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.
From urine recycling to shiitake mushrooms to electrically-assisted bikes, those attending a “Climate Change Economy” discussion Oct. 6 had no trouble coming up with a diverse list of causes and pet projects.
But one issue that came up repeatedly was energy efficiency - how important it is, and how difficult and expensive it can be for Vermonters to make existing homes and businesses more environmentally friendly.
For local residents and state officials, the central, painful reality of post–Vermont Yankee planning is that there is nowhere to take the plant's spent nuclear fuel. That doesn't mean, however, that there haven't been conversations about the eventual removal of that waste from the Vernon property. As part of...
Entergy can eliminate a direct emergency data link between Vermont Yankee and the federal government, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided. By unanimous vote on Oct. 1, NRC commissioners denied Vermont's appeal of Entergy's deactivation of the Emergency Response Data System - also known as the ERDS - at...
There's not much that Connecticut Yankee and Vermont Yankee have in common, other than their names and the fact that they're both nuclear plants that no longer produce power. But a recent field trip to the Connecticut site provided several members of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VNDCAP) with some important insights. For VNDCAP Chair Kate O'Connor, the most powerful impression was Connecticut Yankee's reclamation by nature - and her realization that something similar might one day happen...
The recent Democratic caucus meeting in town attracted all of seven people, and that's about two more than usual, according to Chairman Clarence Boston. But the meeting ran unusually long as Marlboro Democratic Committee members debated whether to endorse U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president. In doing so, they thwarted the wishes of state and county party leaders, who are urging no primary-season endorsements for any candidate at any level. Boston says the committee wasn't interested in heeding that...
The small, red 130-year-old building at 205 Main St. has served as the town post office, a real-estate office, and as a home for Grafton Historical Society. Sitting inside the front room, Liisa Kissel declares, “now, it has a new purpose.” Kissel's Grafton Woodlands Group Inc. has set up shop with an “environmental community resource and knowledge center” that will provide a home base for the group's fight against a possible wind-turbine project in the towns of Windham and Grafton.
Vermont Yankee owner Entergy has dropped its bid to withdraw cash from the plant's decommissioning trust fund without first notifying the federal government. It's a victory for the state of Vermont, which had challenged Entergy's attempt to amend its license and eliminate a required 30-day advance notice for fund withdrawals. In late August, the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board had granted the state a hearing on the matter. The company is not admitting defeat on the substance of that...
The war of words continues over spent nuclear fuel storage at Vermont Yankee. In the latest volley, plant owner Entergy argues that the state should disregard the concerns of a technical advisor to the Brattleboro-based New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution - an adviser who has urged “a most scrupulous and searching review” of Entergy's plans to build a second spent fuel pad on its Vernon property. The testimony of Raymond Shadis is “irrelevant, immaterial, and beyond the scope of...
