that's approximately half of what constitutes litter, that makes sense to me because the other -- there are so many different types of refuse as we know and that 100 percent involves a lot of things that never get moved around by people, aren't portable as are the beverage containers.

WAYNE DEFEO: In response to the 50 percent of all litter, I have seen the results of 37 studies in 20 states. I have never seen that number so I question the source of that.

My colleagues have done that research and I just don't -- I have never seen a study, depending on how you measure it, there are lots of ways to measure, but in the most universal means of measuring, I have not seen those results so I can't attest to that.

I have seen the results of what I surveyed in Connecticut, myself, taking a weekend and driving some 300 miles over the past week ago, looking for litter and looking, just doing a quick, anecdotal audit and visual audit with a camera, but I am trained to do this and I'm pretty good at telling what's in the pile when I see it. Plenty of deposit bottles around Connecticut, of all types, have been there for a long time, and in recycling containers, drop-off containers for towns, plenty of deposit bottles and aluminum cans being dropped off for recycling.

Regarding the beach, litter just doesn't show that this is the largest component. Now, on a beach, I can't tell you that that's not so, but there is no comprehensive litter audit that I have ever seen for Connecticut, but I've seen it in many other states.

So, you're right, we certainly -- two good people can debate numbers, however, I have not seen the support of the numbers you are citing, I have seen support and I have looked for support, period, of all numbers, not just to present a side.

SEN. WILLIAMS: Well, I'd be happy to share that with you if you'd -- and I'd be happy to see --

WAYNE DEFEO: Please.

SEN. WILLIAMS: -- what you're citing, beyond the anecdotal.

WAYNE DEFEO: Thank you very much. I'd appreciate that.

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there further questions? Thank you very much for your testimony.

WAYNE DEFEO: Thank you very much.

REP. WIDLITZ: I inadvertently skipped over Mick Schum. I'd like to call him before Kachina. Thank you.

MICK SCHUM: Good afternoon, Representative Widlitz and Senator Williams and the other members of the Environment Committee. My name is Mick Schum and I'm the president of We Recycle, which is a recycling company based here in Connecticut and one of the items that we recycle is used electronics.

I'm here to speak about RHB5375, regarding the recycling of used electronic devices. Overall, I am supportive of this bill, however, what I'd like to do instead of focusing on the issue of electronics and the vast majority of the issue facing our waste stream, I'd rather focus on the obstacles in passing this type of legislation, here in Connecticut.

As dictated by last year, there does seem to be a significant amount of support in this Committee for this legislation and I understand that there may be some concern over the impact that it may have on the state budget.

The generation of used electronics in Connecticut falls into two categories. You have the residential sector and you have the non-residential sector. The non-residential sector is today efficiently served by recycling companies such as ours because non-residents are required by regulation to manage these materials as universal waste, which is a subset of hazardous waste regulations.

Including that portion of the sector in this bill would really double-charging the same entities. In other words, if the State is required to pay into this program for, as the bill is presently structured, they are also paying at the end of life, today.

They have a contract managing used electronic devices as universal waste so they effectively would be double-paying for the same service, therefore, my proposal would be a recommendation to the Committee would be to only look as this as a residential issue.

That is the sector that is severely under -- there's no option, really, for residents today regarding the proper management of electronic devices and I would like to answer any questions that you have that I can be of help in helping this legislation move forward.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you for that testimony and I did appreciate receiving your email on this issue. So, that would certainly save us a fiscal note, a potential fiscal note on this, so what you're saying is any -- like, any corporation or any state agency already is required to recycle electronics under the Universal Waste rule?

MICH SCHUM: That's correct.

REP. WIDLITZ: So, if I -- so, if we eliminated the commercial actual use, or commercial purchase, rather, of electronics, we would avoid double charging and avoid a fiscal note?

MICH SCHUM: That's correct. Therefore, they should not be required to pay into that, into the Program, either if they could do it as a credit at the end of life or at the end of their tax return and so forth, there's a state contract that exists today for the management of used electronic devices and that's a quarter of a million dollar contract, per year, so there would be no need to pay into that double system.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much, that was very helpful. Are there any questions? Thank you again and thanks for waiting for so long to testify.

MICH SCHUM: Thanks for your time.

REP. WIDLITZ: Kachina Walsh Weaver followed by Jim -- Jim --

(Gap in testimony changing from Tape 3B to 4A.)

KACHINA WALSH WEAVER: -- members of the Committee. For the record, my name is Kachina Walsh Weaver. I'm with the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities.

I'm here today to support HB5608, which would eliminate the grant sunset for the Clean Water Funds grants, current statute shows that these grants will sunset as of July 1^st of 2006 and municipalities would be relying entirely on loans out of the Clean Water Fund for their municipal projects.

Local sewer users would be bearing the cost of this change, as they would be paying the lion's share of repayment of the loans.

It is important to continue to protect Connecticut's waterways and help municipalities comply with the state and federal water pollution laws.

CCM sees no fiscal impact for this bill over the next several of years, but it will continue to preserve the state and local partnership that we currently have.

I'm also here to support HB5610, which would allow routine maintenance -- municipalities to conduct routine maintenance without receiving inland wetlands permits.

Currently, municipalities must do routine maintenance on roadways to ensure public health and public safety. The language of this bill, from what we can see, is narrow enough to ensure no abuse of the program and continue to protect our inland and wetlands across the state.

I'm also here to support HB5375, HB5602, SB548, and HB5611.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Are there any questions? Representative Chapin. You finally got a positive comment on your bill. That's a terrible thing to say to him at the end of the time.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you for pointing that out, Madam Chair, I appreciate it. Thank you for your testimony today and I also wanted to thank you for your support of SB548, AN ACT CONCERNING LITTERING FINES. It's interesting that we've been here for so many hours and I think you may be the first person that actually noticed that that bill was on today's Hearing agenda, so thank you very much for that.

KACHINA WALSH WEAVER: Certainly.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Thank you very much.

KACHINA WALSH WEAVER: Thank you. Have a nice afternoon.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Jim Lohr followed by Tim Phelan.

JIM LOHR: Representative Widlitz and Chairman Williams, my name is Jim Lohr. I'm the deputy director of the Carpenters Labor Management Program, which is a coalition of contractors in the Carpenters Union throughout New England.

I'm actually here today to testify for Glenn Marshall who is the president of the Carpenters Local 10, 210, but Glenn couldn't be here. He's recovering from surgery.

I just wanted to read his testimony into the record, which Senator Smith had cited in his appearance earlier today. Good afternoon, Chairman Widlitz, Chairman Williams, members of the Environment Committee. My name is Glenn Marshall and I'm the president of Carpenters Local 210, which represents approximately 2,000 carpenters in Fairfield and Litchfield counties.

I'm here today to testify in favor, with modifications, of HB5611, AN ACT CONCERNING NOTIFICATION TO MUNCIPALITIES OF CONTAMINATION. First, I would like to thank the Committee Chairs for raising this bill that is very important to our members.

I'd also like to thank those members of the Committee and the General Assembly who came to Milford in February to listen for more than four hours to residents and construction workers who were adversely impacted by the contamination at the Milford Power Plant.

And finally, I would like to particularly thank Representative Amann, Senator Smith and Representative Roy for their work on this issue.

I realize this bill is just the starting point in the legislative process to address this issue, but I have to say I was shocked when the original draft failed to mention any notification of workers or residents. After all, hundreds of workers and residents attended and appeared before the Milford hearings in September and February, since it is their lives that have been turned upside down by the pollution at the Milford Power Plant.

Towards that end, I've attached language to my testimony to rectify this oversight. Our modifications would require the DEP Commissioner to notify the OSHA Office having jurisdiction over the property, require the DEP Commissioner to notify the offices of any labor union representing workers on the site, and require the owner of the property to post notice of the contamination in a conspicuous place readily accessible to the public until the pollutants have been remediated.

These changes will significantly improve the original Committee draft. Sadly, no changes in the law or hearings will heal the operating engineer who worked in the Milford Power Plant and became seriously ill.

However, our suggestions, along with the suggestions of Representative Amann and Senator Smith will go a long way towards full disclosure that should be the standard on future projects unlike the secrecy that marked the Milford Power Plant site. Thank you for your time and I would be happy to answer any questions, and you can just see attached, our suggestions in terms of the language changes to the bill. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much for your testimony and for submitting the written suggestions. I have come to them yet in my packet, but I'm sure it's there and that's the purpose of a Public Hearing --

JIM LOHR: Right, exactly.

REP. WIDLITZ: -- to fine tune everything and we really appreciate the --

JIM LOHR: Exactly, and we appreciate you coming to Milford, Representative Widlitz. We know you were down there and we really appreciate those members that were nice enough to take the time to come down. Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there any questions? Okay, thank you. Tim Phelan followed by Brian Freeman.

TIM PHELAN: Good after -- ooh, well, thank you. It's been awhile since I've been here. I didn't think you'd shoo me off that quick. Representative Widlitz, Senator Williams, Representative Chapin, Representative Piscopo and other members of the Environment Committee. Thank you for listening to my testimony today and I know the time is late for all of you so I'll try to be brief.

For the record, my name is Tim Phelan; I'm here on behalf of the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association to testify on HB5375, AN ACT CONCERNING THE RECYCLING OF ELECTRONIC DEVICES.

The Connecticut Retail Merchants Association opposes passage of this bill. CRMA and member companies believe that a state-by-state solution to the issue of recycling of certain computers and TVs, although well intended is the wrong approach.

One reason is simply that products and customers can move from state to state and because of that, a Connecticut-specific bill such as HB5375 would put retailers operating in Connecticut at a competitive disadvantage.

In addition to placing Connecticut retailers at a competitive disadvantage with surrounding states, an advance recovery fee would be extremely unfair to brick and mortar retailers as they try and compete with online retailers and remote sellers.

And finally, until such times as a national solution to this problem can be solved, we believe that the many voluntary programs where all players share responsibility for education and costs is the best approach. I thank you for your time. I said I would be brief and I hope I held to that and be happy to answer any questions you may have.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Do you know if there is any movement on the federal level to address something like this?

TIM PHELAN: I understand from some of our members that there is a bill, similar to this bill HB5375, that's in Congress. I can't say with any certainty that it has any -- the chances of it's advancing in this session of Congress, but I do understand that there is some discussion on the federal level to come up with a national solution.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Do you know if any of our surrounding states have this type of legislation?

TIM PHELAN: The only state that I'm aware of that has something similar to this is California. I know that Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, I have not heard, have similar advance recovery fees legislation pending.

REP. WIDLITZ: I appreciate the input. Sometimes, the states have to initiate actions that eventually the federal government adopts and we seem to be having to do that more and more on many different topics including air pollution, so I would hope that we could work something out to bring this bill forward. Thank you. Are there any questions? Okay, thank you very much.

TIM PHELAN: Okay, thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Brian Freeman followed by Chuck DeBlois, Dubois?

BRIAN FREEMAN: Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, Chairman Williams and members of the Committee. My name is Brian Freeman. I am speaking on behalf of the Independent Connecticut Petroleum Association, ICPA.

I'm also going to shift hats at the end of that statement to speak on behalf of clients of mine who have been helped by and now severely constrained by the Tank Fund.

I'm here to talk about RSB543, in opposition to the new moratorium on applications that that bill would put in place and to urge the Committee to support meaningful changes to restore and protect the Tank Fund. The Committee, it's late in the day, the Committee has heard from over a dozen people on written and oral testimony about the importance of the Fund.

I just wanted to focus my remarks on legal reasons why the proposed moratorium would create more problems and why -- legal reasons why a viable Tank Fund is critical for gasoline marketers in the state.

In brief, to summarize my written testimony, the legal reason is that this Tank Fund is not operating as a program that Connecticut thought up to advance state interest.

This program is directly driven by a federal mandate from federal statute and regulations requiring Tank Fund owners to have financial responsibility for their underground tanks.

Financial responsibility is bureaucratic lingo for a viable means of funds for the very expensive situations that can arise when, God forbid, you have a leak in your own system or as far more likely, if you discover a leak that happened on someone else's watch with no involvement on your part but you're stuck with it as a matter of law because you own the property or you're there.

The federal mandate for financial responsibility requires up to one million dollars per tank. The mechanisms that EPA will allow for that simply boil down to, as we've heard before, the Connecticut Tank Fund is the only viable mechanism for many of the businesses in this state that own or operate underground tanks.

And again, I'll refer you to my written testimony for details as to which statutes and regulations come into play, but the upshot is with a moratorium, a new moratorium being threatened, that creates the prospect for just more problems for the Fund, increasing the backlog and what does that mean, legally?

Then it does three things. One, it increases risk of exposure to enforcement actions by EPA, by Connecticut DEP for not having a viable, financial responsibility tool in place to address a problem that, God forbid, you may find tomorrow.

Again, that's a legal mandate. If the Tank Fund is not there to serve you, there is risk of enforcement. Second, related to that, there's enforcement wholly aside from the Tank Fund for your legal responsibilities to clean up that release tomorrow that you find or, God forbid, that the release you found that happened ten years ago, before you were even at the property but you are legally stuck with.

Third, a new moratorium and further problems with the Tank Fund would just lead to proliferation of more litigation by injured third parties who you, as a tank owner operator, do not have the funds to make whole, that will force them into the courts, force more lawsuits. It's a slow, cumbersome and frustrating process for all involved. With that, my three minutes are up. If you'd -- with the Chair's indulgence if I could just address briefly the other client that I'm here for, aside from ICPA?

REP. WIDLITZ: I think you waited all day to testify so I will allow that. Thank you.

BRIAN FREEMAN: I appreciate it very much. Again, I'll be brief. A client of mine, for several years now, it's actually a couple, they were helped by the Tank Fund and now they're in dire straits because of the problems with the Tank Fund. They invested personal funds to buy a small, commercial property in New Hartford. They -- it was part of substantial career change. They decided to leave what they were doing, invested in some real estate and had a successful venture going and then they, God forbid, found the thing that everyone dreads. They found an old release. The owner, who had caused it on the property years ago, was long since dead. His estate was closed. They had nowhere to turn to. The Tank Fund came through. It was particularly critical because the MTBE and benzene plume threatened a down gradient drinking water well for a multi-family house that was immediately down gradient. The Tank Fund came through. That's the good news, that's the success story.

The second chapter though, is that the problems with the Tank Fund, the backlog and processing their applications for reimbursements so they can pay their consultant, the lack of funds for the Tank Fund to write checks, even when they come to the front of the line, their consultant essentially said, after years, they said, we're in the hole about $70,000 and they said, we just can't continue. They walked off the job. Right now, we have a drinking water well at risk.

We have my clients, who are -- they have not paid me for several years for the record, as well, and I have not pushed that but they have a drinking water well at risk. Again, that just leads to all the problems I said before. Litigation with no end, enforcement, et cetera, et cetera.

A viable Tank Fund is critical for the state of Connecticut businesses, residents and the environment, and thank you very much for the additional time.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much. Okay, Chuck followed by Sandy Breslin and Grace Nome. Is Chuck here? Okay, Sandy Breslin.

SANDY BRESLIN: Chairman Widlitz, Chairman Williams, members of the Committee. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you this afternoon. My name is Sandy Breslin. I'm director of Governmental Affairs for Audubon, Connecticut, a part of the National Audubon Society and I'm here today to speak in support of SB547, AN ACT CONCERNING FINES FOR BANNED INVASIVE PLANTS, HB5614, AN ACT BANNING THE SALE OF INVASIVE PLANTS.

We strongly support both of those bills, which seek to control the spread of harmful invasive plants in Connecticut. I have attached a fact sheet to my testimony that will give you some more details, some statistics about the damage from invasive plants and also, talks a little bit about the experience that Audubon is having on its 15 sanctuaries across Connecticut.

Here, we have the newly formed Invasive Plants Council that you supported last year and they have made great strides in identifying and listing plants that are invasive or potentially invasive but we strongly support your move to take the next step and recommend some plants for banning.

There are a number of ways to try and control invasive plants but none is more effective, certainly none is more cost-effective than prevention and that's what a ban is.

It would help us to stop new invasives from coming in to the state and also help us to halt the spread of already existing invasives, so we applaud you for your action on this.

I'd also like to speak in opposition to HB5610, AN ACT CONCERNING MUNICIPAL EXEMPTIONS FROM INLAND WETLANDS PERMITS. You also have some written testimony from the Connecticut Fund for the Environment from the Rivers Alliance and from the Connecticut Association of Conservation Inland Wetlands Commissions of whom none could be here today but who are also testifying in opposition to this bill.

Audubon believes that this would be -- is an unnecessary exemption and the -- we are concerned about the precedent of creating exemptions to the Wetlands Act.

I think I would just echo some of the comments made earlier by Mr. Aurelia that there are ways to handle this issue, hopefully, that are administrative and wouldn't require a change onto the Act. So, I will stop and if there are questions, I'm happy to answer any.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. Thank you for waiting all afternoon to testify.

SANDY BRESLIN: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Are there any questions, comments? Representative Chapin.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you, Madam Chair and thank you, Sandy, for your testimony. As you know, this is one reason we have the Public Hearings is so we can pick apart the proposed bills and look for reasonable solutions and I look forward to doing that with you in the future.

SANDY BRESLIN: Thank you. I do, too.

REP. CHAPIN: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: Other comments? Thank you. Grace Nome is the last person I have to sign up unless I skipped over somebody. Last, but not least.

GRACE NOME: I'm Grace Nome and I represent the Connecticut Food Association, which is approximately 80 percent of the retail food business in the state.

Naturally, I'm here in opposition to expansion of the Bottle law. I didn't bring up a whole bunch of grocers this year. Anyone who wishes all the reports we did on the Bottle law, I'm bring them to you but almost everybody here, last year, got the whole -- all the Committee reports and everything.

I am definitely for recycling and I don't think that's the question, here. Where I come from, the question is that dirty bottles don't belong in grocery stores near food and I was even shocked to hear Representative Mushinsky say to me, I wish she was sitting here now, Grace, I think I finally agree with one of your statements. I agree. I don't believe the bottles belong in the grocery stores.

So, I thought I'd pass out when I heard that but I think the point is, they're dirty. It's -- we cannot handle -- we've learned to handle what we have. When new stores are built, they built them outside. We've lots of troubles with the vending machines but you learn to do what you have to do in life, but to expand the law it's millions of bottles. There's just so many bottles and especially if everybody says, well, they're just water.

Water has become like this -- I don't think if anyone told me 20 years ago I'd be spending a dollar on a bottle of water, I would have believed them, but water's become an extraordinarily popular thing and people are buying it and it's selling like crazy. It's just -- it's just not workable for our stores anymore.

The cost involved would be terrible. The sanitation is terrible. We even get, believe it or not, hypodermic needles in the cans of these -- when they go into the machines and even when they crush them, sometimes these needles -- like one little kid got stuck. This is just not a place with food. It's just not.

You have no conception of what people bring back their bottles like. I wash all of mine but most people don't. So, I'm begging you not to pursue expansion of the Bottle law. Hopefully, maybe there's a way of us coming up with a different kind of a solution.

I'm happy to work to that goal, all the time, every day. I'm happy to try to come up with other methods, maybe, of trying to achieve your goal and of course, the goal should be for us to be able to recycle in the state and you've got to remember when this Bottle Bill first came in, you know, we didn't have sort separation even at the doorstep. I mean, we have that.

I'm amazed at how many bottles I even have in my orange container every week. It's good and they -- people tell me sometimes, even the deposit cans go into those recycling bins but you know, somebody's getting a nickel somewhere, right?

But anyway, I really would appreciate this Committee not pursuing expansion of the law and I thank you and I just want to mention two other bills that we oppose and those are the two bills on the invasive plants, HB5614 and SB547, and the only reason the opposition is there is, we work very, very hard to get together a committee, an Invasive Plants Council, that was very difficult to do.

I mean, the procedure, Representative, you know Representative Widlitz, how long it took just to get those minds together. They're all great minds. They just come from different walks of life, which is probably what makes the Council so good and the Council has been finally starting to work together very nicely, coming up with plants that they feel are -- that could go on the list for banning.

They brought in experts and they don't want to ban something until they make sure in our economy that it doesn't have a huge negative impact economically, this year, and so, they're thinking out things in a very thoughtful process and I'm quite pleased with what they're doing and I think if we just give them a chance, I think they'll resolve many of these problems because we all have the same -- I think we really do all have the same goals. So, I thank you very much, and if you have any questions?

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Grace. Excuse me, thank you Grace and I see that the Invasive Plants Council is meeting again on Thursday?

GRACE NOME: Yes.

REP. WIDLITZ: We had hoped -- I don't know if you heard the earlier discussion on this. We had hoped that the agreement that we had last year, we would be able to move forward with the list of plants to be banned this year but we hope you can still keep working towards some sort of presentation to us before the end of the Session that we can realistically go forward with.

We do appreciate how hard the Council is working. I've sat in on a couple of the meetings just for a short time and the expertise that is there is really unbelievable, all --

GRACE NOME: It's really good.

REP. WIDLITZ: -- it's terrific, so --

GRACE NOME: I've learned a lot just sitting there, listening, you know? But, I think you will come to that. I think they will come to it. I think it's just a matter of letting them work and I almost think it's important to let them work because things don't just stop here, you know?

Today a plant's invasive, you may not see one and tomorrow there's a plant that you haven't heard of that becomes invasive. Different areas, it's invasive. In another area, it's not.

Different parts of the country, we have a plant that might not be invasive, but all yet in Connecticut it might be, and so, these people seem to have this enormous knowledge of this, which I don't and I don't pretend to, so hopefully, they're going to do their work and we're going to see good end results.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you, Grace. Are there questions? Comments? Okay, thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to testify who is -- Eric, did I skip over you?

ERIC BROWN: No, you didn't.

REP. WIDLITZ: Oh, okay, that's good.

ERIC BROWN: Madam Chairman, I'm just procrastinating, as usual. I apologize. I'll be very brief. I did submit much to the disgust of the staff, about 15 minutes ago, testimony on HB5375, with some concerns and some suggestions for that bill.

The only thing I'll point out before you now is, just to echo the comments that were made earlier about businesses currently being obligated to pay for the disposal of these items under the Universal Waste Rule and so, we would hope that you could find some way to restructure the bill a little bit to get them out of it, whether it's an exemption or some other means, that would be terrific.

I'm not close to the construction of this bill, but we did list some other ideas you might want to consider in our testimony. With that, I apologize again for holding you up, and sign off there.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you. That you waited all afternoon for the shortest testimony --

ERIC BROWN: Actually, I'm waiting all afternoon to talk with your Co-Chairman. So, I figured I might as well testify.

REP. WIDLITZ: Thank you very much.

ERIC BROWN: Thank you.

REP. WIDLITZ: We'll work on that to try to -- actually that helps us with the fiscal note as well, so that's terrific. Anyone else? Okay, thank you everybody. Hearing's adjourned.

(Whereupon the Public Hearing was adjourned.)