I can’t let the month of March pass without mentioning that we just marked the fourth anniversary of the triple melt-down at Fukushima Daiichi, a crisis that is still unfolding as contaminated water continues to seep into the groundwater and flood into the ocean.

It is also the 36th anniversary of Three Mile Island, another nuclear melt-down made worse by a slow corporate response that prioritized “damage control” ahead of population safety.  A second reactor still operates on that Pennsylvania site, giving the operators an excuse to postpone decommissioning of the devastated unit until both reactors may be dealt with together, sometime after reactor 2 finally goes offline.

The news from Japan continues to be dismaying, as the Prime Minister presses for a return to nuclear dependance and TEPCO makes it clear that they are looking for a way to avoid paying the enormous cost of decommissioning their own crippled reactors at Fukushima.

Despite repeated assurances that, “from now on” there will be complete transparency, ugly surprises just keep cropping up.  Most recently a sea of collected water on the roof of one of the reactors was revealed to have radiation levels many times that of water that was being routinely collected for treatment.  The highly contaminated roof water had been draining directly into the ocean with TEPCO fully aware of it for over six months before finally acknowledging the existence of the problem.

Why would anyone believe that TEPCO can be trusted with such a preponderance of evidence to the contrary?

Of course, here we are in little old Vermont, contemplating a future in which our own “trusted” nuclear provider has issued veiled hints that it might simply cut and run from its own decommissioning obligation should it take longer than sixty years to complete.

Entergy fully intends to hire itself to do the decommissioning of Vermont Yankee, in any case; so no matter how things go down, Entergy intends to turn a nice profit.

I am obliged to add that I am a non-technical member of the Fairewinds Energy Education crew, but the opinions that I express on GMD are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of Fairewinds.

This past week, quietly and without fanfare, Vermont took one baby step forward toward embracing reality.

The reality I refer to recognizes the need for some minimal effort at gun control.

This is the twenty-first century and we are living in an alienated America where children in a quiet Connecticut kindergarten can fall victim to mass murder on a whim; and where we hear every week, if not every day, of new acts of senseless gun violence even in unexpected places.

The argument that Vermont doesn’t have a gun problem and so does not need to even consider gun control makes about as much sense as does refusing to carry car insurance because you’ve never had an accident, or declining homeowner’s insurance because your house has never burned down.  

If Vermont has so far escaped an outbreak of gun violence on national media scale, it is only by virtue of a small population and a whole lot of luck.  It is not because of a total lack of regulation, and anyone who argues that it is is deluding him/herself.  

While S.31, a bill that would have imposed criminal background checks on all gun sales, failed to pass, a much more modest effort, S.141, received a generally favorable reception by the Senate.  

S.141 simply aligns state regulations to the existing federal mandate against felons convicted of violent crime possessing firearms, and requires background checks for persons with “adjudicated” mental illness.

To anyone living in the other 49 states where the federal mandate has already been endorsed, or almost anywhere else in the civilized world, this does not seem like much of a stretch; but, for Vermont, it is groundbreaking…and not without the hyperbolic accusations from the peanut gallery that we have come to expect in the wake of any discussion of gun use in Vermont.

As if unveiling a “smoking gun” (‘scuse me), opponents of the bill drew a line from Gun Sense Vermont to Michael Bloomberg’s national campaign for gun control.  

In response to the accusations of “outside influences,” proponents of the bill had only to point to the long-time campaign by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to prevent any form of gun legislation from passing in Vermont.

I don’t personally see unregulated gun ownership as the privilege that defines Vermont.  In fact, I find that very idea a little depressing, given that there are so many values more deserving of our state identity.  Be that as it may, I recognize and respect the fact that many  others disagree with me.

The ability to entertain that conversation with tolerance and an open mind is much more my idea of what makes Vermont the place I love and call my own.

Some of our readers may remember that, in January of this year, our esteemed state auditor, Doug Hoffer released a report on the outdated value of ski area leases in Vermont’s public purse.

The “rent” that developers of ski areas pay to state taxpayers for the use of our land has remained constant for over half a century, while expanding services at those areas have allowed the developers to profit from multiple new sectors, beyond simple lift ticket revenue.

Adjusted for inflation, total sales in all sectors at the resorts have risen by 65% since 2000, but lease payments have fallen by 4%.  Since 2003, property values (not adjusted for inflation) rose by 140% while lease payments rose by a mere 11%

The legislature is currently grappling with a lot of funding issues this session, but the most prominent of these is how to finance clean-up of the lake before the EPA comes in with sweeping mandates.

Republicans are especially resistant to the idea of raising new revenues.

It should be obvious to all but the terminally naive that, even as need grows among the expanding service class of underpaid workers, expectations for twenty-first century infrastructure also grow among the more privileged.  Sooner or later, someone’s going to have to put more money in the kitty.

As Mike pointed out in the diary below, Democrats and Progressives do not like raising taxes any more than do Republicans; we just tend to be less enslaved to party dogma.

When the auditor suggested that an increase in the price of ski area leases might be considered by the Legislature, the suggestion was met with a chorus of “heaven forbid.”   The ski industry, it was argued, is a boon to Vermont’s economy and should enjoy as much encouragement to be fruitful and multiply as we can give it.

I get that; but even a valued industry should be expected to do its part to maintain the valuable Vermont environment.

Certainly, the ski business has a particularly vested interest in the health of that environment; and even though the distance from mountains to Lake Champlain may obscure the connection for some, most should recognize that pressures from ever expanding development and snow-making are having an impact way down hill, even at the Bay.

I understand that a legislator did ask the ski industry nicely to step up and contribute to the lake clean-up fund. This unilateral approach was perhaps not sufficiently persuasive. I am told, he was soundly rebuffed.

It’s time to stop asking for volunteers from the audience.

Increasing the value of ski area leases could go a long way toward funding lake clean-up.

These are our stationary natural resources, from which mostly big out-of-state investors are profiting handsomely.

They aren’t going to fold up the mountains and move them to New Hampshire just because we raise the rent.

As you no doubt have heard, the craziest crayon in the Republican toolbox, Ted Cruz has just told the waiting world that he will run for President in 2016.

Are you breathless ?

Mr. Cruz chose to make this announcement from the podium of Liberty University, in Lynchburg, VA.

A bastion of Christian fundamentalism so extreme as to tinge its very name with irony, this nominal “university” was only minted in 1971; and, at that, by the Rev. Jerry Falwell (remember him?), who himself graduated in 1956 from the then unaccredited  Baptist Bible College in Springfield MO.

What has largely escaped the immediate attention of U.S. media, but, alas, not that of the world, is the fact that Cruz’s chosen launch venue adheres to a Christian conservative model known as “young earth creationism,” under which it teaches its students that the world is only 6,000 years old.

Liberty University has even dedicated a special place, “Creation Hall,” to the teaching of this off-the-wall theory.

On a visit to Liberty University last year The Telegraph saw displays showing Noah’s ark as a scale model next to a Boeing 747 and the US space shuttle, explaining in detail how all the animals had fitted in.

Personally, I can’t think of a better perch from which to reach out to the flat-earth fringe that represents Cruz’s natural constituency.

In case you didn’t get the memo, Cruz is being styled a far-right Barack Obama, and the appearance at Liberty was intended to fire-up that mind-numbingly conservative student body so that it might represent the groundswell of youth that would presumably carry Cruz to the White House.

Of course the 10,000 plus young people in attendance for Cruz’s announcement were there because they were required to be by the University, and apparently there was considerable grumbling about that.

It is worthy of note that, despite the fact that Cruz was the son of a conservative minister, when it came to his own education, even he had the good sense to pick Harvard over Liberty.

Cruz, of course has that in common with Obama, as well as an international ethnic heritage that had him born in Canada to a Cuban father and U.S. mother.  No doubt the constitutional basis for his qualification to run will give Donald Trump a reason for some apoplectic camera time, and may even be toyed with by other Republican rivals; but that will be amusement for another time.

Returning to the stupefying position that the world is only 6,000 years old, the obvious question is: how can anyone believe that, given all the scientific evidence to the contrary?

Well, the answer is that it is simply an article of faith, like Catholics’ belief in a “Holy Trinity.”

Defenders of the doctrine will tell you that the huge body of scientific evidence disproving it is just a trick sent by God, to test the faith of true believers.

By the same rights, climate change, endangered species, limited resources, crippling poverty can all be rationalized away as mere illusions designed to test the faithful.

(Heck; maybe that’s where Holocaust deniers get their mojo.)

…And that is why Ted Cruz could be the PERFECT Republican candidate. Never was a man better equipped to traverse the thinly supported scaffold of relativism that Republicans have constructed for their assault on the White House.

Ever since an uppity black man had the temerity to claim that hallowed address…twice,… the Republican base has sailed in a parallel universe, where  ‘up’ has been ‘down’ and ‘down’ has been ‘up.’  

Even the most unassailable statistics supporting positive outcomes from the Obama presidency are routinely dismissed by Republicans as simply untrue.  How can you argue with that?

When rational accountability has been removed from the conversation you can make an argument for almost any outlandish view if you take the position that the evidence against it is nothing more than a test of faith.

‘Sounds ideal for defending Republican ideology, which has strayed into especially deep denial waters when it comes to things like climate change, and Liberty University is the perfect Neverland from which to make that stand.

Well, the Vermont legislature certainly has its work cut out for it this year, what with critical water quality issues, healthcare to resolve, carbon to battle, budget constraints, and the innumerable human crises that accompany cutbacks in social services.

But Franklin County’s Republican senator Norm McAllister has drug-testing of social service benefits recipients on his personal “to do” list.

That’s right, Mr. McAllister has just figured out how to increase the cost and bureaucracy in Montpelier, while taking a self-righteous whack at the folks least likely to protest.

He certainly isn’t the first “R” to champion this demeaning and wasteful measure. The Pew Charitable Trusts reports that

“at least twenty eight states (have) proposed drug testing or screening for public assistance applicants or recipients”

‘Trouble is that, like the Vermont gun lobby is fond of arguing on their own issue, there appears to be no real problem here.  In fact, drug use among the need class is statistically much lower than among those who can go it alone.  Poor folks are just plain POOR.

Since  Tennessee launched their own drug testing program in July, how many folks do you think they caught red-handed?  One.

That’s right; just one lonely offender out of 800 screenings.

Other states have had similar results.

Utah spent more than $30,000 in the year that turned up just 12 drug users.

All over the country, states are discovering that what McAllister proposes isn’t just mean-spirited, its downright uneconomical; and the revelations knock stereotypes of welfare recipients into a cocked hat.

Those who get public assistance spend less than half of what families who aren’t enrolled spend and still put a larger share of those small budgets toward basics like food, housing, and transportation…Welfare recipients may be spending so much less in part because the benefits have become so meager. Virtually all of them are worth less now than in 1996. And many families who should be eligible aren’t even getting them. In the mid-90s, a little over a quarter of poor families with children didn’t get benefits. In 2012 that number had soared to three-quarters.

Now, Mr. McAllister, as one of your constituents, I put this to you: how about a little more attention to finding resources to clean-up the lake and a little less to imaginary issues that would only siphon resources away from where they are truly needed.

I don’t know about you, but the glut of environmental issues and international crises is taking its toll on my ability to rise to each new wave with renewed energy and determination.

There is one item on that agenda that is so absolutely essential to human survival that it can not be set it aside even to attend to other problems.

That essential is clean water.  Without it, life, human or otherwise, would simply be over… in relatively short order.

It is, we are learning, an extremely finite resource, pushed further to its limits by over-development and climate change.  Even though we still flush it down the toilet without a thought, twenty-first century living is rapidly exhausting its  supply.

The very idea of ramping up commoditization of that ubiquitous necessity is only a recent development, aimed at lining people’s pockets rather than encouraging more responsible habits.

That is why, even with everything else I have to do, I plan to be in Montpelier tomorrow, March 17, for Clean Water Day, sponsored by the Vermont Natural Resource Council (VNRC), Vermont Conservation Voters, CLF, the Sierra Club and the Lake Champlain Committee.  

It runs from 9:30 AM – 12:PM in the Statehouse, and provides an opportunity for us to buttonhole our legislators and remind them how very important this single issue is to us.  If you can’t be there in person, this is a good time to drop a note to your legislators to tell them that this is a high priority for you as a voter.

Right here in Vermont, our main water concern at the moment is the critical condition of our beautiful Lake and how it impacts recreation and tourism opportunities; but it is not inconceivable that we may one day find ourselves joining other places in the country that face clean water shortages of ever expanding magnitude.

Last week in his topical monologue, Bill Maher quipped that LA has only one more year’s worth of water.  Everyone laughed, so I looked for the story online. Sure enough, there it was in the LA Times.  

The artificial Garden of Eden created in California by sucking-up life-giving ground water from as far away as Colorado  to support a twentieth century explosion of agriculture and development, is now nearing its logical conclusion.  

Even if business interests and private citizens can somehow be kept to strict rationing, future “California dreaming” will be mostly about water.  

At least the sunshine state has, for some time now, been trying to turn things around before it really is too late. Aquifers are also shrinking at alarming rates in states like Texas and New Mexico, where any kind of regulation is met with suspicion and resistance.

Vermont, touted as the “most progressive” state of all, is still blessed with adequate water supplies, but we chafe at limits on development related to wetlands protections, grouse at “over regulation” of stormwater, and no sector that can afford to is willing to make the kind of investments required to ensure recovery of our lake.

We can’t raise taxes on the uber-rich; we can’t increase rents established seventy years ago for public lands leased to the ski industry; and we can’t increase permit costs that might inhibit the expansion of impervious surfaces that act as highways for rapid delivery of pollutants to state waterways.

I’m going to Montpelier tomorrow to hear where the money is supposed to come from.  I have a feeling I won’t like the answer.

Now begins the “gotcha” phase of Vermont’s relationship with Entergy.

Once upon a time, the energy giant was making nice with our green mountain state in order to win the fair hand of Vermont Yankee (LLC), which Entergy still expected to be a cash cow for years to come.

Entergy lawyers pinky-swore and spit on their hands, promising that we could trust them.

So it came to pass that Vermont went to bed with Prince Charming, but awoke with Frankenstein.

The honeymoon was already over when we learned about the tritium leaks and the pipes that “were not there.”

In light of mounting new evidence that neither Entergy nor the aging facility were reliable, the state asked them nicely to cease operations.  

They responded by dragging Vermont through costly litigation. This was apparently only in order to prove that they could , because shortly thereafter, the company chose to abandon VY due to their own economic considerations.

Meanwhile the vagaries of Wall Street and uncertain times for energy pricing had conspired to severely limit growth of the decommissioning “dowry,” for which both parties once held such high hopes.

And that is when things began to take a turn into “War of the Roses” territory.

Again, just because they could do so, rather than rehabilitating the property for other use in a timely manner, Entergy opted to push decommissioning up to sixty-years down the road, under a program known as SAFSTOR, which Vermonters might sardonically refer to as ‘SAPSTOR,’ as in “what saps we were for believing these guys.”  

The gloves are off and its bare-knuckle blackmail time.

On February 11, just days after a strontium-90 leak had been discovered on the grounds of the idle reactor, portending even greater cost to clean-up the site, Entergy VP Mike Twomey was asked by the legislature what would happen if the decommissioning investment fund couldn’t finally cover the cost of decommissioning within the prescribed sixty years.

His reply had a decidely pugnacious ring to it:

Twomey first said he doubted such an outcome, but added, “There would probably be quite a bit of litigation about that…”

Digging the hole even deeper, he added:

“We are not going to pin down today the answer to a hypothetical question when we don’t even know what the facts are on something that might happen 60 years from now”

and suggested that the company might even seek to recover some of the decommissioning cost from VY’s previous owners, Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corporation, aka: the ratepayers of Vermont.

Though Twomey later repeated that he thought it would never come to that, his remark had already earned him the sobriquet, “So Sue Me Twomey” from industry safety advocate, Arnie Gundersen.  

Breaking up really is hard to do.

Entergy is not contesting custody of its runaway “daughters,” Tritium and Stronium-90.  If we find them later, they’ll be all ours.

As always, I must disclose that I work in a non-technical capacity for the good folks at Fairewinds Energy Education, but the opinions I express on GMD are my own alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Fairewinds.

Once more, our intrepid state auditor Doug Hoffer has shone a light where some would probably prefer that he had not, exposing potentially costly mismanagement of a signature administration initiative.  

That the state has, nonetheless, come away from the table in pretty good shape is due to the watchful eye of the auditor’s team.

Seven Days is reporting that, in reviewing payments made against the contract of economist Jonathan Gruber, Governor Shumlin’s go-to guy for modelling his now abandoned Single Payor Healthcare initiative, the Auditor’s Office found some serious irregularities:

In a five-page report released Monday, Hoffer stopped short of accusing the economist, Jonathan Gruber, of fraud, citing a lack of documentation pertaining to his alleged “inconsistencies and questionable billing practices.” But the state auditor was unsparing in his criticism of the administration’s oversight of the contract, which called for an economic analysis of Shumlin’s since-abandoned single-payer health care proposal.

Coming on the heels of what many feel was a shell-game perpetrated on voters by the Governor when he chose to renounce single-payer only after gaining re-election, this latest revelation will do him no political good.

The recently appointed Secretary of Administration Justin Johnson seems to agree with the Auditor that Gruber’s billing justifications are inadequate, but stops short of accepting, on behalf of his office, blame for any error.

“The bottom line to me is did we get the work that we asked for?” Johnson said. “We did get what we were buying here.”

At the request of Sen. Joe Benning (R-Caledonia) and Rep. Oliver Olsen (I-South Londonderry), the Auditors Office undertook to examine invoicing against Mr. Gruber’s $400,000. contract in December and found significant irregularities in billing hours.

The evidence suggests that Dr. Gruber overstated the hours worked by the RA and that the Agency of Administration ignored the obvious signs that something was amiss.”

In contrast to Peter Shumlin’s political fortunes, which have headed rapidly downhill since the last election, Doug Hoffer is shaping into someone who could hold real potential for voters across the political spectrum who are longing for a return of integrity, independence and accountability to the halls of the Pavillion.

But there’s still a lot of work for him to do in the Auditor’s chair, which I remember him saying was the only one he ever wished to occupy, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The  Messenger recently featured an article, “Wetland poses sticking point,” which explained some permit problems the Town of St. Albans was experiencing in advancing its plan for a “loop” road to join the Walmart and Price Chopper projects with the City’s nascent Federal St. Connector.  

The issue had to do with deficiencies in wetland mapping and projections concerning future development.

This was followed by an editorial from Emerson Lynn in which he referred to the wetland issue as “nonsense”  and invoked the usual outrage over regulations that make Vermont ‘bad for business.’

Next to chime in was Town Selectboard candidate Al Voegele, who wrote a letter-to-the-editor in which he, too, complained about the constraints on growth imposed by the permit system and pledged to pursue Designated Growth Center status if he is elected to serve on the Selectboard.

Then came Sam Ruggiano’s letter, read aloud to the Lt. Governor at a Chamber event that GMD’s Mike McCarthy captured so well.

(It should be noted here that Mr. Ruggiano’s firm has charge of the “loop” road project on behalf of the Town, and also engineered the Walmart development.)

‘Sounds like it’s time to counter-balance the misinformation that appears to be in circulation with an infusion of facts and rational perspective.

Mr. Voegele is correct in saying that the Town of St. Albans must get state approval for its chosen growth centers in order to qualify for any of the benefits that accompany designation.

It is not sufficient for the Town to simply identify an area as its “Growth Center” in order to make it so.  Even acceptance of the Town’s growth center preferences by the Northwest Regional Planning Commission bestows no more than nominal endorsement.

It is to the state that the Town must make its case, and frankly, there is very little beyond wishful thinking that supports that case, so it might not be a wise place to invest the necessary resources.

Mr. Lynn poses the rhetorical question of ‘where else might the Town grow?’ if not in its designated growth center at Exit 20.

Well, first of all,  the Town has designated not one but two entirely separate “growth centers.”

Both are highway-centric and therefore in conflict with the governing principles established by the state in its growth center vision, but the one at Exit 19 does not represent the same wetland issues as exist in the selected area at Exit 20.  

The very same voices that have most recently been raised to demand that St. Albans Bay and the Missisquoi watershed be restored to health without further delay are now complaining about regulations governing the wetlands.

Do the indignant gentlemen mentioned above not understand that the two are inescapably connected?  At minimum, Mr. Ruggiano, who was trained as an engineer, certainly should.

Those rules that require mapping of wetland areas and that govern their use were established for very good reasons.  As well as representing sensitive wildlife habitat, the wetlands west of Route 7 serve both as a conduit to and a filter for waters that finally end up in the Bay.

As for the benefit to Stevens Brook that Mr. Lynn imagines accompanied the Walmart development: that is pure fiction.

For all the hard-won “protection” Vermont Natural Resources Council advocates specifically extracted in the Walmart development negotiations, this does not mean that secondary development of surrounding lands would represent some kind of boon to the environment.  

Such assertions represent a profound misunderstanding of the science and the nature of discharge permits, each of which represents substantial new contributions of phosphorus and sediment to a watershed already in crisis.

In fact, those protections only limited the new contributions of pollution to Stevens Brook represented by the Walmart project.  They did not improve the Brook, per se.  Furthermore, those measures only applied to the Walmart store and have no implication for other development in the watershed.

Expansion of impervious surfaces in that sensitive area will have an overall harmful effect and further degrade an already bad situation, even should state-of-the-art engineering be imposed to minimize that impact.

We’re already demanding that the farming industry step-up for a cleaner lake.  It’s time for the rest of us to make some hard choices about our future.

If a healthy lake truly is important to us, we will have to learn to require less accommodation from the natural environment to suit our growth impulses.  

At the same time, we must insist on more ecological planning from stakeholder communities in order to accommodate the rich natural environment we are privileged to share.

Well, if nuke happy Arizona legislators don’t raise your blood, how about the RCMP taking on climate activists on behalf of the oil industry?

We like to think of Canada as our dull but infinitely more responsible continental sibling.  Largely overlooked by its flamboyant southern neighbor, that characterization has quietly slipped since Conservative Steven Harper seized the helm.

The current Prime Minister is an approximation of George Bush in his worldview, and a big friend to tar sands oil.  As a longtime MP from Alberta, his political fortunes have always been linked to the material ones of the fossil fuel industry.

With Harper in charge for a decade and much Canadian wealth tied up in burnable resources, it now appears that the RCMP has been appropriated to serve those interests.

An internal RCMP memo has recently emerged that paints a sinister picture, wholly inconsistent with the organization’s “Duddly Do-Right” reputation.

The Globe and Mail, which was the first to report on the memo, said the tone of the RCMP memo reflects the hostility of the Harper government towards environmental activists.

Judging by the language in the memo, it would seem that, girded for a climate clash, they have settled on “terrorist” as a fair identifier for activists who would limit Canada’s contribution to carbon emissions.

Bucking the international trend toward arresting climate change, Harper and his henchmen appear to be preparing to arrest the other side.

From the memo:

“There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society’s reliance on fossil fuels,” the memo says.

“If violent environmental extremists engage in unlawful activity, it jeopardizes the health and safety of its participants, the general public and the natural environment.”

It’s pretty funny that concern for the “natural environment” gets mentioned in this context.

Apparently the RCMP isn’t having a lot to say about the leaked memo.  For now, at least, we must assume that their faces are as red as their uniforms.