Green Mountain Daily just added this post about Burlington’s Intervale having lost a major battle to stay in operation and continue providing its many benefits to the community and state. Granted that there were problems with composting in the Intervale, but the responsible parties were willing to, well, be responsible, and make whatever changes were necessary to correct problems with runoff and to provide a proper example of the right way to comply with environmentally sound regulation.

According to the GMD report, however, there were political axes to grind, and the recent bureaucratic maneuvers have saddled those who would continue farming the Intervale with prohibitively expensive studies, applications and reviews, were they to continue their efforts to stay in operation. The article ends with characterizing the actions against the Intervale’s proponents as “pure, vindictive, political thuggery.”

I’m afraid that phrasing has an all too familiar ring to it. But here’s an idea: if the governor and bureaucrats undertook nefarious actions under the banner of environmental concerns over composting runoff, let’s turn that example of “political compost” into fertilizer for increasing transparency and accountability in the state. Then we can uphold the fine Vermont tradition of spreading our fertilizer as broadly and richly as possible, and see what grows from it.
Peace.

Deborah Alicen