This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

COLCHESTER — At the Colchester Days Inn on Thursday afternoon, Annette Berry found herself contemplating a task that was both daunting and exhaustingly familiar: how to efficiently pack up all her belongings and move.

“My George Foreman, my Crock-Pot, my ramen noodle pot … dishes, cups, glasses, knickknacks …” Berry said from the breakfast room of the hotel she’s lived in since February, with a voucher from Vermont’s emergency shelter program. “You know, just stuff that I had in my house, when I had a house.”

The 60-year-old said she has been homeless since 2019, when she lost her Section 8 voucher for an apartment in Florida that was rife with maintenance issues. She and her 77-year-old partner came to Vermont to be closer to family. They’ve since shuttled between motels in Rutland, Barton and Middlebury — made all the more difficult because they lack a car — before finding a degree of stability at the Days Inn over the last few months.

Now, they’re preparing to uproot again. As tens of thousands of visitors are expected to stream into northern Vermont this weekend to catch a glimpse of Monday’s total solar eclipse, some motels and hotels in the state’s emergency shelter program are clearing their rooms to accommodate the celestial event chasers — who are driving up hotel prices across the path of totality nationwide. 

Hotel rooms in Chittenden County this weekend are booking for upwards of $500 a night. The state currently pays motels and hotels $80 a night to shelter unhoused Vermonters.

Three lodging establishments that shelter unhoused Vermonters have told the state they would not accept state vouchers in the days leading up to the eclipse: the Anchorage Inn in South Burlington, and the Motel 6 and Days Inn in Colchester.

Around 50 households are sheltered through the program at the Chittenden County locations, with the majority at the Days Inn, said Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families’ economic services division.

Most of the households impacted have indicated to the state that they have friends or family who can host them during the eclipse interruption, Gray said on Friday morning. DCF staff are assisting the other households to find options for alternative places to stay, including finding open motel rooms in other parts of the state, she added.

Around a third of the impacted households are required to contribute a portion of their income to the state to maintain their voucher, in the form of “self-pay days” at the motels, Gray said. Every month, such households can decide to leave the motels rather than pay for these days. That means these households could essentially disappear from the state’s radar for a few days over the eclipse and then re-emerge afterwards. 

Berry made plans to stay with her daughter over the long weekend, though she hesitated to ask for the favor. She worries packing into her daughter’s home in Ferrisburgh could jeopardize a family custody situation because of overcrowding. And she fears that telling the state that she can stay with her daughter could make it appear that she doesn’t need her motel room anymore.

“My daughter is the one that said, ‘Why would you stay in a tent?’ She said, ‘You know you can come here,’” Berry said. “I said, ‘I don’t want to lose my voucher.’ She said, ‘You’re only coming to visit.’ I said, ‘Well, yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.’”

Asked about Berry’s concern, Gray emphasized that the motel program is meant to be an option of last resort. If there are reasons why family or friends can’t accommodate someone permanently, “those are conversations that we also have with people everyday, to really try to understand what the situation is,” she said.

For other unhoused guests at the Days Inn, staff have attempted to house multiple people in a given room for the weekend. While the hotel was booked solid for the eclipse weekend months ahead of time, some visitors have canceled their stays, and as rooms have opened up, employees have offered to bunk up multiple unhoused guests in rooms together to give them an option other than sleeping out in the elements.

One guest, who agreed to speak about his living situation under the condition of anonymity, said he’ll be tripling up with two other guests he was grouped with by the hotel for the days surrounding the eclipse. 

“It’s a roof over our head,” he said in the parking lot on Thursday afternoon, as snow fell. “It’s better than the other options.”

Gabe Handy, who owns the hotel, declined to comment for this story.

Nothing prevents motel and hotel owners from declining to provide rooms for unhoused guests through the state program. The state does not have a contract with the lodging establishments, and historically, when large numbers of people come to certain parts of the state at once — such as during college graduation weekends — there’s “disruption” in the motel program, Gray said.

The state is interested in entering into longer term contracts with the motels and hotels, but as lawmakers debate the program’s future beyond this summer, there’s “a lot of uncertainty,” Gray said.

Without knowing what the scale of the program might be beyond July — until which many motel program participants have extensions — the state is wary of signing longer-term agreements, she said.

Paul Dragon, executive director of the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity, said the temporary eclipse displacements highlight the drawbacks of depending on businesses to shelter people.

“The bottom line of this is that, you know, we rely on hotels, which has been really good in many, many ways — we’ve been able to shelter so many people. We saw that through Covid,” Dragon said. “And we also know that when you rely on for-profit businesses to do this work, there’s a different orientation.”

Gray also emphasized the need to move away from the state’s reliance on motels and hotels to shelter unhoused residents. She pointed to the Scott administration’s focus on encouraging more housing development.

“We don’t want to be using this many motel rooms every year, endlessly. We want people to have their own housing,” she said.

On Thursday afternoon, Berry expected to need to leave the Days Inn the next morning. But on Friday morning, staff let her know she can stay until Sunday. Now, she’s holding out hope that enough visitors cancel their eclipse trips that she can stay put.

“I’m still praying to God that come Sunday, I’ll be good till Tuesday and get my voucher renewed,” she said. “But I’m packing just in case.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: As eclipse watchers arrive in Vermont, some motel residents must pack up to make room.

Journey to Recovery, an addiction recovery center in the Northeast Kingdom, refers two people a week to inpatient treatment for alcohol use disorder.

At the other end of the state, 2 out of 3 patients that Bennington Turning Point recovery coaches see through their emergency room program primarily have alcohol dependency issues.

In Rutland and Springfield, local recovery coaches are also seeing an increasing number of people aged 60 and up who are seeking help for alcohol misuse.

“Every collaborative partner is aware of the high rate (of alcohol misuse),” said Tracie Hauck, director of the Rutland Turning Point Center, “and the increased use among older adults.”

A recent national survey reflects this gloomy picture of alcohol use in Vermont. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health for 2021 and 2022 show Vermont had the second highest rate of alcohol use disorder among the states.

Alcohol use disorder is diagnosed based on several criteria. They include whether a person ended up drinking more or longer than they intended, wanted a drink so badly they couldn’t think of anything else or drinking interfered with taking care of their family or work.  

Vermont showed a 12% rate for this disorder, same as six other states. The highest, 14%, was found in Colorado and North Dakota. 

The survey, conducted annually by the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, also ranks Vermont as No. 2 for binge drinking. It’s defined as having five or more drinks (for men) or four or more drinks (for women) within a couple of hours of each drink on at least one day in a month. Some 27% of Vermonters acknowledged drinking this way.

Another survey question asked whether people consumed alcohol in the past 30 days. Vermont placed third nationwide, at 57%. The survey respondents included adults and children ages 12 to 17. Among adults, the prevalence is 61%.

Alcohol is the most commonly used substance by Vermonters, and adult Vermonters’ drinking behavior has remained consistent since 2011, said Anne Van Donsel, of the Vermont Department of Health’s division of substance use programs.

Referring to previous state reports, Van Donsel underscored that alcohol not only causes overdose deaths, it also contributes to health problems.

The long-term health risks include weakening of the immune system, learning and memory problems, high blood pressure, anxiety and depression, and cancer.

“We have seen people in their 20s given six months to live due to a confluence of complications directly from excessive alcohol consumption,” said Margae Diamond, director of the Bennington Turning Point Center.

The fact that alcohol is a legal substance and part of the American cultural fabric, she said, makes it “intensely difficult” for those who are suffering from alcohol misuse to admit they have a problem, seek help and remain sober.

Diamond said she is glad that alcohol dependency in Vermont is getting more public attention, since alcohol is a substance that people often struggle with but has been overshadowed by the state’s opioid epidemic. 

“The majority of funding and attention tends to lean towards opioid use disorder and while there is no debate that is serious and often fatal,” she said, “we consistently see more people for alcohol use disorder.”

Staffers at addiction recovery centers statewide said that, since the coronavirus pandemic reached Vermont in 2020, they’ve had growing interactions with people aged 60 and older who are struggling with alcohol misuse.

Astrid Bradish-Hoyt, a peer counselor at the Turning Point Center in Springfield, said more older adults and elderly people are now calling the center to seek recovery services. Others cross paths with local peer counselors through their emergency room outreach, where they offer recovery assistance to people who are brought in for substance-related health emergencies.

“Elderly people get very isolated,” said Lila Bennett, director of the Journey to Recovery Community Center, echoing what other centers pointed to as a reason for alcohol misuse among this age group. This social isolation became especially marked during the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic due to social distancing regulations.

The state health department, meanwhile, said its data does not reflect a bump in chronic drinking or at-risk drinking behavior among elderly Vermonters. 

The state numbers, from 2011 to part of 2022, show consistent alcohol use among those aged 65 and older, said Van Donsel, of the substance use programs division.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Binge drinking, alcohol use disorder in Vermont ranked among the highest in the nation.

Overnight in early July last year, Vermont solar installer Bill Chidsey got a call that a grocery store he worked with in his village of Hardwick was flooded. He arrived to find feet of water in the Buffalo Mountain Market’s utility room, spilling over from the rising Lamoille River in a record-breaking rainstorm. 

“The grocery store survived by an inch,” Chidsey said. “If it had rained fifteen more minutes, they’d have lost four compressors.” 

He’s now helping the co-op build a net-zero energy system that will use solar power and recycled waste heat from the store’s refrigerators. But it’s going to be a long project — just one of countless examples Vermont has seen since last year of how sustainable rebuilds in the wake of a flood don’t happen quickly. 

“I think we’re just getting started with this,” Chidsey said. 

Advocates, utilities and state agencies have seen slow progress and mixed success since July 2023 in trying to replace flood-damaged home and business energy systems with more efficient, cost-effective, low-carbon technology. Now, they hope to redouble these efforts as part of a long-term recovery — both to keep people affected last year from falling through the cracks, and to be more resilient in the next storm.

“We consider that we’re now about to start ‘phase two,’ where we hope to go back and talk about energy systems,” said Sue Minter, who leads Capstone Community Action in central Vermont. “In the emergency — with winter and nowhere else to go, and oh, by the way, no contractors available, labor shortage, material shortage, crisis — we couldn’t do the transition work, but that doesn’t mean we won’t.” 

Lessons from storm Irene

More than a decade ago, Minter was the deputy secretary of Vermont’s Agency of Transportation when the 2011 Tropical Storm Irene — comparable in its severity to the 2023 floods — washed out hundreds of miles of roads and bridges across the state. 

As the state’s Irene Recovery Officer, Minter spent the next two-plus years grappling with federal regulators and pushing through new policies and programs to rebuild “stronger, with resilience in mind,” she said. This included allowing easier upsizing of culverts and clearing development out of floodplains. 

Many places with these post-Irene resilience upgrades and reforms saw less damage in the July 2023 floods as a result, Minter said. Vermont officials even came to a recent meeting of the Maine Climate Council, after a pair of weather disasters there, to talk about their approach to flood-resilient infrastructure.  

“When you know you’re in an emergency, and you know everything has been destroyed, you also know it’s an opportunity to innovate … to rebuild differently,” Minter said. 

Vermont, often called a potential haven for future climate migrants, is nonetheless seeing more frequent and intense rain and floods as one of its top impacts from human-caused climate change. The state also relies heavily on pricey, carbon-intensive heating oil. 

After last year’s floods, Vermont leaders wanted to seize the moment to help affected residents make future-looking energy and efficiency upgrades on a widespread scale. 

“They’re ripping out drywall, they’re having to update systems — this is the time to make sure that you do it properly,” said Efficiency Vermont supply chain engagement manager Steve Casey.

Making emergency rebates accessible

Efficiency Vermont created an emergency flood rebate program for affected homeowners and renters, reallocating $10 million in pandemic aid already set aside for low-income weatherization projects.

The new program offered up to $10,000 per household to repair or replace flood-damaged energy systems and other appliances, on top of existing funding for efficient electric heat pump water heaters and electrical panel upgrades. Similar rebates for damaged businesses were just raised to a $16,000 cap. 

But uptake on this funding has been slow. As of January, only 155 households had received flood rebates of $5,100 apiece on average, according to state legislative testimony from Efficiency Vermont director Peter Walke.

It’s partly because the initial $10 million was “an overshoot to ensure we wouldn’t run out of funds,” allocated quickly “without knowing what the actual need would be,” said spokesperson Matthew Smith. 

But people also ran into myriad barriers to using the money quickly. 

Some lacked up-front cash to pay for upgrades that would be rebated later. In response, the state has begun offering a 100% cost-coverage program for the lowest-income clients, where contractors are paid directly by the state. That program had paid out nearly $92,000 to 10 people as of January, per Walke’s testimony, with 58 more in the pipeline. 

“The households that are still in significant need at this stage were vulnerable households to begin with,” Casey said. “We do have this repeating situation where flood events kind of just exacerbate some vulnerabilities for certain households.” 

‘Life and safety first’

The timing of the 2023 floods was another complicating factor. The upcoming heating season loomed in the months after the disaster, and limited housing stock meant people couldn’t relocate from damaged homes, unlike after Tropical Storm Irene, said Sue Minter.

“In 2023, July, people had to get into their homes as quickly as possible,” she said. “You always have to have life and safety first.” 

The repairs and retrofits needed most urgently were not simple. Many people’s water and space heating systems and electrical panels were in basements, “the first place to flood,” said Casey. 

Parts of Vermont are trying to change this norm — Waterbury, for example, requires basements to be above flood elevation in new or substantially improved home construction, among other flood protections. 

Chidsey, the solar installer in Hardwick, said he and his electrician have tried to shift to putting electrical panels on the outside of homes, with any indoor subpanels out of the basement. Ideally, he said, the cellar becomes “just a hole in the ground that holds up the house, because water comes in often now.” 

But moving HVAC infrastructure out of a vulnerable basement, whether to meet a local requirement or voluntarily, isn’t easy, especially after major damage, Casey said. People may not have a ready space for that equipment on the first floor, or may need mold remediation before taking on serious flood-proofing. 

It means that the advocates working to facilitate upgrades have had to take a long view.

‘The promise that we’ll be back’

Last fall, Efficiency Vermont, Capstone, the state’s utilities and a range of other partners stood up a new system of Vermont Energy Recovery Teams, who went into damaged homes to help people plan and prioritize repairs before winter, including coordinating holistically across contractors and funding sources. 

Some homes were able to switch straight to heat pumps as a cheaper, cleaner method of water and space heating, officials said. But for many, a replacement oil or gas system was the simplest short-term option. 

Efficiency Vermont does not normally offer incentives for installing fossil fuel systems, but made exceptions for high-efficiency Energy Star-rated models as part of its flood recovery rebate program.

“In every case, we looked for something that was more efficient than what they had before,” said Vermont Gas energy innovation director Richard Donnelly, who was part of many recovery team home visits. 

In each of those visits, the teams would take note of residents’ long-term needs and goals for decarbonization, resilience, comfort and lower energy burdens, with an emphasis on heat pumps. 

“We left off with sort of the promise that we’ll be back,” said Vermont Gas CEO Neale Lunderville — that “there’s money available for some of these technologies, that we can help you with the same process.” 

The recovery teams are now under the umbrella of GreenSavingSmart, a pilot energy and financial coaching program for low-income residents run by the Vermont Community Action Partnership. They’ll soon begin revisiting last fall’s clients to facilitate a new round of resilient improvements. 

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s a hopeful pathway to allow these households to have — once they’re fully made whole and recovered from all of this — a lower energy burden and cost burden than the situation they were in to begin with,” said Steve Spatz, an account manager on the supply chain team at Efficiency Vermont. “It really is an opportunity to … upgrade the conditions for the household.”

Months after devastating floods, Vermont renews efforts to aid climate-friendly rebuilds is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Jason Eaton, the man accused of shooting and wounding three young Palestinian and Palestinian-American men in Burlington in November, made his first in-person court appearance Friday afternoon so that attorneys could schedule upcoming proceedings in the case.

In the brief hearing in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington, Judge Kevin Griffin reviewed the attorneys’ preliminary case timeline and set an “optimistic” date of Jan. 1, 2025, for Eaton’s trial.

Prosecutors allege Eaton, 48, shot the three college students — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad — who had been visiting one of their families in Burlington for Thanksgiving, according to charging documents. The students attended high school together in the West Bank.

Eaton pleaded not guilty in November to three counts of attempted murder.

The three men, who were all 20 years old at the time of the shooting, were speaking a mix of Arabic and English and wearing keffiyehs, a traditional scarf that is a symbol of Palestinian identity, while walking on Prospect Street in Burlington on the evening of Nov. 25, according to court documents.

Eaton allegedly approached the three men silently from a porch and shot all three.

Awartani sustained the most serious physical injuries of the trio. A bullet that lodged in his spine rendered him paralyzed him from the chest down, according to his family.

The shooting became international news amidst the Israel-Hamas war, which is still raging in Gaza. Many activists in Burlington and Vermont called for the act to be prosecuted as a hate crime.

Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George has previously said her team did not have enough evidence to add that charge. The issue was not discussed in court on Friday.

In the packed courtroom, many onlookers wore keffiyehs.

Damian Taylor said he attended as a member of The Party for Socialism and Liberation “in solidarity and support for the victims and their families.”

“We wanted to show up and have our presence be known in the court for everyone to see that these people have our support,” Taylor said. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that the person who perpetrated these hate crimes receives the justice that they deserve.”

Eaton has been held without bail since his arraignment on Nov. 27. He is currently lodged at Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans.

Friday’s hearing was briefly delayed while the judge allowed Eaton to change into civilian attire rather than appear in court in prison garb. Defense attorneys had filed a motion earlier this week arguing that his appearance in prison clothing could potentially taint a jury pool and deny him a fair trial.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Man charged with shooting 3 Palestinian students makes first in-person court appearance.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Montpelier has become the latest Vermont municipality to approve “just cause” eviction protections for renters this Town Meeting Day.

The measure passed by 16%, or about 400 votes, according to results reported Tuesday evening by City Clerk John Odum.

But the measure will need to make it past the Legislature and the governor before it can go into effect – and so far, other local “just cause” charter change votes have gotten stonewalled.

“Hopefully, this will send a strong message to lawmakers in the Statehouse that ‘just cause’ eviction is a serious policy that has a lot of support from Vermonters across the state – including outside of Chittenden County,” said Joe Moore, a Montpelier resident who helped gather signatures to get the charter change measure on Tuesday’s ballot.

The new measure clearly delineates under what circumstances a landlord can evict a tenant.

In Vermont, landlords can generally decline to renew a tenant’s lease for any reason. “Just cause” protections prohibit these evictions for “no cause” — but still allow a landlord to evict a tenant because they haven’t paid rent, or they’ve broken state landlord-tenant law or the provisions of their lease. 

The language approved by Montpelier voters mirrors measures passed by Burlington and Winooski voters in recent years. It would effectively require property owners to give current tenants the right of first refusal for the unit when the lease ends. Landlords and tenants would still be able to renegotiate, but with more guardrails. For instance, a landlord would be barred from enacting “unreasonable rent increases” which can amount to “de facto evictions.” 

Many small-scale landlords would be exempt altogether. Property owners who live onsite at a duplex or triplex or who rent out an accessory dwelling unit on their property could continue to evict tenants as they do today.

Given the state’s razor-thin rental vacancy rates and rising rents, proponents of such protections argue that they’re a necessary tool to give tenants greater leverage in the housing market – and insulate them from profit-driven or retaliatory evictions. 

But so far, state leaders have blocked the local eviction measures passed in other cities and towns from becoming law.

Local charter changes in Vermont must get the greenlight from legislators and the governor before being enacted, and thus far, no “just cause” measure has cleared both hurdles.

Burlington residents approved a “just cause” charter change in 2021, and the next year, lawmakers gave it their rubber stamp. But Gov. Phil Scott vetoed the measure, arguing at the time that it would discourage property owners from renting out units to “vulnerable prospective tenants,” instead encouraging them to give preference to renters with better credit scores and no criminal history on their records. Rather than pass the tenant protections, Scott emphasized the need to promote more housing development. Lawmakers fell one vote short of overriding his veto. 

In 2023, Burlington representatives again pushed for the charter change, and voter-approved “just cause” measures from Winooski and Essex headed to the Statehouse, too. But last year, none advanced. And this session, the prospect of passing the local charter changes appears grim.

Last month, Rep. Mike McCarthy, D-St. Albans City, who chairs the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs — which has control over whether local charter changes move forward — told VTDigger/Vermont Public that the committee would not advance the measures this year.

(McCarthy noted that the committee removed the Essex “just cause” provision — which included broader language than the Burlington, Winooski and Montpelier measures — from a larger charter change bill for the town, which has advanced). 

McCarthy offered a few reasons why now is not the time to pass these “just cause” measures town by town. The bills are likely to meet yet another veto from Scott, and McCarthy does not think they would garner enough votes in both chambers for an override. He also argued that such tenant protections should be married with policies that streamline and expedite the eviction process more generally by bolstering court staffing, thus clearing the path for landlords to remove tenants who are causing safety concerns.

Instead of “just cause” protections, McCarthy wants to work on funding eviction prevention programs — and focusing on regulatory reform to bring more housing online. 

“I don’t think that, in this current environment, where there are a lot of changes going on in housing, that this is the policy lever that we should push,” he said. 

That hesitance under the golden dome means Montpelier’s newly approved charter change is likely to hit a major roadblock. But Moore hopes lawmakers will shift their footing after the Montpelier victory. 

“We look forward to seeing the charter change move in the Legislature as soon as possible,” he said.

As local charter changes stall, some lawmakers are considering a temporary pause on “no cause” evictions statewide until July 2025. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Montpelier voters approve ‘just cause’ eviction protections.

For just over two years, Craftsbury Academy, which educates roughly 140 students on its Craftsbury Common campus, has had no potable running water.

Instead of using fountains, students and staff drink from bottled water that is trucked in — at the state’s expense. But it’s not only drinking water that’s affected.

“They’re having to pour water out of bottles to cook with and all of that, which makes it a little more challenging,” said Joe Houston, the Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union’s facilities director. “Dealing with bottles and bubblers, and making sure that water deliveries come on time and get refilled, is just one more complication to the operation.”

The reason? Tests have detected toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, in a Craftsbury public water system.

PFAS are toxic chemicals present in a variety of manufactured products, including electronics, construction products and fire-extinguishing foam. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, PFAS can increase the risk of cancers and have a range of negative impacts on human health.

It’s not clear how the contaminants got into Craftsbury’s water. But Craftsbury Academy’s workarounds are an example of how some schools with hundreds of students have had to adapt to life without potable running water — in some cases, for years.

‘Got into a rhythm of it’

Under a 2019 Vermont law, public water systems — public systems that serve 25 or more people — are required to test for PFAS regularly. And schools, many of which depend on their own individual public water system, are bearing an apparently disproportionate PFAS burden.

“There are approximately 150 schools in Vermont that are (on) their own public drinking water system,” said Ben Montross, drinking water program manager at the Department of Environmental Conservation. “So they’re served by their own on-site well. And because they serve a public population of more than 25 people, they’re regulated as a public system.”

Montross said that small, rural schools are likely more susceptible to PFAS contamination because they may have both water and septic systems on-site.

At those schools, “floor waxes, floor polishes, floor cleaners and various other chemicals that would be used as part of the cleaning and maintenance processes would then wash down the drain,” Montross said, giving a hypothetical example. “And the drain would go into the on-site septic (system), and then the PFAS would travel through the aquifer into the drinking water system.”

The public water system currently under a Do Not Drink Order in Craftsbury serves both Craftsbury Academy and Sterling College, according to a spreadsheet of state data provided by Montross. The data does not include information about small private and residential properties, only public water systems.

“Over time — you know, it’s now been just about two years — over time, we all kind of got into a rhythm of it,” said Nicole Civita, a Sterling College administrator and a commissioner on a Craftsbury fire district board, which oversees the water system. “So the water truck comes in, somebody notices, and a whole bunch of Sterling staff or students get out and volunteer to offload jugs.”

Mount Holly Elementary School and Woodbury Elementary School are under similar orders because of PFAS levels, according to the data. Mt. Holly, which educates about 110 pre-K-6 students, has been under the order since December 2019. Woodbury, a roughly 55-student elementary, has been under the order since November 2022.

In Woodbury, officials are working to determine the source of the contamination so a new system can be installed, and at Mount Holly, a “new well and treatment design” is in the works, according to the state spreadsheet.

The Dover child care facility Kids in the Country and the Morgan independent Turning Points School are also under Do Not Drink orders due to PFAS. Kids in the Country has been without potable tap water since 2020, while Turning Points has gone without since 2021. A sports bar in Killington and a mobile home park in Rockingham also exceed PFAS limits in their water, according to the data.

The town of Morgan owns the school building occupied by Turning Points, a therapeutic school with about 30 students, and the town pays for the water.

“It’s hundreds of dollars a month,” said Eric Pope, the chair of the Morgan selectboard. “But it’s not astronomical.”

Pope said that PFAS had been detected at other private properties nearby Turning Points. The town is planning to drill a new well that Pope hopes will be PFAS-free, he said, and if all goes well, clean water could be flowing by the summer.

Tasha Tobey-Pike, the assistant director of Kids in the Country, in Dover, said she believed the nonprofit child care center was paying out of pocket for bottled water.

Using bottled water could be an “inconvenience” if the nonprofit ran out during the day, she said. And “with us paying for it out of pocket, it is an added cost that we wouldn’t typically incur.”

PFAS and PCBs

The state has implemented an upper limit when it comes to PFAS contamination in water: 20 nanograms per liter. No current federal limit exists, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency expects to release its first PFAS regulation limits early this year.

Anyone following the state’s ongoing saga around polychlorinated biphenyls — aka PCBs — in Vermont schools may see parallels with PFAS.

The story has a similar shape: Vermont releases regulations about the permitted concentrations of a toxic chemical that are more stringent than federal ones. And in schools, the detection of that toxic chemical requires mitigation and racks up costs.

Luckily, however, the presence of PFAS has not been nearly as disruptive to schools as PCBs. For one thing, the short-term remedy consists of simply trucking in bottled water — not, for example, rebuilding a school from scratch, as is happening with the contaminated Burlington High School.

But PFAS still has its costs. As of early November, according to Montross, the state had paid out $88,000 to purchase bottled water for systems affected by PFAS. Of that sum, $66,000 went to Craftsbury alone.

Civita, of Sterling College and the Craftsbury Common fire district, expressed gratitude that the state was picking up the water tab. Without that, she said, the cost would have been “tremendously burdensome” for customers, including Craftsbury Academy and Sterling.

In Craftsbury, however, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Tests from a newly drilled well have come back clean — meaning that, with luck, bottled water could be on its way out.

“Hopefully, sometime this summer, drinkable water will start flowing through the taps again in Craftsbury Commons,” Civita said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Some Vermont schools have been without potable tap water for years.

Now that the countdown to Christmas is in full force, less-organized shoppers who celebrate the holiday may still be searching for this year’s Christmas tree. With some farms sold out of inventory and already closed, panic is possible.

Although the supply of locally grown trees is tight this year, industry observers, including Jim Horst, the executive director of the New Hampshire-Vermont Christmas Tree Association, have an assuring message.

“Most people that want to buy a Christmas tree are gonna be able to get one in Vermont,” said Horst.

But it might require persistence. The current state of Vermont’s industry fits into a national trend of a tightening supply of Christmas trees. As trees take roughly a decade after they’re planted to grow large enough to sell, the industry goes through long cycles of supply and demand, with a tightening supply since 2016, according to the National Christmas Tree Association.

“The Christmas tree industry, like most industries, goes through oversupply and undersupply, just like the housing market, or any market,” Jill Sidebottom, a spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree Association, said.

Given the long growing period of trees, the effects of financial crises that happened years ago can still be visible in the industry.

“The start of the issues that we’re experiencing now started all the way back with the recession in 2008, and at that time there was an oversupply, and the economy wasn’t good, and a lot of tree growers were having a hard time selling their trees. And because of that many weren’t planting as many (trees) as they normally do,” Sidebottom said.

However, the limited supply is not only due to financial ebbs and flows but also a potential increase in demand for the real thing. According to a survey by the Real Christmas Tree Board, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote the use of real trees, 20% of respondents this year were planning to buy a real tree for the first time.

According to Horst and some tree farm owners, there is also growing interest among families in the cut-your-own tree experience in Vermont.

“It’s just the trend of, and I think it started especially during Covid, that people like to get outside and do things,” said Jack Manix, owner of Walker Farm’s Elysian Hills in Dummerston. “You go outside and we have hot cider and popcorn and cookies and all kinds of stuff like that, and it’s like a little event.”

While Manix expects to be open until Christmas Eve, others, such as Isham Family Farm in Williston and White Trees in Jericho, have already closed for the season. That’s not unusual for this time in December, said White Trees’ owner Bob White.

“Everybody wants to cut their own trees — that’s typical. It’s a struggle to find a place to go this time of year. You could find a hundred farms — we all sell out pretty much, that I know of,” White said.

During a call with VTDigger, White had to pause to send numerous customers away. When asked where to, he said: “There’s nowhere else to send.”

White said that he needs to be judicious about how much he cuts to keep sales consistent from year to year. “If we cut (trees) all in one year, it will take four or five years before we open again,” said White.

While the supply may be more plentiful again in the near term, the future of the local industry remains precarious for other reasons. White’s farm, for example, is on a floodplain.

“If (a flood) happens in the spring or fall that doesn’t bother me at all,” he said. But when Tropical Storm Irene hit in late August 2011, “we lost half the farm and it took eight or 10 years to recover from that,” White said.

And apart from a changing climate, the long cycles in the Christmas tree industry pose a real problem for Vermont’s aging population, as new farmers can only begin selling trees after four to five years.

“Assuming you’re planting on an annual basis, you got ever-increasing expenses and no income coming in,” Horst said. “The flooding that we had in July has complicated things a little bit, but even over the last several years there have been people to some extent leaving the industry, primarily because of age, and no one to take over.”

On top of that, the land available is limited, making it difficult to get into the industry, and also to expand to keep up with demand.

“I’d love to plant a lot more trees (but) there’s no land available because I can’t bet against housing projects. Housing projects win every time,” White said. “We only grow X amount of trees, and the demand has grown. … So we do the best we can but we aren’t going to make it to Christmas anymore.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Christmas tree farms grapple with a tight supply this year.

The late Vermont artist Norman Rockwell is best known this time of year for “Freedom from Want,” his 1943 portrait of three generations of family gathered for Thanksgiving.

The four grown children of Don Trachte are grateful for another Rockwell work, “Breaking Home Ties.” Many people recognize the 1954 Saturday Evening Post cover for its stoic farmer seeing off his college-bound son. The Trachtes know it better as the painting their father purchased for $900, then forged a copy of so he could hide the original during a contentious divorce.

This is not your typical holiday story. But in the end — and as seen in a new exhibit, “The Norman Rockwell Mystery,” at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center — it’s punctuated by a $15.4 million payoff.

As his children tell it, Trachte was the cartoonist of the Sunday comic strip “Henry” — syndicated to 400 newspapers in 40 countries from 1935 to 2005 — when they moved from the Midwest to the Arlington-Sandgate town line in 1950.

Trachte soon befriended a palette of renowned area artists, including Grandma Moses and Saturday Evening Post illustrators John Atherton, George Hughes, Gene Pelham and Mead Schaeffer. But the cartoonist was most drawn to Rockwell, who worked for the Post when it was the most widely circulated weekly in America.

Completing his first Post cover in 1916, Rockwell created 322 more until his last in 1963. His 1951 “Saying Grace” was voted the most popular in the magazine’s history. Second place went to “Breaking Home Ties,” the final cover he created in Vermont before moving to Massachusetts.

Trachte loved the latter painting, in part because his neighbor had posed as the farmer. Seeing the work for sale at Manchester’s Southern Vermont Arts Center in 1962, the cartoonist bought it for $900.

Trachte hung “Breaking Home Ties” in his living room. Then he and his wife, breaking their own home ties, divorced in 1973.

Aiming to divide the couple’s assets, lawyers called for an art sale. But Trachte, not wanting to part with the Rockwell, convinced his wife they should keep eight various collected works so their children could inherit them.

And so “Breaking Home Ties” remained in the family, with Rockwell borrowing it for special shows in such world capitals as Cairo, Moscow and Washington, D.C.

After Trachte moved to an assisted-living home in 2001, his children sent the painting for display and safekeeping at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

Enter John Howard Sanden, artist of the official White House portraits of President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.

“Imagine my puzzlement,” Sanden wrote on his website, “when visiting the exhibition for the first time and confronting the large canvas labeled ‘Breaking Home Ties,’ I realized at once that the painting before me was not by Norman Rockwell.”

Sanden mailed seven letters to the museum starting in 2003, pointing out such discrepancies as the work’s faded colors. But curators, explaining away such changes as due to the passage of time and improper cleaning, held firm they were exhibiting the original.

Trachte died in 2005 at age 89, leaving his children the painting — and lingering questions about its authenticity. Son Dave was searching for answers on St. Patrick’s Day 2006 when he called his brother Don Jr.

In a recent interview, the latter remembered his sibling’s pronouncement: “I think I found something.”

Meeting at their father’s old studio, the brothers noticed a gap behind a bookcase along the wall. The wood paneling, they discovered, was actually a sliding door. Opening it, they found a crawl space with all eight paintings from the divorce settlement, including the Rockwell.

Failing to unearth any written explanation, the family contacted the Norman Rockwell Museum, which confirmed all the hidden works were originals and the “Breaking Home Ties” it had on display was a replica.

The New York Times reported the revelation on its front page of April 6, 2006. In an exclusive interview, the family speculated that Trachte painted the duplicate himself to keep the true one away from divorce lawyers.

“Doesn’t surprise me,” ex-wife Elizabeth Markey was quoted as saying.

Amid the publicity, the children decided to auction off the Rockwell.

“People don’t realize how large these paintings are,” Don Jr. said of a framed canvas that’s nearly 5 feet in width and height. “It’s a burden if you have something too valuable.”

And so the family sat at New York’s famed Sotheby’s auction house in November 2006 as the original their father purchased for $900 went up for bid.

“You always worry at an auction,” Don Jr. recalled. “Anything can happen, right?”

Within minutes, his anxiety morphed into amazement when the painting sold to an anonymous bidder for a then-record $15.4 million.

The family returned to Vermont with the replica — now part of the exhibit “The Norman Rockwell Mystery” that just opened at Bennington’s Monument Arts and Cultural Center. The show features the forgery next to a full-size photo of the original, which went back into hiding after the auction.

The family doesn’t regret letting go of such a prized possession.

“A lot of people have paintings,” Don Jr. said. “Lucky us, we’ve got a heck of a story.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: How a Vermonter forged a Norman Rockwell painting — and why his family is thankful.

WASHINGTON — At the place where Poor Farm Road meets Route 110, about five miles south of Washington Village, a simple wooden cross stands beside the road sign where Michele Demar’s body was found on the morning of Aug. 3.

The cross, placed by her family, is adorned with photos of Demar as a child and as a young woman. It bears her name and a simple heart at the intersection of the wooden pieces.

The 33-year-old woman’s death received little attention at the time, as outward appearances suggested her death was by suicide. A press release issued by the Vermont State Police said an autopsy confirmed that Demar’s death was due to hanging but added, “the manner of death remains pending.” As of this month, her death certificate still said the same.

“Initial evidence gathered at the scene indicated the death is not suspicious, but this remains an active and open case,” state police said in mid-August, encouraging anyone with information to call the agency or leave an anonymous tip.

But Demar’s death has received more attention, and more scrutiny, since Oct. 25, when hunters came across the body of a second woman, 23-year-old Tanairy “Tanya” Velazquez Estrada, at the northern end of Poor Farm Road. The remoteness of the location was not lost on area residents, who were still questioning the circumstances of Demar’s death about three miles away and not even three months earlier.

“People come up here to dump tires and trash, not bodies,” said Bob Sherman, a retired Montpelier lobbyist and 40-year Washington resident. Velazquez Estrada’s body was found about 20 feet from the gate to his property, Sherman said, in or near an old cellar hole at a spot where the rural road turns particularly rugged.

“Clearly, the person who dumped the body didn’t have four-wheel-drive,” he said. Noting that the remote road has long attracted illicit activities, he added, “I believe they knew exactly where they were going when they left that body there.”

Velazquez Estrada, who state police said had lived “most recently” in Barre, had been reported missing by her mother on the same day the hunters found her body, police said. Her mother told police in Fitchburg, Massachusetts that she had not heard from her daughter in more than a week.

The cause of Velazquez Estrada’s death remains pending, as toxicology tests are expected to take from “several weeks to several months,” state police said.

On Thursday, Maj. Dan Trudeau, who heads the state police Major Crime Unit, confirmed that police “were treating it as a homicide,” but offered few other details, citing the importance of protecting the investigation.

In the days following the discovery of Velazquez Estrada’s body, grisly details about her death spread among community members in the small central Vermont town, which claims just more than 1,000 residents, while high school students took to social media to share what they had heard.

Rumor and speculation have filled the void left by the lack of information offered by state police, whose resources have been stretched thin by a string of eight apparent homicide cases in the month of October alone.

While it is not unusual for police to hold back details of a case that is under active investigation, Sherman and others said the silence does little to squelch the rumors or offer residents some needed context.

With the deaths being the topic of conversations at local gathering spots, including the Washington Village Store and the post office, Sherman said of Demar’s death, “I haven’t talked to anyone in town who believes it was a suicide.”

“Two deaths on a rural road, it makes no sense,” Sherman said, adding that the deaths have prompted “a plethora of emotions.”

“Some people are scared, some are confused, some are angry,” he said. “I think they should be releasing more information to the community.”

Trudeau, however, said nothing more could be offered at this point.

“I’m well aware that with any death investigation, there are often rumors among people in the communities,” he said. “In these cases, I cannot provide any more details to the public because it would jeopardize the investigation.”

Trudeau also declined to say whether there are any known connections between the two women or their deaths.

“The investigations into both of the deaths have been complicated by the fact it has been difficult to track down and interview associates,” he said. “But that is common in a lot of investigations.”

As he spoke, he chose his words carefully, clearly struggling with the limitations of what he could offer and urging patience.

“I feel like we’re making progress on the majority of the cases that we have pending right now,” he said. “Unfortunately, cases sometimes take a long time. They are not solved in the first week or so, and it is frustrating to us as well.”

What are the chances?

Henry Demar, Michele’s father, is among those looking for answers.

“Police aren’t telling me anything. It’s been very limited. I’ve actually had to contact them and they are all short-staffed,” Demar said this week.

Demar said his last contact with police was when he reached out to the detective heading up his daughter’s case and learned that there were polygraph tests being conducted. He estimates that was about five weeks ago.

There’s been no further communication since Velazquez Estrada’s body was found, he said.

“I know police had issued a statement saying (Velazquez Estrada’s) death was not connected to any of the other ones where foul play was happening, but they didn’t mention whether it had anything to do with our daughter’s death,” said Demar, a Northfield resident who, with his wife, also named Michele, have custody of their daughter’s two children.

Demar is forthright in acknowledging that his daughter led a troubled life, stemming from a decade-long struggle with substance use disorder. She found it difficult to stay off drugs after she was recently released from jail, despite a period of sobriety when she appeared to be pulling her life back together, he said.

Demar has his own theories on how and why his daughter may have died, mostly related to her being caught up in the drug culture that he believes left her vulnerable. While his daughter had previously used heroin, he said, she had more recently turned to crack cocaine.

Demar also believes there are inconsistencies in the stories of the last people to have seen his daughter alive, and he isn’t accepting that his daughter took her own life on that August morning, an explanation he said state police offered soon after her body was found.

“They specifically told me it looked like suicide and I said ‘no way.’ My daughter has certainly been in the dumps before, but she had two kids she loved and she and her sister were very close,” he said. “Michele would have left a note, and she wouldn’t have just drove out there and said, ‘that’s it.’”

“Something’s not right. She could have been drugged out. I just really don’t think my daughter would have done this to herself,” he said, adding that he has heard the speculation and rumors related to his daughter’s death. In one instance, a photo of her deceased body was photoshopped in a manner that only fueled the rumors, he said.

In light of the second woman’s death, Demar said the notion of his daughter dying by suicide seems even harder to believe.

“Something’s going on there, two on Poor Farm Road,” he said. “What are the chances?”

Little has been publicly released about the circumstances of Velazquez Estrada’s death, although those with knowledge of the case have said the injuries to her body were extensive and vicious. Efforts to reach her family members were unsuccessful. Fitchburg police, who took the missing persons report from her mother, declined to release the report, citing the ongoing police investigation in Vermont.

At the Goodrich Academy in Fitchburg, Principal Alexis Curry confirmed that Velazquez Estrada was a 2020 graduate of the alternative high school, which is part of the public school system. Curry said she had not been aware of Velazquez Estrada’s death.

“She was a very kind young lady. Staff were very fond of her,” Curry said. Noting that Velazquez Estrada had “overcome a lot of challenges in her life,” she added, “She just wanted to graduate and do bigger things.”

A 2019 photo from the Fitchburg Public School website shows a photo of Velazquez Estrada working with elementary school students as part of a community service learning program.

Community candlelight vigil planned

Diane Kinney is co-director of Circle, one of three agencies working in central Vermont to support people affected by domestic and sexual violence. She said the two deaths, combined with reports by women who said they have recently encountered suspicious behavior on rural backroads, has only heightened anxiety levels, as evidenced by an uptick in calls to her agency in October.

“Callers just say they are more afraid than usual; they aren’t going out at night. They are worried that there is someone out there hurting people,” she said.

Since the three agencies — Circle, Safeline and Mosaic — work with survivors of violence, Kinney said efforts to develop safety protocols have been made harder by all that is unknown about the deaths and reports of suspicious vehicles in the area.

“We’re all pretty frustrated, honestly,” Kinney said. “We work with a population that is very traumatized. Therefore, they are hypervigilant and want answers, just like the general public. We are finding ourselves not able to support them.”

Vermont State Police have said they responded to the reports of suspicious vehicles with “high-visibility patrols” in the region that includes Corinth and Topsham, but were unable to substantiate that any criminal behavior had taken place.

“The state police is aware of community concerns regarding these reports, and investigators also acknowledge that individuals may have varying perceptions regarding interactions with strangers,” state police said in a Nov. 1 press release.

While state police have said last month’s eight apparent homicides across the state appear to be “isolated incidents,” Kinney said police could do more to elaborate on the reasons why residents should not feel in danger.

“What else can they tell us? I don’t know,” she said. But given the number of recent homicides, she said, “it just doesn’t seem to add up.”

The sense of increased violence in the area, she said, prompted the three agencies to organize a candlelight vigil, scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday in the town’s Carpenter Park. A flier for the event hangs in the village store, prominent near the exit door. It promotes the vigil as “a gathering for healing from the violence and trauma.”

“We decided to come together and invite folks to find a place of support and hopefully, in the community, find a little bit of hope,” Kinney said. “We don’t have the answers either, but we can support people in figuring out what things they can control.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In the rural town of Washington, rumors fill the void as details prove scarce in the deaths of 2 women.