Thursday, February 4, 2010

WVTK Local & State News February 4, 2010

Federal regulators are reassuring Vermont's congressional delegation that the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is getting close scrutiny in the wake of recent tritium leaks. In a letter to lawmakers, Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Gregory Jaczko says the agency will keep pressure on Entergy to pinpoint and fix the source of the leak.

Neighbors of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant are keeping open an extra wary eye these days, following the discovery of tritium in groundwater in test wells at the Vernon plant site. One local man says he'd like to see the plant shuttered, adding that with the tritium discovery, he's not swimming or fishing in the Connecticut River.

A provision in the Douglas administration's Capital Bill would fund a feasability study for merging the Shaftsbury and Rutland State Police barracks. One official tells the Benning Banner a move would take several years and would require finding a location with good radio and phone coverage.

An internal probe has been wrapped up into the death of a former Vermont Police Academy instructor, although the Rutland Herald reports it isn't known what the investigation found. A trainer at the academy, David McMullen, took his own life on academy grounds last month.

A Vermont Senate committee is considering a bill that would end Vermont's status as 1 of 5 states - and the only one in the Northeast - without a comprehensive law against human trafficking. Sex offender legislation passed last year addressed trafficking of underage people for sexual purposes. The new bill would extend to enslaving and trafficking in adults and deal with other types of labor aside from sexual exploitation. The Senate Judiciary Committee worked on making adjustments to language on Thursday to address concerns from farm groups that some of the definitions in the bill might be construed as applying to migrant farm workers. Committee members say they want to make sure the law only would apply to involuntary work situations.