Top Stories for Tuesday September 19, 2006

Velco Describes Environmental Efforts At Otter Valley Union High School Hearing
By Ed Barna
    No one explained why the Agency of Natural Resource would hold a VELCO wetlands permit alternation hearing in Brandon on Sept. 11, when most of the affected wetlands were in Addison County, and none of the 10 or so people on hand asked.
    Perhaps it had to do with the Northwest Reliability Project's steady march southward. As of last Thursday, 3Phase's heavy equipment had congregated on the flats just north of the Leicester River, close to the Leicester-Salisbury border.
    Sandy Rowe, a member of VELCO's environmental team, occupied most of the time giving a Powerpoint presentation on the project's working methods, as a way of reassuring people that they were truly concerned about the environment. Reporting on the line's progress so far, she said about 95 percent of the right-of-way cutting was complete, and all the work should be done by December.
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Disaster Drill
By Alexandra Larrow
    On Saturday, September 9th, the New Haven Fire Department held a drill for various fire departments and rescue squads in the area. For this particular drill, New Haven flipped an old Vergennes High School bus over an embankment into a ditch. They then placed a car under the front of the bus, and wrecked a car farther up the road. Several students from Vergennes and Mount Abraham volunteered to act as victims in the crash, as did multiple adults from the area. I was fortunate enough to be one of those students. Each of us was given a different injury, and our job was to portray that injury while the firemen and paramedics worked on the crash. I was the most critical patient in the bus, aside from the dummy acting as the dead bus driver. I was supposed to be unconscious. I was very impressed with the men and women working on the crash.   [ more ]

Other Top Stories

• The Bristol Harvest Festival is back and “Gearing Up” for its “2nd Annual Better L8 than Never” Car Show!