Democrats Scuttled Vermont Yankee Replacement

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Update: Some feedback on this article claims that the Republican governor Douglas was actually responsible… this underscores my point that the Legislature have the real power, and can easily override a veto. If they want to.

But the Democrats in the Legislature walked away from Vermont’s dams under extreme lobbyist pressure.

We have to stop focussing on a figurehead and start holding Legislators accountable for their actions.

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Hello Addison County!

As of today the gloves are off.  The Democrats are playing hardball and so will I:  with real facts.

With the facts that they don’t want you to know, because then you’d realise that the trust-funder Democrat elite don’t give a fig for local energy development or replacing Vermont Yankee.  Their antinuclear stance is a partisan game… they can always override a governor’s veto if the issue is important enough… but they didn’t. They happily dropped the issue of replacing Vermont Yankee when our dams were on the auction block… blaming Republican governor Douglas. Very old political game.

If the Legislature did give a fig for replacement, they wouldn’t make it so hard to be an energy producer in Vermont.  They wouldn’t pile up regulation & red tape against local energy production, faster than Vermont business and communities can cope.

This is a fact that has to change with the 2012 election!

Democrats make nice promises, but once in office they rip off working families in Vermont for the benefit of corporations such as Nestle, Entergy, AIG, Trans-Canada, Coca-cola & Omya.  They drive away local business and kill small family farms, and maintain unreachable in-state tuition for UVM (highest in the US).   We can’t afford it.

Vermont’s Hydro-Power: Not for Vermonters. We don’t get the power and don’t get paid for it. Corporations just take it, tax-free.

The Burlington Free Press reported that the (mostly) Democrat Legislature scuttled Vermont’s purchase of 8 hydroelectric dams in 2005-6.  The market value then was $385 million, and today it is over a billion!  There’s 478 MW coming from those dams, enough to cover 25% of Vermont’s electricity needs.  It could do better than replace Vermont Yankee; in fact, Sen. Vincent Illuzi, R-Essex/Orleans said that the dams ‘would have reduced the cost of doing business in Vermont’.

Today Vermont’s dams export power to Massachusetts and don’t even have wires connecting them to Vermont (except for two small wires north of St. Johnsbury).  Vermont’s locally grown power is export-only, according to the incumbent Vermont Legislature.  They’re not serious about replacing Vermont Yankee.  Never were.

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There’s a potential of 60 megawatts of power around the state if we can get these small dams and small hydro plants back in production -Rep. Joseph Krawczyk Jr., R-Bennington

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Why are Vermont’s natural resources and opportunities (and electricity) for export only?

The Vermont legislative Democrats listen to their corporate lobbyists and the Democrat Party in Washington, NOT to you and me.  That’s why I’m running for Senate, along with a growing number of Independents.  I’m out there every day, listening to you, and learning about the real Vermont.

Let’s work together to make a clean green sovereign Vermont, with local energy, local food, and local opportunities to make it, especially for our young people!