“The Intervale Center can no longer afford to pay toward an uncertain and increasingly expensive permitting process for Intervale Compost,” treasurer and board member Charles Lief wrote in a news release Wednesday night.
“Hiring civil engineers, wetland scientists, hydrologists and other technical experts, as well as legal counsel — along with site work required by the Agency of Natural Resources — cost the Intervale about $200,000 in 2007. Even more than that total would be needed to continue permitting work in 2008,” he said.
Freeps
Viewed as a fight between the Act 250 regulatory regime and the robust and idealistic Intervale Center, can there be any doubt that the bad guys won? As to the charge that this was a politically motivated hit job ... who knows? Certainly no Vermont grown-up can doubt that the regulatory apparatus has, on occasion, been capriciously employed to take out enterprises that someone just didn't like. Logging, for instance.
The Intervale's lament about the cost of compliance -- of satisfying the multiple demands of the regulators -- is compelling but hardly original. Impossible to know how many developments that might-have-been never even got started because the permitting hill was just too steep to climb.
Common sense and compromise don't figure in the current setup. And we all pay a price. The Intervale is merely the the most recent casualty.
As the Intervale was dear to the heart of Speaker Symington and others, and a feel-good thing for Greens in general, does anyone believe this might be a wake-up call for those legislators who think Act 250 should remain sacrosanct?
Posted by: Jon Harrison | March 03, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Holy Cow! Mister Guy, who was a know-it-all pain in the neck on this site, is the voice of reason on the GMD posts!?! The apocalypse cometh... He certainly has undecaffeinated in a lather.
Posted by: Gordon Smith | March 03, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Quite a dust up on the GMD site. A real knickers-in-a-knot hissy fit going on.
Posted by: Lazarus Long | March 03, 2008 at 12:24 PM
It was stupid to put a compost pile on a flood plain. I've lived in communities that had 100-year floods. They do happen.
Undecayed compost is not inert. It's a pollutant. Decayed compost is still a pollutant. "Natural" does not mean "safe."
A big rain and fast snow melt could send Intervale compost not only into Lkae Champlain but whirling north into Canada.
Posted by: Lani Duke | March 03, 2008 at 02:31 PM
This is one of the few instances where the chickens have come home to roost regarding Act 250. And it's not surprising to hear the Libs crying "fowl" and claiming some kind of political motive. How many flimsy enviro/aesthetic/NIMBY arguments have been used over the years to kill all manner of home and commercial construction projects, modest sized logging operations, cell phone antennas, and even domestic wind turbines in order to protect a bat or newt or bird
or some buried bones. We have world class NIMBY's in Vermont. A wind turbine project was halted last year because of claims that the sight of rotating blades would exacerbate the emotional problems of the students in a private school by
"wind turbine syndrome". Cell phone antennas are routinely denied because of concerns about exposure to RF radiation meanwhile people press their hand-held microwave generating cell phones up to their skulls for hours a day.
Powerline projects are re-routed for the same concerns by people who wouldnt think twice about wrapping themselves in an electric blanket.
Every human endeavor from the Statehouse in Montpelier to Bill McKibben's or Al Gore's houses have displaced and or killed some wildlife that was there first.
Get a grip, eco-hypocrites...
Posted by: Rich L. | March 03, 2008 at 03:10 PM
Isn't everybody on this site a know-it-all pain in the neck?
Posted by: Jason | March 03, 2008 at 03:19 PM
OK, I admit know everything -- or almost everything, but I deny that I'm a pain in the neck.
Posted by: Jon Harrison | March 03, 2008 at 08:36 PM