Hundreds of people, many of whom traveled in buses from the far corners of the state, jammed the Statehouse April 12 to tell the House Agriculture Committee to pass the bill mandating labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food sold in Vermont.
“It reminded me of Barack Obama saying, 'Pass this bill,'” said Rural Vermont executive director Andrea Stander about the litany of testimony. She said 112 people testified by the end of the evening.
Committee member Will Stevens, I-Shoreham, echoed her. “One hundred percent wanted us to pass the bill. Some said tonight, some said tomorrow.”
Committee Chair Carolyn Partridge, D-Windham, said after the hearing that the committee will be discussing the bill Friday morning, and she expects it to pass in some form. She said she thinks it will need examination by the Judiciary Committee.
The slogan “Buy Local” has been the mantra for independently owned companies in Vermont for more than a decade, but at a gathering for a left-leaning statewide business group, members were told that now-ubiquitous retail concept isn't enough to help businesses endure tough times. “Invest Local” is the logical...
Vermont's food sector employs 56,000 people - or almost one in five private jobs in the state. Can the number of food-related jobs increase in the middle of an unemployment crisis? About 150 Vermonters involved in food production, marketing, and sales recently gathered at Lake Morey in Fairlee to...
On May 23, the Vermont Attorney General's office filed its first response to Entergy Corporation's lawsuit against the state. Entergy is suing the state in a bid to keep Vermont Yankee, the state's sole nuclear power plant, operating beyond the March 21, 2012 scheduled shutdown date set in Vermont statute. In a 26-to-4 vote last year, the Vermont State Senate blocked the Public Service Board from renewing Vermont Yankee's state license after it expires in March 2012. In its 68-page...
Cost and revenue figures for decommissioning Vermont Yankee are outdated, deficient and incorrect, according to a recently released study by the Legislature's Joint Fiscal Office. The author of the study, Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear expert for Fairewinds Associates, says the Legislature should ask Entergy to hire an independent consultant to recalculate decommissioning costs for the plant before lawmakers discuss the issue this session. Depending on the extent of the contamination of soils at the Vermont Yankee compound, the fund could...
The Vermont Public Service Board held four days of technical hearings last week on petitions from environmental groups seeking to shut down the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and revoke its state operating permit in the wake of revelations that the facility was leaking radioactive water into the environment. A year ago, Entergy Corp., the owner of Vermont Yankee, announced that tritium from the plant had been released into soils on the compound. In the hearings, lawyers for the New...