Current News

by Jason Huynh, UVM Class of 2026 CAP is a partnership program between the Vermont Attorney General's Office and the University of Vermont. The academic component is a service-learning class based out of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics (CDAE) which embodies the values and mission of the department through hands-on learning for the public good. Students develop professional skills by assisting consumers, businesses, and the public through outreach and education. CAP was created in the late 1980s by Jay Ashman, a former professor in CDAE and an Assistant Attorney General. “He knew that there was an opportunity to offer students a service-learning experience where they could apply the knowledge of what they were learning in consumer law, and to assist Vermont consumers with unresolved complaints,” explained Lisa Jensen, Assistant Director of the CAP.

by Kate Kampner, Community News Service When Peter Stickney walks along his cow paddocks in the morning, he notes the scattered patches of greener grass across the pasture. He knows what this means: It’s where his cows have peed. So when the Rich Earth Institute, a Brattleboro organization focused on turning human urine into fertilizer, approached him to be a farm partner, Stickney said it was a no-brainer. Stickney manages the Elm Lea Farm at The Putney School, a boarding high school in the Windham County town of the same name. For the past few years, alongside six other farms in Vermont and the Northeast, Stickney has been receiving treated urine from Rich Earth Institute to spray across the farmland at Elm Lea. The institute, its partners and others in the sustainability industry see the practice — dubbed “peecycling” in national headlines — as a cheap, easy and less-destructive method for fertilizing plants than synthetic fertilizer and as a way for people to rethink their views on whether human waste should really go to waste. 

Vermont Business Magazine At 8 pm Thursday, May 2, Professor Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux from the Department of Geography and Geosciences at the University of Vermont, will give a lecture covering the latest climate change science coming out of the 2023 National Climate Assessment and the implementation of Vermont’s first ever Climate Action Plan, which was adopted in December 2021. The event, this year’s Robert H. Woodworth Lecture in the Sciences, is free and open to the public. It is scheduled for the Tishman Lecture Hall, which is labeled #3 on the campus map.   

Vermont Business Magazine The Composting Association of Vermont (CAV) is excited to announce the significant expansion of resources in its multimedia On-Farm Community Composting Toolkit. The toolkit provides technical support and training for community-oriented food scrap composting and manure management on farms in rural and small communities throughout the US. Many raw materials for composting are readily available on farms, and the nutrient-rich product of composting is also needed there. The On-Farm Community Composting Toolkit provides resources to support better composting on farms and encourages composting with community needs in mind, with the overarching goals of reducing solid waste, avoiding water pollution, and increasing soil health and farm resiliency. 

Vermont Business Magazine Ahead of this year’s boating season, the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has published a new rule regulating wakeboats and wakesports under Vermont’s Use of Public Waters Rules. This rule, developed in response to a petition filed by Responsible Wakes for Vermont Lakes, seeks to protect Vermont’s environment while balancing a range of recreational activities. As of April 15, 2024, a wakeboat may only operate in “wakesports” mode in designated wakesports zones of Vermont’s lakes, ponds, and reservoirs. A wakesports zone of a lake or pond is an area of at least 50 acres over 20 feet deep, at least 200 feet wide, and over 500 feet from shore. The wakesports zone has been established to address concerns that wakeboats erode vulnerable shoreline when the distance to shore is not adequate to dissipate the wakes and stir up lake bottom sediments in shallower waters. 

Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department Herricks Cove Wildlife Festival: This is a family-friendly festival with an emphasis on the wildlife and natural resources of Vermont. The festival will feature live animals, nature-focused walks, kids’ activities, presentations by environmental and nature organizations. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board will hold two more public hearings on May 6 and 8 to solicit input on deer and the department’s 2024 Antlerless Harvest and Youth/Novice Recommendation.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel (VT NDCAP) will hold its first regular meeting of 2024 on Monday evening, May 13th, from 6:00 PM to 8:15 PM.  At this meeting, NorthStar and Vermont State Agencies will provide updates on recent Vermont Yankee (VY) decommissioning activities.  The Vermont State Agencies reports will also discuss NorthStar’s March 31, 2024 required annual status report for the VY Decommissioning Project.  Recent activities of the Panel’s Federal Nuclear Waste Policy Committee will also be discussed.

Vermont Business Magazine The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board will hold two more public hearings on May 6 and 8 to solicit input on deer and the department’s 2024 Antlerless Harvest and Youth/Novice Recommendation. The hearings are scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m. at the following locations: Monday, May 6 – Rutland High School, 22 Stratton Rd, Rutland, VT 05701; Wednesday, May 8 – Thetford Academy, 304 Academy Rd, Thetford, VT 05074.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont’s popular fish and wildlife summer course for teachers and other educators will be held July 14-19, 2024. The interactive field course that gets educators out into Vermont’s streams, forests and wetlands with some of the state’s leading natural resource experts takes place at the Buck Lake Conservation Camp in Woodbury. Now in its 39th year, “Wildlife Management and Outdoor Education Techniques for Educators,” is a one-week course taught by Vermont Fish and Wildlife and other Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) staff through Vermont State University. 

Vermont Business Magazine Today the Vermont Senate gave initial approval to H.72, an act relating to a harm-reduction criminal justice response to drug use, on a tripartisan vote of 21-8. This bill will allow for the creation of an overdose prevention center pilot to prevent fatal overdoses, provide access to harm-reduction services (including sterile equipment, drug-checking, and naloxone), reduce pressures on emergency rooms and Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and to provide access to referrals for substance use disorder treatment. H.72 permits the creation of an overdose prevention center in Burlington, either at a fixed location or a mobile facility, supervised by health care professionals or other trained staff. It provides a person the ability to consume pre-obtained drugs and medication for substance use disorder with access to harm reduction supplies, drug-checking services, addiction treatment, medical services, and overdose reversal medications.

Vermont Business Magazine Governor Phil Scott has named award-winning Brandon poet and teacher Bianca Stone the next Vermont Poet Laureate. Stone is the author of five books, including the poetry collections, What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018); and Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014). She collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation, and elsewhere. She co-founded the poetry-based nonprofit Ruth Stone House, where she teaches classes on poetry and poetic study and hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast, and is editor-at-large for ITERANT magazine.

Vermont Business Magazine Attorney General Charity Clark today announced that Vermont received $24,885,098.40 from tobacco manufacturers under the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA). Annually, Vermont receives monies from tobacco manufacturers from the MSA, which resolved the State’s lawsuit filed in the 1990’s. The settlement funds are credited to the State’s Tobacco Fund, and the legislature determines how they are spent. On November 23, 1998, Vermont’s Attorney General and 51 state and territory attorneys general signed the MSA with the four largest cigarette manufacturers in the United States, including Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. As a leader in this effort, Vermont has received more than $794 million from the tobacco companies since 1998.