Michelle Monroe, policy director at the Vermont Association of Conservation Districts (VACD), told the House Agriculture, Food Resiliency, & Forestry Committee that staffing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has dropped dramatically, slowing flood mitigation, wetlands work and technical assistance to farmers.

"We are looking at NRCS numbers in the low sixties," Monroe said, characterizing the change as "almost a 50% cut" from the more than 100 NRCS employees the state had earlier in 2025. She credited the previous state conservationist for staffing gains but said the combination of deferred-resignation programs and reduction-in-force actions left key engineering and planning posts vacant.

That loss of engineers and specialized staff has practical consequences, Monroe said: emergency watershed projects from the 2023–24 floods required rapid engineering support at roughly 150 sites, and the office lost institutional expertise when senior staff retired. Districts and VACD have tried to plug gaps by hiring a shared engineer in Rutland, funding temporary positions with state money and recruiting a GIS specialist to improve field-data mapping and reduce manual entry.

"We've hired a GIS specialist," Monroe said, noting the person started Nov. 3 and will provide statewide training through the Vermont Ag Water Quality Partnership. The position aims to restore mapping and field-data work that helps projects move from application to contract more efficiently.

Monroe also described losses among program assistants and conservation planners. She said NRCS program assistants statewide fell from nine to two during the reductions, with four additional assistants employed by the Agency of Conservation Districts (ACD) remaining in place; combined, that represents a substantial increase in workload for the remaining staff.

On wetlands, Monroe said NRCS had roughly one wetlands staffer for much of 2025 while wetlands funding was slated to rise substantially in FY26, creating a capacity mismatch that will slow delivery of those projects. She said districts do critical nutrient-management planning and outreach but cannot perform functions that remain NRCS responsibilities — for example, ranking applications and making final funding decisions.

Monroe presented a planning-level estimate for state support to stabilize district staffing and add engineering and conservation-planning capacity. "We are looking at about $2,000,000 to fund the staff at VACD and at the districts for FY27," she said, describing the figure as an internal estimate to replace lost federal capacity and shore up short-term technical assistance.

Marlene, a Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation staffer who oversees a recent Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) grant, said pulling the RCPP financial assistance created an acute gap: about 140 applications were left stranded when federal financial assistance was removed. "Redstart is going to be losing two people as a result of it," she said of a local forestry partner, and DEC has filed an appeal of the decision.

Monroe urged lawmakers to consider targeted state funding to preserve planning capacity and short-term staff so that eligible conservation and flood‑resilience projects can move forward while federal hiring and appeals are resolved.

The committee plans to hear later today from Agency of Agriculture staff about specific projects and possible state funding responses.