A train crashed into two vehicles that police say were parked too close to the railroad tracks in Barton during Monday’s total solar eclipse, sending one woman to the hospital with minor injuries. 

Authorities responded to the crash at 3:33 p.m., according to a press release issued late Tuesday by Vermont State Police. Totality in the Northeast Kingdom town of Barton took place between 3:27 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday.

A state police investigation found that a Vermont Rail System train traveling north through Barton struck a Toyota Prius at the intersection of Eastern Avenue and High Street, damaging the vehicle’s passenger side mirror. The train then hit a second parked vehicle — a Ford Explorer driven by the woman — and the force of that collision pushed the Explorer 5 to 10 feet into a third vehicle, a Jeep Wagoneer, according to police. 

All three vehicles had minor damage. Police said the cause of all the crashes was the vehicles parking too close to the railroad tracks. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Train strikes vehicles parked too close to the tracks in Barton during eclipse.

BURLINGTON — In the aftermath of the totality of the eclipse on Monday afternoon, most viewers on the Burlington waterfront departed quickly. But some lingered, awestruck, in the returning sunlight.

“It was absolutely incredible,” said Waterbury resident Mike Timbers, 66. “It was one of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen in my lifetime.”

Bettina Haskell, 60, also of Waterbury, said that it looked like “a sunset or a sunrise on each side.”

“And to see stars?” she said. “And the birds?”

Ben Frechette, 34, and Ana Weiss, 33, of Boston, said they had made a last-minute decision to come to Burlington to see the totality.

“Everybody was like you gotta do it, you gotta do it,” Frechette said. “I wasn’t sure until we saw totality. And then I was like, holy crap. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

“It was crazy,” Weiss said. “It was so, like, eerie.”

“Looking up at where the sun usually is and seeing, like, a hole in the sky, is …” Frechette said.

“So weird,” Weiss put in.

“It kind of makes you understand why like, you know, like ancient civilizations saw that and they were like, ‘Oh, the world’s ending,’” Frechette said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘One of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen in my lifetime’.

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.