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 administrators are staunchly defending their plan for storing Vermont Yankee's spent nuclear fuel, saying relocating the storage facility would take years and could cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Detractors worry that the location of Entergy's dry cask storage facilities will hinder decommissioning and might dramatically raise the cost of cleanup at the Vernon plant.
More than an hour of debate on Dec. 10 in Brattleboro further exposed the deep divide between those factions, as the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VNDCAP) was unable to come to consensus and take an official position on the fuel-storage issue.
Panel members will try again next month, with some saying it's a critical debate given the fact that spent fuel will be staying in Vernon for several decades – and maybe much longer.
The creation of new federal regulations for cleaning up nuclear power plants is supposed to address a common complaint – that the decommissioning process doesn't allow for meaningful public participation. But even as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gets started on drafting those rules, there is new controversy regarding...
A primary goal of Act 46, Vermont's new education-governance law, is to “provide substantial equity in the quality and variety of educational opportunities statewide.” But the principal at one Windham County school said she believes the statute may do the opposite. Dorinne Dorfman, who leads Leland & Gray Union...
When it comes to dealing with the complexities and controversies of Vermont's new education law, Marlboro School Board members believe there is strength in numbers. That's why they'll be asking voters, in a special meeting scheduled for Jan. 4, to expand the town school board from three members to five. It may seem like a counterintuitive move given that, when the sweeping education-governance changes proposed in Act 46 take effect, there may not be a Marlboro School Board – at...
United by the presence of spent nuclear fuel in their backyards, members of community advisory panels in four states - including Vermont - are demanding congressional action. The Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VNDCAP) is among the groups writing to their federal lawmakers, urging approval of an interim, centralized storage facility so that nuclear waste won't be stashed long-term at four shuttered plants - Vermont Yankee, Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee, and Yankee Rowe. “Indefinite on-site storage of this material...
A new economic study of Windham and Bennington counties begins with this succinct assessment: “Southern Vermont is in trouble.” The bulk of the report, mandated by this year's creation of the Southern Vermont Economic Development Zone, is dedicated to potential solutions to the region's financial and demographic troubles. Those include creating a regional economic strategy; funding a recruiting and marketing campaign; developing a broadband-financing plan; and starting a public-private partnership to lure investment capital. The document will be delivered to...
After addressing its regulatory troubles, Brattleboro Retreat has been released from a “systems improvement” agreement with the federal government, officials announced on Dec. 4. The psychiatric and addiction-treatment facility also has recovered its “deemed status” – meaning that it is no longer under direct scrutiny of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for quality and performance issues, a spokesman said. Retreat administrators learned of the changes via a letter from a regional CMS administrator who lauded “the...
In 2014, Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark convinced the cash-strapped Vermont Legislature to invest $200,000 in a new, experimental electronic monitoring program. Now, Clark is ready to make his case that the program should continue. In fact, when the Legislature reconvenes for the 2016 session, Clark intends to argue that the initiative should expand throughout Vermont as a way to cut the state's prison expenses and alleviate the social costs of incarceration. In the short time the pilot program has...
