Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.org.

Vergennes and Panton officials are attempting to clarify the boundary between the municipalities, after local officials identified a discrepancy between Vergennes tax maps and the city charter. The inconsistency may also have repercussions for other surrounding communities. 

Vergennes’ tax maps show the city occupying over 1,600 acres, whereas the city’s charter sets the municipal limits at 1,200 acres. A recent survey resurfaced decades-old questions about the city’s boundary lines that current leaders are now trying to resolve. 

The uncertainty has left some Vergennes residents unsure which municipality they will end up living in. Others have concerns about the financial implications of a boundary change, while officials hope an agreement between the municipalities can be reached smoothly and with relative speed.

The land in question between Vergennes and Panton totals some 178 acres of residential and commercial property, and both municipal governments will need to agree — through discussion or arbitration — to any new boundary proposal for approval by the state legislature.

At a packed Vergennes Fire Department on Tuesday evening, mayor Chris Bearor called to order “the first of probably many meetings” on the Panton boundary. Several meetings have also been held in Panton.

At times, Tuesday’s meeting grew contentious.

Travis Scribner, who lives on part of the disputed land, said if the boundary moves, he effectively “didn’t get to choose which town I get to live in.”

“I’ve been a resident of Vergennes for 22 years,” he said after the meeting. “It’s really a bizarre situation.”

Martha DeGraaf, a longtime Panton resident, said Wednesday that while she didn’t want to be “stomped all over by Vergennes anymore,” the tone of the previous day’s meeting was “not healthy.”

“We are two strong communities, and we can come together and find a reasonable solution,” she said.

‘Significant discrepancies’

Historical documents provided by Vergennes and Panton municipalities indicate that officials became aware of the boundary issue in the 1990s, when correspondence on the subject was exchanged between residents, Ferrisburgh officials, legal representatives, and then-Secretary of State Jim Milne.

A 1995 letter from Bob Mitchell, a member of the Ferrisburgh Historical Society, described “significant discrepancies” at several of Vergennes’ borders with the surrounding towns, which included not only Panton but Ferrisburgh and Waltham as well. 

Talks between Vergennes and the latter two towns have not yet begun. Ferrisburgh officials declined to comment on the issue, and the Waltham town office did not respond to requests for comment.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Vergennes Alderman Mark Koenig called the current issue with Panton “the first of three,” and anticipates future talks with the other two affected towns.

The current tax maps in Vergennes were drawn in the early 1990s by former city manager Mel Hawley, who said he used a combination of property surveys and town highway markers as his main reference points. 

Hawley said in an interview he was aware of the discrepancy between the tax map and the city charter, but that a “mountain of evidence” dating back to 1788 shows Vergennes encompassing more than 1,600 acres rather than the 1,200 stated in the charter. He also referenced a now-amended statute which stated that, in the absence of a clear boundary, mutually agreed town boundaries lasting over a century would be binding.

The disagreement was never resolved. 

Tim Cowan, a local surveyor who first worked on the issue 30 years ago and has been hired again this year, said because of statutory complications — which have since changed — and a lack of perceived urgency, the discussion of Vergennes’ borders “just kinda went to sleep.”

Vergennes City Manager Ron Redmond said the issue had arisen again partly because of a grant from the Addison County Regional Planning Commission to explore a potential highway bypass of Vergennes to avoid extreme truck traffic through town. The state-sponsored study included a survey of town boundary lines, he said.

‘A functional resolution’

Redmond said he and Panton Town Clerk and Treasurer Kyle Rowe had a shared goal of making any town line transition as smooth as possible. They have proposed, for example, guaranteeing access to the Vergennes sewer system for customers it currently serves.

“The only thing that should change is where you vote and where you pay your taxes,” Rowe said.

Vergennes resident Craig Miner said he was concerned moving the boundary would cause the city to give up land that could become more valuable in the future (a rough valuation of the 178 acres of property is about $10 million). Miner is also worried that taxes will increase due to the change.

“I think it’ll separate the community and create a dysfunctional combination of towns,” he said. “I think there’s a lot at stake.”

Rowe and Redmond have made a “starting proposal” for a new boundary, which would give some land to Panton while retaining certain parcels in Vergennes that might be more complicated to transfer. Rowe estimated the change would cause a roughly 1-cent tax increase for Vergennes residents. Since both municipalities use the same regional schools, education taxes won’t be significantly impacted.

While any land Vergennes gives to Panton could potentially gain value, Redmond added, recent speculation about the extent of its future worth was “maybe not realistic.”

“I understand the concern (from) community members who are being impacted by this proposal,” Rep. Matt Birong, D-Vergennes, said.

In addition to representing the city, Birong chairs the House Committee on Government Operations and Military Affairs, which would review any proposed changes to the city’s charter or boundary lines.

“Last night left me encouraged that we’ll find a functional resolution to this long-standing border issue,” Birong said Wednesday.

Correction: A previous version of this story mislabeled Panton Town Clerk and Treasurer Kyle Rowe.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vergennes and Panton push for resolution to boundary line confusion .

Milky skies were carrying smoke and haze from Canadian wildfires across northern and central Vermont on Tuesday — prompting state officials to issue a one-day air quality alert across the state. 

Smoke and haze rolled in early Tuesday morning and are expected to linger through the afternoon and night, according to Tyler Danzig, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Burlington. 

Officials warned that sensitive groups should take breaks and monitor their conditions when spending time outdoors. 

Individuals with heart or lung issues, older adults, children, people who work outside and those experiencing homelessness are especially at risk, according to state health officials. Sensitive groups can spend time outside but should take more breaks than usual, according to officials. 

People with asthma are recommended to keep medication handy. Those with heart disease should watch out for palpitations, fatigue and shortness of breath. 

Sensitive groups could continue to feel the effects of exposure up to 24 hours after the haze has passed, according to Danzig. 

The alert spans across Grand Isle, Franklin, Orleans, Essex, Chittenden, Lamoille, Caledonia, Washington, Addison and Orange counties. 

Officials recommend Vermonters sign up for air quality alerts, limit their exposure and keep an eye on forecasts. 

The smoke and haze are coming from wildfires in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Danzig said. Many of those fires have been ablaze for weeks and caused similar conditions in Vermont earlier this summer.

Skies may tinge orange this evening, but the air should clear overnight, Danzig said. The alert stands all day Tuesday and will not likely be extended for another day, according to Bennet Leon, who monitors air quality for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Correction: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the length of the alert.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Officials issue air quality warning for northern and central Vermont .

Updated at 12:06 a.m.

Severe thunderstorms on Thursday caused flash flooding across parts of Vermont, particularly in the Northeast Kingdom and Addison County.

The deluge marks the third year in a row that the state has experienced a major flooding event on July 10. The disasters of the past two years caused tens of millions of dollars in damage across Vermont, which towns are still recovering from.

Just after 6:30 p.m., 5.07 inches of rain had already fallen in West Burke, 4.32 inches had fallen in New Haven and Sutton saw 4.92 inches, according to Matthew Clay, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Burlington office.

In Sutton, one water rescue team was dispatched to “assist the residents of one home cut off by floodwater,” according to a press release from the Vermont Emergency Operations Center.

No injuries or deaths have been reported, as of late Thursday evening.

Other rescue teams were staged in Lyndon, Burke, Woodbury, Stowe, Johnson, Middlebury, Vergennes and Colchester, according to Mark Bosma, a spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management, and Lyndonville Deputy Fire Chief Greg Hopkins.

“They’ll be there until the threat passes or they move to another area under threat,” Hopkins said.  

In the Northeast Kingdom, the east branch of the Passumpsic River at East Haven rose more than 4.5 feet in just over two hours to reach a “minor” flood level and began to recede by 5:30 p.m., according to the National Water Prediction Service.

The flooding washed out part of Route 114, according to a post by NBC5 meteorologist Ben Frechette, threatening the low-lying Northeast Kingdom Mobile Home Park, located on the northern side of Lyndonville. 

Burke Town Administrator Jim Sullivan said most of Thursday evening’s flooding took place in West Burke. 

“We also had a culvert that overflowed on Old Farm Road that washed out the road,” Sullivan said. “Other than our washout areas, those are the areas that people should pay attention to.”

Sullivan also said a 100-foot section of Newark Street got washed out, and one of the lanes collapsed. “As it is right now, that road is closed,” he said.

Any affected residents should visit the Burke Community Center on 212 School St. or call the clerk’s office, Sullivan said.

In the Addison County town of New Haven, no rescue teams were deployed as of Thursday evening, but town officials said they were keeping their eyes peeled. 

“I’m on Field Days Road just past the fairgrounds. We have the road closed. It’s flooded,” said Becky Hutchins, the town’s emergency manager .  

Trees and branches had come down in town, Hutchins said, and Green Mountain Power was addressing some downed power lines in the area. 

“We had two rain cells that came in: One that came in from the west and one that came in from the south, and they both hit at the same time,” she said.

She also urged New Haven residents to avoid the Otter Creek.

“Otter Creek is very high and rushing right now. I suggest that people stay off from any of the waterways and if you see water, turn around. Do not drive through it cause the roads have gotten some damage to them,” she said.

People should avoid floodwaters and seek shelter in impacted areas, Bosma said.

“All of our fatalities last year were on flooded roads. There’s often an undercurrent and/or washouts you can’t see, and even a car can be swept away,” Bosma wrote in an email. “This is fast-moving, so people should get inside if a storm approaches, monitor rivers and streams, and get to higher ground if there is a rise in the waterway. The last two years storms just stopped and dumped a ton of rain over a long period, so this is different.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Flash flooding hits towns in Vermont for the 3rd year in a row.

A New York federal judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction last week that allows Job Corps centers, like the Northlands Job Corps Center in Vergennes, to remain open while the legal battle to determine their fate continues.

In issuing the order, Judge Andrew Lamar Carter, a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, stated that the arguments by lawyers for National Job Corps Association and a litany of fellow defendants — ranging from Education and Training Resources, the contractor who operates the Job Corps in Vergennes, to current Job Corps students — were largely likely to succeed. The plaintiffs all sued the U.S. Department of Labor to stop its attempt to shut down the program.

In late May, the Department of Labor told Job Corps centers across the country to “pause” all of their operations. This order would have forced Job Corps center to shut down a program that provides room, food and a vocational education to low income 16 to 24 year olds by Monday, June 30. 

Instead, the department’s order would have instated what the administration characterized as a “cost-effective” $2.9 billion “Make America Skilled Again” grant program that shifts from federal programs like Job Corps to state-led registered apprenticeships, intended to train workers and provide an alternative to college.

The Job Corps centers had already been funded from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026 by Congress, which previously approved $1.7 billion for the program. 

The plaintiffs in the case argued that the Department of Labor “effectively prevented new enrollment” by ending background checks starting in March, court documents show. Students attending Job Corps need to be background-checked to attend the program, but it is unclear now whether or not the government intends to resume background checks, or if they can be legally compelled to do so.

The Department of Labor claimed that they had only temporarily halted Job Corps operations. However, Carter wrote in his order that the “way that the DOL is shuttering operations and the context in which the shuttering is taking place make it clear that the DOL is actually attempting to close the centers.”

Carter also found that the Department of Labor did not have the power to end the program, writing that the department must “concede that, as part of the executive branch, they do not have the authority to unilaterally eliminate a congressionally mandated program like Job Corps.”

Carter also stated that there were clear harms in ending the programs, citing the circumstances of a plaintiff who is a student with the Job Corps program who was previously homeless.

The plaintiff “will immediately be plunged into homelessness, and she will lose all of the progress she has made in her culinary program. She would be forced to leave a stable residence and placed in a homeless shelter,” he wrote. It is “undisputed,” he wrote, that she was being harmed by the department’s actions.

“The Department of Labor is working closely with the Department of Justice to evaluate the injunction. We remain confident that our actions are consistent with the law,” Ryan L. Honick, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor wrote in an email.

A student enrolled at Northlands said the injunction is “a relief.” 

“We were all kind of scrambling to figure out a plan in less than two weeks of finding a job and trying not to be homeless,” she said in an interview. VTDigger is not naming the student because of potential retaliation by the federal government. 

She said that Northlands is the first place “I’ve ever had three meals a day, and a lot of emotional support, and it’s the first place that I think a lot of kids have a safe environment to explore themselves as a person and [have] the ability to grow.”

The student, who is enrolled in an associate’s degree information technology dual-program between Northlands and the Community College of Vermont, said the opportunities provided by the program were unprecedented for her. 

“I would be the first woman in my family to get a degree,” she said. “I would probably stay in Vermont. I love it… I’d get a job in programming or software development after this. And I’d probably pursue my bachelor’s degree.”

The injunction was also cause for political celebration among Vermont’s Democratic state and federal officials. 

Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark also joined 18 other attorneys general to file an amicus brief in support of the program.

Noting that she was “pleased, and not surprised,” by the court’s order, Clark added that “this order will allow Northlands Jobs Corps Center in Vergennes to continue serving young Vermonters in their journey to achieve their career goals and access stable housing.”

In an emailed statement, U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt. called the Job Corps “a critical training ground and opportunity pipeline for so many Vermonters.”

“I was pleased to see it remain open and operating for the time being,” she wrote. “But the Trump administration remains adamant in ripping away these programs that give Americans a fair shot at success – while training the exact trades workers that Vermont so desperately needs. I’ll keep fighting every step of the way to keep these funds going to the programs just as Congress mandated.”

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. signed a letter with thirty eight other Senators urging the Department of Labor “to immediately reverse this decision to prevent a lapse in education and services for Job Corps students.”

The injunction comes at a time where the Trump administration is butting heads with the judicial branch, as many of President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive actions have been repelled by various federal judges through nationwide injunctions.

On June 27, Carter ordered parties involved in the Job Corps battle to file motions arguing whether or not the recent Supreme Court decision — which limited federal judges’ power to issue nationwide injunctions — would impact the injunction he filed by June 30. The Department of Labor requested an extension that may push the filing date to July 11.

Carter also denied any order to stay the case, meaning the battle for the future of the Job Corps seems poised to continue. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Federal judge’s order means Vermont Job Corps center stays open, for now.

Vermont State Police have identified the man who drowned Tuesday in Lake Champlain as Darren Kemp, who was originally from South Africa. 

Kemp, 30, lived and worked at Basin Harbor Club, which spans parts of Vergennes and Ferrisburgh. On Tuesday, Kemp swam in Lake Champlain near the club, but did not emerge from under the waters, according to a police press release. 

State Police received word of the drowning incident around 9:25 p.m. and reported to the scene along with the Vergennes Area Rescue Squad and the Addison, Charlotte, Ferrisburgh and Vergennes fire departments. First responders carried Kemp from the waters to shore, but efforts to revive him were not successful. 

Kemp was pronounced dead at approximately 10:10 p.m, and the Chief’s Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington will perform an autopsy to determine the cause and manner of death. There is no evidence the drowning death is suspicious, according to police.

This is the second reported drowning in the state in the span of a week, after an 18-year old Burlington High School student Eljak Menjwak died in the New Haven River in Bristol on Saturday. 

Like other states in the East, Vermont has been hit with extreme heat, humidity and thunderstorms this past week, leading many people to seek relief in or near bodies of water.

The state’s Department of Health has identified more than 400 cooling centers where Vermonters can seek shelter from heat waves this summer. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Police identify man who drowned in Lake Champlain.

The Burlington High School community is mourning the loss of student Eljak Menjwak, who drowned Saturday at Bartlett Falls in Bristol.

The 18-year-old senior jumped from the falls into the New Haven River around 5:10 p.m. He immediately began to struggle in the water, and bystanders were not able to pull him out, according to a press release from Vermont State Police.

Multiple fire and rescue agencies responded to emergency calls, including Bristol Rescue. Menjwak’s body was recovered around 8 p.m., the release said.

State police do not consider the death suspicious or criminal in nature, department spokesperson Adam Silverman said.

“Eljak was a bright light in our school district,” Schools Superintendent Tom Flanagan wrote in a letter to the school community Sunday. “He was deeply loved by his peers, teachers, and mentors, and his presence will be profoundly missed.” 

Counseling services would be available to students and families at Burlington High School on Monday, at Champlain Elementary on Tuesday, and Edmunds Middle School on Thursday, Flanagan’s statement said. Support for staff members will be provided through the employee assistance program. Community members have also started an online GoFundMe fundraiser to support the family.

A viewing is planned for 5 p.m. Friday at the Cathedral of St. Joseph, and the burial will be the following day, school district spokesperson Russell Elek said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Burlington schools mourn death of student who drowned at Bartlett Falls.

The Turning Point of Addison County unveiled a free, round-the-clock vending machine dispensing opioid overdose mediation and other health care supplies on Tuesday in Middlebury.

Middlebury joins the towns of Johnson and Bennington in Vermont that have vending machines providing free naloxone, more commonly known by the brand name Narcan.

Another vending machine will be rolled out in Bristol this summer to help fill gaps in health access in the region’s rural communities, said Danielle Wallace, executive director of the Turning Point Center of Addison County. Turning Point is a nonprofit organization with 12 satellite locations around the state that focuses on helping people through addiction recovery.

The dispensers will also provide fentanyl and xylazine test strips, educational harm reduction kits, first aid kits and hygiene supplies such as socks, toothbrush, toothpaste, sunscreen, bug spray and hand sanitizer, Wallace said.

The two vending machines in Middlebury and Bristol, both in Addison County, are funded through a $100,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Health. 

The Turning Point Center determined which supplies to offer after assessing the highest needs of the community and will continue to rotate supplies as needs change, Stephanie Busch, injury prevention program director at the Vermont Health Department, said in a statement to VTDigger. An external disposal container for sharp items is available alongside the vending machine, she said.

“Placement of these vending machines ensures more flexible and responsive access to supplies and treatment services information to better serve the whole community,” Busch said.

While people struggle with addiction across the state, Wallace said resources are often sent to Vermont’s more densely populated areas. 

“In rural communities, resources are always lacking,” she said. 

The vending machines will complement the Turning Point of Addison County’s other addiction recovery related-work, such as the recovery coaching program and a street outreach program, which primarily serves the region’s unhoused population, Wallace said. 

Overall opioid-related deaths fell in the state in 2024, but xylazine-related deaths rose 10%, from 32% in 2023 to 42% in 2024, according to a Vermont Department of Health report. Efforts to offer free and readily available overdose prevention resources are important to continue to reduce drug-related deaths, save lives and help people on the path to addiction recovery, Wallace said.

“I think that education, advocacy and access to resources is a huge piece of what’s driving this reduction in overdose deaths,” Wallace said. “This is our effort and strategy to continue that reduction and to continue seeing less people losing their lives from substance use.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Free, 24-hour naloxone vending machine opens in Middlebury; Bristol to come.

Scout Kranick is a reporter with the Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

GOSHEN — Nestled in wooded hills, an old white house sits along a gravel road, patiently awaiting the next writers, artists and musicians to fill its halls with poetry and music.

A small brook babbles peacefully alongside the dwelling, and a screened-in patio provides the perfect place to enjoy a beer and listen to a local poet’s work.

In a time of political instability, Ruth Stone House is an oasis for writers and artists, both in Vermont and across the world.

The house is named for the poet Ruth Stone, who lived and wrote there for most of her life. After her husband, Walter Stone, died in 1959, she supported herself and her family by teaching creative writing, publishing poetry books and winning literary awards. She was Vermont’s poet laureate from 2007 until she died in 2011.

Ruth Stone’s poetry is known for its seamless blend of domestic themes and cosmic strangeness. Chard diNiord of the Guardian said her poetry has “a tragic/comic register few other American poets have struck, often reminiscent of Emily Dickinson’s double-edged verse, only in a more conversational style.”

Ruth Stone’s legacy is carried on by her granddaughter and current Vermont poet laureate Bianca Stone. She says her poetry is very much shaped by her grandmother’s.

“I look to her poems all the time,” said Stone. “And I feel like my poems speak to hers so much.”

During her life, Ruth Stone cultivated a community of poets, often hosting workshops and poetry readings at her house.

Today, Ruth Stone House is a nonprofit organization. It continues to provide support for a grassroots literary community through poetry workshops, public readings and other events.

Bianca Stone is not the only family member involved. Her husband, poet Ben Pease, is the nonprofit’s executive director. Both have worked on the house’s continued improvement and larger mission.

Bianca Stone is deeply passionate about maintaining the house as a space for writers and local artists to share their work.

“It’s very collaborative,” she said. “It’s like the team’s making it together. It keeps changing and deepening, and we’re just discovering so much.”

Pease added, “Part of our mission is encouraging everyone who’s working with us to take things that they like personally and incorporate that into outreach to the community.”

Their community now extends far beyond the physical house. The couple offers a free online poetry workshop every Tuesday night. The Zoom format has allowed them to work with poets beyond Vermont.

Aimée Algería Barry, a tai chi instructor from Philadelphia, has been joining the online workshop for four years.

“One of the most amazing things about working with Bianca and Ben is that you’re dealing with two people living the poetry life,” Barry said. “They’re very dedicated to poetry, and yet there’s this humbleness and generosity that is constantly in action.” 

“I feel like I’m getting an MFA just from being with them and learning from them,” she said.

Ruth Stone House plans to host more in-person events this summer, including its Beer & Broadsides poetry readings. They are informal, open mic–style events where folks gather and listen to a local poet’s work.

Broadside posters of the featured poet’s work are printed by hand using an in-house Vandercook SP15 letterpress, which belonged to Ruth Stone. That way, everyone can take a free broadside home with them.

Local poet Ben Aleshire, who is also a photographer and printer, said he loves getting involved at Ruth Stone House. He has run the letterpress at Beer & Broadside events.

“There’s a poetry reading, but there’s also other stuff going on,” Aleshire said. “It’s just a really magical little event.”

Aleshire said he’s grateful that there’s a non-institutional, informal center for poetry in the state. He appreciates the casual, easygoing nature of the Ruth Stone House.

“Academics are welcome, of course, but it’s mostly like neighbors and friends and, you know, fellow travelers who come out of the woodwork,” Aleshire said.

But cultural institutions like Ruth Stone House are threatened by a loss of federal funding. Because the National Endowment for the Arts is being targeted by the Trump administration, Stone and Pease are worried their nonprofit won’t receive key awards in the future.

“A lot of the grants that we were gonna apply for are federally funded,” said Stone. “And things like the NEA are very precarious right now.”

Stone and Pease had hoped to use future grants for scholarships for writers to come to retreats and classes, for payments for featured guests on the “Ode & Psyche Podcast” and for printing and freelance costs for their literary publication, ITERANT.

With or without the money, Bianca Stone said poetry survives because poets are driven to write, especially in this political moment.

“I feel radicalized by it,” Stone said. “I feel motivated by it. I don’t feel defeated by it, but I feel sad about it.”

“Somehow,” she said, “poetry endures anyway.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: In Goshen, 2 generations of poet laureates converge.

It might not be Memorial Day yet, but that didn’t stop people from gathering Sunday afternoon for Orwell’s 50th annual Memorial Day parade. The route looped around the Addison County town of 1,200, with people participating on foot, in cars, atop floats and even on tractors. Scroll to see all of VTDigger’s photos from the event.

Read the story on VTDigger here: PHOTOS: Vermonters gather for Orwell’s 50th annual Memorial Day parade.

The state Department of Public Safety has released audio and video recording of the arrest of Addison County State’s Attorney Eva Vekos on a charge of drunken driving more than a year ago.

The recordings, which include videos from troopers’ body worn cameras and dash cam footage from a cruiser, show about two hours of interactions between police and Vekos, mostly after she was taken into custody. 

The recordings, however, do not capture all the interactions that led up to the arrest, including some instances when troopers reported observing the prosecutor allegedly slurring her speech and smelling of alcohol, according to charging documents.

The recordings and the Vermont State Police troopers’ observations of Vekos may prove critical in her case since Vekos refused a breath test that could have shown a measure of any intoxication.

The release of the recordings follows a decision earlier this month by Judge Timothy Tomasi in Washington County Superior civil court ruling in favor of the Vermont Journalism Trust, the parent organization of VTDigger, which brought a lawsuit seeking the recordings.  

Tomasi, in his decision ordering the release of the recordings to VTDigger, told the state Department of Public Safety to produce the previously withheld records to the news outlet within 10 days, making Monday the deadline. 

The department provided the material Monday afternoon to VTDigger.

VTDigger filed the lawsuit after the Department of Public Safety refused to provide the recordings to the news organization. Officers from Vermont State Police, which is within the department, arrested Vekos.

Vekos has pleaded not guilty to the DUI charge and a trial has not yet been set. A judge told attorneys in the case at a recent hearing that he expected it to take place sometime this fall. 

Vekos has continued to serve as the Addison County state’s attorney while the criminal case against her remains pending. The prosecutor’s post is an elected position.

The recordings released Monday begin shortly before a trooper placed Vekos in handcuffs, put her in a cruiser and drove her to the state police barracks in New Haven to be processed for drunken driving. 

Vekos was arrested on the night of Jan. 25, 2024, after she allegedly drove impaired to the scene of a suspicious death investigation in Bridport, according to the charging documents.

Recordings show very little interaction between Vekos and Trooper Kelsey Dobson, who was driving the cruiser, during the roughly 25 minute trip to the barracks, according to the released video. 

The videos do show that Vekos walked a short distance from her vehicle, which was parked at the scene at the time, to a nearby cruiser. She appeared steady while walking without any support. Vekos was then handcuffed by a trooper and placed in the back of the cruiser.

The recordings also don’t clearly show slurred speech, though the videos released do not show much of her interactions with police at the scene. 

At the barracks, the videos and audio recordings show Vekos appearing uncooperative at times, though never raising her voice when Sgt. Eden Neary, who conducted the processing, read her rights and questioned her.

Vekos immediately told Neary when the processing began at the barracks she was not going to answer questions, take a breath test or have a mugshot taken.

“Do you know that discretion is allowed?” she said to Neary, adding: “No photographs. My face is not going to go out in the paper.”

“As far as discretion, we as a department don’t take any discretion with DUI,”  Neary replied.

“There wasn’t any DUI,” Vekos said to him. “There was alcohol on the breath and alleged slurred speech.”

“Which are enough indicators to request an evidentiary test, which you know as the state’s attorney,” Neary responded.

Vekos then spoke about the impact the incident would have on her office. 

“We’ve been working really hard with law enforcement to build a good relationship and this is gonna knock that really down and my office is going to suffer now,” Vekos said. 

“I’m not gonna argue with you about it,” Neary said to her. “That’s a discussion for another day, not right now.” 

Vekos then talked about how much she had to drink.

“I came out to participate in a homicide scene investigation,” she told Neary. 

“I understand that, and I guess that’s where maybe your discretion would have been better used,” Neary said.

“In what way?” Vekos asked him.

“Well, if you knew you had a drink or two,” Neary said. 

“An hour ago – one – an hour ago with a meal,” she said. “It doesn’t make me inebriated.” 

Vekos spoke in a normal tone during the roughly 45 minute interaction with Neary. At times, she appeared to be crying.

Charging documents in the case included an affidavit by Detective Trooper Mengbei Wang who wrote about being inside a residence in Bridport as part of the death scene investigation. Wang wrote in the filing that, while standing next to Vekos, she detected a “strong odor of intoxicants emanating” from Vekos and heard her slurring her speech.

There is no body camera footage of Wang’s interaction with Vekos.

Detective Trooper Ryan Normile, in a separate charging affidavit, wrote that he was present when Vekos arrived driving a Volkswagen Golf. Normile wrote that he walked beside Vekos at the scene and “recognized an odor of intoxicants emanating” from her.  

Later, as Vekos was sitting in her vehicle, Normile wrote that he asked her how much she had to drink that night. Vekos replied that she had one gin and tonic with a burger for dinner about an hour ago, Normile wrote in his affidavit.

Normile wrote that Vekos’ speech appeared slurred and he asked her to undergo field sobriety tests, which she refused. 

Vekos, according to Normile’s affidavit, then asked him: “Are you serious Ryan, can’t you just have a friend come and get me?”

Normile was not wearing a body camera, but footage from Dobson captured the interaction between Normile and Vekos as she sat in her vehicle before she was placed in custody. However, the exact words exchanged between the two at times aren’t entirely clear.

Vekos can be heard saying that it doesn’t matter if she performs the field sobriety tests because she would be arrested anyway.

“Eva, that is not true,” Normile replied. 

Adam Silverman, a spokesperson for state police, stated in an email Tuesday that since Wang and Normile are both detectives, they typically dress in business attire and “generally” do not wear body-worn cameras. 

“In addition,” Silverman wrote, “BWC policy requires activation of cameras during anticipated interactions with members of the public; in this case, the situation at hand was a controlled scene with access limited to law-enforcement personnel, including the state’s attorney. When the nature of this encounter changed, troopers activated their BWCs as required.”

David Sleigh, an attorney representing Vekos on the drunken driving charge, said Tuesday that he has reviewed the audio and video footage from state police in the case and didn’t believe it indicated his client was guilty of the charge. 

“Other than showing that she was distraught and upset at being arrested, there doesn’t seem to be any clear indication of impairment or lack of control of her physical or mental faculties,” Sleigh said. “We think that largely the recorded evidence is consistent with innocence.”

He also disputed that comments Vekos made to police indicated any intent to seek favoritism to get out of a DUI arrest, including when she asked them to use discretion, and when she requested to have a friend pick her up, rather than undergo sobriety tests. 

He said police “make discretionary decisions” at many points when considering whether to arrest someone for drunken driving. 

“I don’t take her requesting a ride home from somebody else as asking for a favor or admitting that she was impaired, but rather saying, ‘Look, if you guys have even the slightest concern about my ability to operate, I’ll have somebody else come get me,’” Sleigh added. 

Near the end of the video recordings of Vekos’ processing at the state police barracks, she can be heard asking a trooper about the status of her vehicle that was left parked at the scene she had been seeking to keep from being towed. 

A trooper replied that a tow truck had already been called to remove the vehicle. 

“Thanks,” Vekos said to him in apparent sarcasm, adding, “just a little consideration.” 

Clarification: A description of the arrest seen in the video has been updated to clarify the order of events.

Read the story on VTDigger here: State police release arrest recordings of Addison County state’s attorney on drunken driving charge.

Parts of Vermont experienced minor flooding on Saturday as thunderstorms traveled through the state.

The National Weather Service’s Burlington office had heard reports of flooding in Irasville as well as washed out roads in Waitsfield and Warren.

A flash flood warning was in effect until 8:30 p.m. Saturday for parts of Addison, Orange and Washington counties, according to the weather service.  

As of 7:08 p.m., the state had seen 1 to 2 inches of rainfall. By 8:23 p.m., the weather service reported that the heavy rain had ended and no additional flooding was expected.

There were 2,663 customers without power as of 8:35 p.m., with Woodstock and Hartford being the hardest-hit areas, according to VTOutages. 

The weather service urged people to observe road closures and “turn around, don’t drown” if people come across high water or flooded roads since more than half of all flood-related drownings occur in vehicles.

Although rain is forecast for much of the state over the next week, the weather service does not expect hazardous weather Sunday through Friday.

A representative from the weather service’s Burlington office was not immediately available to comment. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Flash flood warnings expire for central Vermont as thunderstorms hit the state.

The Vermont Supreme Court last week found the owners of a Panton dairy farm in contempt of court for their failure to reduce agricultural runoff produced by their large operation. 

The latest decision in a long-running legal case could further mire the farm’s application for state approval of its plan to add 580 cows. The expansion has already prompted concerns from neighbors who complain that the farm is worsening the water quality in nearby Lake Champlain.

Owned by Rudy, Hans and Gerard Vorsteveld, the property is recognized as a Large Farm Operation by the state. The farm’s 1,500 mature dairy cows and 1,500 heifers produce 19.87 million gallons of liquid manure annually. The proposed 580 cow expansion would generate an estimated 6.1 million additional gallons of waste each year, according to their permit application.

In response to Vorsteveld Farm’s application, 18 concerned Addison County residents urged state leaders to deny the expansion in an April letter to the secretaries of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets and the Agency of Natural Resources as well as Gov. Phil Scott. The neighbors cited the farm’s multiple violations, lack of compliance and defiance of court orders.

Additionally, a crowd of roughly 60 people gathered at an April 3 public meeting held by the Agency of Agriculture to discuss the farm’s expansion plans. After a five-day public comment period following the meeting, the agency began reviewing the farm’s expansion application and plans to approve or deny it June 16.

In response to neighbors’ claims, Gerard Vorsteveld has said the farm would gradually increase the herd, rather than adding all 580 cows at once. He acknowledged public concern and said he and his brothers were following orders from the state regarding the farm, according to Seven Days.

Neither the Vorstevelds’ attorney, Claudine Safar, nor Gerard Vorsteveld returned multiple requests for comment.

A history of conflict

The brothers have already been accused of releasing pollution into local waterways, including Lake Champlain — one of Vermont’s primary drinking water sources.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency filed a civil suit against the Vorstevelds last summer for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act and destroying wetlands. The brothers denied the charges, and the case remains open.

In 2022, Addison Superior Court Judge Mary Miles Teachout found the Vorstevelds liable for trespass due to polluted runoff crossing a neighbor’s land and flowing into Lake Champlain. The contaminants included nitrates, phosphorus, suspended solids and E. coli levels comparable to untreated sewage, according to the court decision. 

Though the court ordered the farm to stop the runoff in 2022, the Vorstevelds were held in contempt in September 2024 for failing to comply. Teachout ordered they pay a $1,000 fine for each day the farm was out of compliance, starting Nov. 15, 2024. 

The Vorstevelds, through their attorney, appealed the decision and invested an estimated $60,000 in improvements to their tile drainage system to prove their compliance with court orders.

“The Farm did its best to address the issues that were raised by every point, and spent a significant amount of time and money addressing these issues,” Safar said in an argument before the Vermont Supreme Court. 

In rebuttal, the Hoppers’ attorney Merrill Bent argued much of the $60,000 the Vorstevelds spent on improvements was geared toward the EPA’s lawsuit against the farm, rather than in response to Teachout’s contempt order. Bent said “there is a robust record” of evidence validating Teachout’s motion for contempt.

At evidentiary hearings on April 24 and 25, Gerard Vorsteveld testified that he had capped the tile drains, successfully preventing water from flowing into neighbors’ property. Although the excess runoff was halted temporarily, the court found that Vorsteveld’s solution did not meet the clear and convincing standard to prove permanent compliance with the initial contempt order, according to Teachout’s May 1 Superior Court decision.

To conclude the three-year legal battle, a final Supreme Court decision on May 9 upheld the lower court’s contempt order. However, Teachout relieved the Vorstevelds of any fines due to their attempt to comply during the period between Nov. 16, 2024, through April 25, 2025.

Community complaints

In their letter to state agencies and the governor, neighbors pointed to the contempt ruling as evidence that Vorsteveld Farm has not addressed the continued harm to Vermont’s waterways, therefore, “the question the Secretary of Agriculture must determine when evaluating an LFO Amendment application has already been conclusively determined.”

Neighbor Glen Macri pointed to the EPA’s separate lawsuit accusing the Vorstevelds of illegally discharging pollution into wetlands, calling it a clear contradiction against the farm’s ecological practices such as cover-cropping and no-till farming.

“They are trying to maximize yields, but there’s no countermeasure to control the accelerated runoff that’s going directly to the lake or surrounding waterways,” Macri said. “I guess there’s no regulation or requirement to prevent that.”

He said the farm is situated in an environmentally sensitive area with the Dead Creek watershed to the east and Lake Champlain directly to the west, both of which provide popular public recreational sites. 

Paulette Bogan, another neighbor and longtime Addison County resident, said algae blooms near her Lake Champlain property have rapidly increased since the Vorstevelds built their tile drainage system, which she believes to be the cause of the pollution.

“We have a dock … I used to swim in it, and I would not swim in it anymore. It’s directly a result of the algae blooms,” she said. 

In an email to VTDigger, Safar wrote that these claims from neighbors were “completely baseless.”

The state’s role

The proposed farm expansion accompanies ongoing criticism of Vermont’s regulatory system, which divides oversight between the Agency of Agriculture and the Agency of Natural Resources. Macri voiced frustration with what he called a “totally dysfunctional” arrangement between the agencies. 

Under the existing system, the agriculture agency oversees farm practices to prevent runoff, while the Agency of Natural Resources is tasked with intervening if that pollution reaches streams or lakes. 

However, neighbors say the split regulatory system has led to finger-pointing rather than action. Bogan said her questions about water quality have gone unanswered by the state. 

“Every time we ask (the agriculture agency) to look into the water quality,” their response is to put the responsibility on the Agency of Natural Resources, even though “the agriculture agency has 12 water specialists on their staff,” she said.

Scott Waterman, a spokesperson for the Agency of Agriculture, said in an email that officials were unavailable for comment while the Vorsteveld farm’s expansion application remains under review until June.

The EPA has acknowledged deficiencies in Vermont’s regulatory programs for more than a decade. In a January letter to Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore, the federal agency said the state’s division of responsibilities between her agency and the Agency of Agriculture “has led to confusion and regulatory inaction.” 

The EPA has pushed Vermont to clearly define the two agencies’ roles, particularly for regulating concentrated animal feeding operations, which have never been formally permitted in the state. The pollution generated from phosphorus, often present in agricultural runoff, is arguably the greatest threat to clean water in Lake Champlain, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

In response to the EPA’s concerns, legislators are considering bill S.124, which would give oversight of the concentrated animal feeding operations program to the Agency of Natural Resources, though many responsibilities would still be shared with the Agency of Agriculture. Moore said the bill received broad support from the EPA.

“There were places where we hadn’t kept up with some of the changes in the Federal Code of Regulations around CAFO,” Moore said. “We’ve committed to EPA that we will revise that to provide better clarity around roles and responsibilities, and that the authority for the CAFO program really sits with ANR.”

The agriculture agency is responsible for approving or denying the Vorsteveld’s proposed expansion, and its review of their permit application is expected to occur “outside of any real conversation about the CAFO program,” Moore said.

Bogan, one of the neighbors, expressed disbelief that the farm’s expansion is even on the table, due to the drastic reforms needed in Vermont’s regulatory system. 

“Since we’ve got this dysfunctional relationship between ANR and the agency of ag, and we have no permit for CAFOs in Vermont, and we’re in violation of the Clean Water Act, how can they possibly consider an expansion of the farm?” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont Supreme Court holds Vorsteveld farm in contempt, clouding farm’s expansion bid.

MIDDLEBURY — Middlebury College faculty, staff and students staged a schoolwide walkout and teach-in on the Old Chapel green on Thursday morning in response to the college’s plan for making budget cuts to address a projected $14.1 million deficit this fiscal year.

“Our working conditions are your learning experience,” David Miranda-Hardy, a member of the faculty, said at the demonstration. “That’s why we are here today to urge our trustees and administrators to change course.” 

The budget plan announced April 2 included a reduction in matching contributions to the retirement benefit from 15% to 11% for faculty and staff, starting in January of 2026. This would impact staff hired before 2017 as the retirement match was already reduced to 11% for new employees in 2017. The match begins when college employees reach the age of 45.

Another aspect of the administration’s budget stabilization plan is maintaining the student body at the small private liberal arts college at 2,650, heightened from the pre-pandemic norm of 2,500. The college increased enrollment to more than 2,800 in 2020, according to the budget announcement.

Other cost-saving measures in the plan include offering an early retirement incentive for staff and consolidating at Middlebury the college’s summer language schools that are currently hosted by Bennington College. The plan also mentioned reevaluating employee contributions and deductibles to health insurance plans for potential changes in the coming year.

An 11% retirement match may seem generous, said Peter Matthews, a professor of economics, but salaries at Middlebury College tend to be lower than those at similar institutions. The overall compensation package with the higher retirement match was a draw for faculty and staff and encouraged them to stay. He said changing those benefits now feels like a “betrayal” for many. 

Matthews told the crowd at the demonstration that a conservative estimate of the 4% reduction in the retirement match amounts to a $100,000 to $250,000 loss with compound interest by the time faculty and staff retire. He explained that the financial hit is more significant for younger employees who have been waiting for the retirement match benefit to take effect when they turn 45. 

“It’s the equivalent of the college saying, ‘We’re not going to give you a rocking chair when you retire. We’re going to burn down your house.’ That’s the economic equivalent of what’s going on, and not surprisingly, people are upset,” Matthews said in an interview. 

Following Thursday’s demonstration — which the administration said drew roughly 250 people —  Middlebury College spokesperson Jon Reidel said in a written statement that the school has continued to provide updates on budgetary matters since the announcement.

“We value the perspectives of all of our faculty, staff, and students and are actively engaged in conversations with our constituents across Middlebury,” Reidel wrote.

Miranda-Hardy — an associate professor in the Film and Media Culture Department and among the leaders of the Middlebury Chapter of the American Association of University Professors — said the announced budget plan was a “unilateral” decision that was not made in collaboration with students, faculty and staff. 

Jason Mittell, professor of film and media and the chair of the Faculty Council, said not only is the retirement match reduction a financial loss, but it comes after Middlebury College froze salaries for the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Mittell said most employees’ salaries, when adjusted for inflation, are less than those of 2019. 

While Middlebury College is taking austerity measures, Miranda-Hardy said the endowment and student tuition fees continue to increase. He pointed to figures showing Middlebury’s endowment has grown from $1.1 billion in 2015 to $1.6 billion last June and student yearly tuition and fees grew from $61,000 in the 2015-16 school year to $90,000 this school year. 

“Our compensation still lags way behind and now we are seeing a compensation cut. That is a breach of trust that is bringing morale even lower,” Miranda-Hardy said in an interview.

An ‘Albatross’

In the budget plan announcement, the leadership wrote that $8.7 million of the total deficit was the result of low enrollment at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a satellite campus in California housing various graduate, joint-degree and certificate programs focused on multilingual and cross-cultural education. 

Mittell said Middlebury College has invested large sums into the institute over 20 years since acquiring the campus in 2005. He called it an “albatross” for Middlebury College that is sinking finances and morale.

The rest of the deficit, amounting to $5.4 million, was tethered to decreased tuition revenue at the summer language schools, the Bread Loaf school and study abroad schools, as well as health care costs, “increased costs for some budgetary items unrelated to salaries or employee benefits, as well as interest and depreciation.”

Miranda-Hardy said the deficit is not the result of instructional costs or faculty and staff benefits, but that is the area the administration aims to trim. He said he thinks the college should work to centralize educational programming and bring jobs to Vermont rather than continue to invest in the institute in California.

Laurie Essig, a professor of gender, sexuality and feminist studies and a leader of the Middlebury chapter of the Association of University Professors, said Middlebury College’s deficit is a “self-imposed crisis,” that is separate from the federal funding threats to higher education happening nationally. She said the deficit is due in part to lack of financial oversight in investing in the institute at Monterey. 

Growing frustration, fear of precedent

Thursday’s demonstration was the latest in a series of actions faculty, staff and students have taken in the past month to express frustration with the budget decisions.

On April 18 with a vote of 94%, faculty members approved a motion sponsored by the Faculty Council and the Middlebury Chapter of the American Association of University Professors urging the college’s leadership to cancel the benefit cuts and higher student enrollment and to begin again by discussing solutions with faculty, students and staff. 

The faculty motion also called on the incoming president Ian Baucom to weigh in on the budget decisions, which he did a week later during a speech at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California on April 25. 

Baucom said that he supports the current leadership’s “truly difficult decision,” and will work with faculty, staff and students to build financial stability for the college in the future, according to the posted remarks. 

A circulating online petition in support of maintaining faculty and staff retirement benefits has garnered around 800 signatures by faculty, staff, students, students’ family members and community members, according to Matthews. The physical copy of the petition was delivered to Middlebury College’s Provost Michelle McCauley at the close of the demonstration. 

The majority of the economics faculty also signed onto a letter urging the administration to reconsider the financial plan, pledging to boycott commencement and other school events until “the decision has been reversed or a plan to mitigate the damage has been implemented.”

Essig said the budget announcement would set a concerning precedent if the college is able to renege on compensation promises without consulting faculty and staff. The college could continue to reduce salaries and benefits and employees would have no recourse, she said.

The Director of Discovery and Access at the Middlebury College library, Terry Simpkins, said he views the budget proposal as a product of a “failure of imagination” by college leaders to devise creative ways to address the deficit. 

Along with the retirement match cut, Simpkins said library staff and other workers at the college will have to take on a larger burden to support more students and help facilitate the language school’s relocation to the Middlebury College campus. 

“The administration’s response is always to solve whatever budget problems they are facing on the backs of staff,” Simpkins said. “There’s no real understanding or acknowledgement of the additional work that it causes for the existing staff to carry out these decisions.”

Media Production Specialist Ethan Murphy, a 17-year staff member, said at the protest that he was less than a year into earning the retirement match benefit before the college announced the reduction. He said the work of all staff is integral to the function of Middlebury College.

“This decision sets a precedent — a new Middlebury Way if you will — where no benefits are safe and where the very idea of a total compensation package is meaningless,” Murphy said at the demonstration. “It is safe to say that collectively, we are the student experience at Middlebury and we shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about defending long-promised benefits or be made to believe that layoffs are the only alternative.”

Student experience

Daniza Tazabekova, vice president of the Middlebury College Student Government, said she is concerned that continuing with higher enrollment may cause a scarcity of housing and space in classes for students.

Miranda-Hardy said he has already experienced the higher enrollment numbers having a negative impact on the student experience by causing a housing crisis, long cafeteria lines and a loss of community spaces. 

At the demonstration, senior Freddi Mitchell said the student experience is tied to the working conditions of faculty and staff, which will both continue to deteriorate under the compensation cuts. 

“As seniors at Middlebury, we understand that our experience would not be the same without the faculty and staff that have been with us along this way,” Mitchell said at the demonstration. “Increasing or maintaining the high student enrollment that we’ve experienced these last four years will continue to negatively impact student-faculty relationships and put more pressure on college staff.”

‘Volatile moment’

Miranda-Hardy said faculty, staff and students have not lost sight of the “biggest problem,” namely concerns with federal funding cuts, detention of international students and threats to free speech across college campuses. He called the budget cuts ill-timed, sparking discontent and disunity at the college as it transitions to a new president.

“It’s the worst possible time to breach the trust of your employees, dishonoring your commitments,” Miranda-Hardy said. “This is not the time to create a divided community.”

While budget cuts may be necessary, Tazabekova said decisions should be discussed and implemented in a “fair and transparent manner” with faculty, staff and students. 

“When we’re in such a volatile moment and our funding sources from the federal government are being threatened, I can definitely understand why emergency measures need to be taken to just preserve the longstanding nature of the institution,” Tazabekova said. “But, for me personally, I think tough decisions need to be made in collaboration, because there are so many different stakeholders on campus.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Middlebury College faculty, staff and students take action against administration’s budget cuts.

Vermont State Police arrested 18-year-old Stephen Nuciolo Jr. on a second-degree murder charge in the January 2024 shooting death of his father, 44-year-old Stephen Nuciolo Sr.

Nuciolo Sr. was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head at his home on Swinton Road in Bridport on Jan. 24, 2024. The investigation remained open for more than a year until recent developments led detectives to arrest Nuciolo Jr. on Monday, according to a press release from Vermont State Police.

During his arraignment on Tuesday, Nuciolo Jr. invoked a right known as the “24-hour rule” to give him until Wednesday to enter his plea. At the Tuesday appearance, the court upheld its order to hold the defendant without bail until Wednesday, when it will consider arguments on bail and potential release.

The Vermont Attorney General’s Office said in a Tuesday press release it would not oppose a request for the defendant to be considered for youthful offender status, as he was 17 years old at the time of Nuciolo Sr.’s death, according to a police affidavit.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bridport man arrested and charged with father’s murder.

A Hancock man pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of attempted second-degree murder and unlawful trespass in the stabbing of a chef at a local restaurant.

Jozef Eller, 32, was arrested Saturday in Rochester after he fled the stabbing of Robert Barral, the chef and owner of Café Provence in Brandon, according to a Vermont State Police press release.

Barral, Eller’s former employer, survived the attack and was treated at Rutland Regional Medical Center, according to a court affidavit. 

According to a court affidavit, Eller entered Café Provence on Saturday, despite Eller having received a no trespass order in August forbidding entry to the cafe.

When Barral confronted Eller to remind him of the no trespass order, Eller allegedly attacked Barral with a knife, stabbing him several times, according to multiple witness accounts cited in the affidavit. 

Barral suffered wounds to his head, left shoulder, left arm, left hand and his right finger, according to the affidavit.

“We believe that the affidavit describes a vicious attack in broad daylight at the victim’s place of employment,” Rutland County State’s Attorney Ian Sullivan said during the arraignment hearing. 

“The severity of the attack, we believe, is demonstrated by the number and placement of the wounds the victim received from Mr. Eller’s attack,” Sullivan said.

Eller was a longtime Café Provence employee but stopped working there more than a year ago, allegedly due to declining mental health, according to the affidavit.

If convicted, Eller could face life in prison, with a minimum sentence of 20 years, for the charge of second-degree attempted murder. The charge of unlawful trespass could bring him a three-month sentence and/or a fine of $500. 

Eller, who joined the arraignment remotely from Southern State Correctional Facility, will be preliminarily held without bail until a hearing where the court will weigh the evidence against him.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Man charged with the attempted murder of former boss, the chef of Brandon’s Café Provence.

Middlebury College is among 60 higher education institutions that received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education on Monday, warning of “potential enforcement actions” if the schools do not take sufficient action to protect Jewish students on their campuses. 

“The Department is deeply disappointed that Jewish students studying on elite U.S. campuses continue to fear for their safety amid the relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year. University leaders must do better,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release. 

Citing Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender, McMahon said public investment in institutions of higher education is “a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.” 

Jon Reidel, director of media relations for Middlebury College, said the college received notice of the investigation in March 2024 and received a subsequent letter from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights Monday. Middlebury College has and will continue to cooperate with the investigation, Reidel said in an emailed statement. 

“We are committed to our educational mission, and that includes supporting all students with no tolerance for discriminatory behavior on our campus,” Reidel wrote.

All universities and colleges who received the letter are currently under investigation for antisemitic discrimination and harassment under Title VI, according to the Department of Education’s press release.

Another missive 

Middlebury is also one of many universities and colleges across the country that received an open letter last week from the American Civil Liberties Union. The letter addresses two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump that demonstrate the current administration is attempting to corrode principles of academic freedom in the U.S., according to Harrison Stark, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont.

“The letter outlined a number of principles that we urged colleges and universities to uphold, and also drew their attention to legal protections and legal obligations that are already in place that require them and hopefully empower them to protect their students from the kind of federal pressure that we’re seeing this administration threaten against colleges and universities,” Stark said.

According to the letter, both Executive Orders 14161 and 14188 — titled “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats” and “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” respectively — aim to target non-U.S. citizens on college campuses for using their First Amendment rights, under which everyone in the U.S. is protected by regardless of citizenship or immigration status. 

The letter urged universities and colleges to maintain freedom of expression, avoid acting as immigration law enforcement, and reject “baseless calls to investigate or punish international and immigrant communities for exercising their fundamental rights.” 

Stark said the current administration has not demonstrated concern for civil rights enforcement given the dismantling of the Department of Education, including the Office of Civil Rights, and targeting DEI policies, which attempt to combat discrimination based on race, religion, gender and ethnicity. 

While recognizing concerns of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination on college campuses, Stark said the Trump administration has taken advantage of the investigative arm of Title VI and threats to withdraw federal funding to target institutions that permit free speech the administration opposes.

“This administration is clearly using the investigative power of the federal government, including its enforcement authority in the Department of Education, to pursue its political enemies and to silence critics of the administration,” Stark said. 

The complaint in question

The Title VI complaint against Middlebury College was filed by the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, a nonprofit organization focused on supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism.

The complaint alleges that Middlebury College’s administration has fostered an antisemitic climate on campus through “inaction, refusal to enforce its own policies, dismissiveness toward Jewish students’ concerns, and lack of equal treatment of its Jewish students as compared with other minority groups on campus.” 

The complaint includes a list of alleged evidence against the Middlebury College administration, such as administrators denying recognition to a second Jewish identity-based club on campus called Chabad and allegedly issuing “retaliatory disciplinary action” against a Jewish student who reported a resident adviser for posting the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”

According to the complaint, administrators also asked student organizers to “universalize” a vigil after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack to recognize both Israeli and Palestinian deaths and to not display Israeli flags or Jewish symbols at the event. The complaint also states that school officials limited campus police presence at the vigil despite Jewish students expressing safety concerns.

Rachel Feldman, a community organizer with the Vermont-based organization Shalom Alliance, said the alleged events in the complaint are reflective of a broader national trend.

“For two years, Jewish students, Jewish parents and Jews across the country have been screaming that our campuses are not safe and are becoming increasingly hostile, discriminatory and even violent towards our Jewish students, and these very real pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears,” Feldman said. 

In an emailed statement, Carly Gammill, executive director of StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, expressed gratitude to the Trump administration for prioritizing addressing antisemitism on college campuses.

“We look forward to the results of OCR’s investigation, including meaningful changes for the Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist students at Middlebury College who have been directly impacted by the hostile climate on their campus,” Gammill said. 

But, Jonah Rubin, the senior manager of campus organizing for the national organization Jewish Voice for Peace, said via email that the Trump administration and the group StandWithUs “falsely conflate” antisemitism with criticism and protest of Israeli government and military actions against Palestinians. 

“It is not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli military’s genocide of Gaza.” Rubin said. “These false accusations of antisemitism evacuate the term from its meaning precisely at the time when real antisemites are ascending to power in this country.”

Defining antisemitism

On its website, the U.S. Department of State cites the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. The StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice also uses the definition as a basis of its Title VI complaint against Middlebury College.

But, the American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech advocacy organizations have taken issue with that definition, sending letters last year to the U.S. Secretary of Education under the Biden administration and the American Bar Association, urging the definition be rejected. 

This was due to concerns that the definition equates protected speech under the First Amendment, such as political criticism of the government of Israel or Zionism, with unprotected discrimination and would cause increasing censorship on college campuses, according to the letters. 

“Regardless of the original intent of its drafters, in practice the IHRA definition has been used consistently (and nearly exclusively) not to fight antisemitism, but rather to defend Israel and harm Palestinians — at the cost of undermining and dangerously chilling fundamental rights of free speech, freedom of assembly and protest, and academic freedom,” the letter to the American Bar Association reads.

Feldman, with Shalom Alliance, said there are three areas where she considers criticism of Israel to be antisemitic: demonization of Israel, delegitimization of the nation of Israel and double standards directed toward Israel.

“It’s more about listening to the Jewish people when they are experiencing antisemitism, and stop trying to put it in a box, because antisemitism is a shape-shifting form of hatred,” Feldman said. 

Stark said the actions of the Trump administration to investigate institutions of high learning and threaten funding cuts are particularly concerning because universities have traditionally fostered free speech and served as “breeding grounds of dissent and vociferous criticism of the federal government.”

“Without intending to diminish in any way the very real problem of antisemitism on college campuses and in American society writ large, this is not a good faith attempt to actually combat antisemitism,” Stark said. “The preoccupation with speech on university campuses, which I think we’ve seen through multiple executive orders and the White House’s public comments, are part of a broader assault on American intellectual life.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated an incorrect date when Middlebury College received a letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Middlebury College, facing antisemitism investigation, is among those warned by Trump administration .

A Department for Children and Families official said that a planned Vergennes residential youth facility will not include space for older teens, backtracking on earlier plans to expand the campus. 

State officials are working on drawing up plans for the Green Mountain Youth Campus, a treatment center in Vergennes for “justice-involved youth” — the department’s term for youths who have been criminally charged. 

The program is intended as a more therapeutic successor to Woodside, the Essex juvenile detention center that closed in the fall of 2020. The initial plan, unveiled May 2024, called for the campus to include 14 beds and to offer treatment to youths aged 12 to 18 on state-owned land in Vergennes, starting in 2026. 

Late last year, however, state Department for Children and Families officials said they were considering expanding the facility to 22 beds so it could also house 18 and 19 year olds.

But in an interview last month, Tyler Allen, the adolescent services director at the Department for Children and Families, said that the state decided to scrap that proposed expansion after hearing concerns from Vergennes officials and others. 

Those meetings with stakeholders led the department to determine that a 22-bed Green Mountain Youth Campus would be “trying to serve too many needs, too many ages, too many populations,” Allen said. 

The state is now moving forward with the original 14 bed-plan, although Allen said officials have made some other changes as well, including structural design tweaks and expanding capacity for vocational programs.

“DCF changed our position while we did the exploration, because this is all about working with stakeholders and working with multiple perspectives,” he said.

The shift comes as Gov. Phil Scott’s administration is seeking the repeal of Vermont’s “Raise the Age” statute, a law to bring 18 and 19-year-olds charged with less severe crimes into family court and out of adult prisons. 

Currently, 18-year-olds charged with misdemeanors and some minor felonies have their cases heard in family court. Lawmakers, however, seem inclined to again delay the complete implementation of the law, which was scheduled to expand to include 19-year-olds in April. 

The proposal for an expanded Green Mountain Youth Campus would have allowed the facility to serve some of those older teens. Now, the status quo, in which some youths charged with criminal offenses end up in adult prisons, seems likely to prevail for the near future. 

In an interview Monday, Allen said that the changes to the facility design and the governor’s proposal to repeal “Raise the Age” were not connected. 

“I could see how somebody might connect those dots, but they are separate from one another,” he said.  

In Vergennes, the prospect of housing older youths at the facility had drawn concern from residents.

Mark Koenig, the chair of a Vergennes committee negotiating with the state about the facility, said that the fact that state officials were considering a larger campus with older youths had come as a surprise.

“Suddenly, it’s not just 18 and under, it’s possibly 19-, 20-, 21-year-olds,” he said in an interview last month. 

 The proposal was also a complicating factor in their negotiations, he said.

“We can’t buy a car if all you’re saying is it has four wheels, right?” Koenig said. “We’d like to know, is it a Mini Cooper, or is it a semi?”

The committee that Koenig led, called simply the Ad Hoc Committee, has drafted a list of items that state officials could provide that would help Vergennes residents accept the construction of the youth campus. 

The most recent draft of that list includes a request for 180 acres of state land for affordable housing, as well as state investments in public safety and infrastructure, among other items. 

In December, the city sent a letter to Wanda Minoli, the commissioner of the Department of Buildings and General Services, asking for specifics on the proposed youth facility and who will be held there. 

That letter has not yet been answered, Vergennes city officials said. 

“We’re kind of in a holding pattern, waiting to hear back from BGS,” Vergennes City Manager Ron Redmond said in a phone interview Monday. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Proposed Vergennes youth facility will not include 18 and 19 year olds, officials say.

BRIDPORT — Inside the walls of its Community Hall on Tuesday, members of a small Addison County town appeared to be safely tucked away from the fire of political contention burning around the country. 

About an hour west of where Vermonters turned up in droves to protest the appearance of Vice President JD Vance at Sugarbush Resort days before, participants of Town Meeting Day in Bridport politely debated — and approved — all of the 30 articles they voted on from the floor. 

A majority of the articles asked town residents to support social services provided by local organizations and town departments through funding requests that ranged from $30,000 for the Bridport Fire Department to $350 for Addison County Readers, Inc.

Residents discussed several of the requests before approving them. One deliberation focused on a $1,500 funding request from the Addison County Restorative Justice Services, which had increased from $400 in 2024.

Moderator Tim Howlett called on an audience member who said she’d attended the selectboard meeting when the organization had made its case, and that it seemed “very persuasive.” 

“But you’re right,” she said with a shrug. “It’s $1,100 more.”

Others raised their hands to speak. The program “has always saved a lot more taxpayer money” than it’s spent, one resident said. 

Corey Pratt, a member of the Bridport Fire Department, said his daughter has interned with the organization “and has decided that it does so much good that she’s actually changed what she was planning on doing for a career.”

Someone proposed an amendment that would have shaved Bridport’s contribution to the organization from $1,500 to $1,000. The residents voted once; the amendment failed. They voted again and approved the full request. 

For other amendments, participants simply lauded the organizations that requested funding. 

“I’m getting old. I’m not as strong as I used to be, and it’s nice having some young muscle to help carry people out of the house,” one resident said of the local fire department. 

Hints of federal and state political drama entered the room only a few times, when residents wondered whether federal funding cuts and freezes could impact an expensive and long-running project to replace culverts under a nearby road (probably not, according to the road foreman), and when Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, gave updates from the Statehouse. (Her announcement that lawmakers were not planning to move forward with the clean heat standard, a controversial energy policy, elicited some cheers.)

Near the end of the meeting, residents considered the town’s budget, a grand total of $1,765,090, most of which would be raised through property taxes. Residents mulled a few line items they hadn’t voted on — $500 to the Addison County Humane Society, for example — before making a collective decision.

“Any other questions on the budget?” Howlett, the moderator, asked a silent crowd. 

“Wow,” he said. “I appreciate the support.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: At Bridport Town Meeting, political debate remains polite.

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

Middlebury is getting a new neighborhood.

About a half-mile from the center of town, Summit Properties has begun laying the groundwork for more than 250 new homes — both for sale and for rent, at a range of price points. The Stonecrop Meadows project is among the largest new developments outside of Chittenden County in recent memory. 

“We’re building an ambitious, all-electric, innovative neighborhood on the scale and of a type that rural Vermont hasn’t seen in decades,” said Zeke Davisson, Summit’s chief operating officer, at a groundbreaking event on Monday.

The Seminary Street lot that will host this new neighborhood is still an open, snowy field, dotted with orange cones marking newly-installed water service lines. But the first houses to be sold there are on track for move-in this summer.

Getting a project of this scale accomplished has taken many hands. Middlebury College got the ball rolling, Davisson said, when administrators approached the developer saying the college had a workforce housing problem. The college then bought the lot on Seminary Street and passed it off to Summit with the goal of building housing available to the whole community, not only college employees. A 2023 legislative tweak to Act 250, Vermont’s land use review law, allowed the project to move forward without obtaining that state permit, which can often add time, cost and risk to the development process. 

Summit had the tall task of installing key infrastructure — such as water, utilities, and roads — and used federal, state and local funding to do it. When that funding came up short, the college stepped in with $2.5 million in gap financing. The town will ultimately take over much of that infrastructure, once it’s built. 

Gov. Phil Scott, who is keen to make it easier for developers to build infrastructure, used the groundbreaking event to make a pitch for a new infrastructure financing program for rural communities. The Republican governor is urging lawmakers to adopt his proposal, which is modeled off of Vermont’s existing tax increment financing program.

“The basic infrastructure needed for projects like water, sewer, storm water — those are the basics that really can be a bottleneck for some of these really effective developments,” Scott said.

Summit plans to open the development’s first phase — 45 duplexes and townhomes, built in an East Montpelier factory — later this year. They’ll be sold at a wide range of price points, from around $200,000 on the low end to over $650,000 on the high end, according to Davisson. 

That’s largely because of a mix of different subsidies in play. Six of those homes will be sold through Addison Housing Works’ Shared Equity program, making them affordable to people making less than 80% of area median income, and 31 will be available through the Vermont Housing Finance Agency’s Middle-Income Homeownership Program, which caters to people at what Davisson calls the “workforce” income bracket. The remaining houses will be sold at market rate. 

A 35-unit apartment building, financed with federal low-income housing tax credits, is on track to open next year. General plans for the remaining 174 homes have been approved, Davisson said, but the additional buildings are not yet financed or permitted. Given the uncertainty of key federal funding sources, Davisson could not provide a timeline for the remainder of the development.

The cadre of officials at the groundbreaking gathering lauded Stonecrop as a model example of how an employer, a town government, and a developer can join forces to ease Vermont’s deep housing shortage. Addison County needs upwards of 1,300 additional homes by the end of the decade to keep pace with demand, according to a state analysis of regional housing targets. 

“That’s what a community chipping in and taking a big chunk out of their goal looks like,” said Alex Farrell, commissioner of the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Middlebury College, developer and town join forces on major housing project.

BURLINGTON — Former Addison County Sheriff Peter Newton, accused in 2022 of sexually assaulting and unlawfully restraining a woman, pleaded guilty to lesser charges of lewd and lascivious conduct and simple assault during a court appearance Friday.

During the proceedings, Judge John Pacht stated that Newton was charged with intentionally engaging in behavior that was “open and gross” as well as “lewd and lascivious,” with the intent of sexual gratification.

Newton had been accused of sexually assaulting, physically assaulting and unlawfully restraining a woman he knew in February 2022 while he was sheriff. He declined to run for reelection in 2022. He was first elected as sheriff in 2018.

For the lewd and lascivious conduct charge, Newton would receive a deferred sentence with probation for two years, and if completed successfully, the charge would be expunged. For the simple assault, he would face a suspended sentence of six to 12 months with two years of probation, according to the terms of the plea agreement that was filed earlier this month.

The judge deferred acceptance of the plea, ordering a pre-sentence investigation and a psychosexual evaluation, including a screening to determine if Newton needed alcohol or mental health counseling.

“Deferred sentence can either be a really good deal for a defendant, or perhaps not such a good deal for a defendant, that really depends on how well someone does during the two-year period of probation,” the judge said. 

Newton must also complete a 26-week domestic violence counseling program, refrain from owning firearms or other deadly weapons, and is prohibited from working as a law enforcement officer under conditions of the agreement.

Correction: A previous photo caption misstated the charges to which Peter Newton pleaded guilty.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Ex-Addison County Sheriff Peter Newton, accused of sexual assault, pleads guilty to lesser charges.

Following a report that Middlebury College sent to federal authorities last year disclosing its own lapses in laboratory research work and outlining a remediation plan, an animal research watchdog group is calling on the college to take tougher measures. 

In a lab at Middlebury College last fall, researchers repeatedly botched animal research protocol and practices, particularly while performing castration surgeries on rats, according to the report that Middlebury sent to the National Institutes of Health on Nov. 19. 

Researchers struggled with maintaining anesthetic depth and sanitary practices during castration of rats, confused recorded data sets and mixed up rats scheduled for surgery, according to the report.

The recurring “adverse events” recorded over the course of weeks spanning the beginning of September to late October of last year raised “concerns over inadequate training and confusion surrounding post-operative monitoring,” Middlebury’s associate dean of the sciences, Richard Bunt, wrote in the report.

The account went on to describe practices resulting in contaminated procedures such as vials of controlled substances left unattended on counters and pre-filled syringes left on bench tops in the vivarium, which were to be injected into the rats later that day.

Some rats were not given allotted feed and water over a span of a day, and feed was not increased for several rats with recorded weight loss, according to the report. There were also several rats that did not have their sutures removed after 17 days, when the appropriate amount of time to wait to perform the postoperative practice is seven to 10 days, Bunt wrote in the report. 

In a letter that Stop Animal Exploitation Now! sent to Middlebury last week, the group’s executive director Michael Budkie called on the college to either discharge the researchers or prohibit them from the study of animal research.

Budkie started the watchdog group in 1996, with the goal of ending research on animals. He said his education in animal health technology revealed to him “ethical contradictions” with animal welfare practices in laboratories. 

Budkie said he obtained the report through the group’s routine public records requests of animal research reports sent to the National Institutes of Health, which he provided to VTDigger. 

“Unfortunately, the kinds of things that we see in the report by Middlebury College are not that unusual,” said Budkie. “The use of untrained staff, failure to follow protocols, failure to even anesthetize animals correctly and, in this case, even not being certain which animals are supposed to be worked on — that’s not science.”

In response to the letter sent by Budkie’s group, Middlebury College’s media relations director, Jon Reidel, provided a statement to VTDigger, acknowledging the events outlined in the report and noting that the National Institutes of Health supported the college’s proposal to remedy the situation.

“We took immediate corrective actions as soon we observed these issues in our lab and proactively reported these concerns to the National Institutes of Health as a measure of transparency,” the statement read. “The NIH has supported our plan and this matter is now resolved.”

In the report sent to the National Institutes of Health, Bunt wrote that Middlebury College’s immediate course of action was to cease using uncastrated rats in research.

The ongoing corrective measures Bunt described in the report included requiring the lead researcher and students on the project to retake two courses on guidelines for animal research, requiring inspection of sutures, facilitating communications about feeding schedules and continued development of a more robust animal research training program for students. 

For at least a year, the lead researcher will also be required to visit the vivarium twice a day, seven days a week to monitor student research, and students will not be allowed to perform surgeries on rodents, according to the report. 

Budkie said that the use of uncastrated rats for research is “just sidestepping the problem.” He added that he doesn’t think additional training and monitoring is sufficient recourse given the confusion that emerged after researchers had already received instruction on animal research protocols. 

Middlebury, in its statement to VTDigger, said that its self-report of the violations and the corrective plan of action put in place demonstrates its commitment to following animal research guidelines.

“The health and welfare of our animals is a top priority and we continue to be attentive to maintaining the highest standards of animal care,” the emailed statement read. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Animal research watchdog points to botched practices at Middlebury College lab.

Ian Baucom is set to become Middlebury College’s 18th president after a unanimous recommendation from the college’s presidential search committee, the university announced Wednesday. 

Baucom has served as executive vice president, provost and English professor at the University of Virginia since 2022. 

“There are a handful of defining colleges and universities across the globe,” Baucom said in the college’s announcement. “Middlebury is one of them.”

Baucom’s predecessor, Laurie Patton, stepped down in December, after becoming Middlebury’s first female president and leading the college for a decade. Steve Snyder, the former dean of Middlebury Language Schools, has served as interim president since Patton’s departure and plans to continue in that role until Baucom begins July 1. 

“He is a big thinker about the future of education and the role of liberal arts, but he is also student centric, relationship driven, and spoke passionately about the importance of place in learning and about Middlebury’s campus in Vermont,” search committee chair Kirtley Cameron said in the announcement.

Baucom will also hold a position as tenured professor in the college’s Department of English. 

Before becoming provost at the University of Virginia, he was dean of its College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences for eight years, where he led a major revision of its undergraduate curriculum during his tenure, according to the college’s announcement. 

As provost, he saw the University of Virginia’s research spending and grant-awarding reach record highs, with the college reporting $700 million in research funding for 2024, according to the announcement. He also oversaw a $5 billion fundraising campaign at the university that has already reported $5.6 billion in commitment. 

Middlebury College is in the midst of its own significant fundraising campaign, which has already brought in $510 million of a $600 million goal. Simultaneously, the new president will be tasked with managing efforts to shrink the college’s endowment spend rate from 5.5% to 5%, Patton told the Middlebury student paper in an exit interview.

“The presidency is a defining role for an institution,” Baucom said in a video included in the announcement. “And to accept the position as president means that you have the responsibility to serve a community that is present to you, community that has preceded you, in this case by centuries. And you’re also serving a future to come.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Middlebury College announces its next president.

Valley Vista, Vermont’s largest substance use disorder rehabilitation facility, will no longer take patients on methadone, an administrator said Thursday.

The facility, which has locations in Bradford and Vergennes, will continue to serve current patients who are on methadone, Kevin Hamel, Valley Vista’s vice president of medical and clinical services, told facility staff in an email Thursday morning. But Valley Vista will no longer accept new patients who use the recovery drug, he said.

In an interview, Hamel said Valley Vista currently has seven patients on methadone, out of a total of 78, across both of its locations. Transporting those patients to and from methadone clinics can cost up to $400 a day, Hamel said, a sum the facility can no longer afford.

“The cost of staffing is going up,” he said. “The cost for us to be able to provide health insurance for employees is significantly going up this year.”

Methadone is a drug used to mitigate withdrawal symptoms in people recovering from substance use disorder. The drug, which usually comes in the form of a drinkable liquid, is tightly regulated and can only be dispensed from designated methadone clinics in limited doses.

That means patients who take the drug during recovery must return regularly to methadone clinics. Valley Vista’s Bradford patients travel to St. Johnsbury — about half an hour away — and Vergennes patients must make the roughly 45-minute trip to Burlington to get methadone treatment, Hamel said.  

Valley Vista’s change in policy comes amid an apparent disagreement with state regulators over reimbursement for transportation to and from methadone clinics. 

In his email to Valley Vista staff Thursday, Hamel wrote, “We recognize that this is an underserved population; however, the reality is that the State of Vermont is unwilling to cover the transportation costs for patients to receive their doses.”

The situation appears to be more complex, however. 

Vermont Medicaid will pay for transportation to clinics, but only if the vehicles are “operated by a state contractor or subcontractor, in order to adhere to regulations regarding licensure and safety,” Alex McCracken, a spokesperson for the Department of Vermont Health Access, said in an email.

Under those rules, patients have access to various public transit operators across the state.

But Hamel, of Valley Vista, said riding on public transit could lead to safety concerns for the facility’s patients, and that schedules didn’t always line up. It’s safer and more effective for Valley Vista to have staff members drive patients and supervise their trips, he said. 

“It’s best to be in a closed environment with our staff bringing them, who are familiar with them, are aware of what’s going on with them,” Hamel said. “And can keep an eye on them to make sure that they’re not talking with other people at the clinic, to make sure that there’s nothing going on there.”

But Valley Vista is not eligible for Medicaid reimbursement if it drives patients on its own, which means the rehab center is footing the bill with no help from Medicaid. About 80% of Valley Vista’s patients are on Vermont Medicaid, according to Hamel.

From 2021 through mid-2023, the state Department of Health provided Valley Vista with Covid-19 funding for patients’ transportation to and from methadone clinics. 

But that money, which came from federal Covid-19 pandemic aid, “was always intended to be a short-term solution,” Kyle Casteel, a spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Health, said in an email.

Valley Vista could “use a transportation vendor whose expense is reimbursable through Medicaid or to obtain a new license for onsite methadone treatment from the (federal Drug Enforcement Administration),” Casteel said. “These options remain open to Valley Vista at this time and the Health Department is prepared to support Valley Vista should it choose to pursue either of these options.”

Since his email to staff Thursday morning, Hamel said Valley Vista and the state have set up a meeting next week to discuss the situation. 

Until then, however, the decision could create another barrier for Vermonters seeking treatment for substance use disorder.

“Vermonters continue to struggle with accessing the type of residential treatment that they need,” Christopher Smith, the chief clinical officer at the nonprofit Spectrum Youth and Family Services, said in an interview Thursday. 

“As a community, as a state, we need to put effort into building the residential treatment that’s going to work for all Vermonters,” Smith said. “And that means addressing appropriate funding and appropriate services that meet the needs of people who have addiction issues.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont’s largest substance use rehab facility will no longer accept patients on methadone.

A black horse bowing its head against the backdrop of the American painter Andrew Wyeth’s home in Maine, shrouded in a misty gray sky. This was the photograph Lutalo Jones chose for the cover of their debut album The Academy.

Taken by Lutalo’s partner’s grandfather decades prior, the photograph struck Lutalo as not only a beautiful moment captured on film, but emblematic of the ideas they were grappling with when writing the album. 

“The black horse often symbolizes change,” said Lutalo, 25, who goes by their given name for their music. “That was tied into the theme of the album, being more about a reflection of the past and a new version of myself coming from the experiences of my past.”

The Minnesota-born songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer who moved to rural Vermont in 2021 said the photograph felt like a good fit because they are drawn to the New England landscape, architecture and philosophy. All of the songs on the album were written in Vermont, Lutalo said, and living in the state has taught them  — both in life and in writing music  — to keep it simple and “create space for silence.”

The Academy — released in September — was met with critical acclaim from outlets such as  Rolling Stone UK and Fader. Lutalo considers the album to be the first chapter of their story, with the previous EP releases serving as prologues.

Even after the release of their debut EP Once Now, Then Again in 2022, Lutalo caught the attention of The Guardian, in a review that named them “One to Watch” in the music industry. 

In a recent interview in a Middlebury coffee shop, Lutalo recalled being hit by the realization of their rising success while playing an early slot at Psych Fest in Manchester, England in August. The show’s host was blown away that the show was packed and drew a waiting line, according to Lutalo. 

“I try not to tie too much of my own self-perception to that. I’m just grateful that people are interested and excited about music, and I hope that people continue to give me a platform and space to keep sharing my art,” they said. 

A self-proclaimed “city kid,” Lutalo said their move to Vermont — after living in Minneapolis and New York City — was motivated by a desire to fulfill their father’s dream of living rurally, which became their own dream. 

“It was an experiment to see what I was capable of taking on,” said Lutalo.

After buying some land in Addison County, Lutalo built a home and music studio and is in the process of adding a house for their partner’s parents. While unsure what the future holds, Lutalo said they are grateful their life brought them to the state and that they have a space for respite from touring and the music world. 

“I’m just trying to be as present as I possibly can and stay open minded, but I love it here, and it definitely feels like home to me,” said Lutalo. 

Living in a geographically isolated area like rural Vermont, Lutalo said they had to develop survival and problem solving skills when things have gone wrong that are not necessary in a city. 

“The most important thing is just being present with whatever you’re having to deal with, and I think that’s been a really important lesson for me,” said Lutalo. “Society, expectations, work, relationships, all of that means absolutely nothing if you aren’t alive.”

While living in Vermont the past three years, Lutalo has connected with musicians, finding “there is no lack of talent and skill” in the Vermont music scene. But they wish there were more venues to see music acts perform in the state. 

Lutalo is also concerned about what they see as larger shifts in the music industry that make it more difficult to make a living as a musician, such as the push toward social media self-promotion and music venue and ticketing monopolies.

“Th​​e current music industry model preys on the fact that music is powerful,” said Lutalo. “People need it in their lives to create a buffer from the difficulties in their day-to-day life and connect to something that speaks louder than just strictly words.” 

While written in Vermont, Lutalo’s debut album is a nonlinear tale of their memories of childhood, finding their own sense of self in the world, growing up in Minneapolis and getting an education at a private academy. 

One song titled “Big Brother” on the album is framed as a conversation with their younger brother, discussing their experiences in the 2008 recession and the 2007 collapse of the I-35 highway bridge, which was built to cut through an economically thriving, predominantly black neighborhood due to redlining policy. Lutalo said they knew people who had just barely cleared the bridge before the collapse, which killed 13 people and injured scores more.

“It’s not even like I’m trying to necessarily have intense commentary on it all. It’s just that it was part of my existence, and that’s something that I can reflect on,” said Lutalo. 

Lutalo’s first instrument was the drums, but they have picked up guitar, bass and piano along the way. While taking along a band for live performances, Lutalo plays all the instruments in their recordings to have more control over the creative process, and said their multi-instrumentalist background also helps them as a producer. 

“Having a base of rhythm is really important for all instruments,” said Lutalo. “That opens a lot of doors. I’m not crazy proficient in any of the instruments, but I have a general understanding of music that allows me to be able to traverse different instruments.”

After their debut album release, Lutalo went on a U.S. tour this fall opening for the British singer, songwriter Nilüfer Yanya, and they will be headlining a U.S. tour scheduled for the winter with a stop at Radio Bean in Burlington. Lutalo said that while performing music is a challenge, it provides lessons in surrendering themselves to the collective joy of music. 

“I might be in my head, but then seeing how people respond during the song or after the song, and they’re having a completely different experience,” said Lutalo. “It’s really important, because it shows me how irrelevant my thoughts in that moment actually are.”

Lutalo said they intend to cross genres and styles, and ultimately seek to continually reinvent and surprise themselves through their music. 

“The goal is just to make good music, like good songs. If that means changing a sound or adding different instruments to serve that song, that is the priority to me,” said Lutalo. “The through line is that there’s a vision of my personal experience that I try to keep big enough that also people can apply their own meanings and ideas to.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Lutalo builds music career and home in rural Vermont.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is offering a reward for information about a bald eagle that was illegally shot in the Addison County town of Bridport last month. 

The federal agency is offering up to $5,000 “to eligible individuals for information that significantly furthers the investigation,” according to a joint press release with the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department issued Thursday.

The adult bald eagle was found dead near East Street in Bridport on Oct. 15 after Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department game wardens received reports about the dead bird.

Officials confirmed the cause of death after a radiography analysis of the eagle’s body found metal pellets and wounds consistent with shotgun fire, according to the release. Data from a research band shows the bald eagle was first observed in Vermont in August 2006.

Vermont is home to at least 45 pairs of bald eagles, according to Audubon Vermont.

Although bald eagles were delisted from the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2007 and Vermont’s state endangered species statutes in 2022, they are still protected by federal law. The fines for killing one can reach a maximum of $15,000 under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and $100,000 under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, according to the release. 

People with information regarding the bald eagle shooting in Bridport should contact Sgt. David Taddei, Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department Game Warden Detective, at 802-498-7078. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Officials offer reward for information on bald eagle illegally shot in Vermont.

Last Tuesday, Andy and Mary Buxton announced in a Facebook video that they planned to close their general store by the end of the month. The financial burden of owning a store in a small, rural town had become too much to bear.

“We are just, unfortunately, not sustainable,” Andy Buxton said in the video. “We’ve also learned that, through years of doing our own market research, sadly, we’re just not essential to all the community members in this town and that too affects us.”

But that may not in fact be true. Within days of the announcement, Orwell community members had launched an online fundraiser to raise money to buy the store and convert it to a nonprofit community center.

After learning of the pending closure, Joseph Andriano, a state representative for Orwell, approached the Buxtons with an idea. Meanwhile a group of community members launched a GoFundMe page. 

“I found out just the same way that everyone found out,” said Andriano, currently the area’s representative to the Legislature. “I saw that there was a notification on Facebook and I watched the video and like everyone in Orwell, I was devastated.” 

“Even more than the store, we love Andy and Mary,” Adriano said. “They give so much to the town and they are such an essential part of this community.”

According to Andy Buxton, the response to the Facebook video has already exceeded their expectations.

“It’s overwhelming, it’s heartwarming. These are our friends, our community members, our family, and even strangers who have reached out,” he said.

The GoFundMe effort aims to raise $103,000 to cover ongoing costs like taxes, utilities, and insurance. Securing grants to purchase Buxton’s General Store will take time, said Rep. Andriano.

What form the community space will ultimately take is still unclear, Andriano said. The group’s current top priority is getting the community’s input. He wants the  project to focus on what residents want and need from the space, reflecting the community’s priorities.

“Maybe they still want a store there, maybe we’ll have a cafe with a little store, or something I’m not even thinking of, but it’s really important to me that this be a community driven project,” said Andriano. 

Andy and Mary fulfilled their long-standing dream of buying Buxton’s Store in downtown Orwell in January 2017. The store holds deep personal significance for Andy, whose family has called Orwell home for generations. 

The history of Buxton’s Store stretches back to 1967, when his grandparents bought the existing country store and operated it for decades. After their retirement in 2006, the business was sold to an unrelated owner who kept the name. In 2017, Andy and Mary, drawing on their combined 35 years of experience in the hospitality industry, took over the store, eager to continue its legacy. 

After the store closes at the end of October, the Buxtons plan to focus on finalizing the year-end financials and cleaning up the store before looking for new employment. They anticipate getting back into the hospitality industry again.

Andy Buxton said that the community’s efforts would not affect his plans to close, but they may have an impact when they try to make a sale. At first, the couple had no idea that the community had launched the fundraising campaign, he said.

“After a few days of really thinking about it, we want to get on board with this nonprofit organization,” Buxton said. “The community has the opportunity to make decisions on what the future of the building can be as opposed to myself and my wife just putting it up for sale and letting the highest bidder come in and do whatever they want.”

Buxton’s Store offers staples to the town of about 1,200 residents, like general groceries, fresh cut meats, cheese, craft beer, local wine, sodas, chips, baked goods and take out meals. 

On Reddit, people seem to agree they will mostly miss one specific sandwich – the Miss Hannigan, a sandwich named by the Buxton’s daughters years ago after seeing the movie “Little Orphan Annie.” The sandwich consists of McKenzie Oven Roasted Turkey, apple with smoked bacon, homemade pickle red onions, sliced local tomatoes, Vermont cheddar cheese and homemade garlic and mayo on a ciabatta roll.  

“That’s our number one selling,” Buxton said.

The Facebook video has received over 47,000 views and 370 comments from those saddened by the couple’s decision to close, with many sharing their favorite memories of the store in the comments.

“I wanted to get a sandwich, I went in there, I ran into the select board chair,” said Andriano. “I saw the owner of our local plumbing company who was outside talking to people, you know, it is a community and throughout the day people come in and out.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Orwell community has started fundraising to buy Buxton’s Store.

A Vermont Superior Court judge decided Friday that Middlebury Chapel at Middlebury College can keep its name, dealing a blow to a lawsuit brought by former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas that sought to restore the building’s original moniker, Mead Memorial Chapel. 

In an order issued Oct. 3, Superior Court Judge Robert Mello rejected most of Douglas’ arguments, writing the former governor “would not be entitled to relief compelling Middlebury to retain the chapel’s original name or monetary relief compensating the name change” no matter the outcome of the case.

The decision is a significant setback for Douglas, who filed suit over a year ago over the college’s decision to remove Mead’s name — a decision that he said was motivated by “cancel culture.” 

In an interview, Douglas said he was disappointed with the court’s order, but noted that it left the door open for a jury trial on several remaining questions.

“I said all along that I want a jury to hear this case,” said Douglas, a Middlebury alum and former Republican governor of Vermont from 2003 to 2011. “I think a group of 12 disinterested people will be fair.”

For over a century, the white chapel has stood at the highest point on the campus of Middlebury College. The chapel was originally named Mead Memorial Chapel in honor of the family of John Abner Mead, an alum and Republican governor of Vermont from 1910 to 1912 who donated money for the construction of the structure.

But in 2021, Middlebury College removed the Mead name and rechristened it Middlebury Chapel.

Amid a statewide reckoning over Vermont’s history of eugenics, college administrators pointed to Mead’s support — laid out in a 1912 farewell address to the legislature — for a state program to deal with what he called degenerates, or “a class of individuals in whose mental or nervous construction there is something lacking.”

In that speech, Mead asked the legislature to consider instituting new restrictions on marriage “among defectives” and to consider a state vasectomy program.

But, in a complaint filed in Addison County Superior Court last March, Douglas argued the college overstated Mead’s role in the state’s eugenics movement. Eugenics legislation was not passed until nearly two decades after Mead’s speech, the complaint argues.

In the lawsuit, Douglas, who was appointed Special Administrator of the Mead estate, asked the court to restore the Mead name to the building and to award restitution and damages to the estate.

Douglas argued that Mead provided funds with the understanding the college would build a chapel named for the Mead family, which amounted to a contract — and the removal of the name breached that contract.

Removing his name from the building “makes Governor Mead a scapegoat and does a disservice to his memory, the good works he performed throughout his lifetime, and particularly the love and devotion he showed to Middlebury College,” the suit reads.

Middlebury College, however, argued that Mead’s donation for the chapel was in fact a gift, not a binding contract. And as such, the college argued, it was under no obligation to reverse its decision to rename the building.

“When Governor Mead pledged funds for the construction of a chapel on the Middlebury campus over a century ago, did that gift impose a perpetual, legally binding obligation for the College to maintain the name ‘Mead Memorial Chapel’ on the building?” attorneys for Middlebury wrote in a filing last year. “The answer is manifestly no.”

Either way, Judge Mello wrote in his recent ruling, the court would not order Middlebury to restore the name.

“Governor Mead contributed most of the funds supporting the initial construction of the chapel, but he did not provide funds for its indefinite maintenance,” Mello wrote, “and Middlebury has determined that the time has come to change the name.”

Instead, the case can proceed on much narrower grounds. The only questions left to be settled are whether the agreement between the college and Mead was a gift or a contract, and if the latter, whether “Middlebury breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”

Jon Reidel, a spokesperson for Middlebury College, said the institution was pleased with the court’s decision.

“The College’s attorneys are evaluating the next steps to fully resolve the few remaining issues and move this case toward a close,” Reidel said in a statement. “The College has and will remain committed to exercising the fundamental right of freedom of expression and open debate on our campus and welcomes all voices on this issue.” 

Jared Carter, a law professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said he had always seen the case to be more about politics than a standard contractual dispute. 

“They wanted to change the name because of the sordid history of Mead,” he said. “And so this was an effort to stop that, gussied up as a contract law claim. But I always thought it was a long shot, as a result, so I’m certainly not surprised by the outcome here.”

Douglas said in an interview that it was still too soon to say whether he would appeal the decision. But, he noted, the college could always decide to restore the name on its own.

“We’re supposed to be learning from history and not erasing it,” he said. “So I — despite the judge’s declining to order the college to restore the name — hold out some hope that it still could happen.”

Disclosure: Jared Carter is providing pro bono legal assistance to VTDigger in an unrelated public records case.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Middlebury Chapel can keep its new name, court rules, in victory for college.

The rare Canada lynx has been spotted again in Vermont. And again, and again.

Biologists from the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department said they’ve received multiple photos and videos of what they believe is the same cat spotted in southern Vermont earlier this summer. 

“We’ve had 15 confirmed lynx sightings since August and signs point to these all being the same dispersing juvenile male,” said Brehan Furfey, a wildlife biologist with the department, in a press release Friday.

The lynx was first reported in August, spotted walking along a road in Rutland County. It marked the first reported sighting in the state in six years. 

The cat has now traveled about 60 miles north into Addison County, according to the department. 

“That’s a conservation success in its own right because Vermont’s network of protected lands is what makes this journey possible,” Furfey said. “Vermonters can be proud that decades of land protection and management for connected habitats have allowed this rare wild cat to make its way through our state.”

Juvenile lynx will often travel long distances searching for new territory, a behavior known as “dispersal,” the press release explained.

Canada lynx are considered endangered in Vermont and threatened — meaning likely to become endangered — in the United States, Furfey said. The department is urging anyone who sees a lynx to give the cat a respectful amount of space. 

The lynx currently being spotted by Vermonters appears skinny but healthy and is not a threat to people, according to the press release. The cat is likely stressed by being in unfamiliar habitat and needs to be allowed to continue on its way without disturbance, the release stated. 

“The rule of thumb is always to keep a respectful distance from any wildlife you’re observing. If they are changing their behavior in response to you, then you’re too close,” Furfey said in the release. 

She encouraged residents to learn how to distinguish lynx from the more common bobcat, and to send photos or videos of possible lynx sightings to the state Fish and Wildlife Department. 

“We’re rooting for this lynx to keep heading north where it will find more young forest habitat and plenty of snowshoe hares to eat,” Furfey said. 

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated Brehan Furfey’s gender.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Endangered Canada lynx sightings continue in western Vermont.

The Vermont Department of Health is urging people to avoid exposure to mosquitoes after a horse in Addison County tested positive from eastern equine encephalitis, according to a press release the department issued Monday morning. 

The case prompted officials to add Salisbury to the list of towns with high risk for eastern equine encephalitis, also known as EEE. This list now includes Alburgh, Burlington, Colchester, Salisbury, Sudbury, Swanton and Whiting, according to the department. Health officials “strongly recommend limiting evening outdoor activities until the first hard frost in their area” in those towns, the release stated. 

The health department also reported the first case of West Nile virus in a person this year. The Chittenden County resident, in their 80s, was hospitalized then released in August, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed test results Sept. 25.

Illness from the West Nile virus is less severe than EEE, according to the department, and most people do not develop symptoms. Others may experience fever, headaches, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea or rashes. 

Health officials recommend that residents across Vermont should take precautions, including using mosquito repellent registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, applying repellent when they spend time outdoors, particularly at dawn or dusk, wearing loose-fitting long sleeve shirts and pants outside, removing standing water near the home, and fixing holes in screens. 

EEE is a rare, serious disease transmitted through mosquitoes that is fatal in about 30% of people who develop severe symptoms, according to the CDC. While most people infected do not develop symptoms, those who do may experience headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, fever, seizures, behavioral changes and drowsiness. There are no vaccines or treatments for West Nile or EEE for humans, though vaccinations do exist for some animals, including horses.

The Addison County horse, which was unvaccinated, has died, according to the release. Scott Waterman, a spokesperson for the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, declined to state whether the horse died from the disease or was euthanized. 

Officials recommend horse owners consult with their veterinarians to make sure animals are properly vaccinated for EEE, West Nile and other viruses spread by infected insects or ticks. Horses cannot spread EEE or West Nile viruses to humans or other horses.

In August, the virus killed a New Hampshire resident and infected a man in Chittenden County. More mosquitoes tested positive for the disease, which prompted the health department to advise that residents of Alburgh, Burlington, Colchester and Swanton limit time outdoors between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Then, on Sept. 23, health department officials reported that in their most recent testing at the time, from Sept. 8 to 14, no new mosquitoes had tested positive for the virus. They still urged caution, noting that EEE continues to circulate in low rates among birds, from which mosquitoes contract the virus. 

This season, out of 3,863 groups of mosquitoes the department tested, 82 groups tested positive for EEE and 63 tested positive for the West Nile virus. The department recommends that anyone with symptoms of either disease should reach out to their health care provider. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Officials urge caution after Addison County horse tests positive for EEE.

A judge has found a family of Panton dairy farmers in contempt of court after they failed to stop water from coming out of a drainage system on their farm, washing over their neighbors’ property and flowing into Lake Champlain. 

Brothers Gerard and Hans Vorsteveld, who operate a large dairy farm in Addison County, must stop the water from flowing out of their fields by Nov. 15 or face a fine of $1,000 per day, according to the decision, written by Addison Superior Court Judge Mary Teachout on Sept. 12. 

The Vorstevelds plan to appeal the decision, according to their attorney, Claudine Safar of the Burlington-based firm Monaghan Safar. Gerard Vorsteveld did not respond to a phone call from VTDigger. 

Safar called the decision “dramatically incorrect” in an interview on Tuesday, saying Teachout’s ruling “ignores all of the evidence that we put before the court.”

Safar argued that the water coming off the farm is not generated by the farmers themselves and that the increased amount of water that neighbors have seen in recent years is a result of climate change. Because the court is holding the farm responsible for the quality of water that isn’t immediately flowing from the tile drains, “my client is now responsible for dealing with the brown water that is coming off of the town of Panton’s dirt roads,” she said. 

But Teachout wrote in her decision that the original court order instructed the Vorstevelds to “prevent the destructive flushing of water that originates from the tile drain system onto Aerie Point land.” Because the farmers have not stopped that water, they have not complied with the court order, Teachout held. 

The high-profile case has been playing out since 2020, when the Hopper family, neighbors of the Vorstevelds who live between the farmers and the lake, filed a complaint. In December 2021 and January 2022, a six-day trial led to a decision in March 2022 from Teachout calling for the Vorstevelds to stop the runoff flowing from their farm. 

The case has spurred debate about the state’s regulatory system related to agricultural pollution and caused lawmakers to consider whether farmers should have greater protections from nuisance lawsuits by neighbors. 

In her March 2022 decision, Teachout found that the Vorstevelds “had committed trespass and nuisance against its downslope neighbor Plaintiff Aerie Point by increasing the volume and velocity of water discharged into two streams that crossed Plaintiff’s land.”

That change in the volume and velocity of water was caused by the Vorstevelds’ tile drainage system, a network of perforated underground pipes that carry the water away from the field.

The system resulted in “the discharge of water in a manner that caused damage in a number of ways, including erosion of land and deposits of sediment and phosphorus,” Teachout wrote in her latest decision. 

In a January decision, Teachout found the Vorstevelds in contempt but did not assign penalties while the court waited to see whether a mediation process would identify solutions. 

By May, the parties had completed that process “without resolution,” Teachout wrote. 

Gerard Vorsteveld estimated that the farmers had spent roughly $60,000 to comply with the 2022 court order, though the court noted in its most recent decision that this money may have been spent anyway on a separate enforcement order issued by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Teachout wrote that the water coming from the tile drains had become clearer. To emphasize this point, Vorsteveld “captured clear water” at some of these drainage points in a cup and “drank it” during a recent site visit, the court order stated. 

“He testified that he did not get sick,” Teachout wrote.

Still, the judge found that once the clear water “gets down to the ditch on the Farm side of Arnold Bay Road, the water that enters the ditch during rainfalls is generally brown and murky, and some is foamy.”

Safar said she doesn’t know how the farmers would comply with the order. 

“How are you supposed to stop 300 acres of water from going back where it naturally went in the first place?” she said. “What are you supposed to do with it?” 

She noted that tile drains are allowed by Vermont’s Required Agricultural Practices, though state law includes restrictions on how the drains can be used. 

“These guys have spent $60,000 doing water quality improvements on their property with absolutely no evidence that there’s any contamination leaving these tile drains, and we’re asking them to either take them out, which is a $3 million expense,” and plug them up, which could cause environmental problems, or truck the water away, she said. 

Merrill Bent, an attorney who represents the Hoppers, said the court’s decision “is based largely on the farm’s own evidence and just a very straightforward interpretation of a court order that’s been interpreted multiple times over the last couple of years.”

If the Vorstevelds “can farm responsibly within the confines of their farm, then they wouldn’t need to impose their burden on their neighbor,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge finds Panton dairy farmers in contempt of court, orders fines barring major changes to farm.