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.
It should come as no surprise that energy was a hot topic at a Democratic gubernatorial forum here on June 6.
The debate came just hours after Gov. Peter Shumlin vetoed a bill concerning renewable energy project siting. And the event was held a short drive from the site of a controversial, 28-turbine wind-power proposal in the towns of Windham and Grafton.
On June 2 at a Boston hotel, a team of officials and experts spent hours dissecting a vexing question: What's the best way to find a new home for the nation's nuclear waste? The inquiry is vitally important for Windham County and the town of Vernon, where Vermont Yankee's...
A large-scale - and specially legislated - solar array atop Brattleboro's old landfill is supposed to bring big financial benefits to 19 towns. But progress on the 5-megawatt project has stalled, and landowner Windham Solid Waste Management District (WSWMD) is talking with solar companies to formulate a “plan B”
State regulators have rejected an anti-nuclear group's last-minute objections to spent fuel plans at Vermont Yankee. The state Public Service Board still is considering Entergy's plans to build a new storage facility for radioactive spent fuel at the Vernon plant. But in an order issued June 1, the board declined to admit new evidence offered by New England Coalition in the case. The Brattleboro-based coalition had asked the Public Service Board to consider information about the proposed fuel facility's visibility...
There has been much debate about how Vermont Yankee administrators are using the plant's decommissioning trust fund. As it turns out, the federal government has been taking its share of that same pot of money. In response to an information request from the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VNDCAP), Entergy administrators have disclosed that they paid $34 million in federal trust fund taxes over a 10-year period. Those tax payments - the result of a 20 percent federal levy...
The planned “reinvention” of downtown Brattleboro's Harmony Place isn't an economic development project in the traditional sense: It won't directly create or retain jobs, and it doesn't carry a big price tag or occupy much land. But the project - which includes a park and performance stage - is attracting attention despite its relatively small size. That's partly because Harmony Place will serve as an exclamation point to the $23.6 million redevelopment of Brooks House, the downtown landmark ravaged by...
Since late 2013, Vermont residents have had access to free doses of naloxone, a drug that can reverse the deadly effects of an opiate overdose. But the state's biggest users of naloxone - its ambulance services - have had to pay out of pocket for the increasingly costly drug. That's about to change: A new allocation in the state Health Department's budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 will fund distribution of free naloxone - also known under the...
Vermont Yankee's property value has plummeted by almost 70 percent, according to a tax deal that has been approved by the Vernon Selectboard and the state. The six-year tax-stabilization contract sets the shut-down nuclear plant's value at $78 million, down from a $250 million valuation that had been in effect. The change affects the town and state differently, but the end result will be the same - a loss of millions of dollars in Vermont Yankee tax revenue over the...
