Vermonters for a Clean Environment maintains that this project existed primarily to promote the profits of multi-billion dollar out-of-state companies. It is not responsible development. It does not make use of the best available technologies. It offers no sustainable, renewable energy. There would be substantial environmental impact, and very little in the way of benefits to Vermont and Vermonters into the future.

VCE has received tremendous support (remarkably strong for such a new organization) from people throughout the region. We say THANK YOU to all who have and are contributing their time, energy and money to this fight. But that fight continues, and may intensify, and we ask those who might wish to contribute to our effort to contact us.

Annette Smith...

  When the natural gas power plant and pipeline project was announced last fall, I read a newspaper interview with the power plant sponsor which contained information that I believed to be scientifically inaccurate.
  After several months researching electricity and energy issues, I compiled a list of Questions and Issues surrounding the proposal. On March 31, I was putting copies of Q & I in town offices in my neighborhood when I learned that the gas company had written to all the selectboards in the region asking them to send a letter of support of the project to the Commissioner of Public Service to include with their filing. I felt that it was inappropriate to be asking for approval at a time when hardly anyone was aware this huge project was going on, so I asked selectboards to hear my arguments in opposition to the project if they were going to be considering a resolution in support.
  In the first two weeks of April, I addressed the selectboards of Danby, Wallingford, Tinmouth, and Bennington. On April 20, I went before the Dorset selectboard to tell them about the information I had received that morning from Vermont's Agency of Transportation and the project engineer of the gas company, NYSEG/SVNG. Both state and gas company employees told me that a meeting had been held April 6 where 26 state agency and gas company officials got together to decide on the preferred route of the pipeline (see Preferred Route Meeting Minutes).

  In Dorset, the preferred route would involve taking land all along Route 7 because the state does not own a wide enough right-of-way. It would also involve blasting away the ledges at Emerald Lake. Hearing those details plus the overview I had compiled about what this project meant to Vermont, the Dorset Selectboard unanimously resolved to oppose the power plant and pipeline project, citing no benefit to the people of Vermont.
  The gas company was compiling lists of affected property owners all along the route in April and May, and they held private meetings for property owners from mid-May until early June. After the first meeting, a citizen called me to say "I went in with an open mind and came out very worried." Each subsequent meeting resulted in a similar phone call. Public concern and awareness were gradually increasing, and the need for an organization to cope with the magnitude of this billion dollar project was clear.
  On May 26, I held a press conference at the base of the Revolutionary War Memorial in Manchester Village to announce the formation of Vermonters for a Clean Environment (see Press Release ). While the impetus for the organization is to fight the power plant and pipeline project, we are seeing there is also a need to address Vermont's energy future, electricity restructuring, and economic development.