Senate panel reviews draft amendment to S.328; removes default distance for municipal water area and adds farmworker housing update

The Senate Natural Resources & Energy Committee reviewed draft 3.2 of an amendment to S.328 on March 20, a proposal that would change how the statute defines areas served by municipal water and sewer systems and add a required update on farmworker housing.

Legislative counsel summarized the first change as removing an initial default-distance provision from the statutory definition and instead allowing a municipality (or fire district) to establish the area served by municipal water or sewer by ordinance or local law. Counsel said the alteration is intended to avoid a one-size-fits-all feet-based default (for example, 300 to 2,000 feet) that could produce inappropriate boundaries across different landscape and municipal contexts.

The amendment also explicitly adds fire districts to the list of entities whose infrastructure can delimit service areas and retains existing exclusions (flood hazard zones, river corridors, shorelands, and resource-protection overlay districts).

In a related presentation, a representative of the Mount Pleasant Conservation Board updated the committee on a farmworker housing program created after a 2020 study. He described two program elements: a repair loan up to $30,000 (forgivable over 10 years in many cases) and a replacement loan up to $120,000 (with a portion described as grant/assistance). The board representative said the program had served about 284 workers in the repair program and roughly 30 in replacement projects; the 2021 needs assessment estimated the need at about 600 units or workers.

Committee members discussed the practical effects of striking the feet-based default, including concerns about repeated remapping for municipalities if statutory distances change in future years. The chair suggested asking municipalities to define served areas because local governments commonly hold the best knowledge of capacity and landscape.

What happens next: legislative counsel said she would circulate the draft and the committee planned a potential straw poll if no substantive objections arise. The chair indicated the committee would forward the draft to economic development staff for further review.