Net zero - zero non-renewable, utility-sourced energy usage - has become a reality for several area businesses and nonprofits this year, largely due to government incentive and rebate programs.
West Hill Shop in Putney now meets all its business energy needs from photovoltaic panels located in its field to the west of the shop.
“We've become our own power station,” owner Jim Sweitzer said. “We get paid for generating excess energy.”
Paul Harlow, co-owner with his brother Dan of Harlow Farm in Westminster, said the business was at net-zero all winter, but “now we are into the summer season, and our demand has gone up. I'm sure we are using more energy than we are generating.”...
Obituaries Editor's note: The Commons will publish brief biographical information for citizens of Windham County and others, on request, as community news, free of charge. • Jane Murdoch Baker, 83, of Brattleboro. Died at her home on July 27. Wife of Stephen E. Baker for 55 years. Mother of...
Gallery Walk, Brattleboro's monthly first-Friday celebration of the arts, returns on Aug. 5 to liven up the downtown and a few satellite locations within a short drive of Main Street. There are 43 listed venues, some with meet-the-artist receptions or live music. Venues joining the Walk or returning after...
If you have read the newspaper or listened to the radio recently, chances are that you have heard the Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS) commercials for something called “Smart Power,” which is how CVPS has branded their implementation of what is known as smart grid technology. Over the next year, we can expect to hear a lot about the smart grid, including smart metering. Several of Vermont's utilities, including CVPS and Green Mountain Power, are working on a multi-year effort...
There's a reason the renowned, politically savvy economist and fellow Vermonter, the late John Kenneth Galbraith, cited campaign finance reform as the most urgent issue of our time. It is the root. It has an impact on everything else. In our current debt-ceiling debate, with Republicans unwilling to raise taxes on the wealthy and Democrats barely holding the line on Medicare and Social Security, we are seeing clearly the outcome of big money's grip on the electoral process. We are...
The 58th annual Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl, a showcase for the top high school football players from Vermont and New Hampshire, is set for this Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at MacLeay-Royce Field in Windsor. Last year, the event raised $30,000 for Shriners hospitals in Montreal, Boston, and Springfield, Mass. About 4,000 spectators attended the game. This is the third straight year the game has been held in Windsor. For many years, it had been held at Memorial Field at Dartmouth...
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) recently announced that it will conduct a study of approximately 3,700 post offices around the nation, mostly in rural areas, to determine customer needs. The study comes as part of an effort to introduce a retail-replacement option for affected communities around the nation. One of those communities is Cambridgeport, a village near the Grafton town line that is part of the town of Rockingham. USPS spokesman Tom Rizzo, based in Portland, Maine, said it's important...
Is the current financial crisis in Greece that has brought that country to the brink of default a preview of coming attractions in Europe? And can the country survive the crippling austerity that has been unleashed by the crisis? These questions were taken up by Maria Margaronis, who covers Europe with her husband, D.D. Guttenplan, for The Nation. She talked about what she saw in Greece this spring as the crisis came to a head during a presentation on July...
I was one of more than 50 people who attended the session on July 25 on “How is Brattleboro Creating a Sustainable Future?” While I do think this session was another helpful step toward Brattleboro's new Town Plan, I also think it was trying to put a square peg in a round hole and so fell short of its potential. The Planning Commission, Planning Services Department and Town Plan Advisory Group have been hard at work for a long time...
I am a resident of Swanzey, N.H. I was born there, went to school there (graduating at the top of my class), left to go to college for my mechanical engineering degree, and returned there to marry my wife, a resident of Keene, and raise my family. I now have three small children whom I want to grow up in the same small New England town setting that my wife and I grew up in. This is my story, but...
Last week, The Commons reported on a report by the Maryland-based ViTAL Economy Alliance (VE) that showed Windham County's workers earn significantly less money than their peers around the region. If you want to know why Windham County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, lost a significant number of its population between the ages of 25 and 44, that is the biggest reason. People in their prime earning years, people who are critical to the growth of an area's economy,
Bear sightings have been increasing all over Vermont, especially along the Connecticut River Valley. This summer, sightings of several black bears in backyards in Putney have generated concern from residents. That concern prompted the Putney Conservation Commission to ask State Fish and Wildlife biologist Forrest Hammond, who has studied both grizzly and black bears for almost 30 years, to speak to the community about how to live with the animals. “We've been getting calls about people seeing more bears looking...
On Sunday, July 24, after spending a wonderful weekend visiting in the Guilford area, I lost a small black bag containing jewelry that has tremendous sentimental value at the Weatherhead Hollow Pond boat launch parking lot. I am offering a reward for its return. I can be reached at (518) 928-3875 or by e-mail. Thank you.
Inside the gutted fifth floor “penthouse” of the Brooks House, owner Jonathan Chase blocks out imaginary walls with his hands. A pigeon wiggles through a gap between the penthouse's new hip roof and wall. It flaps to an opposite corner and settles on a perch. “Picture an apartment here; an apartment here, here, and here,” he says, illustrating the four townhouse apartments he envisions in the space. The two-story townhouse would straddle the fourth floor, and afford future tenants a...
Re: “Entergy vs. Vermont: Now it gets serious” [Editorial, July 27]: There are lots of state and local zoning laws available that have nothing to do with nuclear energy. But the Feds have many preemptive laws to protect polluting industries, and local/federal conflict means lawsuits. How about a class-action lawsuit of all counties, towns, and states that want to fight Entergy? That strategy would take the financial strain off any one state. However, there will always be some communities that...
George Clain [Letters, July 20] is correct: the Entergy representatives were not lying in their testimony to the state Public Service Board, but answering what they thought was a technical question in the technically accurate way that engineers use. In my opinion, at least one of the people who asked Entergy about “buried pipes” knew exactly what he was doing and was setting a trap for Entergy for ulterior motives: Arnie Gundersen, who used to work in the nuclear industry...
On Saturday, Aug. 6, at 6 p.m., the River Bank Park in Wilmington will be officially dedicated. All Deerfield Valley residents and visitors are invited to attend this event to honor the many talented local craftspeople and volunteers who transformed a burned-out corner in the center of Wilmington into a prize-winning “pocket park.” This corner in Wilmington has had a long and rich history. In 1853, the Wilmington Savings Bank was built in the center of Wilmington, and a bank...
The Vermont Barn Census seeks to answer two questions: How many barns are there in Vermont, and what can be done to preserve these icons? Since 2008, volunteers have helped the barn census to catalog more than 2000 barns and other agricultural buildings across the state - from 18th century English barns to the massive dairy barns of the 20th century. “Barns are part of our rural landscape and heritage,” Joshua Phillips, state Barn Census Director, told the 50 or...
The deficit-reduction package is grotesquely unfair. It also is bad economic policy. The wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well. In a recent 25-year period, 80 percent of all new income created in America went to the top 1 percent, who now earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. In terms of wealth, the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country on earth, with the top 400...
Gov. Peter Shumlin Tuesday linked the discovery of fish containing trace amounts of the radioactive isotope Strontium-90 to Entergy Corp.'s poor management of a tritium leak at Vermont Yankee. The Vermont Department of Health announced on its website Tuesday that measurable levels of Strontium-90 were found in the flesh of a fish taken nine miles north of the nuclear power plant, which is located on the banks of the Connecticut River in Vernon. The radioactive material was also discovered in...
A Holyoke, Mass., man who has been the subject of an intensive state police drug investigation for more than a month was charged Monday with the kidnapping and murder of a 31-year-old woman from Bellows Falls who had been living in Brattleboro. In affidavits filed with Windham Superior Court in Newfane in connection with the arraignment, police allege that Frank Caraballo, 29, shot Melissa Barratt, 31, in the head. According to a state police press release, Caraballo most recently lived...