Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Keeping your community covered. We're committed to producing high-quality, fact-based news and information that gives you the facts in this community we call home. If our work has helped you stay informed, take action, or feel more connected to Windham County – please give now to help us reach our goal of raising $150,000 by December 31st.
Vermont Yankee's plan to send radioactive wastewater cross-country to Idaho “will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment,” federal regulators have decided.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn't yet given the official green light for 200,000 gallons of water to be trucked from the Vernon plant to US Ecology's disposal facility near Grand View, Idaho.
But the NRC's environmental findings, announced April 3, show that the federal agency is now comfortable with Entergy's assurances that the shipments wouldn't pose radiological or nonradiological problems.
“Our evaluations show there would be minimal risk from the shipment and disposal of the water,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.
When Brandy Cheney tries to convince kids to stay away from opiates, she has a secret weapon: Brutal honesty. Cheney, a recovery coach and youth advocate at Turning Point in Springfield, offers her own story of addiction, arrest, and recovery to students as young as 8 years old. Like...
State officials are allowing two Native American tribes to get involved in the proposed sale of Vermont Yankee. The Vermont Public Service board has ruled that both the Elnu Abenaki and Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi can act as “intervenors” in the state's review of the plant's purchase by NorthStar...
Marlboro College's undergraduate and graduate campuses are only about a dozen miles apart. But when college President Kevin Quigley was interviewing for that job in early 2015, he noticed a much greater divide. “It was quite striking to me to think of two programs, part of the same institution, but there seemed to be this enormous cultural gap,” Quigley recalled. Marlboro administrators hope that's about to change, as the two campuses are scheduled to officially unite this weekend. They say...
As commercial properties go, the former Vermont State Police Brattleboro barracks is modestly proportioned: The one-story building sits on less than an acre of land. But state officials are hoping the property's location - on busy Route 9, at the western gateway to Brattleboro - will help them find a buyer. Eight months after the barracks closed as part of a state police consolidation in Windham County, the state is marketing the property. And officials haven't set a minimum asking...
An auto parts maker denies that its staffers lost millions of dollars in what federal regulators have called a “fundamentally flawed” transition to employee ownership six years ago. Sonnax Industries - along with two administrators and a financial adviser - filed responses on March 24 to a December U.S. Department of Labor suit that alleges violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The defendants want a judge to dismiss the government's complaint. And they are issuing near-blanket denials of...
A private equity firm has finalized its acquisition of Sovernet Communications, a Bellows Falls company that maintains a fiber optic network stretching across Vermont and New York. The sale to Oak Hill Capital Partners means that, in the not-too-distant future, the name “Sovernet” will cease to exist. That's because Sovernet is merging with Albany, N.Y.-based FirstLight Fiber, an Oak Hill subsidiary. But administrators with all three companies portrayed the changes as a step forward, saying customers will benefit from a...
A key state agency has signed off on the sale of 13 hydroelectric stations to a Boston company. The Vermont Department of Public Service - which represents the public interest in energy matters - has approved a deal pledging to support Great River Hydro's proposed purchase of TransCanada's dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers. Jim Porter, director of the department's Public Advocacy Division, said the agreement came after a thorough review of the sale and after negotiation with Great...
