BRATTLEBORO — RE: “Drain the river, close Vermont Yankee” [Letters, Aug. 1]::
Nice try, Peter Van der Does, but there's a major hitch. Vermont only owns the western banks of the Connecticut River; New Hampshire owns the river itself, as well as the eastern banks.
Dramatic environmental concerns aside, shutting off the Bellows Falls dam would have New Hampshire, Connecticut, and the federal government sending a horde of lawyers to invade the Brattleboro Federal Courthouse to the point where Vermont would be easily bankrupted by the litigation costs alone, not to mention the inevitable penalties and probable loss of control over its own waterways.
This is not speculation; rather, it is a lesson learned from the history of litigation among the states in the Mountain time zone (where water for livestock is critical), as well as internally in California (where the north is basically compelled to provide water to the south).