Found 34 Results
VT
Act 250 and Section 248 Response Coordination
The review of Section 248 and Act 250 permit applications requires input from various programs throughout the Agency. The existing process for soliciting comments on current applications involves a weekly email to over 200 staff. The process often does not receive prompt responses to these requests and requires Office of Planning and Policy (OPP) staff to manually solicit comments for certain projects, leading to additional time spent to ensure completeness. The current minimum timeframe for this process is a 21-day turnaround, but can be longer depending on the type of application.
VT
Act 250 Application Processing
The Act 250 permit process is 45 years old, and happens across 9 districts throughout the state. The process and tools currently in use are dated and are applied inconsistently across the districts. Further, budgets are shrinking and staff are retiring, which means the same work will need to be done moving forward with fewer resources and less institutional knowledge. This project sought to standardize the Act 250 application process and identify efficiencies for the applicant and staff.
VT
Construction Procurement
The Facilities Engineering Division, through the State Revolving Fund, provides support and funding for drinking water and pollution construction projects. They are involved in putting contracts out to bid, award, execution of the contract, change orders, and site visits through the end of the warranty period. Very little written documentation of the construction procurement process existed. With a small staff, there were significant questions related to which tasks were critical and which were discretionary given a significant amount of overtime hours being logged.
VT
Drinking Water and Clean Water Audits
Drinking Water and Clean Water Audits
VT
Facility Information Sharing
Facility Information Sharing
VT
February 2014: Drinking Water & Pollution Control Project Audits
The Facilities Engineering Division administers the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds in addition to state and federal grants for the upgrade of drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater infrastructure statewide. A memorandum of understanding with the Vermont Municipal Bond Bank, who co-administers the funds, requires certification that final project costs have been audited. With a backlog of ~1100 accounts to audit, and a recognition that the number of new loans awarded was outpacing the number of audits that could be completed each year by the auditor, the program saw a need to review current practices, identify opportunities for improvement, and design a more efficient audit process.
VT
February 2014: Petroleum Cleanup Fund
The Petroleum Cleanup Fund provides funding for the cleanup of leaks from above and below ground storage tanks. Roughly $5 million is dispersed annually through a reimbursement process. The lead-time to issue reimbursement checks to customers (tank owners and their consultants) was too long (only 31% of reimbursements were made within 30 days). An innovative approach was needed to speed up the reimbursement process.
VT
February 2014: Wetlands Permitting
The Vermont Wetlands Program is responsible for identifying and protecting wetlands and the functions and values they provide. The goal of the Wetlands Program is to achieve no net loss of significant wetlands or wetland function. This goal is mainly achieved by assisting the Vermont public and professional community in avoiding impacts to wetlands and wetland buffers through personal contact with District Wetland Ecologists. Due to a cumbersome process and database system, Wetlands staff were spending a large portion of time on redundant, non-value added activities.
VT
Financial Monitoring and Compliance
Both the Administration and Innovation Division’s Financial Operations group and the Facilities Engineering Division’s Financial Management section have responsibilities for the monitoring, compliance and auditing of State and Federally funded grants, contracts, and loans. There are numerous requirements associated with these funding sources and unfortunately there is uncertainty in regards to where they do and don’t apply, where they are being applied multiple times, where they are not being applied and should be, and where they are not required and are being applied. As a result of this uncertainty, the Department has been subject to a number of audit findings over the course of the past few years which has had financial consequences for the Department. Given that the Financial Operations group has been expanding their role in monitoring of state and federal grants for the Department, and recent retirements have occurred in the Facilities Engineering Division, this appeared to be a good opportunity to examine overlap in the two programs.
VT
Grants and Contracts
Grants and Contracts
VT
July 2014: DEC Incident Tracking
Thousands of complaints regarding alleged environmental violations are received by the Department each year through various means. A database system exists to enter, track and manage those complaints as they move through the referral process. There was a need to better understand how the Department-wide incident tracking system was performing and being used by DEC staff and what improvements were needed to increase usage.
VT
July 2015: ECO AmeriCorps
In June, 2015 Vermont DEC received funding to implement a statewide AmeriCorps program. The program aims to place between 20-25 AmeriCorps members in water quality focused positions with a variety of non-profit and governmental entities through the state. DEC serves as program coordinator and provides administrative and technical support to members and sponsors. Given that this was an entirely new program for DEC, there was an opportunity to build it from the ground up using Lean principles and tools.
VT
July 2015: Groundwater Reclassification
According to Chapter 12 of the Environmental Protection Rules, all groundwater is considered Class III unless otherwise reclassified by the Secretary of ANR. The Drinking Water and Groundwater Protection Division in coordination with the Groundwater Coordinating Committee is responsible for recommending groundwater classifications or reclassifications to the Secretary. Fewer than a dozen sites have been reclassified as Class IV in the past 20-25 years and reclassifications, on average, take 1-2 years. The current reclassification process lacked clarity and often led to improper submittal of information and materials, especially at the petition phases. Also, because the roles and responsibilities of involved parties were not well defined, a number of re-do loops occurred. Under a new draft Groundwater Rule, hundreds of sites may need to be reclassified within a 5-year time frame. Given this, there was a definite need to streamline and improve the process.
VT
July 2015: Licensing and Certification (L&C)
The Department maintains roughly 8 certification/licensing programs across a wide range of media. These are managed with several data management technologies including ASP.NET, Clarion, and Excel. Because these are distinct solutions that are not integrated, a single environmental professional could exist in multiple databases, renew their license through multiple processes, and pay fees multiple times to the department each year. The manual nature of the process increases the likelihood of data entry errors and causes significant delays. It also means that the public is not easily able to search for information online. There was an opportunity to address these issues by thinking of L&C at a department level.
VT
Land Acquisition
Acquisition of land by ANR for recreational and conservation purposes is guided by a 1999 Land Conservation Plan and done through fee simple purchase of property, purchase of interests (conservation easements), and acceptance of donations. In general, the acquisition process has many steps and can be cumbersome, is often both time-sensitive while taking a significant amount of time, lacks transparency, and often requires significant legal and survey resources. Additionally, the acquisition process is not keeping up with the LARC process leading to a significant backlog of projects. There is a backlog of several dozen approved acquisitions totaling approximately $12 million. Furthermore, there are other ANR teams or committees that often duplicate LARC’s review of proposed acquisition projects. As such, an opportunity existed to streamline the process and the role of LARC, reduce unnecessary redundancy, explore opportunities for resources sharing, and improve the timeliness of acquisitions.
VT
March 2015: Construction Procurement
March 2015: Construction Procurement
VT
March 2015: Identification & Prioritization of Water Pollution Restoration …
The Watershed Management Division (WSMD) plays a strong role in the identification, prioritization, and funding of remediation projects. Finding and funding these projects is critical to sediment and nutrient pollution reduction efforts. Unfortunately, the most important and cost-effective projects are not always the ones selected due to inconsistencies in the tactical basin planning process and funding criteria. In light of new requirements associated with Act 64, WSMD sought to improve upon their process and better align prioritization and funding mechanisms for the greatest benefit.
VT
March 2015: VTRANS-ANR Title 19
Title 19 requires VTrans to consult with ANR on instream projects like culvert replacements, road embankments, and other instream work. Currently, Title 19 projects follow two VTrans pathways: a Maintenance and Operations Bureau (MOB Districts) pathway and a Project Delivery Bureau (PDB) pathway. DEC River Management Engineers were involved in each pathway to varying degrees, in some cases more than necessary. There was a desire to standardize and clarify both pathways, leverage technology for improved efficiencies, improve tracking of Title 19 projects at the District level, and reduce re-do loops.
VT
May 2014: Grants and Contracts
The Administration and Innovation Division provides oversight over granting and contracting activities for the Department. Roughly 225 grants and contracts are approved on an annual basis. In the existing system, various duties associated with those grants and contracts were performed by over 60 different staff spread across the Department with one person responsible for execution and payment. The process was mostly paper and involved many levels of approval. In extreme cases, agreements could take over a year to be executed.
VT
May 2014: Source Protection Permits
May 2014: Source Protection Permits
VT
May 2014: Stormwater General Permit
The Vermont Stormwater Management Program provides regulatory oversight and technical assistance to ensure proper design and construction of stormwater treatment and control practices necessary to minimize the adverse impacts of stormwater runoff to surface waters. This is done primarily through program staff reviewing and issuing a variety of Stormwater permits. The ability to effectively acquire and manage permit and project information is crucial to the success of program operations. Roughly 75% of applications received were administratively and technically incomplete. In addition, application and project information was manually entered into a database multiple times in multiple places. Furthermore, a large percentage of projects were delinquent on inspections, re-certifications, fees, and permit renewal requirements. The program saw a need to make some significant improvements to their process
VT
Monitoring Assessment Planning Program & Ecosystem Restoration Program: …
Monitoring Assessment Planning Program & Ecosystem Restoration Program: Find and Fund Project
VT
October 2014: Air Quality & Climate Division Facility Information Sharing
The Air Quality and Climate Division (AQCD) monitors air quality and air pollution sources, proposes regulations to improve existing air quality, ensures compliance with the regulations, and issues permits to control pollution from sources of air contaminants across the state. Three sections of AQCD manage facility data for 200+ common facilities. This information was stored in program specific databases which makes finding the relevant information about a particular facility difficult and time consuming.
VT
October 2014: Public Notice
The Department currently has public notice processes for 85 different permits. Nearly all have unique federal or state-required processes that result in inconsistent notice and comment periods for even permits that address the same project. This can cause an applicant and the public to be confused as to how to effectively participate in the process. Additionally, the inconsistent requirements increase DEC costs and create administrative inefficiency i.e. staff is required to provide multiple/different notice types and may be required to attend multiple public informational meetings for a project.
VT
October 2014: Receipts Processing
In 2014, the Department received over $11 million in receipts including payments for numerous fees and registrations, loan repayments, enforcement fines and penalties, laboratory sampling billings, and court ordered settlements. In most cases, divisions and their respective programs received those receipts (mainly in the form of checks) directly from the U.S. mail to their specific division/program for initial processing and handling. With a lack of standard operating procedures, this led to some inconsistency between programs and caused delays in processing time.