Dean for America...
Quotes From Environmental Attorneys and one of VT's Leading Environmentalists are far more reliable sources.
But how much do you trust
"Vermonters for a Clean Environment"
DAFM is a poor regulator
Vermont's agriculture is in crisis, and not just because the Northeast DairyCompact was not renewed. The state has not developed a strategy to promote healthy, sustainable farming. Once called Department of Agriculture whose mission was just about farmers and farming, DOA is now DAFM, Department of Agriculture, Food and Markets and the agency’s mission is all Vermonters. The written mission of DAFM is “to provide consumers and the Vermont agricultural community with the highest level of service possible including ensuring and enforcing quality standards for agricultural products, regulating pesticide use, providing information, technical and marketing assistance to farmers and producers and developing new markets for Vermont products.”
DAFM is not responsive, is not providing a high level of service, is not regulating pesticide use, is not providing information, and is not supportive of Vermont's dairy farmers. Something is terribly wrong when our agriculture policies expose Vermonters to unhealthy pesticides and infringe on the economic viability of our family farms. Vermonters should have a right to farm, but no one, not even farmers, have a right to pollute the waters of the state, nor do they have the right to expose neighbors to the increased risk of birth defects or cancers by their misuse of highly toxic pesticides. The right to farm that DAFM is protecting in Highgate is factory food production, at the expense of the family farm. Allowing collateral damage is not acceptable agricultural practice.
The legislature set up the Vermont Pesticide Advisory Council “to suggest programs for wise and effective pesticide use that lead to an overall reduction in the use of pesticides in Vermont.” In its 15 years of existence, VPAC has not dealt with the subject of the use of pesticides in agriculture.
Our Governor, our legislators and our courts have failed to protect Vermonters from the big money, corporate farming and chemical company interests whose agenda is being carried out by the current Agriculture Czar.
http://www.vtce.org/deancrisisagvt.htmlOr How About:
Governor Howard Dean, on a trip to Bennington, compared the chance to have a natural gas pipeline with the chance to have an Interstate highway -- the absence of which has been sore point for southwestern Vermont business leaders for decades. He said that if that area of the state truly wanted economic development, the time had come, with the pipeline, to put up or shut up.
They have contacted groups monitoring gas-related developments elsewhere, have consulted with energy experts to build their case, if there is a filing, and have enlisted formidable counsel. Attorney Jon Readnour is a former Assistant General Counsel for the Central Maine Power Company, primarily involved with licensing power plants and transmission lines, and Stephanie Kaplan is the former executive director and general counsel of the Vermont Environmental Board (1986-1994), the lawyer who successfully opposed OMYA truck traffic for a group of Brandon innkeepers in a recent, much-publicized Environmental Board case (which has since been appealed).
http://www.vtce.org/LoosePages/vtbizarticle.htmlNow lets try:
Governor talks about coal-fired power plant
By Nancy Bazilchuk
Free Press Staff Writer
Vermont ought to consider building new electric power plants in the northwestern part of the state, even a coal-fired power plant, Gov. Howard Dean said Tuesday.
"We need (electric) generating capacity in northwestern Vermont, and we are overly dependent on natural gas," Dean said. "This is not a proposal, but this is intended to spur discussion. The whole point is to get Vermonters to think about having a power plant in their back yard. We are going to have to have one..."
Power is power
Gov. Howard Dean is right to encourage the discussion about Vermont's energy needs. His method was kind of wacky, though -- the cost of getting the coal to Vermont, the disposal of ash, and the mercury in the ash are reasons enough to dismiss his coal plant idea as preposterous, but that's what he did with the gas project in southwestern Vermont, too -- promoted an idea without really understanding the details.
The governor did get people's attention, even if it has made him the butt of a few jokes around here. Cabin fever is pretty intense and we all needed a good laugh.
What we do need to be talking about are our current energy issues, not just new supplies a dozen years away. Why are we selling Vermont Yankee now, when market power clearly lies in the hands of the owners of the generators?
Vermont's energy plan features renewables. A diversified energy supply utilizing wind, solar and hydro technologies can work. We need to pass legislation this year to encourage investment in renewables and empower Vermonters to take responsibility for our own power needs. I live with solar panels and they work. Generating your own power is power.
ANNETTE SMITH
Danby
Annette Smith is executive director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
http://www.vtce.org/coal.htmlEnvironmentalists step up criticism; former chairman defends Harding
November 1, 2001
By DAVID GRAM The Associated Press
MONTPELIER — Environmentalists are stepping up their criticisms of Environmental Board Chairwoman Marcy Harding for her conduct at the board’s annual meeting last week, while her predecessor on Wednesday came to her defense...
Smith said that Harding told her “she felt my reputation was at stake and that I was threatening the integrity of Act 250.”
In a letter to Gov. Howard Dean, Smith said, “I take issue with her (Harding’s) personal attack, questioning my credibility and attempting to intimidate me through her accusations and unfounded conclusions.”
http://www.vce.org/Act250news.htmlA year after receiving their public rebuke from Dean, four of the Environmental Board members, including the chair, were up for reappointment. With not-so-subtle clues from Dean that he didn't approve of the Board's political direction, the Republican majority in the state senate shot down every one of their appointments, thus dramatically changing both the structure and climate of the Board.
"After the post-C&S purge," says Kaplan, "the burden of proof for Act 250 permits switched from being on the applicants - where it's supposed to be - to being on the environmentalists. That's why 98 percent of the permit requests are approved and only 20 percent ever have hearings."
http://www.vtce.org/deanenvironmentomya.htmlDean envirnmentalist who did not go along thi his "business first" environmental policy, which is the above mentioned purge.
After the purge, only one in five environmentally unsound businesses were ever brought up for hearings and 98 percent of all permits were allowed.
Now, acknowledging that its cost made universal health care, let alone single-payer system, politically impractical on a state level was probably a prudent judgment. But Wright, possessed of an ex-Marine's tenacity, was nevertheless shocked by the governor's quiet acquiescence. ''I guess this was the one thing I never could understand about Howard Dean,'' he notes. ''He always seemed so ready to abandon his cause at the first sign of defeat. . . . Maybe it was an unwillingness to have any cause at all, at least any cause for which he was willing to risk his political skin.''
He could be that way with people as well, Wright laments. After the reactionary Republican Senate, in a battle that pitted developers against environmentalists, voted to reject three qualified members of Vermont's Environmental Board, Dean sent the names back to the Senate for reappointment. But when they were again refused, rather than risk real political capital in a prolonged public battle, Dean backed down and declined to submit the names again. In so doing, the governor had abandoned three dedicated public servants, Wright contends.
''I don't think I've ever been more disappointed than I was at the moment,'' he writes.
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/218/oped/Howard_Dean_s_pragmatic_side+.shtml
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