The Rabid Dog and the GOP or What Color IS Vermont

Last week I received an email from Cerise Mayo, of Greenhorns, Serve Your Country Food, Slow Food and New Amsterdam Market, about composting in Vermont. The email was a letter to the editor of the Times Argus paper in Montpelier, Vermont. It reads like this:

Dear Editor:

We are a group of concerned citizens, including avid home gardeners, long-time commercial farmers and voracious consumers of fresh local food, who believe that the Vermont Compost Company of Montpelier is a most valuable and responsible business in our region that must be kept open and thriving.

We feel strongly that the recent action taken by the Vermont Natural Resources Board to shut down Vermont Compost is unjust and in clear violation of the state's own regulatory procedures and laws. The moratorium on compost operations that the Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law this past legislative session was written specifically to exempt from shutdown both Vermont Compost and the Intervale, two of the state's larger composting facilities, until an adequate regulatory definition could be officially determined as to whether "composting" qualifies as an agricultural activity. The administrative action taken to immediately suspend Vermont Compost's operations and fine the company $18,000 is a draconian and blatantly capricious action that we call on Governor Douglas to reverse immediately.

As the price of fuel skyrockets and the global food emergency intensifies, the state of Vermont desperately needs more agricultural facilities and local food and farm operations like Vermont Compost. To close down Vermont Compost, as well as the Intervale which is also teetering on the brink of collapse in the wake of inconsistent regulatory oversight, is a most dangerous and reckless failure in public policy that will undermine Vermont¹s ability to maintain and develop a vibrant farm economy for generations.

Keep Vermont Compost open!

-Martin Kemple, Middlesex
-Kelly Sullivan, Middlesex
-Lydia Russell, Montpelier

An entity called the Natural Resources Board is closing two-thirds of the composting facilities in Vermont? The irony is crystal. With a little more research this drama plays out like an episode of Desperate Housewives. I suppose that might be harsh but the neighbor down the road who recently complained about Mr. Hammer, owner of Vermont Compost, is a GOP fundraiser who has raised many moneys for Jim Douglas, THE GOVERNER. The other open compost facility, Vermont Natural Ag Products, is by run the governor's brother-in-law. At the same time across counties Vermont Yankee (again feel that cool irony), the nuclear power plant, has a crack in it. And Mr. Hammer is shut down because his facility is not considered a farm? Because the majority of waste he processes comes from other farms?

The only other voice I found in opposition to Mr. Hammer was one Ellen Beck who argues that he is a bad business man because he was reluctant to give his dogs rabies shots and "felt no need to get a permit from the town of East Montpelier when he erected a business sign." The business sign which I imagine is as offensive as the logo seen above...

---

---

---