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.
Two weeks after a developer came to town to disclose details of what could be Vermont's biggest wind-turbine site, the project's opponents presented an impassioned case against building any windmills in Stiles Brook Forest.
The tone of the two gatherings could not have been more different.
In making the first detailed proposal for a gas-fired power plant here, the Planning Commission threw out some big numbers at a Nov. 10 meeting: 600 megawatts of power production, $750 million in development costs, 400 to 600 construction jobs. But questions far outpaced answers during a 90-minute session...
State officials have gone to great lengths - including filing a federal lawsuit against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - to protect the Vermont Yankee decommissioning trust fund from what they see as improper expenditures. Ironically, it's now possible that some of the state's expenses for that fight may come...
As someone who launched her first legislative campaign before she graduated from college, state Rep. Kesha Ram says she's used to being underestimated. “I think what my opponents and others didn't know about me at that time was that I am an incredibly hard worker,” said Ram, a Burlington Democrat now serving her fourth term in the House even though she has not yet reached age 30. Ram says she is bringing that same work ethic to the 2016 race...
Communities that host nuclear plants should have a significant role in developing rules that govern how those plants are shut down and cleaned up, local advocates say. That's the gist of a new opinion approved by the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel - the panel's first such official opinion since forming more than a year ago. On a 15-2 vote at a Nov. 12 meeting at Vernon Elementary School, the panel approved a short position paper advocating new ways...
The Nov. 2 news of yet another pending nuclear plant closure means that, within the next several years, Entergy will be juggling three complicated, expensive decommissioning projects in New England and New York. Company administrators and federal officials say the coming shutdowns of FitzPatrick Nuclear in New York and Pilgrim Nuclear in Massachusetts won't delay or otherwise negatively affect decommissioning work at Vermont Yankee, as each plant has separate and substantial decommissioning trust funds. In fact, federal records show that...
Geographically speaking, the sprawling Windham Central Supervisory Union is one of Vermont's biggest, taking in both the West River Valley and mountain ski areas. Its organizational chart – consisting of 12 boards and eight schools linked by a tangle of lines – seems to barely fit on a single page. So, even as all Vermont school administrators struggle with how to comply with sweeping governance changes proposed in the state's newly approved Act 46, that struggle seems all the more...
After a somewhat rocky start, state Rep. Dave Sharpe believes he and his fellow lawmakers are finding a much more receptive audience for Vermont's new school-governance law. The House Education Committee chairman does have some lingering concerns about Act 46: One controversial element of the law - a variable budget-increase threshold - may soon be “tweaked,” Sharpe said. The Bristol Democrat also acknowledged that he's increasingly concerned about some smaller districts with unique education structures being left out of the...
