Those of us who were alive and sentient in the1960’s remember Senator Barry Goldwater (R) as one scary dude who proposed a nuclear end to the Cold War:

“Let’s lob one into the men’s room at the Kremlin.”

A hawk with a capital “H-E-Double-L,” the Arizona senator

…advocated that field commanders in Vietnam and Europe should be given the authority to use tactical nuclear weapons (which he called “small conventional nuclear weapons”) without presidential confirmation.

Dangerous as he sounded, Goldwater was orating mostly for effect, secure in the knowledge that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union shared an understanding of  “mutually assured destruction.”

Although we all feared that an “accident” could happen and unleash a terrible chain of consequence, this governing principle held both parties somewhat in check.

But that was then and this is now…

Apparently borrowing a page from his bellicose Republican ancestor, Arkansas Senator Jason Rapert says he thinks it would be a good idea to nuke ISIS.

“With ISIS spreading all over the Middle East and Africa and Islamic extremists carrying out violence in Europe, the United Kingdom and even in the United States, I wonder why the civilized world just sits by when we have weapons that could wipe out these barbarians where they are concentrated?” …Rapert went on to write, “a strategically placed nuclear weapon would save the lives of our soldiers and quickly turn things around.”

When this message went out on social media and was met with the predictable response from sane people, Rapert quickly back-pedalled a bit, saying something about targetting just the bad guys with a bunker buster device.

Mr. Rapert has made decisions as an Arizona Senator since 2011, but hasn’t gained even the most basic understanding of the widespread and asymmetric nature of the ISIS threat, which one may appreciate simply by picking up a newspaper.

He actually seems to imagine some central command that can be decapitated and thereby neutralized in a single spectacular explosion.

I suspect too many “Star Wars” sequels and not enough homework in this guy’s past.

It’s truly frightening to think that, on a federal level, his party now controls both the Senate and the House!

I can’t believe there’s still more bad news to discuss concerning VY this week!

On Valentine’s Day, I awoke to the news that the NRC had just revealed another “minor violation”at Vermont Yankee, that occurred the day after shutdown, on December 30, 2014.

As per usual, they assure us that the problem was discovered and reported in the “final inspection report,” and that it was fixed before the public was placed in any danger.

The obvious question is: what could have happened if that final inspection report hadn’t required that someone take a closer look at the water levels in a timely manner?  

The answer is: perhaps nothing…so long as all the other systems were functioning properly and no other mitigating circumstances occurred to further compromise the water level.  

But, the emergency cooling water pumps likely would not have worked if needed.

As staffing becomes further undermined by cost constraints, and underused infrastructure succumbs to passive aging, any small failure becomes more likely to be compounded by a chain of other failures, and could lead to a truly calamitous event.

If you have any doubts about the truth in this, I suggest you watch the embedded Fairewinds video at the end of this diary, which explains in some detail how sequential failures at Fukushima Daiichi lined up like a string of dominoes to bring about the unlikely triple meltdown we now know is so regrettably possible.

I don’t think I need to explain again to our astute readers why maintaining something as simple as the correct level of water in a reactor is essential to avoiding a crisis.

According to Susan Smallheer, reporting in the Rutland Herald:

… water levels in the reactor core were lower than plant workers realized because of faulty calculations, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Friday.

This is what we at GMD have come to regard as a “Friday News Dump.”  During VY’s operating years under Entergy control, we grew accustomed to learning about violations that took place much earlier at VY, only on Fridays, when most people are too busy with weekend plans to take much notice of the news from VY.

Entergy Nuclear spokesman Martin Cohn said Entergy workers incorrectly measured water levels, thinking they were higher than they actually were.

He attributed the problem to the fact that many plant personnel took five days off immediately after the Dec. 29 shutdown. “It was an issue of instrument calibrations,” he said.

As we bear in mind that personnel cuts will be ongoing at the idled reactor, and that Entergy has sought relief from its emergency planning and notification obligations,  is instructive to read the NRC’s own words about the failure:

“Entergy did not establish measures to assure the design basis was correctly translated into procedures and instructions,” the NRC report stated…An incorrect assumption in calculation led to reduced water level in the reactor vessel while using the shutdown cooling system,”

Doesn’t that make you feel all better,now?

Happy Valentine’s Day from VY!

I am a non-technical member of the Fairewinds Energy Education crew, but the views expressed here are my own alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Fairewinds.

Note:  Comments from the public on decommissioning issues are being accepted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission only until March 23.  You can use this handy link to submit your own.

It’s Friday the13th and less than a month away from the fourth anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, which continues to flow radioactive water into the Pacific

What better day for Vermont to revisit their own nuclear powder keg, Vermont Yankee.

On Monday,the Vermont Department of Health revealed that last August, Strontium-90 had been detected in test wells on the property of the now inactive nuclear plant.  

Assuming a very conservative position on the release, the Vermont Dept. of Health offered  the following observation:

Until now, the only radionuclide measured in any of the groundwater monitoring wells at Vermont Yankee was tritium (hydrogen-3). Sr-90 was detected in soil collected near the source of the tritium leak in 2010. Sr-90 has also been detected in fish in the Connecticut River as well as in fish in other Vermont waters not connected to Vermont Yankee, but those detections are consistent with worldwide background levels.

So-called “background” radiation sounds benign enough, until you consider this (also from the Health Dept.):

Sr-90 is a product of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, and does not occur naturally in the environment….It has a half-life of 29 years, which means this is the time it takes to decay to one-half of its original concentration. Ingesting Sr-90 at high enough levels is linked to bone cancer, cancer of soft tissue near the bone, and leukemia.

…and this:

Although the specific source of the Sr-90 is unclear, it is likely that Sr-90 in ground water and soils at Entergy Vermont Yankee are the result of past leaks and fallout from air releases at the station during its years of operation.

Remember that tritium leak from the pipes that Vermont Yankee denied even existed?  Apparently Entergy still lacks the curiosity to investigate, saying that the source will probably remain unknown until decommissioning.

Which brings us to the week’s second big news item about VY.  

As predicted here on GMD and by plenty of others, Entergy is beginning to inch away from its decommissioning commitment.

You may recall that, when the Legislature allowed Entergy to purchase Vermont Yankee, everybody spat on their hands and swore a boyscout oath that Entergy would live up to its decommissioning obligation.

Entergy Vermont Yankee was formed as a Limited Liability entity (LLC).  This designation shields the greater corporate conglomerate, sharply limiting its liability in the event of a bankruptcy.

With establishment of this arms-length relationship, the writing seemed to be on the wall, that Entergy would one day try to walk away from the high cost of decommissioning, leaving Vermont taxpayers holding the bag.

Recent fancy footwork by the energy giant to justify raiding the decommissioning fund, in order to cover some of the costs of long term onsite storage of spent fuel, only served to increase our anxiety.  

That they had been approved for SAFSTOR, a program under which decommissioning can be delayed as much as sixty years, inspired even less confidence.  

The drawbacks for the community in such an arrangement are pretty obvious, but the delay also means significant increase in the final cost of decommissioning.

Now, Entergy is showing its cards as it unscrews all the light fixtures and makes for the door.

An Entergy Corp. official said Wednesday the company is offering no guarantees it will pay to decommission its retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant if the job’s still not done by the end of a 60-year period.

Of course this announcement was accompanied by much confidence that it would never come to this, and decommissioning would begin just as soon as the fund had grown sufficiently.

However, with the fund already a little anemic, Entergy dipping into the fund to offset the cost of onsite fuel storage, the non-returning status of VY, and an uncertain energy market future; that sounds pretty much like a leaky pipe dream.

Entergy VP Michael Twomey hints it could get ugly:

“There would probably be quite a bit of litigation about that,” Twomey told a joint hearing of the House and Senate Natural Resources committees. “We’d all have different points of view.”

Understate much?

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Even though I  am proud to be a non-technical member of the Fairewinds Energy Education crew, the opinions expressed here (as always) are my own alone and do not necessarily coincide with those of Fairewinds.

Toxics Action is calling our attention to a small town crisis to which we all might relate.  

Just 784 citizens strong, Graniteville is a village with a history of dealing with industrial health hazards. It is not surprsing folks there are alarmed by the  proposal to site an asphalt plant in their midst.

The all too recent memory of Silicosis due to dust from the area’s granite industry has raised local awareness, making them highly alert to new industrial health threats and binding the resisters into Neighbors for Healthy Communities.

When I read about public opposition to the proposed plant, I wanted first to know more about the potential hazards before venturing to voice my own; so I consulted that twenty-first century oracle of diverse opinion, the “Google.”

What I learned would concern me if a plant were to locate in my own neighborhood.

While there were certainly many examples of reassurance that if regulatory standards are carefully observed and enforced, no harm should come to the community surrounding an asphalt plant, there was acknowlegdement that asphalt fumes contain known toxins; In the words of the EPA:

“Asphalt processing and asphalt roofing manufacturing facilities are major sources of hazardous air pollutants such as formaldehyde, hexane, phenol, polycyclic organic matter, and toluene. Exposure to these air toxics may cause cancer, central nervous system problems, liver damage, respiratory problems and skin irritation.” [EPA]. According to one health agency, asphalt fumes contain substances known to cause cancer, can cause coughing, wheezing or shortness of breath, severe irritation of the skin, headaches, dizziness, and nausea. [NJDHSS] Animal studies show PAHs affect reproduction, cause birth defects and are harmful to the immune system. [NJDHSS] The US Department of Health and Human Services has determined that PAHs may be carcinogenic to humans.

If the EPA opinion wasn’t enough to give pause, a 1997 study  by the National Parks Service contains the following warning:

NIOSH urges caution related to human exposure to asphalt. Current NIOSH research indicates that asphalt products are carcinogenic to laboratory animals and, therefore may be more toxic to humans than previously believed [366].

So the question of underlying hazard was pretty conclusively answered for me.  That hazard is real and recognized, and the only thing standing between the community and those toxins is the regulatory process, in which the people of Graniteville have had more than small occasion to be disappointed.

But the problem doesn’t end there.  Even if the plant were successfully sealed-up, emission free, there would still be risk from the collateral exposure that would inevitably occur when the material is loaded and unloaded out of doors and transported through the town.

Safety regulations governing necessary products and services are always heavily tempered by pragmatic considerations.   When acceptable practices are finally enshrined in law, thanks to vigorous industry input, health and safety risk reduction has already been carefully weighed against the cost benefit.  So regulations never achieve 100% risk reduction, even when strictly enforced.

Furthermore, accidents involving explosions are always a risk at asphalt plants.  Such an occurrence would not just endanger the workforce, but the community as a whole.

The people of Graniteville have every reason to be concerned.

Toxics Action would like us to know that there will be a fund-raising dinner at the Old Labor Hall in Barre on February 21 at 6:00 PM, to support Neighbors for a Healthy ommunity in their fight against this plant.  In addition, there will be music,  a live auction and a bake sale

Tickets are $10 for adults, $6 for kids under 10, and may be reserved by phoning 802-476-3710.

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The weekend edition of the Messenger carries an editorial by Rob Roper of the right-wing Ethan Allen Institute advocating for Vermont to join 24 other states in passing a so-called “Right-to-Work” law.  

The timing is odd since this red-flag originally saw the light of day way back in August, when it was carried by Vermont Digger.

The name “Right-to-Work” is deceptive, as are the statistics quoted in Mr. Roper’s pitch.  In states without “Right to Work” laws, no one is denied the right to work.  They simply may not benefit from the wage and benefit packages negotiated through collective bargaining unless they contribute to the cost of that collective bargaining effort.

Sounds pretty fair to me.

So-Called “Right-to-Work” laws are popular in states under Republican control, where regulation is egregiously lax, minimum wage is kept truly minimal, and a lack of social services and infrastructure investment keep taxes artificially low.  

These states are extremely attractive to industrial-scale development, of course, but the collateral costs to poorer communities represented in their population, and to the environment, must be borne by the federal purse or not at all.

The statistics that Mr. Roper quotes are therefore skewed by factors other than “Right-to-Work” laws.

Let’s take a closer look at the sources that are providing Mr. Roper with his talking points.  He cites a study by the “Competitive Enterprise Institute.”  According to Sourcewatch, the “Competitive Enterprise Institute” is heavily funded by the infamous Koch brothers and has “long ties to the disinformation campaigns” of big tobacco and climate change denial.

We can only assume that his statement that “over 85% of Vermonters” support a “Right-to-Work” agenda is based on statistics provided by that extremely questionable source.  If this number wasn’t simply pulled out of the air, it was no doubt arrived at through the use of a “push-poll” which surveyed only a carefully chosen section of the population.  

Anyone who has ever been the recipient of a call asking something on the order of  “Would you support candidate “A” if you knew that he beat his wife?” is familiar with the nature of “push-polls.”

Given Vermont’s position as the most progressive state in the Union, it seems highly unlikely that 85% of Vermonters actually would support a law that essentially strips labor of its ability to engage in collective bargaining, particularly in this era of conspicuous corporate greed and exploitation.

The Vermont League of Conservation Voters, on which I am proud to serve as a board member, annually joins other Vermont environmental organizations in releasing a Common Agenda that reflects their shared priorities for the legislative session.  

The principle of a “common agenda” recognizes the fact that each group will have its own distinctive priorities beyond the common goals, but all have agreed on the priority of certain key issues and encourage legislators to craft legislation to address those issues and the associated goals.

Joining VCV in this statement of priorities  are the Vermont Natural Resources Council, Vermont Public Interest Research Group, Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club, Conservation Law Foundation, Toxics Action Center, Lake Champlain Committee, and Preservation Trust of Vermont.

“This agenda highlights the most pressing environmental legislative priorities for 2015 – priorities shared by leading environmental organizations in Vermont,” said Lauren Hierl, political director of Vermont Conservation Voters.  Hierl noted that the groups consulted in assembling the Common Agenda are advocates for Vermont’s natural resources, healthy citizens, and vibrant communities.

The goals of this years Common Agenda reflect ongoing concerns that should be shared by  all Vermonters:

* A clean energy future, specifically enactment of:

o   an innovative renewable energy standard; and

o   a carbon pollution tax.

* Healthy state waters, specifically enactment of:

o   stronger regulations and better enforcement mechanisms to address major pollution sources including farms, roads, and commercial developments;

o   creation of a Clean Water Fund with better accountability for how funds are spent; and

o   increased funding for clean water initiatives, including new fees on polluters.

The Agenda doesn’t end there, but offers details of how these goals might be reached through legislation, and it goes on to raise a number of other focal points:

additional legislative priorities:  strengthen the vitality of downtowns, invest in working lands, maintain the integrity of the state’s environmental permitting system, promote dam safety, and ban plastic microbeads from personal care products.

The Common Agenda is one of the tools that Vermont’s environmental community uses to more affectively carry out its role in ensuring that the state remains a premier name in forward-looking environmental policy.

Tonight’s Messenger (behind a paywall) featured an editorial by Mike Smith, a onetime Secretary of Administration under Jim Douglas.  In it he adds his outrage to the cacophany of right-eous voices in the blogosphere, all in defense of a Hollywood action flick.

Along with many others, Mr. Smith might want to walk back some of the heat in his response to remarks made about the movie “American Sniper.”

It is, after all, only a blockbuster movie; so get a grip, Mr. Smith.

Michael Moore doesn’t need defending.  Neither does Howard Dean; and Bill Maher, least of all.

I know the context in which each commented regarding “American Sniper” and it is sufficient to say that I get what they were trying to say.  

But this would be an opportunity lost, if we didn’t pause to remark on yet another invocation of the false outrage that threatens to sap our collective common sense.

The real story here isn’t political; it is cultural…and maybe ethical.

Being a former Navy Seal certainly qualifies Mr. Smith to comment on his own experience and whether or not the movie represents that in a meaningful way, but it does not endow him with particular privilege to attack anyone who doesn’t love this picture and the creepy blood-lust it raises in some audiences.

Howard Dean may have regretted his quip about the Tea Party, but that’s because he is a politician and the remark violated political “best practices,” not because there was no grain of truth in it.  

And nothing that he said disrespected real servicemen and women in any way.   His remarks were directed primarily toward “armchair warriors” who just love a fighting war, especially when they aren’t in it.

The fact is that movies glorifying American warriors, while appealing on many levels, do find a particular audience among the simply xenophobic, and those who distrust anyone who doesn’t share our common zeitgeist.  

While the Tea Party’s founding principles were primarily based on small government and conservative fiscal policy, it was soon co-opted to deliver messages of “American Exceptionalism” and xenophobia.

It isn’t much of a reach to joke that a movie that is heavy on defining the enemy as “savages” might have special appeal to the extreme right of American politics.

I looked to see what other ex-military had to say about the movie and found this very articulate piece on salon.com, by Garrett Reppenhagen, himself a former sniper in Iraq.

Says Reppenhagen of the movie:

This portrayal is not unrealistic. My unit had plenty of soldiers who thought like that. When you are sacrificing so much, it’s tempting to believe so strongly in the “noble cause,” a belief that gets hardened by the fatigue of multiple tours and whatever is going on at home. But viewing the war only through his eyes gives us too narrow a frame.

So while he acknowledges there is some truth in the portrayal, he is quick to point out the risk in allowing the emotions this piece of docu-drama raises in the susceptible to be mistaken for authenticity.

I met some incredible Iraqis during and after my deployment, and it is shameful to know that the movie has furthered ignorance that might put them in danger.

And he points to an important difference in the nature of the war wounds his own service as a sniper has left upon him:

Unlike Chris Kyle, who claimed his PTSD came from the inability to save more service members, most of the damage to my mental health was what I call “moral injury,” which is becoming a popular term in many veteran circles.

As a sniper I was not usually the victim of a traumatic event, but the perpetrator of violence and death. My actions in combat would have been more acceptable to me if I could cloak myself in the belief that the whole mission was for a greater good. Instead, I watched as the purpose of the mission slowly unraveled.

In Mr. Reppenhagen’s remarks we read authentic pain and haunting shadow.  

This is not a movie.

It’s Ground Hog Day in Vermont and we could all use some good news…other than the Patriots’. win, that is.

‘High time to welcome a new Front Pager to Green Mountain Daily: former Democratic Representative from St. Albans, Mike McCarthy!

I’ll let Mike introduce himself, but suffice it to say that he has been a contributor to GMD for a number of years now; is the Franklin County party chair, and currently works for the folks who endeavor to bring solar energy to as many Vermont households as they can, Sun Common.

Franklin County readers will remember him also as the former proprietor of a lively bakery/coffee shop, and occasional performance space, Cosmic Bakery, which became the hub of informal conversation and intense political debate.

Throughout the years, Mike has contributed his time generously to a number of community endeavors.

Mike is a husband and a dad, and we are grateful that he can still carve out some time for this wholly unpaid gig.

With that I’ll leave it to him to update the record.



Welcome Mike!

Update/correction:  Contraleslie points out (in her comment below) that this is, in any case,  the decision of just the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the NRC, and will not necessarily be adopted by the entire Commission.

I guess I should be stunned by the decision of the Atomic Safety & Licensing Board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that Entergy should be excused from the obligation to provide emergency monitoring at Vermont Yankee.

It is a measure of my lack of faith in the NRC that I am am, at most, confirmed in my cynicism.  

That the 2-1 vote was not unanimous is the one ray of hope on the horizon. Per the fire-walled Rutland Herald:

The majority said Vermont had not made a case for why Vermont Yankee should be treated differently from other nuclear power plants that are shut down and are not required to keep the emergency data system in place.

But the dissenting member, Richard Wardwell, said the other two members were misinterpreting the plain language about the issue of exemption, saying the law did apply to Vermont Yankee, operational or not. The exemption, Wardwell wrote in his dissent, applied to plants shut down before the requirement was put in place in 1990.

The state has maintained that enforced monitoring would be essential to community safety for as along as fuel remains in the spent fuel pool.

Entergy has always said it planned to move all of the fuel into dry cask storage “as soon as possible,” but I don’t believe there are any NRC rules mandating by what date the fuel must all be transferred to dry cask storage.

Spent fuel must remain in the pool for about five years, after which it is cool enough  to move to into dry storage. The casks are extremely costly themselves; even the cheaper design for which Entergy has opted.

This is in addition to the costs of creating onsite storage pads for the casks, since no permanent repository has been created, and the transfer process itself has attendant risks and costs.  

For all these reasons, reactor operators tend to delay the transfer as long as at all possible.  This has led to a situation of overcrowding in spent fuel pools all over the country.

Even if we take Entergy at its word (which has historically been unreliable),  the spent fuel will remain vulnerable in the pool for five more years.

No where are the fuel assemblies more vulnerable, in fact, than in the spent fuel pools built atop Mark 1 GE BWR reactors, such as the one at VY.

Built high above the reactor itself, if even a small breach in the pool occurs, simple gravity may lower the water level to a dangerous point rather rapidly. If electrical issues in the dormant facility compound the problem, remediation could conceivably fail.

Furthermore, positioned as it is beneath a relatively flimsy canopy of ceiling at the top at the reactor, the pool could be targeted by terrorists using all manner of aircraft, now including civilian drones.

These are, admittedly, unlikely scenarios, but don’t they seem more likely today than fifteen years ago?

What is amazing is that in this post 9/11 America, where we have been forced to surrender so much of our personal freedom for the sake of security, and few of the old rules seem to apply, the NRC can still insist on consistency with its own long standing policies that favor business interests over population safety concerns.

Nonetheless, based on Commissioner Wardwell’s comment, it sounds to me as if the State has pretty solid grounds for appeal, should the NRC agree with its Safety and Licensing Board.

(Please note: as always, this diary represents my own personal views and not necessarily those of Fairewinds Energy Education, where I am employed in a non-technical capacity.)

I usually like to take a look at reports from State Auditor Doug Hoffer’s (D/P) office, because those give us the nuts and bolts feedback on how effectively economic policy is executed in state government.

I’m kind of behind on the most recent report, released January 20, on the performance of leases held by Vermont’s ski areas on public lands.

I am grateful to freshman Rep. Corey Parent (R) for the reminder his newsletter provided, although I can’t say I agree with his own conclusions.

The Auditor’s report suggests that the state may not be seeing the full value of the lands they lease to the ski industry, and in this time of budgetary challenges, any improved revenue opportunity should not be dismissed out of hand.

The primary reason why ski area leases appear to be underperforming for the state is because the terms under which the leases were created are now extremely dated and inconsistent.  Not only do these inconsistencies make it difficult to reduce administrative costs through efficiency measures, but the leases  are tied to a dated compensation system that does not reflect the diverse income streams that area operators are now enjoying.

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%

Over the last half-century, locally owned resorts with several lifts and a few facilities have been transformed into year-round enterprises – some of which are now owned by large out-of-state corporations. Today’s resorts feature new lodges, hotels, condominiums, golf courses, retail stores, waterparks, and other high-end amenities.

Between 2003 and 2013, development at the seven resorts spurred increases in sales of goods and services, property values, and revenues from excise taxes. But lease payments over this decade fell when adjusted for inflation. The leases were designed to capture a certain percentage of the primary revenue source, which 50 years ago was lift tickets. As the resorts have evolved, that revenue source has become one of many.

In short while Vermont’s been snoozing, the taxpayers have been losing…often to out-of-state interests whose investments are certainly appreciated but do not bring as much secondary value to the state as those of resident operators for whom the dated and inconsistent lease terms were originally intended.

One of the most problematic of the inconsistencies is the variation in assigning title to property on state land, which obstructs two towns’ power to tax and gives some resorts a tax advantage because property that belongs to the State is tax-exempt. Vermonters therefore pay for land and facilities used by the ski areas through the State’s Payment in Lieu of Taxes programs, which reimburses municipalities for taxes lost from state-owned property. These payments for property used and developed by the resorts reduce the value of the lease revenues to the State.

The Auditor’s Office concludes quite reasonably that the State made a huge error in not building periodic review and updates of lease terms into the system, and that antiquated language in liability insurance provisions associated with the leases may now leave the state vulnerable.

“Our review points to old lease terms that may not be suitable for today and questions whether taxpayers are receiving fair value for these spectacular public assets,” Auditor Hoffer said. “It is my hope that this report will stimulate a discussion about all of these issues.”

Sounds about right to me, but be prepared for an argument from some Republican legislators if any increase in lease rates is proposed.  From Mr. Parent’s newsletter:

“While I agree that standardization of lease contracts makes a lot of sense, I’m not sure Vermont ought to seek higher lease payments because the broader economic growth has compensated the people of Vermont well…we ought to have a discussion about how we can grow business at our ski resorts in Vermont to help further economic growth and increase state revenues organically.”

I guess Mr. Parent is unimpressed with the state’s EB-5 efforts.