Environmental Action 2008 Conference!
 On Saturday, November 15, our annual Environmental Action conference will bring together grassroots activists, community leaders, and issue experts from across Vermont to share ideas, inspire one another, learn new skills, and strategize ways to move Vermont towards a green and sustainable future. Please join us!
The conference will feature world-renowned ecologist, writer, and environmental health expert Dr. Sandra Steingraber, who will be delivering the keynote address, and participating in some workshops.
Dr Steingraber delivers emotionally-engaging talks that connect the personal to the environmental. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment and Having Faith.
Over 24 workshops will provide opportunities to learn from leading activists and to discuss a range of environmental issues that Vermont faces today, including: Creating a Clean Energy Future, Advancing Alternatives to Nuclear Power, The Composting Controversy, Protecting Our Families and Communities from Toxics, Building a Strong Local Food Economy, Planning to Address Climate Change, and Protecting Vermont's Water, Woods and Wildlife. There will also be workshops that will help participants build the skills to be leaders in creating healthy, sustainable communities in Vermont.
The conference will take place at Vermont Technical College in Randolph. Register online at www.vtenvironmentalaction.org.
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Vermont Children Remain Vulnerable to Health Hazards at Schools
 As students settle back into school, a law designed to protect their health in the classroom received a failing grade in the first report card of Act 125. Act 125 was charged with reducing environmental health hazards in schools through the creation of a voluntary program called Envision: Promoting Healthy School Environments. According to the report card released by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG), Act 125 has failed to protect the majority of Vermont’s children and school personnel from polluted indoor air.
Under Act 125, the State was required to create a model school environmental health plan and award environmental health certificates to schools that voluntarily excelled in improving indoor air quality. Passed by the Legislature in 2000, Act 125 established a goal of having at least 50% of schools qualify for an environmental health certificate by January 2005. Only 7% of schools had received a certificate by the end of 2006.
VPIRG recommends that Vermont turn to new opportunities and solutions for creating healthy learning environments including: 1) implementing a comprehensive healthy schools program; 2) requiring schools to purchase environmentally preferable cleaning products; and 3) eliminating high-risk pesticides and establishing strong integrated pest management programs at schools.
To read the full report, click here. To read VPIRG's news release, click here.
Feeling The Heat: Temps Are Up in Burlington
A new report released by VPIRG and our national advocacy partners at Environment America shows that over the course of 2007, Burlington experienced 10 days where the temperature hit at least 90°F, which is a 66% increase over the historical average for the city.
Extreme heat can have serious implications for human health, causing heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and even death. The year 2007 tied for the second warmest year on record globally and was the 10th warmest year on record in the United States. These record temperatures are part of a trend toward rising temperatures resulting from global warming.
“This sobering report tells us that global warming is accelerating at a faster pace than even the most dire predictions by leading scientists had anticipated,” said U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. “We are fast approaching a tipping point, but there is fortunately still time to slow this pace and, in fact, reverse it."
To read the full report, click here.To read VPIRG's news release, click here.
VPIRG Urges Investigation of Vermont Yankee Advertising
 The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) today called on Attorney General William Sorrell to launch a formal investigation into the paid advertising of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY) as a possible violation of a state law designed to protect consumers from fraudulent claims.
“The out-of-state owners of Vermont Yankee have demonstrated such a disregard for the truth that it amounts to a violation of state law,” said Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG).
VPIRG cited examples from ENVY’s paid ads that conflict with documented facts or common public perception and urged Attorney General Sorrell to commence a civil investigation and take appropriate steps to protect the public from further deception on the part of ENVY.
As part of its advertising campaign, ENVY is urging Vermonters to contact their legislators in support of a 20-year license extension for the plant. A vote on the possible extension is expected in 2009 or 2010.
“Vermonters would be far better off if Entergy put all the money they’re spending on ads into hiring competent managers and engineers who can help to prevent the plant from falling apart until it retires in 2012,” said Burns.
For the full press release on VPIRG's request to Attorney General Sorrell, click here.
For the full text of the letter to Attorney General Sorrell, click here.
12,000+ Want Vermont Yankee Closed
 8/19/08- The Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) held a news conference announcing the results of one of the organization’s most successful summer outreach campaigns ever, generating over 12,000 postcards signed by Vermonters interested in seeing the state’s aging nuclear plant retired in 2012 in favor of clean energy alternatives.
 “One of the best ways to gauge public opinion is to go out and actually talk with people, face to face and door to door,” said Ben Walsh, who helped to run VPIRG’s summer campaign office. “We’ve done that from one end of Vermont to the other, and I can tell you that from Grand Isle to Brattleboro, Vermonters are ready to make the switch from an unreliable and aging nuclear plant to a clean, local, renewable energy future.”
This summer Vermonters have been exposed to two very different approaches in the debate over Vermont Yankee’s future. The Louisiana-based corporate owners of Vermont Yankee have spent large sums of money on ads beginning with the ironic tag line, “Vermonter to Vermonter.” Meanwhile, VPIRG outreach workers have hit the streets, on foot and on bicycle, to recruit support for alternatives to the catastrophe-prone plant one Vermonter at a time. They set an ambitious goal of collecting 10,000 signatures on postcards to legislators in districts around the state. Earlier this month, they smashed that goal and have gathered over 12,000 postcards to date.
Read the full press release here.
Take action to help close Vermont Yankee here.
VPIRG Report:
Catamount Health“96 Percent Goal” Currently Unattainable
A new VPIRG report analyzing the state’s package of health care reform programs charges that while thousands of Vermonters have gained health coverage in recent months, the outlook is dim for the state to meet its goal of ensuring that at least 96 percent of Vermonters have health care coverage by 2010.
VPIRG issued the report, which is the second in a series to examine the state’s rollout of Catamount Health and related programs in the Green Mountain Care line. According to VPIRG, although state officials deserve credit for their promotion of Catamount Health and other health benefits available to Vermonters, the state is not on track to reach the overarching goal touted by lawmakers and the administration when the Catamount Health legislation was passed in 2006.
“Vermonters embraced an ambitious goal two years ago – to make certain that 96 percent of the state’s population has health care coverage by 2010,” said Stefanie Sidortsova, VPIRG’s health care advocate. “Catamount Health by itself will not reach that goal, nor will any of our other existing programs. Simply put, if 96 percent of Vermonters are going to have health insurance by 2010, we need to make some pretty big changes to the current landscape.”
The scorecard highlights many of the outreach and enrollment efforts the Vermont Agency of Administration’s Health Care Reform office has undertaken to get Vermonters enrolled in state health care programs. Despite a significant effort, enrollment numbers in the Catamount Health plan have failed to hit projections. more...
Read the full press release here.
Read the full report here.
Leak At VY's Cooling Towers Raises New Concerns
 Multiple problems forced Vermont Yankee to shut down both of their cooling towers and reduce the power plant’s output to 23%. Leaks or other structural failures were found in at least three different sections of the towers including the very same tower the company claims it fixed after last summer’s collapse.
James Moore, the VPIRG Clean Energy Advocate noted that state and federal regulators are failing the public and was quoted in the Burlington Free Press raising questions that deserve our regulators attention: “It makes one wonder where else they’ve cut corners… There seems to be a culture of not doing everything it takes to fix and secure that facility.”
Simply put, Entergy Nuclear proved once again that Vermont Yankee is not the way forward for our energy future. Or as James Moore put it during an interview on VPR “The short term bribe of [saving] a few dollars a month in your electricity bill is far outweighed by the cost that we would be passing on to future generations of Vermonters in nuclear waste, in cleanup, and in risk associated with running one of the oldest reactors in the country.”
Read more about the leak from VPR here, from the Burlington Free Press here, and from the Brattleboro Reformer here.
VPIRG Leads National Health Care Reform Coalition
Efforts In Vermont
 Joining a new coalition with nearly 100 other organizations nationwide, VPIRG announced it would be taking the lead in organizing efforts for dramatic health care reform here in Vermont.
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) is being launched by 95 national and local groups that represent labor, community organizations, doctors, nurses, women, small businesses, faith-based organizations, people of color, netroots activists, and think tanks. Health Care for America Now is organizing to assure that the first order of business of the next President and Congress is to pass legislation in 2009 that guarantees quality, affordable health care for all.
The campaign is spending an initial $1.5 million on national television, print, and online advertising and is sending out an email blast to more than 5 million people. Over the next five months, Health Care for America Now plans to spend $25 million in paid media and have 100 organizers in 45 states.
Health Care for America Now offers a bold new vision for health care reform: Americans can keep the private insurance they have, join a new private insurance plan, or choose a public health insurance plan. The campaign also calls for a government role in setting and enforcing rules on the insurance industry which consistently charges whatever it wants, sets high deductibles, denies coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and drops coverage when people get sick.
Read the full press release by clicking here.
Join us in taking action to change the way we treat the ill in America by clicking here.
Read Times-Argus coverage of the story here.
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Campaigns and Coalition Work...
Take Action...
07-08 Legislative Scorecard: Find out where Legislators stand on key public interest issues before November! Download the VPIRG 2007-2008 Legislative Scorecard today and know who Vermont's Public Interest Heroes are.
Current research...
Feeling the Heat
A new report released by VPIRG and our national advocacy partners at Environment America shows that over the course of 2007, Burlington experienced 10 days where the temperature hit at least 90°F, which is a 66% increase over the historical average for the city.
Tax Policy Can Speak Louder Than Words
A new VPIRG report finds that the state property tax bills for power producers around the state are significantly uneven between renewable and nonrenewable energy providers.
Scoring Catamount Health: Phase I and Phase II
VPIRG's reports grading the Douglas Administration on their effectiveness in implementing the Catamount Health plan.
When it Rains, It Pours
This new report finds that New England leads the country in severe precipitation. Storms with heavy rainfall or snowfall are now 61 percent more frequent in the New England region than they were 60 years ago.
A Decade of Change
This report outlines a clear, achievable path to a clean, safe and affordable electricity future for Vermont, showing how we can get more than half our electricity from renewable energy sources by 2016.
Building Solutions
Vermont has the potential to dramatically reduce its global warming pollution and reduce heating bills by improving the energy efficiency of Vermont homes according to this new VPIRG report.
Troubled Waters
This report outlines the successes and failures of the Clean Water Act in Vermont 35 years after its passage. Sadly, more than 50% of of industrial and municipal facilities across the state continue to violate the law.
Have you heard ...
VPIRG is hitting back against misleading ads by Entergy Nuclear- the corporate owners of Vermont Yankee - with our own radio ads on WDEV thanks to support from the Lintilhac Foundation!
Click here to listen:
Ad 1..... Ad 2..... Ad 3
or listen online to WDEV here
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