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.
Entergy spent $58 million from the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund in the first year after the Vernon nuclear plant's shutdown, the company disclosed.
Overall, with investment income and trust administrative expenses figured in, the fund decreased by about $69 million in 2015 - from $664.56 million to $595.4 million at year's end.
Administrators said the new figures show that Entergy is in compliance with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and is on track financially in the early stages of Vermont Yankee's decommissioning.
“The good news is, we're still well above the NRC required minimum balance for the trust,” said Joe Lynch, Entergy Vermont Yankee's government affairs manager. “And we are under budget, overall.”...
When groundwater is collected at Vermont Yankee, there are two sets of eyes - Entergy's and the state's - scrutinizing the samples for pollutants. The question, though, is whether that arrangement should continue now that the plant no longer produces power. And some say it's a high-stakes debate, given...
It's been more than two years since Vermont, in the midst of an opiate crisis, began distributing free doses of the overdose-reversal drug naloxone. And recently released state statistics back up what Gov. Peter Shumlin declared in his Jan. 21 budget speech: Naloxone, also known under the brand name...
This town's Old Brick Church is nearly 200 years old, and a group of volunteers has plans to restore its former status as an important community center. But first, they've got to stabilize a building so deteriorated that the public has been barred from entering. A new, $20,000 state historic preservation grant - one of a dozen such grants announced by the Vermont Division of Historic Preservation - will help move the town and its Athens Meeting House Committee toward...
Route 142, the two-lane highway that traverses Vernon from north to south, is, by most standards, not a busy road - especially since there are far fewer employees traveling to the shutdown Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. But some say building an information superhighway along this route could be the key to this town's future. For nearly a year, a group of residents has been investigating the possibility of creating a town-owned fiber optic network that could bring lightning-fast Internet speeds...
A group of nonresident taxpayers - i.e., those who own second homes - want a bigger say in whether Vermont's largest wind-turbine project moves forward. It seems clear that those property owners, under Vermont law, are not entitled to participate in a legally binding vote because they do not technically live in Grafton. But some argue that all taxpayers - whether residents or nonresidents - should be able to participate in some sort of referendum on the proposed project. The...
For 50 years, Rescue Inc. has lived up to its name as a provider of emergency services in southeastern Vermont. These days, though, Rescue itself is in urgent need of some relief. Windham County legislators gathered on Jan. 18 at the ambulance service's Brattleboro headquarters to get the latest on what Operations Chief Drew Hazelton is calling a “financial crisis.” There are increasing demands for complex medical services, and the state's Medicaid reimbursement rates - which haven't changed since 2008...
There are two clear conclusions from a new state assessment of four major southeastern Vermont watersheds. First, the basin that includes the West, Williams, Saxtons, and lower Connecticut rivers is rich with recreational opportunity and biological diversity-including two federally endangered mussel species. But the region also has many problems, including waterway impairments related to bacteria, sedimentation, nutrient pollution, and temperature. The last problem is particularly acute, as the report notes “some of the highest number of miles of temperature impacts...
