Freedom & Unity: The Vermont Movie

No Audio No Audio (blocks clacking) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) - I got some friends from New York that are aghast, the fact that I shot a deer.

They can't believe I'd be that much of a barbarian, but they'll have me up to supper and they've got chicken and steak up there and they're thinking it's the greatest thing.

Well, you know, those animals didn't commit suicide.

- Well, if you go up on a farm, you know it's meat.

Every fall growing up you butcher.

(pigs munching) You knew it was gonna happen, it happened.

- My philosophy has always been look at what you have for a resource and then work from there, so we had chicken for Sunday dinner because we had chickens here.

- My mother did a lot of canning and freezing and that was just expected.

- Well, it's kind of bred into ya, it's something that's in the system.

Kinda just stays with ya.

- It's always been that way.

It's been that way since I came to Vermont in '71.

It was immediately grow your own food.

And we've built our own houses, worked on our own cars, made our own beer, everything.

The serious wave of Flatlanders imbibed the spirit of local self-sufficiency.

- Implants, or whatever you wanna call 'em, but they're nice people, they take to the ways and we've got fairly lucky.

- In the month leading up to Thanksgiving, Dan and I go through this whole kind of dance of who stays, who goes this year, who do we keep, who do we want to breed?

Who's expendable, basically, and it's a hard decision to make, you know.

(wings flapping) Whoo.

I'm better with the chickens than with the geese.

The geese, I hatch them, I raise them, I care for them.

They're really a big part of our lives.

- Okay, yes, sweetie.

- Hi, little girl.

Bye-bye.

I, you know, I feel bad doing this.

You know, I mean, it is not my favorite job.

- She doesn't feel bad at all.

- No, I'm sure not.

- [Cindy] He doesn't want that together.

- No.

- You want a good shot, come over this door.

- I think it was when the little goose started kicking.

Something about that hit me.

(rooster crowing) - We still haven't gotten over the habit of naming them.

- There you go.

- Cindy, thank you.

- [Cindy] You're welcome.

Take care.

- You too.

- You're so kind with what you do.

- I know.

I feel bad, you know, sometimes, but you just can't look at it that way.

- Libertarian.

- Yes.

- I know I'm doing it humanly.

- Old-style Vermonters, they get self-sufficiency, self-reliance, independence.

- There's beginning to be, I think, a statewide conversation about Vermont independence, and the word independence means many different things to many different people.

For some people, it means Vermont should become its own republic, its own country again, like it was back in the day.

For other Vermonters, independence means raising animals or raising vegetables or making value-added products like cheese or leather goods, and I think we need to do sort of the same thing on the energy side and it's happening.

I mean I'm pretty optimistic it's happening, but it's happening more slowly than a lot of us would like.

- When I moved here in '85, there was no way I could have afforded to buy into the power installation when it was a mile away.

Now it's moved closer.

Now it's only maybe a quarter mile away and I'm not even interested now 'cause I've been living without it for so long.

(grain rattling) I'm happy with my solar system, which is very small.

The only thing I was desiring was a vacuum cleaner for all the dog hair that I encounter, but I found a cheap generator last year and got a Shop-Vac and now I can vacuum my dog hair up, so life is complete.

- When you think Vermont and energy, it's not a pretty picture right now.

Canada flooded an area the size of France, removing all of Cree civilization so they could have cheap energy to export.

One-third of our energy comes from those flooded Cree lands.

Where does the other third come?

It comes from one of the oldest nuclear atomic plants in the nation.

Who owns it?

Well, we don't know.

It's a company called Entergy down in Louisiana.

- [All] It is irresponsible of Entergy to claim that nuclear energy is clean, while at the same time, expecting those who live near a decommissioned plant site to wait decades for the cleanup and for the nuclear waste to be taken away.

We are here to see truth to power for the sake of our loved ones, for our friends, for our communities.

- [Officer] Just asking you to leave 'cause you're trespassing.

- [Narrator] Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, located at Vernon in Southeastern Vermont, began operation in 1972 with its General Electric boiling water reactor, producing 540 megawatts at full capacity.

- [Speaker] These balloons represent nuclear radiation, blown by the wind, endangering people and living things.

Nuclear power adds nothing to the quality of life of Vermont.

- Its license is up for renewal in 2012 and we have an independent safety assessment underway now.

If that assessment deems the plant safe for relicensure, then I think it's likely that it will be a part of our state's energy future.

- So the cooling towers are over here, can't really see the green tops, I don't think, but they're to the left of the turbine building.

And if we could zoom in close enough, you would see some big concrete and metal, what they call casks.

They look like giant Coke cans and they've got the most lethal stuff that man's ever created on the inside.

- Vermont Yankee worries me.

It had an expected life for 20 years and they're pushing that way beyond and they're taking advantage of an ancient structure and milking it for all that it's worth.

- The stack here is not a smoke stack like you would find at a conventional generating station.

That stack is actually to release radioactive materials here in the event of an emergency.

There's internal documents that say, "Ideally we would wait for the wind to be blowing north before we open the valve because there's less population north in Vermont to New Hampshire than there is south in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York."

So there you have it, Northern Vermonters, they're looking out for you.

- We have done something really wicked.

We've made material which has to be isolated from the ecosphere for the rest of time and that is a physical impossibility.

- It's the big diaper that nobody wants to look at or clean up.

- I mean, right now we don't really have a plan of how this stuff is gonna be stored.

I mean, it's all just held in casks at each nuclear power plant.

We don't even know where it's gonna go.

- Every 100 years, a high-level waste will need to be put into a new cask, and I wanna know, who will be here in 200, 500, 1,000 years to take the waste and put it into whatever else it's gonna go in.

- I didn't think we'd actually needed if the yo-yos hadn't sold all our power plants on the rivers and stuff, the dam.

- Canadians bought them.

Whose resource is it?

I guess it's the Canadians.

- We want to let people pursue their own dreams and goals and maximize their potential without too much interference from government.

- He's a business-oriented governor.

- The questions to try to answer tonight are, are nuclear plants safe?

Are there safer, more economical alternatives?

Is the operation of nuclear power plants adequately regulated?

Should we trust our institutions?

Now to address our questions tonight and more... - I'm gonna walk you through the room and introduce you to some of the key folks here tonight.

So first I'd like to point out William Sherman.

He's our former state nuclear engineer.

We're just passing through real quick.

This is a film called "The Vermont Movie."

- "The Vermont movie."

- Keep making our way around.

This is Tom Buchanan.

Hi Tom.

Oh, this is a lively woman.

It's "Freedom and Unity: The Vermont Movie," and it's a film about activists in Vermont.

- Great.

- The meeting's beginning.

Okay, so if we go across the room, do you want me to introduce people face by face?

Okay, the person just sitting down is Sarah Edwards.

She's a representative from Brattleboro and she's a staunch advocate for the people.

The guy in the blue shirt is David O'Brien and that's Governor Douglas's key ally in being a cheerleader of Vermont Yankee.

That's Bill Irwin with the ponytail.

He's with the Vermont Department of Health and he's the guy that adjusted the way we measure radiation so that you, Vermonter, are getting more nuclear radiation than Vermont law allows.

This is Bill Sherman, a state nuclear engineer.

We met him previously.

So what they do is they hire guys with ponytails to work for the state that are supposed to be protecting the people and it's like, well, they can't be that bad if they've got ponytails, right?

It'll coronate.

- Since this panel last met, there has been a leak on the cooling tower one.

- When was that leak?

Maybe I have forgot to write it.

- That was the July 11th leak.

July 11th, that was the cooling tower one leak.

- Small leak.

Nothing to worry about.

- When they find any type of defect, they have to look adjacently, and when they did that, they identified three others.

- That it is a very old reactor.

The older reactors become embrittled because they've been bombarded with radiation for so long.

- It so happens that when those cooling towers, for instance, were built, there were known design flaws.

- We had experts, we showed them these cooling towers are a problem, they're gonna fall apart.

Sure enough, five years later, they're falling apart.

- [Uldis] Do you have other things you want to brief us on at this point besides the cooling tower?

- [Attendee] I could just talk about the low-level waste.

- You wanna do that?

- The issue was this low-level waste was going to be removed and it's come to my attention that it's still here.

Is that right?

- Well, there's always some waste until you fill up a HIC and make it full and ship it.

- A HIC?

- Yeah, high integrity container.

- Okay.

That'd be just to help the rest of us lay people.

That would be good.

- [Clay] The low and medium waste have been stored onsite because there was no place to ship it for a while.

Barnwell, South Carolina, low-level waste dump filled to capacity and closed.

- These categories of waste is what the intention is for the Texas compact.

- Right, exactly.

- Is that correct?

- That's going on with that.

- That's what I thought.

- A rich individual has purchased a whole bunch of land in Texas and built himself low and medium-level nuclear waste disposal.

- There must be pretty good money in it for them to take it.

Otherwise, these places wouldn't take it.

- So far it's passed all the hurdles.

- The high-level waste is still sitting here in Vermont in that building, in one swimming pool, there's enough radioactivity to make an exploding reactor look like a vacation.

- [Reporter] Japanese authorities did report a large spike in radioactivity after the fire in number four.

- I had a question about the fuel pool and the events at Fukushima.

Is there any clear understanding about whether the fuel pools are affected by the seismic event, or is it the loss of power that contributed to the events of the fuel pools?

- Well, I know that the dry cask, you know, survived the natural disasters.

I don't know how much, I don't know that much about the spent fuel pools, to tell you the truth.

I don't know how much- - That would be far better for them to unload the spent fuel pool and put the waste in these dry casks, except they cost about a million dollars a piece.

- You know, there's a special way because of the heat buildup in those rods that you have to arrange them within the pool, and if you don't do that properly, they can catch on fire.

It's what's called a zirconium fire.

Very, very difficult to put out.

- Currently we believe that both methods, both the cask storage and the fuel pools are adequate ways of storing the fuel, so that's still under commission review.

Next slide, please.

- Whether it's safe or not, you got two different sides and they're saying exactly opposite.

Somebody's lying.

They gotta be.

And who are you supposed to believe?

- The day it happened.

- Good morning.

This is an extremely, extremely important issue and my concern is that with the visibility of the leaks and the collapsed towers, that there is a perception that is being created, and what I'm concerned about is that the brand that we have in Vermont of green, of natural, of maple syrup, of skiing, that that will be poisoned by some further event that in itself may not be dangerous, and basically economically we'd be done.

You have a comment on that?

- There's always the possibility of nuclear accidents.

On the other hand, there is an obligation by the state of Vermont to provide police support and homeland security support related to plant activities.

- Even with our doors and windows closed, the noise is pretty unsettling 'cause it's not a typical firing range amount of noise.

It's much louder and more nerve-wracking.

It involves semi-automatic guns and the decibel levels get pretty high.

So from here you can see (gunfire banging) that they're using human-shaped targets, so you know that the purpose of this is to kill people.

This is all since 9/11.

- What we did after 9/11, when we took the lessons learned from, you know, what we needed to change in the industry after that.

- Not to sound cynical, but it was only because the New England Coalition fought tirelessly that they put a screen up so that someone couldn't stand where we are right now with a shoulder-launched projectile that's easily available in Afghanistan to blow those things apart.

- A power plant that needs this kind of security is a risk just in and of itself.

- There's a huge amount of tritium in the soil and the underground water heading towards, if it's not there already, I'm sure it's in the Connecticut River.

- The concentration level and the amount is very low, but it is known that in fact the tritium is making its way, and has made its way, through the groundwater all the way to the Connecticut River.

Our groundwater is a public trust resource.

When you have polluted groundwater with tritium, you are denying others the use of that resource.

- [Dr. Helen Caldicott] So it is really criminal to have a primary school opposite an old, dirty, old leaking reactor.

- I mean, it's weird because like in the comic books they're saying if you jump into this nuclear thing, you're gonna get mutated, and then in real life they're like, "Oh no, it won't do anything to you."

- You know, it hits home.

It's right in the midst of my home bio region.

My family still lives there, my nephew's being raised down there and I want them to have a safe upbringing, you know, just things that everyone deserves.

Clean air, clean water, safe food.

- Try to just center it, right?

Big letters, as big as we can get.

- So Vermont's energy future goes first and then it's our choice?

- Yeah.

- [Activists] Vermont's energy future is our choice.

Vermont's energy future is our choice.

Vermont's energy future is our choice.

Vermont's energy future is our choice.

- Senator Shumlin.

(crowd applauding) - Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wanna thank all of you for being here today.

This is your state, this is your democracy.

This is your State House.

We are the only state in the country that has the power to decide our own destiny when it comes to nuclear power.

How many people to hear from Wyndham County?

Raise your hands.

(crowd cheering) Let's hear it for the brave souls that live in a high-level nuclear waste dump.

(crowd applauding and cheering) Our governor and his people have a very simple energy policy for Vermont.

When Entergy Louisiana says to this governor jump, his response is how high?

- It's been the cheapest power we've had for some time.

We've been able to stabilize our electric rates, while other surrounding states have seen huge increases in theirs.

- We need new leadership and a new direction.

(crowd applauding and cheering) - [Producer] So Meghan, what are you gonna do with this material?

- I'm gonna put it on Channel 17.

- The concept of public access television is rooted in the fact that the public owns the airwaves and they own the spectrum and they own the rights of way where cable companies run their polls, and so this concept of public ownership is really central to public access television, and it also is very central to Vermont's sense of direct democracy, that everyone has a voice in the destiny of their communities.

(crowd applauding) - The people of Vermont, through their representatives, have a choice about nuclear power.

- We are the only state in the nation that has legislative oversight of the continued operation of a nuclear power plant.

(crowd cheering and applauding) - And for people who couldn't be there, we're making something that's part of the public record.

- And even when the public doesn't follow the program, Entergy knows that they're being filmed.

The NRC knows that they're being documented.

They know that someone's gonna watch that film.

They know that people like us are gonna dig it out of the archives when it's time to contrast what they're saying now to what they were saying then.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- Thank you.

I'm Ellen Kaye.

I'm part of the Safe and Green campaign, but more importantly, I'm a person who lives 10 miles from the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor and I wanna thank you all from the other parts of the state for welcoming us today.

There is a network of activists in this state.

When one person talks to another person, they think of a third person to talk to, and that third person thinks of the fourth and fifth person to talk to, and pretty soon there's a movement.

Today I am an evacuee.

We're just pretending today, right?

But here's my pillow.

A few things in my bag.

That might be how it might look.

A nuclear power plant is about six miles right down the river, right from downtown Brattleboro, and a traffic cop is supposed to be standing there directing traffic in the wake of a nuclear meltdown or a nuclear release.

I'm talking about the daily realities of living 10 miles from a nuclear reactor.

- A lot of people have spent a lot of their own lives after work, taking the day off from work, to drive up to Montpelier, and we went to our legislators at the State House over and over and over again.

- I came from Brattleboro with my pillow and my backpack today to demonstrate about the possibility of evacuation from the 10 mile zone where I live.

- We're your constituents.

- Yes.

- Leah and I got delegated to come and talk to you about changes in the rules, about allowing more radiation, so I brought you a letter that I wrote.

- When citizens take the time and trouble to write a letter or makes the time and trouble to go from here in Southern Vermont all the way to Central Vermont to get to the State House to talk with us, it has an impact.

- Hey, you're looking great dapper.

- How are ya?

Yeah, well, legislative camouflage.

- Yeah, yeah.

- People do realize, do know that they can call us up and unfortunately all times of the day, like mostly around nine, 10, 11 o'clock at night, whereas I know that in other states, if you can find the home phone number of your legislator, it would be surprising, but here, I don't think there's anyone that doesn't have their phone number listed.

- Who is it?

- Lois Bersley checking in.

If you think about it, democracy was designed for small numbers and I think that's why we have such effective government in Vermont.

It really is citizens trying to do the best for the state.

- But I gotta tell ya, Entergy lobbyists almost outnumbered our legislators.

I mean, literally, they had suits in every room, every hallway, they made themselves known.

So citizens came together, and through individual donations, have funded our own lobbyists.

- Hi, I saw you out there in the yard filming.

How you doing?

- I'm good.

- I'm not a lobbying firm, I am a lobbyist, and unlike the Entergy's lobbyist with staff and people, I'm just me.

Looking for another perspective on this.

And of course, my job representing my client is to create as much doubt as I can about the future reliability of the plant.

Things like the collapsed cooling tower, which as you heard in testimony today, that should have been known.

It's very much like deer hunting.

You can sit in a tree stand for hours on end and then finally a deer will come along and boy, you got one shot in one second in time, and that's the deal.

Now I'm sure what Entergy is going to say is that, "Well, we'll do better.

We'll be fine."

- To some extent you identify with your clients, and you know, in order to aggressively pursue their interests, in the case of today, Entergy, Vermont Yankee.

- [Interviewer] Do you have to believe personally in what you are lobbying for or against?

- My personal conviction, I'm wholeheartedly supportive of them.

- And my job is to flip him like a cheeseburger.

(both laughing) I gotta work on him.

I mean, I know that he'll come around.

- But political change has to happen in so many ways and using so many tools.

- Some people are very much oriented towards lobbying legislators and doing sort of normal lobbying process where you've got your well-heeled lobbyists and you've got your sneaker lobbyists and they got their different budgets and they're working with their representatives.

Lots of other people, and I'm one of them, have a strong belief in the idea of citizen grassroots actions and democracy in towns at town meeting.

- So we mounted a town meeting campaign.

We thought it's time that Vermonters weighed in about Vermont Yankee.

- [Presenter] Shall the voters of the town of East Montpelier request the Vermont legislature too?

- Shall the voters of the town of Newfane request the Vermont legislature to one- - See if the voters of the town of Marlboro request the Vermont legislature.

- Shall the voters of the town of Tunbridge request that the Vermont legislature refuse- - To require the Entergy Corporation of Louisiana to fully fund the plants clean up.

- [Presenter] And decommissioning when the reactor closes as energy pledge to do.

- As the firm would pledge- - [Presenter] As the corporation pledged to do when it purchase Vermont Yankee.

- When it purchased Vermont Yankee in 2002.

That's the article as petitioned.

- Discussion.

- Discussion.

- Hello, my name is Court Richardson.

I work on the issue of high-level radioactive waste, and the people that I talk to in that industry, when they hear about the cooling towers failing again at Vermont Yankee, they really cringe because it gives the industry a bad name.

- The real cost starts when uranium is mined and the people and the creatures who live there, what happens to them?

- And I'd say we have to think about the Southern Vermonters who are living near this plant.

We're not there.

They're living with the risk every day.

Their children are.

- Categorizing Vermont Yankee as dangerous is a scare tactic.

The systems down there are in excellent condition.

They've got a lot of service life left in 'em They've been analyzed to make sure that they have a lot of service life left.

- The nuclear power plant is a really good example of having to do your activism right where you live.

When you speak up about anything, you're risking the displeasure of people you know and people you cannot escape because they're your neighbors or they work in the hardware store where you go every day.

- If we wanna keep 650 jobs, $100 million in economic activity, and $938 million in revenue sharing, then we need to have them.

- So speaking up is a courageous act and it begets respect from everyone.

- I totally agree with Jesse that if Yankee is closed in 2012, this area is in severe economic crisis.

Because of the money generated by the jobs down there, that's where he and I part in terms of that plan.

- I think you can just look at the kind of citizen that Entergy, the owner of Vermont Yankee, happens to be and know that we do not want them in our state.

- And we're dealing with a company that when Katrina hit in Louisiana and messed up all their power lines, they declared bankruptcy.

- They haven't put away the money they were supposed to put away to shut it down.

- They haven't put any money into that fund and now they wanna take massive amounts outta that fund to pay for the dry cast storage.

- What about the waste?

Where does it go?

Is the banks of the Connecticut River the appropriate spot for that?

And that may engage some of the rest of the state because frankly that's a big piece of the problem is getting the rest of the state to realize it's their problem, not just a Windham County problem.

- So is the legislature waiting breathlessly for the town meeting votes so they know which way to to vote on this issue?

No.

What the town meetings votes do is they help inform the legislators about where their constituents are.

- I have very hard feelings on the subject 'cause my son and his family live in Vernon.

Every time something happens down there, this is what it does to me.

I'm fine.

I just want people to vote to close the plant.

- [Presenter] Thank you.

Who else would like to be heard?

- [Presenter] Any more debate?

- Ready for the question?

- [Presenter] Are you ready for the question?

- I'm not gonna read it all again, if you don't mind.

- [Presenter] The question has been called, which means to end discussion on this.

Is there a second to that?

- There's a second.

- Ready to vote?

- Yeah.

- All those in favor signify by saying aye.

- All in favor say aye.

- Aye.

- All in favor say aye.

- Aye!

- All those opposed.

- Aye.

(crowd laughing) - All right, I think the ayes, the first ayes have it.

- And it is approved.

(crowd cheering and applauding) (upbeat music) - The vote spoke loudly and clearly.

I mean it wasn't just the towns in the Southeastern part of the state that were located near the plant, it's towns like Middlesex and callus and towns up North.

So it was a very interesting vote and it was hard work and it paid off so it was good.

- And the town meeting debate, even if it doesn't go the way that we want every vote to go, it makes for more informed citizenry.

People today heard arguments they hadn't heard before.

- And it really let the legislature know that this is a state issue.

- The votes of town meeting got their attention.

- The people spoke and then the senators spoke.

- Please listen to the results of your vote.

The yays four, the nays 26, Chairman.

- [Clay] So every little step that we've taken in Vermont matters, however people participate in the process.

- And I think the folks who are in charge of Entergy probably underestimated the power of citizen involvement in this state.

I'm sure there are very many ways in which they wish they had never come to Vermont because we have been a you know what in their you know what.

- Would you please give it up for your governor elect from Brattleboro, Vermont, Peter Shumlin.

(crowd cheering and applauding) - Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm just so extraordinarily grateful to Wyndham County for electing this little Putney boy Governor, you did it.

You had the power, you used the power, we're grateful to you, and we are going to do great things for you.

Thank you so much.

(crowd cheering) (upbeat music) - Thanks a lot.

- So we're here today, January 1st.

We thought this would be a good way to start the new year, and we are hoping that our newly elected governor, Peter Shumlin, he has said that he wants to shut down Vermont Yankee, but we feel that we really need to be here to make sure that he follows up on that promise.

- [Activists] No more leaks, no more lies, no more unusual events.

- [Martha] And the cops have just arrived.

- [Producer] So Patty and Francis, the cops are here.

- Yep.

- Are you nervous?

- Really?

- No.

- [Producer] You're not nervous that the cops are here?

- No.

- Why is that?

- We expect them to come just like we expect ourselves to be here.

- Excuse me, I'm gonna have to ask you guys to leave.

- [Activists] Shut it down now.

Shut it down now.

- Are you refusing to leave?

- Shut it down now.

- You're not refusing to leave?

- Yeah, you are refusing to leave.

- I'm refusing to leave.

- Okay.

(gentle music) Watch your elbow.

(door slams) - [Producer] What do you think about this group of people that come out to Vermont Yankee and risk getting arrested to shut it down?

- I really can't say anything.

Sergeant Sorrens is the one that you ought to speak with.

Thank you.

- If we do not scramble and move to renewable technologies, the planet that we pass on will be unlivable for our children and our grandchildren.

- [Clay] Governor Shumlin won his gubernatorial campaign on the issue of closing from our Yankee Vermont.

- Vermont can be the example.

If we can show the rest of the country that wind and solar and biomass- - It's time to move beyond this place.

- But don't ever underestimate the pockets of a large corporation dedicated to stakeholders.

They sued us.

Big lawsuit and hired very good lawyers, and at this point they won.

- I mean, the whole thing is astonishing.

The legislature shut it down.

The governor said, "Yeah, shut it down."

And then the court said, "Nope, can't do that."

- That is just beyond me, both as a member of the Vermont legislature, and as river steward, that local opinion, local desires can just be run roughshod at the federal level.

- And in the meantime, the plant's still open.

(chuckling) But it's not over yet.

Shut it down, shut it, shut it down - Dan DeWalt is my guest.

We're talking citizen activism.

We're talking about VY and we're talking about judge's ruling and all related things.

I'm framing today out as like, "God, am I pissed today."

- (chuckling) Yeah, right.

You know, but we've all been kind of secretly just really hoping that the judge would do the right thing and we wouldn't really have to go through with what we now have to go through with.

But he didn't, the fact that he's so massively sided with Entergy and categorically denied the state's rights of any kind of intervention, but yet, there are so many more of us than there are of them, and that's what people are starting to slowly dawn, and it's hard like, you know, how are we gonna get thousands of people out to Vermont Yankee when they gotta go to work because they need every penny that they're making from that paycheck.

And half of us probably don't even know exactly what we're willing to do 'cause we're not really used to going unto the barricades to protect our sovereign rights as a state.

The Colonists weren't really prepared to fight against Great Britain either, but, you know, circumstances were such that they had to do it.

- Dan DeWalt here just about to cross over and give us some thoughts.

Please, what are your expectations?

- Well, you know, what they need to understand is we're not going away.

We'll be back until they're not.

- Well said.

(crowd clapping) Have a good time.

- I will.

(crowd chattering) - [Activists] Shut it down, shut it down, shut it down, shut it down, shut it down, shut it down, shut it down.

- [Announcer] From WCAX, Vermont's most trusted news source.

- [Newscaster] Vermont Yankee is shutting down.

- The nuclear power plant will close by the end of next year.

Officials from Entergy, which owns Vermont Yankee, made the surprise announcement this morning.

- Simply put, the plant costs exceed the plant revenue and this asset is not financially viable.

That Vermont Yankee nuclear power station will stop operating at the end of its current fuel cycle and move into the decommissioning process in the fourth quarter of 2014.

- Certainly the security force will stay, I don't know that they'll need all the operators and engineers and the day-to-day guys.

- There are skill sets that will engage in the monitoring and in the security of the plant that reside currently at VY now and theoretically could continue on that until indefinitely, would be my guess.

- [Clay] Irradiated fuel rods are humankind's most long-lived product.

These dry casks will be our pyramids to future generations, except the pyramids are what, a couple thousand years old, and this waste is gotta be isolated from the biosphere for 200,000 years.

- You know, some Vermont utilities have already started the move to renewable energy as their major source of power.

I'm talking about one that serves many of us here.

Washington Electric Co-op.

The co-op... - Our co-op opened up a landfill methane plant in Coventry that's supplying two-thirds of our power now.

Landfill methane runs all the time rather than when the wind blows or when the sun shines, so we really jumped on that.

In a modern landfill like this, when all the trash is being put in, over time, it starts decomposing, it starts rotting, and it starts making methane gas, and a landfill makes a lot of methane.

So the pipes you see sticking out of the ground, those are wells to collect that gas and pump it.

That's what this stuff here does is it basically pulls all of the gas into the big engine room and into the engines.

So if your family is a co-op member, two-thirds of the electricity you use at home is being generated right here at this plant.

And then outside on the far end of the building is a substation, a bunch of transformers, and that's where the electricity that's generated here gets stepped up and that's how it gets to the grid.

The pioneers of the co-op would never have thought that a dump could be an energy source, but they would've loved this.

This is our own way.

We're gonna make power out of garbage and was completely in spirit with the people who started the co-op.

- The co-op, by the way, has had stable rates without any increases for years.

How did they do it?

They did it because they systematically got rid of their nuclear power and shifted to things like landfill gas recovery, hydro, they're moving towards wind.

- What you will see is power being generated from small community systems, small hydro, wind projects, solar projects.

- And that's gonna require streamlining, permitting.

It's gonna require looking at our tax structure and we're gonna have to be really on the forefront again.

We've fallen behind other states and the rest of the world in producing renewable energy, so we have to do a lot more and we have to do it quickly.

(wind gusting) (intense music) (water gurgling) - Base to mountain, over.

- [Robbin] Do you know if the Nelsons got served with that trespassing thing?

- Haven't heard a thing.

It's been quiet as a peep and they have nothing to do with us whatsoever, over.

- [Robbin] Okay, it looks like they're getting ready to blast.

(explosion booming) - Green Mountain Power pickup heading from the lay down yard up the access road.

Yeah, to date it's been a big road building project.

Much of the project has been preparation for getting the turbines up here.

Basically a 200-foot oversized vehicle will be employed to bring them up the mountain.

Some of the parts are coming in from Colorado, they'll come by train.

Some are coming from Canada.

We're still working out how all the transportation's gonna work, but everything will just fit hopefully.

(engine humming) (brakes squeaking) - One of the great shortfalls in evaluating this particular project for renewable energy was to answer the question, what's a mountain worth?

You're gonna get to see this firsthand today, get your feet on it, your hands on it, your eyes on it, your brain's on it, your emotions on it.

You can make up your own mind.

We have a point of view.

- The citizen opposition, there's always gonna be NIMBYs.

That's okay.

And why shouldn't Vermont be pristine?

- [Steve] Vermont has soil and that soil was formed on and off mountains and if we did an effective in-depth analysis of the worth of a mountain, we would find that the mountain itself and its free services are worth much more than the electricity flowing off the mountain.

- What they're doing up here on the Lowell Mountain Ridge, what they did in Sheffield, and what they're gonna do on 200 miles of Vermont ridge lines is blast the bones of Mother Earth.

They are going way below the surface.

- They blast to make sure the grades are level enough along the ridge lines so that we can move the vehicles and eventually the crane that will stand up the turbines.

They also blast to clear the area where the turbines will go.

- I requested to be on a blasting list so that I know when you're gonna blast, just so that I can keep track of my animals mostly.

And they told us they had 700,000 pounds of explosives that they estimated.

They couldn't tell us how much rock they were gonna be moving, but they knew how much explosives they had.

- What they're doing is they have drilled holes here and these little cone things are where the holes will be, where they'll fill with material that they use to blast, and at some point, they'll detonate it.

(explosion booming) - We were hoping for a really bad winter.

(laughing) Not to be selfish, but we were hoping for a very strong winter so that they wouldn't be able to work.

- There's anchors that go into the rock down between the structure, which is, you know, 459 feet from the bottom, from the ground to the highest turbine blades, so the anchors are what really keep it in in place.

- One of the things about wind energy that concerns me is that it takes a large area to produce a relatively small amount of electricity.

- Then when you destroy a mountaintop, it's not renewable.

Never ever again will these mountain ridges be the same when they're done.

- Right now the mountain is essentially being blown up and it's being turned inside out, rocks that have been here for millions and millions of years, part of the Green Mountain chain, those rocks are now part of a road.

- There are many who say that large industrial wind sites will not displace one single nuclear or oil-fired plant because the wind doesn't blow all the time, so should we be sacrificing the most characteristic and most fragile places in Vermont for a wind benefit that's intermittent?

- I think the scale of it, when you start industrializing something, you change the very nature of it.

- It changes on almost a day-to-day basis up here.

170 feet that way includes the entire crane path in this section and over to about 40 feet away from the base of tower six.

- Very small scale projects, locally controlled, locally generated for only local consumption would be far, far better.

- Well, it's not economic at the scale of an individual business.

I mean really wind turbines work large blades on ridges in groups of 15 and so forth.

I mean, that's just the economics of it.

- The sheriff's been over and asked us to respect the property line.

So I would ask you to all respect the posted property line and not go over.

I know you can get better photos over there, but we don't want 'em to get mad at us.

- The last thing I want, the last thing I think anybody wants is anybody to get hurt but we're gonna keep moving on with the project one way or another.

- Gonna blow up the whole mountain, huh?

- We're gonna build a project that we have a certificate of public good to build and I know you guys have difference of opinion on whether it's a good project or not, but we're gonna build the project.

- You look at all the tourist brochures that the Vermont tourist industry puts out and they all show mountains, pristine, forested, mountain ranges and all and these aren't gonna look like that.

- How often do they look at the power lines that are strung all over the place here now?

Them ain't too pretty.

- People probably thought ski areas were pretty awful and scarring of the land at the time that they came.

- Skiing is a wonderful sport, but there's a scale issue here too, when a mountain that was a wild mountain suddenly has trails cut in swaths down its side.

- But since Perry Merrill cut the first trail on Mount Mansfield back in the mid 1930s, Vermont's economy has been tied to the ski resort.

You had Stow opening in the '30s, you had Mad Riverland in the '40s, Sugar Bush in 1958, Jay Peak in 1954.

Yeah, so we've been around for a while.

- When they built the ski resorts, they put scars on the mountains for the lift areas and the run areas, but primarily the damage until very recently was surface damage.

- I have some, you know, very serious hiker friends who think that ski trails are ugly.

But one of the things I love about it is that it gets you to places in the winter that you would never be.

You're up there and all the trees are sparkling and the air is fresh.

There's nothing else like it.

- Yeah.

- The ski industry represents over a billion dollars in spending power every year for the state, because at the end of the day it's about job creation.

Anywhere from an entry level position, say bumping chairs, all the way up to the vice president of marketing, engineers to work on the lifts.

- It's the same as being a plumber in Manhattan or something, you know, a union plumber.

It's not a union job, it's not a union scale, but- - There are jobs and Killington really is what drives the whole economy in this part of the state.

You know, if it wasn't for that, I don't know what, we wouldn't be here probably.

- Vermont made a decision years ago about ski area development as a part of the economy.

But then there was that day in 1969, I guess, when Dean Davis got the call and got in his car and drove to Dover and saw raw sewage running down the slopes from mountainside homes, condominiums, and Vermont became one of the leaders for the next 30 to 40 years in progressive environmental legislation.

- One of the crucial elements of, you know, the Vermont brand and the state of Vermont is its environmental stewardship, so in the state as an agency and as a regulator partners with ski resorts to make sure everything's done responsibly.

- It still bothers me.

They put chemicals on it to keep the plants from growing.

- But ski areas did not alter the geology of the mountain.

They did alter the vegetation, they altered the biology, they altered the ecology, but they did not alter the geology, the very framework of the mountain.

So I'm to an extent then stunned by the fact that Vermonters are allowing the desecration of the so-called Lowell Mountains.

- There's a place for saying, we don't want this stuff, we wanna be different, don't want windmills, but sometimes, and in this is one case, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

- Because for many of us, we think they're beautiful.

- [Gov.

Kunin] Shows we're producing something.

- And after the blasting and all of the noise and the dust settles from the construction, the entire project, both the towers and the new road that was built takes up 23 acres.

- I don't know what so much as the visibility I think bothers me the most is there's a lot of unanswered questions and we have not had a voice in this process and we're very discouraged with that.

- Town of Lowell decided to have a vote on whether or not they wanted to host the project at town meeting day and we said at the time if they said no to the project, then we wouldn't go forward.

If they said yes, then we'd go forward with it.

And 75% of the residents of Lowell said they supported the project and we'll be a big property taxpayer in town, roughly half a million dollars a year in local taxes, and then half a million plus in statewide school property taxes so that's a obvious tangible benefit.

And you know, it will create renewable energy credits.

- So in other words, this project will allow someone else to keep polluting.

- In another region.

- Somewhere else, and it could be anywhere in the country.

- And the water systems, which we haven't even really talked about that are gonna be disrupted.

- There is already sedimentation showing up downstream from the blasting that's already been done.

- You know, we've done the testing, we've gotten the permits, we're doing everything we can to mitigate changes and run off.

- It's also affecting the wildlife up here even now as they do this work.

- It's like it's Vermont, you know, there's animals in the woods and it's a pretty complex ecosystem.

- Coyotes have pretty much left the mountain.

They were singing a lot even during the day, and now they hardly hear any of them at all.

They've moved because of the blasting and the bulldozing and clear cutting and everything.

- And I feel so bad for the bear population because between Sheffield, Lowell, and Jay Peak, what happens to all those bears?

- I'm sure they're a little skittish around the construction, but we have the wind farm in Seasburg and we know that once the turbines are up, they're not bashful about walking around underneath them.

You can have a bear walking under a turbine.

It's not dangerous in any way.

- And of course this ridge line represents the headwaters of two major Vermont rivers, the Missisquoi River, which is tributary to Lake Champlain, and a major, the major Northwestern Vermont River, and the Black River, the Northern Black River, which is a major tributary of Lake Memphramegog.

- Part of the concern is this is a grand experiment.

Nobody knows what messing with headwaters at this level and to this degree could do to watersheds, nobody knows.

- The mountains essentially function as filters or as sponges which soak up water and drip it out at the other end, so when you alter the vegetation, you alter the water flow off the mountain.

Specifically when you reduce the vegetation on a mountain, woody vegetation, you increase the amount of water coming off the mountain.

- Just with any construction project, you know, we're on a road right here and you don't build a road right if you don't take into account the flow patterns off a mountain.

You can have increased flows or you change where the flows are going, the runoff.

- You know, anytime you clear away the trees, you're just setting a stage for an event that would cause a lot of erosion and everything that that comes along with.

- There's no question in my mind after looking at the technical studies that the hydrology of the mountain is being altered.

Now we may not live long enough to see that, but when you reorder the flow of water through a region, you reorder its fundamental nature.

- It's a question of trade-offs.

This is better than coal and other forms of energy that are either carbon intensive or you know, very hard on the environment.

- I mean, I'm very, very concerned about global warming.

I think we all have to be, but the best buffers for global warming are intact natural ecosystems.

- [Activists] One ridge line, one people.

One ridge line, one people.

- You know, every once in a while I get surprised by something that happens in Vermont politics and in the public arena and I have been a little surprised at the degree of resistance to the wind projects.

- I've got an order.

Have either of you been served yet?

Okay, well all I know- - [Sen. Rivers] Instinctively we want things to be small and so some of those people may have a point in terms of the scale that they do it and the way that they do it.

- But do you want 400 foot wind towers or do you want to continue to slice off the tops of large mountain ranges in central Appalachia, which is what's going on right now to supply your energy, only it's not in your backyard.

- We're at the ridge line now and actually you can see Sheffield over here.

- I feel very strongly that this has nothing to do with harmony.

It has everything to do with enriching a multi-billion dollar corporation that is owned out of this country.

- Several years ago, Green Mountain Power was bought by a large multinational energy company based in Quebec called Gaz Metro.

Gas Metro, in turn, has its owners, it has large multinational companies and other organizations that are its owners and even that ownership can change and has even changed a little bit just in the time this has all been under consideration so it's really a matter of who's in control and whether the public has their interests represented.

- I want wind, I want wind, I don't want nuclear power.

- But the way forward I think is not to replace one out-of-state energy entity with another industrial wind.

- But climate change is so dire that we need industrial-strength solutions.

- It's a complicated calculus and we have to accept that if we're gonna rely on electricity, we're gonna have to accept some impacts.

- They're trying to do the right thing.

Renewable is the right way to go.

However, I think it's just a little big and I think they're trying to get as much federal money as they can, as fast as they can, and to hell with the consequences.

But what's the alternative?

- The other side of it is that people don't need those huge flat screen TVs.

They need to cut down on all this extra stuff that is just sucking up more energy and justifying the very destruction of natural resources that we all hold in common.

- We're so reliant on our gadgets.

Okay, I am holding up a smartphone here.

I won't show you the brand.

I hate brand placement.

You could say I'm a hypocrite, but I don't think windmills are salvation.

- Something has changed.

You should have a foot of snow at least out here.

- It's definitely been a funky winter.

Yeah, if we had to pick a winter to open the pump house into a waterpark, it would've been this one because of the slow start, it's been very difficult to motivate the day skier, and having the pump house offers a weatherproof ski vacation so now when you're staying at the tram house lodge and you wanna come all the way over to the pump house, you don't have to go outside anymore.

You can leave your room in your bathing trunks, in your flip flops, come through the resort in the tunnel and go right into the water park.

(people chattering) So now we're in the pump house.

Went from 26 degrees to 86 degrees.

So you got four slides, orange, green, blue and red.

Orange, green and blue all start inside, go outside the building, and then come back in.

And then the red one is the flagship feature of the pump house.

It's called La Chute.

It dropped you in a 60 foot vertical free fall and then spit you out at about 45 miles an hour 'cause now no matter when you come to visit, you're gonna have a good time.

- We're burning huge amounts of fossil fuels so we're liberating energy that's taken hundreds of millions of years to accumulate in the earth's crust.

That additional energy in the form of greenhouse gases traps enough heat close to the earth's surface to drive up the average temperature, not only on land, but in the ocean.

- I don't think people grasp the enormity of what's coming our way.

- I grew up here and we never had ticks on deer, but now we do.

They make it through the winter.

It's like right now it's still 50, 45 degrees here.

It's the 19th of November, you know, it's warm and it stays warmer.

They'll have 100 of them on 'em.

(somber music) - Some people think that the reason why there's so much hardship with nature, that nature is reacting to the abuse.

(rain pattering) (thunder rumbling) - Got quite a bit of rain this morning.

(kid vocalizing) Hey sweetie.

This is the hurricane.

When the hurricane happened it was a very busy day here in the forecast lab.

I was the only person on and handling a lot of information and trying to get it out to the public as quickly as possible so if you'd watched very closely, you probably would've seen a little wisps of steam rising from my ears or something like that as I tried to get all of the work done in a timely fashion.

Hurricane Irene is churning north, northeast at about 15 miles per hour and bringing torrential rain along the spine of the Green and White Mountains.

Flooding of every major river in Vermont will occur.

(rain streaming) (people vocalizing) - Not too bad yet.

- The National Hurricane Center is expecting that Irene could strengthen in the next day or two to possibly a category four, and that's important.

Although we forecast accurately that every river in Vermont would go into flood stage, the rapidity with which some of the large rivers rose caught a lot of people by surprise.

River it was rising But at last in the storm - [Steve] 12-hour rainfall of two to six inches is likely.

Strange what matters - Three to seven inches.

When flood sweeps over the corn - [Newscaster] I know that the state and the town people are doing all they can, but we know enough about what's happening out there that anybody who is a frontline emergency responder right now is doing everything.

- They are, I was just down at our emergency headquarters in the police department.

- Although we knew the amount of rain that would fall and that it would create flooding, I don't think forecasters realize how rapidly that water would rise.

That's for the hills dying - Oh my God.

Rivers that are dull Waves in the woods You hear them roar That was the streams We were just one Kissed on the rocks (water roaring) Takes my breath away - You can listen to this water rolling in here so fast.

So far most of lower Williams Street is closed off.

Route nine roughly from Route 91 over to Bennington is closed off.

There's flooding been everywhere.

They lost a house on the Townsend Road in Grafton.

We also are losing mobile homes as we speak right now and they've just put out a call to all officers on duty.

- My husband and I worked third shift, so we were trying to sleep.

So by the time we realized we needed to go, the water was at our back door, our back window.

- [Mark] The north road from Bethel to Barnard is closed.

Several streams apparently affecting that road.

Prosper road is washed out with a half of the road devoured.

- Yeah, when we finally got out, we were wading waist deep in water and we had our dog and our cat with us and the current was pretty strong pushing us down so we lost everything, we lost all of it.

Call it a hundred, hundred years tall - [Newscaster] All the washouts are hampering cleanup efforts.

Return the keys - [Newscaster] And as a result, it may be weeks before- Send the ocean to roar - [Resident] There were zucchinis right there.

Tornado in spring - And garlic.

Heartland all dry - [Resident] This was the farm.

- I don't think we've really grasped what has happened across the county and across the state and other parts of the region, New York and New Hampshire as well.

Will there be more hurricanes?

Will they be more severe?

Will there be more extreme rainstorms or snowstorms in my spot?

And those are questions that are very difficult to answer.

They're really beyond the scope of the science at this point.

- Get up.

- Another one.

- It was, I'd say probably 10 foot waves coming, flashing against this house and then they told me I had to evacuate and I had to pack a bag and take, I couldn't even think.

I was so in the protect move, get up the rugs, do this, that to switch gears and think about what do you put in a bag?

- Never have I seen this in the history of Brattleboro.

Oh!

Floodings down on the lower levels is just off the wall.

And you can set as far as I can go in my wheelchair, this as far as I can make it.

But look at that, look at that.

Unbelievable.

(cows mooing) - [Resident] There's a tank and here comes the big white tank.

- [Resident] There's Quechee Golf Club underwater and what's so impressive are these propane tanks, thousand gallon tanks that keep floating down the river.

- [Resident] Yeah, where's the cow callers?

Get them out here.

(cows mooing) Oh, cows trying to get up on higher ground.

- Extremes are the result of a very large thermal system like the earth being out of equilibrium.

What you're gonna start to see is really sharp spikes.

And at the same time, you're gonna see a shift in probabilities, so that what once was very extreme event (mobile home crashing) will become an uncommon event and then a common event, and then it will become the new normal.

(residents vocalizing) (tree limbs crashing) Friends and strangers gather Try to fix the harm Funny faith says this is the best place to lose - [Resident] [beep].

Oh my God.

Did you catch on YouTube?

Covered bridge.

Oh, [beep].

(cows mooing) - [Resident] My God, sad.

- [Resident] They're moving up towards the trees, it looks like it.

Call it a hundred They call it... Hundred year storm.

- If you're gradually heating the oceans, which is what's going on, and you're talking one degree is a huge amount.

- It's a slow process at first, but as it picks up momentum, these changes will take place faster and faster.

- [Resident] Gone.

Gone.

(resident vocalizing) (water rushing) - [Kid] Daddy, look it.

Help!

(house clattering) - Scared [beep] Stranded.

We can't go anywhere.

And the road and the pavement is all dug up.

(water rushing) It's all water.

(glass shattering) - The next morning I came downtown at about 6:30 to find most of the downtown underwater.

I couldn't even walk to the houses of the many people who I knew.

And what followed from that was partly instinct.

I went home and simultaneously, as all my neighbors were, and I got on boots and grabbed a shovel and my son joined me and we just returned downtown.

We didn't know to do exactly what.

We just knew this was the only place we could be.

- The day after the flood, so Monday morning people were here and they were making suggestions about things like wearing masks and gloves and things that you wouldn't think of 'cause you're thinking about your house, you know you're not thinking about your health.

- So I just got done working in this house.

Covered fucking in insulation.

We just filled up that whole thing.

The water from the river here went up so high that it flooded all these houses, came from all the way back there.

- And a lot of this hearkens back to 1927.

Waterbury was probably the hardest hit town in the great flood.

I think it was 85 people died, 20 of those were from Waterbury.

Entire families floating down the river and washed away.

- The house caved in, we screamed.

I said, "John's still in the house."

- And for a minute I thought this could be it and then I was like, well, I'm still thinking.

- We waited, we didn't see John, we didn't know what was going on.

- And it's a sort of elbow and for my weight up, what had been hauled, but now was like a 60 degree angle.

- And Sean reached his hand out and pulled John out.

John looked like a ghost.

I mean, he was in such a state of shock.

- I knew where I was.

The bookcase in the hall fell over and that's what created a little cave.

- Well, it felt like we were all in a dream, you know, it didn't seem real.

How could this house collapse?

- The earth was taken away from under it and our house sank and fell into the river.

I mean, it was like a wet earthquake really.

- It had been a fairly wet summer and so the ground was almost saturated.

It did not have the ability to absorb a lot of that heavy rain.

- You know, one person said to me today, "Will I ever not be afraid of rain again?"

- It wasn't raining that hard a lot of the time on Sunday, but it just kept on going and kept on going and one drop and another and another and all of a sudden you've got a flood.

- During the middle of it there was no winds and the rain subsided a lot and it came back later that night, but it just depended where you were.

- Yeah, I hope it doesn't flood again.

- I hope so too.

Put sandbags at the windows.

- You can see what happened to the houses.

- And your house?

- My house is, they got all the mud out today, but I have like probably eight feet of mud in my basement.

- I doubt if anyone here had flood insurance.

- We've tried to get flood insurance, but you have to have it upfront.

You can't make like payments like you do homeowner's.

You have to pay one month sum and nobody ever had that.

- The majority of people who live here manage to get by, and when you just manage to get by, then you don't get the extras, which is like flood insurance, so I'm sure there's going to be difficult times for a lot of people.

(hoe scraping) - [Resident] What are you doing?

- I'm trying to scrape some more of this mud off of their porch.

- Amazing.

People just show up.

They say, what do I wanna do?

I said, "Here, sweep my porch."

We moved everything from the very first day after the flood people came in and we moved all the wet stuff, but man, I don't think it's gonna make it.

- We've been feeding people pretty much three times a day now for a while and I'm in no way in charge of that, but I come in and I help.

When I'm not trying to clean up the bakery that is really devastated, I'm here trying to help out because it's comforting to be here with all the people.

It really is very sweet.

- Volunteers have been coming in and cooking the food.

Nearby restaurants have been contributing things.

The Weathersfield Inn is providing the food tonight.

The (indistinct) Legion provided it last night.

- The Huntington House has opened their doors, they cleaned out their freezers.

They fed 300 people Wednesday night.

- Everyone's doing it that way.

We're sharing whatever we can.

If you have a shower, we share a shower.

If you have a vehicle, our neighbor shared a vehicle with us.

Once we hiked down, we could take the vehicle that she put on the other side of the bridge into town and we communicate with each other through Facebook.

We call each other so there are people on the other end of town that we've been in communication with.

- Every single kid that lives in town is attached themselves to some work group and have been doing it nonstop since the very first day.

- Are you tired?

- Yes.

Yeah.

And the rubble seems to be endless.

You never realize how much stuff you have and how just much is involved in a house until something like this happens.

- Is this your house?

- No.

I live north on 100 a little bit and our pastures got pretty well destroyed, but the water got I think about three inches from our barn and then just receded, we're lucky.

- In Vermont, we're actually in a fairly sweet spot worldwide.

The Northeast United States and the Northwest United States have abundant water.

We have a fairly moderate climate so it may be that this portion of the country up into portions of Canada will become a desired place to live for growing numbers of people.

- We're seeing more persistent, more severe droughts in parts of the world, way outside climatological norms.

- Now you can stave off the effects of that temporarily by irrigation, but once you pump your reservoirs dry, you're up a creek without a paddle.

So projects that use water very, very intensely for amusement purposes will eventually find that they just can't sustain themselves and that water has to be diverted to other uses, more practical uses like for people to drink.

- You know, at the same time we have seven billion people and the numbers continue to grow exponentially.

- So I'll be extraordinarily surprised if we get through the next century without some major conflicts globally over water and food.

(animals growling) (country music) - Good morning, it's live and local.

Steve West here.

You of course where you belong right where you are listen to the radio 'cause you got nothing else to do.

Ah.

No, no, no, there's plenty to do.

God knows, I've been looking at videos and pictures and all the doing going on, which I think that's the most impressive part of it is not too much sitting still in Vermont these days.

- Put the power back here and we'll give 'em some construction outlets coming outta this small box here and go from there.

- Also, you know, folks downtown are looking for help.

I know that Vassi and Stanley Lion over at Lion Motorsports is pretty astonished.

He says we hadn't even had to ask for help because so many people have shown up and that's really the essence of what I think is going on right now.

The one thing I'm not hearing enough about is this young boy who's missing, 17 years old Marble Arvidson missing since Saturday, a guy who's very well connected to others it seems, and went out hiking and didn't arrive and he may have been in the Dover area and nobody knows and they're very concerned so this needs to rush to the front of the pack here.

We can clean up debris and muck, but you can't replace a person, so anything you can do to talk this up or involve yourself, please do, because he has yet to be heard from, it's Thursday.

- That was another thing with Facebook.

We got a lot of people saying, "Can you tell me how so and so is?"

And we were able to say, "Yeah, we saw him at lunch," and that was great, 'cause people were posting from all over the country at that point.

- All barriers broke down.

Economic strata, political differences, of which there are plenty.

All of it broke down.

It's like, "I got a backhoe, what do you need?"

- [Resident] You know, we didn't wait for a FEMA or anybody to get here.

Somebody on the other side of 73 built the foot bridge.

- You know, they said if we waited for the state or somebody to come in and do this... - People just see what needs to be done and do it here.

People have just been incredibly generous.

I mean, it's been everyone in the town, everybody.

- It's not just the crisis.

We do this all the time.

Town meeting, a vanished art for much of the country, is where we come together, certainly to do the town's business, certainly to do all the things that have to be done, but it's a schmooze fest.

It's like, "Hey, how you been?

Haven't talked to you in a while."

- Good morning.

Good morning.

- Those are the things I think that put the muscles on the bone.

And so when tragedy strikes, when fires happen, when flooding happens, when oh my God happens, people are already there.

- Everyone is helping out each other.

I went to about four different houses here today and I'm gonna come back tomorrow because these people need help and I promised them I would.

(upbeat music) - That's true.

(people clapping) - I can't tell you how proud I am of you and how proud I am to be the governor of a state where people come together and I hear story after story, but pulling into town, I just heard of a one of your townspeople who watched his house get washed away, got on the rig and started clearing the streets for everybody else.

- Between people with no power and people with no water and people with no sewer, that was a pretty substantial part of the town.

You might not be able to do much for yourself at home but could be out doing things for other people in the community.

- If you were emotional, they could handle your emotions.

They were there for you, but they also knew enough to help you get past it enough so that they could clean up your place.

Like I have emotional attachments to stupid stuff and they were like, "This is gone, let's get it gone."

- Kids were coming outta the woodwork, all the hikers from the Green Mountain Club, they were here for three days and nonstop hauling.

They helped us take out our rug.

They did everything.

I mean, if it wasn't for that group of young people, we'd probably still be here with a lot of stuff in our trailer and we'd just be sitting on our butts in awe 'cause we didn't know where to begin.

- [Producer] Now where do you live?

- I live in White River and we took care of this garden here, that stone over there is dedicated to three young soldiers who died and one of them was my son, and stone made it.

And just like the town manager said, it's kind of a miracle.

- So thank you for what you're doing.

It's gonna require some patience.

It's gonna get tougher.

I won't rest until we have Vermont put back the way it was before this thing hit and we'll do it together and I can't tell you how appreciative I am of all of you, of the folks who came in from out of state to help of all the resources that are coming together to get this recovery underway, so stick with us, keep hugging each other.

We love ya and we're gonna get through this together.

We're gonna be okay.

- Maybe the best example was our farmer's market, which is legendary to many people.

It's been there for forever.

Completely washed away and myself and friends went and saw, yeah, this will never happen.

And I believe it was the next weekend, people worked around the clock.

By the end of the week it was reconstructed, dug out because it was a symbol to ourselves I think as well to say, "Look, here's fresh produce.

Look, have a chai."

Not to disregard the difficulties that we were dealing with, but that was a chance to catch your breath and say, "We're gonna be okay in this."

- The second day after the flood, some people with the Jeep had been taking us up to the top of the mountain where they're off the grid so we were actually showers and all that stuff.

And this woman, I don't know who she was, she flagged down the Jeep, but we were passing through the rubble and she says, "You have to have this."

And she gave me a picture I'd love to show you.

She goes, "This was your house before the '27 flood.

It'll still be there."

And I don't know who she is, I don't know where she got the picture, but she gave it to me.

(people chattering) (lively fiddle music) - The myth of the individual is so powerful, but the myth of the individual is a modernist myth and that is something I'm certain is changing.

The myth of the community is gonna once again replace the myth of the individual.

- [Producer] So we're gonna go back to that.

- We're going forward to it.

(chuckling) (birds chirping) (gentle music) (people chattering) When I was sick she came to visit me Open the curtains so I could breathe Feel I could see there's a light And sunlight finally rise Over all the naked lies Woman, please, it's time There's something that must be left behind (gentle upbeat music) Along these warheads How many lifetimes Celebrate their feasts with Just enough fear in every eye Nobody never leaves their right I only know when my head fills up with wine Trickles down their chin Woman, please, it's time There's something here that must be left behind (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) (gentle upbeat music continues) When we're younger Seemed like the tide was turned It all came back to this place where we never left Oh woman, oh woman, oh woman Woman, don't follow the blind Me and all my kind Hurry up, please, it's time There's something here that must be left behind