It’s time to say goodbye. For all the many people who have stood so strongly up against the big bad corporation cheer in full delight. Proudly many of them say what a wonderful thing they vainly say they helped to push the big bad corporation out of Vermont. Out of their area. They blew and they blew as hard and as long as they could. Feeling hopless and powerless as the bad bad business was standing it’s ground fighting to stay in business here in southern vermont.
You won. You won the war and now the doors are being closed as the days become numbered and the hours countable as to when it is official that the Vermont Yankess Nuclear Power plant makes ready to end this supply of costly electricity.
Electricity is such’a funny thing. Not one person I come accross in any giving day can tell me that they do not use it. Not one of these people who stood in front of one of the many provided mikes to fill the air with all the noise to end the use of the nuclear energy to create electricity. If indeed there is and was someone who could say they do not use electricity in anyway they indeed are far fewer then all of us who crave the benefits of electricity.
Not too much time after the anouncement of the vermont yankee being shut down was the news of the many protesting the noise level of the wind turbines in another corner of vermont. That protest brought to my memory of a protesting of a new hampshire power company placing wind turbines ontop of mount Wantastiquet. The argument here if my memory serves me right was that wind turbines will steal the “beautiful” view and esthetics of’ the mountain from brattleboro. This if my memory serves me correctly was being protested just as the contruction of the new co-op building in brattleboro was starting. A building which has effectively robbed me and I am sure many other prople from the “beautiful” view of mount Wantastiquet. I guess these protestors were concerned for all these people who are and were going to live in the slate gray poorly designed co-op building.
It must be from inside these apartments that have no needs for electricity you do not have to see the drab gray co-op structure nor worry that it might block a portion of the view of the “beautiful” mountain accros the river. A view taking from the many townfolk for the sake of this “politicaly correct cooperative”.
No wind turbines on the hills away from the residential areas. No wind turbines close to residential areas. I guess no complaints toward the solar hill estate that poorly placed an eye sore of photovoltaic panels in such a way that most every visitor I’ve come accross has asked what is going on there and why did they make those panels look so ugly? This place for what ever the reason was ignored by the protestors for esthetic pleasures slipped by.
If my education serves me even just a little I was taught that twhere are alot of enviromental damage done to create any generators for electricity. Nuclear electricity produces far less co2. The operation of the plant does pose environmental impact yet I wonder if you could measure the amount of usage produced verse enviromental impact of the many tools used by you, what is the ratio. How much environmental damage is done with the excessive use of highly toxic chemicals to create a battery. How much enviromental destruction occurs when making solar panels?
If you are going to protest then start offering an alternative to these limited tools we have available to produce electricity. It is too easy to say no and soo difficult to bring forward ideas that will help solving these high demands for electricity you are asking for. Instead of protesting against all these tools why not stop using the electricity so these generators are not needed as much. You can not expect that you can have everything without making any sacrifice or compromise. Just make up you minds and be proactive here. Stop your protesting untill you are willing to make efforts to stop the demands.
M Raymond
Misinformation?
There’s a lot of misinformation here.
For example:
Quote:
”That protest brought to my memory of a protesting of a new hampshire power company placing wind turbines ontop of mount Wantastiquet. The argument here if my memory serves me right was that wind turbines will steal the “beautiful” view and esthetics of’ the mountain from brattleboro.”
I follow this type of thing, and I can’t remember anything of the sort. Can you be referring to my iBrattleboro post in December 2011?
I wrote a speculative piece about the subject: https://www.ibrattleboro.com/article.php/20111203161821496
I certainly wasn’t protesting anything. In fact, I said: “For me, at least, if the turbines looked like Searsburg from 1/2 mile, I could enjoy them.”
I even supplied a picture.
A reply to my post said:
“A consortium of green energy companies will obtain a permit to build as many as 47 wind towers on Mount Wantastiquet. Etc.“
C’mon! This wasn’t serious, and no one was seriously protesting it.
It was originally a tongue-in-cheek prediction made in 2009 by Maus Anon E: https://www.ibrattleboro.com/article.php/20081231115503597
Yup. You are right. Looking
Yup. You are right. Looking for more information about the wind turbines on the mountain. I can not find a thing about them. Blinded by my frustration of the resistance of any sort of power structure to create electricity I was writing without making sure I all the facts correct. Thank you for pointing this out and correcting me with this.
I used information that was shared with me, the Ibrattleboro story must of been where my friend got the information and she took it as fact. Hinsdale had an opportunity to have a wood burning power plant and there was a great deal of protesting in regards to this. In a article by boston.com the mention of wind turbines and protesting of the placement of them. Some how in my morning state of mind I must of misread the article and interpreted it to support my argument.
I am amazed at how my emotions led me to read into the article what I wanted to hear.
I shall have to be more diligent to make sure I do not do this again.
Thank you for catching this and for pointing this out.
http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/moreira/
Good link.
Thanks.
Being Let Go
In the mid 1990’s I worked at the Computer Museum in Boston doing exhibit design. It was a fairly specialized type of work, and only a few places in the country hired hands-on exhibit designers. Good pay and benefits, and it allowed me to live in Boston rather reasonably.
We did great work on projects like a 2 story working walk-through PC, a virtual reality gallery, and an exhibit showing off the best educational software packages for kids and teachers. We won numerous awards and recognitions for our bosses.
One day, those at the top decided to close the museum and move the collection to California. Just about everyone was let go, and I was one of the first to be let out the door since no new exhibits were planned.
The original plan was to fire me at Christmas; I was able to convince them to give me a few more weeks, but I was in shock.
I didn’t expect to be suddenly tossed from a job I did well and enjoyed. I was angry that all of the hard work paid off with being terminated. I was depressed that the exhibits would be dismantled and sold off or thrown away.
It was embarrassing to have to go collect unemployment. I didn’t think of myself as “that type of person” but I needed the measly payments to barely survive. The clock was ticking, too. Unemployment payments don’t last forever.
I got angry and depressed. I lost friends who thought I had gone nuts. I had trouble sleeping.
I basically went through the stages of grieving – denial, anger, bargaining, depression… and acceptance.
For a while I could only see myself in the same job, doing the same thing, and I searched for and even found a couple of positions. Disney was opening a new Children’s Museum in Baltimore, and Chicago had an exhibit opening at their Children’s Museum.
I investigated each, but couldn’t come to accept a position. My brain wouldn’t let me do that much work again with the possibility of it all being taken away at the whim of someone else.
Long story short – I had met Lise at the Computer Museum and we both decided that starting our own business, no matter how hard, would be preferable to working for someone else again. Using the remains of our unemployment funds, we launched MuseArts in 1997.
Now, if we fail, it is directly our fault. If we succeed, it is our success. No one gets paid extra to claim credit for our work, either.
You know how the story ends… we moved MuseArts to Brattleboro at the turn of the century, suffered through the pains of restarting in a new location, and have settled in here to help people build web sites and other digital goodies.
If the museum hadn’t closed and I hadn’t been fired, life would have taken a different course. As unsettling as that period was, it did lead me to a better (I hope) place once the dust settled.
…
My hope is that similar results can come from this definitely-painful but not entirely unexpected turn of events.
I’d also add that many people who looked forward to VY’s closure also look forward to helping employees with a smooth transition. For that to be successful, some time will need to pass and more information about the who, what, where, when and how’s of various positions need to be understood. VY has held employee info close to the vest and should begin opening up about individual positions rather than averages and totals.
For example, we know the average wage is $110,000 or so. Absent details of all the other salaries, this number is almost meaningless. If a 4 person company is led by someone making $1 million, and the 3 employees each make $20,000, the average salary at the company is deceptively high: $265,000.
We need to know about who planned to retire soon, what positions are unique to nuclear plants vs. able to move to another company without nuclear science at the core, who lives where, who plans to start new businesses, who plans to stay and decommission, and so on. The closing opens up a world of questions.
The process can become cooperative rather than adversarial, but that could take a while.
….
Your encouraging story is quite comforting. thank you
Thank you Chris for sharing your journey to Brattleboro. My distress over the loss of Vermont Yankee and what feels to be the endless protesting to what seems to be any opportunity for a healthy business community here in Brattleboro needed to hear your successful venture.
Our community has so much room for business. It feels so often that every business opportunity offering itself here is met with much resistance. Too many empty structures for people who wish to work and need to work to survive must travel far away to get a good paying job.
We the Brattleboroites must find compromise and accept that there must be some give in the demands of what each interprets as a healthy town. There must be a desire to find plausibility of having a sustaining healthy environment while promoting a healthy business community.
I am so tired of living in a town filled with only food and retail chain stores and watching so many successful business pushed out of the area because of all the resistance. One group upset because a business zoned area might be used for a multi purpose truck stop. Another group refusal to allow for one of the most successful business which had offered to pay for an exit point of its tractor trailers. C and S if I am not mistaking had offered to pay for an additional access to 91 and again if I am not mistaking was granted permission to do so by all parties in concern, except from the people of this area. A business that grew up here and treats its workers fairly. The claim of negative environmental impact forced the company to move a good deal of it’s work force over to Keene. Then the town folk allow for a “healthy food” warehouse to put a new building up with no mention of negative environmental impact and then allow for a hotel to be put up as well these two businesses employment practice is and was far less favorable to employees. They both have created a far more damaging impact to the environment. Thank God the majority of Brattleboroites have allowed for the solar farm to be placed in that area.
This area will continue to have few good paying job opportunities as long as there is a continuation of resistance to supporting strong healthy business.
(I am not running for any office here )
If I were I am sure I will lose many votes because of sharing how I feel not saying the magic words that everyone wants to hear.
All I am saying in such a long form way here is that it is so easy to protest. It is far easier to protest every means to resolve any of the structures needed to fulfill the needs our society demands. It is far easier for any business to set up shop outside of our area to fulfill our needs giving the benefits of that business to other towns and states. It might be said that what the protesters are doing is allowing for our area to fail. They are protesting success and are very successful at keeping our area from any form of financial stability.
Finding a way to meet the needs we ask for while keeping watch to minimize environmental impact. This is far more difficult yet has far greater rewards.
Sorry for the excess of words here
Important discussion
I think that sometimes the things that people do support don’t get as much attention as the ones that cause ripples.
Brattleboro’s been rather accepting of the Commonwealth Dairy, the new solar farm along 91, everything going on at the Brooks House, expansion at the hospital, the redeveloped waterfront by the art museum, and other projects.
But it isn’t always easy to see what will fly and what won’t. They aren’t businesses per se, but the new West River Park and the skating rink repairs have had few who object; the skatepark had many.
It comes down, I think, to differing views of what is a success, what is healthy, and what is good for the town. Some would say filling every available space in town with chain stores would be helpful. Some would say a prison would provide good jobs. Others might say that getting rid of all vehicles is the best way to go.
If you get some time this month, do stop in to the Brattleboro History Center on Main Street to take a look at the exhibit of unfinished plans for Brattleboro. It’s fun to look at how different groups have thought about plans for the town over the years. Open Th, Fr, and Sat.
about the ghosts of local business past
I really tried to let this go, but I have to respond to MRaymond’s comments. Regarding the expansion of C&S – I do not recall anything about their willingness to build an additional ramp to I-91. That doesn’t mean they didn’t make the offer. But it should be pointed our that this was not entirely the issue, as they moved their office operation to Keene – not their warehouse, which is still up on Putney Road. They still ship from there. The trucks still leave from there. As I recall, they were offered a number of deals and incentives to keep their offices in Brattleboro, but they chose to take the deal offered by Keene and New Hampshire. There was much scuttlebutt at the time that it was a done deal and would have happened no matter how much Vermont and Brattleboro sweetened the proverbial pot. Not everyone would agree that they treat their workers fairly – there have been age discrimination suits, and threats of suits by workers who complain that as soon as they became ill they were dismissed. I can not speak to the veracity of such complaints, as I have not worked there. But I’ve gotten pretty fed up with the idea that C&S was chased out of town by some sort of coterie of rabid hippie antibusiness protestors.
As for that “healthy food” warehouse, there were objections to it, too. There were hearings. I know this for a fact as I attended two of them. Northeast even had the American representative of Britain’s National Trust trying to stop that project based on the noise he and guests might hear at Naulakha (the Kipling estate) which is too far away to be affected by such noise. As far as Northeast ever being unfair to its employees, I have to say that it was easily the best job with the best benefits that I ever had in this area. That is not to say that it lasted. Once the vote was taken to disband the co-op and “merge” (read “sale”) with United, many things changed. For the worse, imho. They closed the business down.
As for putting a major truck park it, which would have had refrigerated trucks which need to run continuously, at the lot on Putney and Black Mountain Roads, well, that idea was ill conceived for that specific area. There simply isn’t room there to do it properly.
As for Yankee, I recall quite clearly that several years ago, at the start of the campaign to close the plant when its license was to expire in 2012, there were attempts to start the discussion of what to do about all the workers there who would lose their jobs. I do not know why those discussions were not continued, but I would suggest that ownership shared a great deal of the blame by simply refusing to accept any idea other than getting their own way. The facility was aging, potentially dangerous, and ownership lied about it to the state. I would suggest that workers had a few clues that there were problems on the horizon. It’s not like being called into a meeting out of the blue and being given an envelope with your severance package and final check in it. I’ve been there. Three times, three different careers. I wish this wasn’t happening to my neighbors, I wish we knew what to do to help. But repeating the same old canards isn’t going to do anything.
There are people who will complain about everything and anything. As long as I’ve lived here I’ve heard from disgruntled business owners that Brattleboro or Vermont were not business friendly, that they were given rough treatment, etc. Several of those folks moved to their nirvana of income tax free New Hampshire. I will tell you this – I attempted to shop in a couple of those folks’ stores when they were in town. They ignored their customers except for the few minutes they treated them with rude condescension and/or outright hostility. I can’t say this for sure, but I am under the impression that their businesses didn’t last in Keene, either – which is a town of at least double the population and market of Brattleboro. Their main accomplishment was spreading ill will and blaming others for their own failures. I’m really sorry to be so blunt about it, but if we want to have a very needed discussion about our area, and creating a healthy business climate that will support working people as well as the well to do and the trust funders, then it’s time to stop all the nonsense and have a real discussion about everything from high rents to low wages, lack of benefits, benefits that can’t be afforded and etc. In my experience, the businesses which complain the loudest about the unfriendly business climate are the same as those which restrict hours to make sure they don’t have to pay into an employee health care system, won’t pay a living wage, treat their employees badly,and etc. Then there are the folks who pretend that they care about their employees, but who treat them with the same contempt as the other corporate style businesses. Treating folks, customers and employees, with respect creates a lot of wonders in my experience.
"As for Yankee, I recall
“As for Yankee, I recall quite clearly that several years ago, at the start of the campaign to close the plant when its license was to expire in 2012, there were attempts to start the discussion of what to do about all the workers there who would lose their jobs. I do not know why those discussions were not continued, but I would suggest that ownership shared a great deal of the blame by simply refusing to accept any idea other than getting their own way.”
What was Entergy going to do? Magically make good paying jobs appear out of thin air.
Entergy is giving its employees more than a year to prepare and they have a retention/severance plan in place.
By all means, keep “discussing” it. It should do a lot of good.
BTW, they got their way due to the ineptness of Shumlin and company.
Bad math
“For example, we know the average wage is $110,000 or so. Absent details of all the other salaries, this number is almost meaningless. If a 4 person company is led by someone making $1 million, and the 3 employees each make $20,000, the average salary at the company is deceptively high: $265,000.”
Since VY has ~650 employees, your example is a poor one even if the highest paid VY person makes $1 million/year. (which they don’t)
Most people will leave the area and the more skilled/talented/paid a person is, the more likely they are going to leave. This area doesn’t have the jobs or opportunities to keep those employees here if they aren’t going to stay at VY after shutdown.
“I’d also add that many people who looked forward to VY’s closure also look forward to helping employees with a smooth transition.”
I’m still waiting for something more than words from any of those people.
Bitterness
Why are you so bitter?
Are you among those losing their jobs?
Bitter?
No, I’m just a realist.
Bittersweet
What will be sweet for those who leave VY and the area is when they see in the news that windham county has become like Detroit Mich. And the state of Vermont realizes just how much revenue it lost.
Thanks for this story, Chris.
Thanks for this story, Chris. Not only does it nicely add to the current conversation, but it is very heartwarming to hear these bits of your and Lise’s life story, you getting together, and the details of what preceded your arrival here.
I am sure i am not alone in feeling very grateful that these turns of events brought you two to Brattleboro. Our community is greatly enrichened by your presence.
b.
Beyond Protests and Petitions
I agree we must get to a place I call “Beyond Protests and Petitions”. It is so easy to protest and petition in this day and age. Despite many indicators to the contrary, the POTENTIAL for active democracy is stronger than ever. The skills and abilities of people to participate much more comprehensively in finding positive solutions using democratic approaches are much greater than they were 200 years ago. Yes, there are many obstacles. I don’t deny that. I also don’t choose to focus all or most of my energy on fighting them head on. I prefer to just step around them, find other ways and quietly go about bringing change so that one of these days those big bad people and corporations will get bit in their behinds and they won’t have seen it coming. Aside from being 90% productive, the 10% cunning, not altogether altruistic side of me kind of likes this approach.
What if, for the next six months, we all pledged to LISTEN to each other at least 90% of the time, and respond 10%; to propose solutions 90% and give constructive criticism 10%; to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes, to make a commitment to working together, etc.? I’m asking for only six months initially. You can bail after that or sign up for another six month commitment. Anyone interested?
Fracking won, not the protesters
To say that “they won” or that “we won” (whichever side you happen to be on) is just not true. The Vt Yankee opponents/protesters did not win; Entergy made the decision itself to close the plant due to economic factors. Quoting from the New York TImes article that came out following Entergy’s decision, “The company, Entergy, said a long depression in natural gas prices had pushed the wholesale price of electricity so low that it was losing money on the reactor…So far this year, owners have announced the retirements of five reactors, with the low price of gas being cited as a factor in all of the cases. Three of the five have substantial mechanical problems.”
Having said that, we are too insulated from what is happening in the rest of the country. Mountains are being blown up to extract coal, fracking and the shale gas boom are creating toxic drinking water supplies and unregulated dumping of radioactive waste, and people’s homes and lives and the environment are being destroyed while big corporations try to blindsight the public and our government wages wars to try to secure the remaining oil reserves in politically unstable countries. Our thirst for cheap and abundant energy will be our demise.