Waste management director Matt Chapman urges keeping PCB testing program, tying it to school master planning

Matt Chapman, director of the Waste Management Prevention Division, told the Senate Education Committee that his complete‑strike draft of H.542 would preserve a state PCB testing program for schools but reframe when and how testing is done by embedding it in school facilities master planning.

“This just to give a little context … [we] put most of the positive requirements into law so that people can find them and use them,” Chapman said when he introduced the January 23 draft. He said the draft removes the fixed July 27 testing deadline and allows districts to pursue investigations as part of the master‑planning process or voluntarily at other times.

Chapman outlined a tiered approach to managing PCB findings. For concentrations at or below the school action level, districts would implement a PCB management plan — measures such as wet‑cleaning dust, ensuring HVAC maintenance, and, where appropriate, installing carbon canisters. For exceedances above the immediate action level, the statute would direct mitigation measures and retesting; if concentrations remain high, removal or repairs would follow so classrooms are not used while unsafe. “We’re not going to let people be in classrooms that are just unsafe,” Chapman said.

The draft also creates a special fund to reimburse schools for work done under the statute and to receive recovered litigation proceeds; Chapman emphasized that the fund currently contains no appropriation and therefore would not yet cover widespread remediation without future legislative funding. He described the special fund as a mechanism that, if funded, would allow emergency spending between sessions and later replenishment through the budget process.

Committee members pressed Chapman on how his draft differs from the House‑passed version of H.542. Several members said the House bill effectively pauses the statewide testing program until the Legislature provides money to resume it, while Chapman’s draft would keep the program in law and orient testing around the facilities planning timeline. A committee member asked for a side‑by‑side comparison so the panel could see line‑by‑line differences and decide whether to extend, eliminate, or retain the statutory testing deadline.

Members raised two recurring concerns: first, master planning is voluntary and many districts do not undergo the state master‑planning process because state school construction aid has been largely unfunded; second, without explicit priority points or dedicated funds for PCB work, districts have little incentive to add testing to planning or bond proposals. Multiple speakers noted that a Phase I environmental assessment that recognizes PCBs as a hazardous‑material condition will trigger remediation obligations when districts pursue bank or bond financing, but the timing will be uneven across districts.

On the question of health assessment language included in the House bill, Chapman and members said the health department has reviewed available literature but may not be able to answer every question posed in the House study language for Vermont’s small population; Chapman offered to coordinate more workable study language with the department.

The committee agreed to produce a side‑by‑side comparison of the House and Chapman drafts and to take the item up again on Monday, with additional attendance expected in followup sessions. No formal vote or motion occurred during the meeting. The committee also requested clarifications about funding, priority scoring in school construction applications, and the mechanics of the proposed special fund before deciding whether to adopt the strike‑all language.