WVTK Local & State News May 10, 2010

The Coast Guard has established a no-wake zone for boats traveling through a section of Lake Champlain where the new Crown Point Bridge will be built. Boats had been banned from the area due to safety concerns. Now the Coast Guard says boats can travel through a marked channel at slow speeds.

Two proposed projects got the green light from the Development Review Board in Brandon last week. The board approved the subdivision of the Neshobe Farm planned unit development and issued permits for the conversion of the former Brandon High School to condominiums. Nobody voiced opposition to either proposal at a DRB hearing in late March.

The state Agency of Natural Resources issued a solid waste permit to Omya Inc. on Friday that allows the company to dispose of its calcium carbonate waste. The full certification allows Omya to dispose of its marble tailings in a lined "tailings management area" on its Florence property. The state issued a draft certification in December.

Lawmakers failed to meet their deadline Saturday of finishing the current legislative session. Instead, plans are for the House and Senate to reconvene tomorrow. The legislature spent most of Saturday debating the Challenges for Change bill but were unable to reach a consensus. Lawmakers will also have to pass a budget before their work is done.

A high-risk sex offender is back behind bars for failing to properly register himself on the state sex-offender registry. Jesse Barcomb is required to register his personal information with authorities for the rest of his life as part of a 1993 conviction in the City of Plattsburgh. Barcomb will be in prison for the next 1 to 3 years.

Vermont lawmakers have approved a bill requiring health insurance companies to cover some therapies used to treat autism. The bill applies to children with autism who are between 18 months and 6 years old. It calls for a study to determine whether a similar insurance mandate should apply for coverage of older children.

Now that funding is in place, organizers of the Saranac River Trail plan to begin construction soon and hope to have the project completed by year's end. The trail will stretch from the footbridge behind Plattsburgh High School to the now-closed Saranac Street Bridge. Organizers hope the paved trail will be used year round.

A group of Vermont Air National Guard Solders is heading to Haiti. The sendoff ceremony took place Friday afternoon. The guardsmen will soon be leaving for Port-Au-Prince. There they will be dismantling an Air National Guard facility that supported the Haiti earthquake relief effort. The guard group leaves today. They are expected to be in Haiti for about a month.

Police are trying to get to the bottom of a suspicious phone call made to BFA-St. Albans. Investigators say a man called the school Friday afternoon, and identified himself as the stepfather of a student, and asked that she be let out of school early. The student called her family and discovered they had not contacted the school. No one ever showed up at BFA to pick up the girl.

This weekend's wintry weather prompted State Transportation officials to close down the Smugglers Notch road. VTRANS opened route 108 for the season this past Monday. But officials say with snow and temperatures below freezing, the road is now closed again and will remain closed at least through this morning's commute.

A National Guard soldier from Brookfield is recovering from the injuries he received May 1st in Afghanistan. The wife of Sergeant Thomas T.J. Eaccarino says her husband suffered a ruptured spleen and bruised lungs. She says he's already undergone several operations, and is scheduled to be transferred from a hospital in Germany to one in the U.S.

In the last three years, New York's anti-smoking program has been cut three times by a total of 30 percent. The program that was once a top priority of Republican and Democratic governors is another casualty of the fiscal crisis. The latest cut to the smoking program is proposed for $5 million in the 2010-11 state budget, now a month late and under negotiation.

More low-income school kids could soon have access to free nutritious dinners. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is offering reimbursements for meals served to at-risk kids in after-school programs in 13 states and the District of Columbia. This year the program expanded to Vermont.

Social capital was the theme of the 2010 graduation ceremony yesterday at College of St. Joseph in Rutland. According to the graduates and families this year's class will continue to add substance to society. Commencement speaker Stuart Comstock-Gay, a graduate of Harvard University and president of Middlebury's Vermont Community Foundation, said CSJ and the experience of being in Vermont prepared the students to do more important things than just work such as volunteering their time.