The Vermont House on the floor concurred in the Senate's proposal of amendment to House Bill 484, a broad miscellaneous agriculture bill, adopting a further House amendment and sending the measure immediately to the Senate.

The bill packages a number of agriculture- and environment-related provisions. Key changes approved by the House include a $50 increase in the annual product fee that pesticide sellers pay (raising the fee from $200 to $250 per product), a directive for the Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets to study options for reimbursing solid waste management entities with a report due by Dec. 15, 2025, and an expansion of the state's paint extended-producer-responsibility (EPR) program to cover all paint products including aerosol coatings and related products.

Other provisions the chamber approved would allow the Rutland County Fair to obtain a three-acre stormwater permit without paying a stormwater impact fee or completing an offset for phosphorus reductions that the site cannot complete because of physical constraints, and they adjusted effective dates for portions of the act.

Members also discussed provisions specific to the Ryegate biomass power plant in Caledonia County. The bill amends the statute that governs the plant's contract milestones and moves several deadlines out by one year to accommodate new ownership and a revised equipment plan after tariffs and canceled sales made the plant's original upgrade strategy infeasible. The plant, described on the floor as providing roughly 3% of the state's electricity and supporting local logging markets, had been required in earlier legislation to increase efficiency by 50 percent; the amended language postpones several vendor-contracting and certification deadlines by one year to allow the new owner to use American-made equipment and new approaches to capture and reuse escaping heat.

Committees reported the changes by straw poll votes: the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency and Forestry Committee reported supporting the further amendments on a 6-0-2 straw poll; the Environment Committee reported two separate straw poll approvals related to pesticide and EPR provisions. On final action the House voted'the "ayes do have it"'to concur with the Senate proposal as amended and then voted to suspend the rules to message the action to the Senate forthwith.

The bill contains many cross-cutting technical and effective-date provisions; the House's action was procedural concurrence with the Senate proposal plus the additional House amendment.

Members involved in the floor presentation included Representative Nelson (member from Derby), the Member from Randolph (floor reporter on several sections), and the Member from Manchester (floor reporter on the Ryegate provisions).