On Tuesday, the Governor came to St. Albans to sign the Working Landscapes Bill.
This is as it should be, to crown departing Democratic Senator Sara Kittell’s years of dedicated toil on the Agriculture Committee with a final significant achievement.
For me, though, the St. Albans signing was filled with irony. Had this recognition of the tremendous importance of agriculture to our economic future come somewhat sooner to Franklin County, we might not now be looking at what could well be the end of farming in a significant area of prime agricultural soils adjacent to Exit 20 of I-89.
This summer, City and Town residents wait expectantly for work to begin on the first big box retail store in the county. With retail space totaling roughly 160,000-square ft., this Walmart will be the biggest one in Vermont. If it is the first, it will certainly not be the last.
Despite the developer’s PR to the contrary, casual conversation reveals that support for the project is probably almost evenly divided. Some will find it convenient, but dread the traffic; others recognize this to be just another nail in the coffin of our local economy.
For me, it signals the beginning of the end of the very working landscapes S.246 is meant to support. Without strengthening their weight in the Act 250 permit process, the effect of this bill is largely a moot point here in St. Albans, as “development pressures” always seem to close the deal.
One of the failings of the permit process is that it allows developers to trade-off on working landscapes through a mitigation scheme which, while intended to protect environmentally sensitive areas and ag soils, is often exploited in the permit process in order to get around a preservation requirement.
So, while we celebrate the spirit of the Working Landscapes Bill, let’s not forget a moment of silence for the working farms and ag soils that will continue to disappear from Franklin County in the relentless push for development at all costs.
The sole purpose of Wal-Mart is to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich. Wal-Mart’s business plan depends on running small businesses out of business wherever they open, eliminating American jobs across the nation, moving everything to China where all the work are done by slaves and selling toxic junk back to the very people that lost their jobs to Wal-Mart in the first place.
Wal-Mart is a purveyor of death. Those that wants Wal-Marts in their towns want to kill off all of their small businesses and turn their town centers into abandoned wastelands.
If you love America you boycott Wal-Mart.
Sue
there’s only so much prime ag soil; we can’t replace it
we should not allow any more to be lost, even if it’s near an interstate highway