Williston Observer

Lee Nellis moving to Oregon

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

Williston Town Planner Lee Nellis will quit his job and move out of state so his wife can attend law school in the Pacific Northwest.

Last week, Nellis informed Town Manager Rick McGuire that he intends to leave in July. Nellis said he gave more than two months notice so the town would have ample time to find his replacement.

Nellis said there is still a “1 or 2 percent chance” that he will stay at his job if his wife, Karen, changes her plans to attend school in Oregon. She is still awaiting word on other law school applications.

“I’m kind of along for the ride,” he said.

McGuire said Nellis gave him his letter of resignation last Wednesday. The opening was advertised on an Internet bulletin board for planners, and McGuire said by the following Friday afternoon the town had already received two resumes – one from Nebraska and one from Washington state.

Nellis said his decision to quit came after his wife decided to attend law school in Eugene, Ore. She had applied to other schools, including Vermont Law School in Randolph. She was accepted there, but the commute would have been too long for Nellis to continue working in Williston.

Nellis has worked for the town almost exactly three years. He moved from California to Vermont when he started in May 2004.

Nellis had nearly three decades of experience in planning-related positions when he came to Williston. He had worked as an assistant professor and authored a book on planning.

His experience as a planner was mostly in small communities in the western United States, with much of his work concentrating on growth management.

During his time in Williston, Nellis helped rewrite the town’s Comprehensive Plan, which received kudos for being well-organized and readable.

He is currently revising the town’s zoning ordinance and assembling an application to get state growth center status for the Taft Corners area. Nellis said a draft of the new zoning ordinance would be completed and the growth center application filed before he steps down.

McGuire said because Nellis came from a different region of the country, he had a unique perspective on the growing pains Williston has experienced over the past several years. Primarily through his work on the Comprehensive Plan, McGuire said Nellis will continue to influence the town for years to come.

“Lee’s experience had a very big impact on us,” McGuire said. “His input will be felt far in the future.”

McGuire said he would likely follow the procedure used to hire Nellis, narrowing down the initial applicants with telephone and in-person interviews, then conducting additional interviews before selecting someone to fill the position.

Nellis said his job, like many in the planning profession, was taxing, with long hours and an erratic schedule. But he added that there isn’t a better place in Vermont to work as a planner, both because of the top-notch town staff and the interesting challenges posed by Williston’s relatively rapid growth.

He said he would likely work in a planning-related position in his new home. But Nellis said at least for the immediate future he looks forward to just spending more time with his infant son and supporting his wife as she works toward her law degree.

“I’m sure I’ll find something to do that is equally complicated,” he said. “That seems to be my destiny.”

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Williston site in early stages

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

When representatives of federal agencies visited Williston in September 2005 to discuss the Commerce Street Plume Superfund site, local residents might have reasonably expected more information in the following 12 months.

Representatives of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said they expected to release their public health assessment the following spring. The federal report would summarize if the Superfund site exposes people to potentially harmful hazardous substances. (A Vermont state official said last week there is no immediate risk to human health at the site.)

Also at that time, an Environmental Protection Agency official said the agency hoped to contact companies or other parties potentially responsible for the hazardous waste site the following spring. The EPA, responsible for administering the national Superfund program, attempts to identify those responsible for certain hazardous waste sites to assist in their cleanup or containment.

Twenty-two months later, neither agency has met those estimated goals, though officials at both say they’re only a few months away from doing so. Those same officials said in recent interviews that estimated time lines are necessarily imperfect given unique circumstances at each site.

“No single site has followed every one of those steps the way one would have thought,” said Karen Lumino, EPA New England’s remedial project manager for the Commerce Street Plume.

The site

From 1960 to 1984, liquid waste containing heavy metals and solvents was disposed of off and on into an unlined lagoon and a leach field at 96 Commerce St., just south of U.S. Route 2.

Mitec Systems Corp. discharged waste from electronic and microwave components manufactured on the site, which they leased from 1979 to 1986, according to the EPA Web site. The State of Vermont found the company responsible for violating hazardous waste regulations after a Mitec employee reported the discharge practices to the state in 1982.

In April, 2005, the site was added to the National Priorities List, identifying hazardous waste sites the EPA believes require additional investigation and potential cleanup or containment.

As recently as 2002, state monitoring found elevated levels of 13 metals and 11 volatile organic compounds, including trichloroethylene (TCE). Elevated levels of TCE consumed in drinking water over many years can cause liver problems or increase the risk of cancer, according to the EPA.

Michael B. Smith, a hydrogeologist with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, said because the contamination is so far underground – and because they believe it isn’t moving – that people are not at risk, unless they install a well.

Agency responses

Steve Richardson, an environmental health scientist with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, acknowledged the draft of the public health assessment has taken longer than he expected.

Last summer, the agency sent some residents and media representatives a summary of the site and the agency’s responsibilities there.

“The public health assessment for the Commerce Street Plume site will be ready for public review and comment by the fall of 2006,” the flyer reads.

Last fall, Richardson said by phone the report would be ready by late November or December. At the end of last year, he said he expected it would be complete by the spring. This month, he said he is “shooting for” the end of September.

Richardson said two things have prevented the agency responding more quickly.

“Some other sites I’ve been working on took priority because of high-profile issues,” he said. Some of those sites have urgent public health hazards, unlike the Williston site, he said.

Electronic data passed along by the state also has slowed the agency’s work, Richardson said.

“It’s not a well-organized thing,” Richardson said of the more than 10,000 pages of electronic documents he received. “It’s pretty time consuming to get through all that and sort through and get the data.”

EPA’s Lumino said her agency expects to notify this summer the parties potentially responsible for the Williston hazardous waste site.

“A unique set of circumstances about this site have caused us to need to take additional time during this phase,” she said. “Every site is unique…. It’s very hard once you get in there and start doing the work to predict how much time (a step will take).”

Once the parties are notified, they have the opportunity to present evidence contradicting the EPA’s findings. Then the EPA works with those parties to develop a plan for cleanup or containment for which the parties should pay.

The national picture

A report released this spring by a national nonprofit news organization alleges the Superfund initiative nationally has lost momentum and funding. EPA officials concede inflation has eroded the power of their consistent budget, but disagree that the agency has any less commitment to cleanup work and recovering the cost of that work from polluters.

The Center for Public Integrity, which identifies itself as a non-partisan and non-advocacy organization committed to investigative journalism in the public interest, has over the last two months released portions of a report titled “Wasting away: Superfund’s toxic legacy.” The investigation, according to the report, was based on data obtained from the EPA through more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with dozens of experts in and out of the agency.

The Center’s investigation found that the startup rate of cleanup work in the last six years is only one-third as high as the previous six years. The number of sites reaching what the EPA calls “construction complete” in the last six years was roughly half that of the previous six years, the report said.

Betsy Southerland, the Superfund program’s director of assessment and remediation division at the EPA, said when the Superfund program started in 1983, no other federal or state agencies were authorized to do cleanup work, so even simple projects went through the Superfund process. Now, states no longer have to refer to Superfund if they have voluntary cleanup programs, she said.

“So what’s happening in recent times is very large, very complex, very expensive sites are the only ones coming to Superfund for cleanup,” Southerland said.

Looking ahead

Dave Deegan, a spokesperson for the EPA New England regional office, said that Superfund “definitely is a long, slow process.”

“We well understand that communities want to see something get done, finalized, stop having to worry about it, even if it’s something as simple as paying attention to the work that is done,” he said. “We try to do the work publicly and transparently so that people can follow it.”

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Parties move to fact finding

By Kim Howard
Observer staff

Mediation last week failed to result in a new contract for teachers in Chittenden South Supervisory Union, of which Williston schools and Champlain Valley Union High School are members.

“We made progress in the mediation, there’s no question about that,” said attorney Scott Cameron of Zalinger Cameron & Lambek, P.C. Cameron is the chief negotiator for the CSSU School Board negotiating team. “The two issues that are getting the most attention are salary and health care. … The board and the association are still a fair distance apart, especially on salary I’d say. The health care is getting closer.”

Members of the CSSU School Board and the local education association met with mediator Ira Lobel, a former commissioner with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, last Wednesday. Lobel is often called upon to mediate teacher contract disputes in Vermont when early negotiations fail to yield agreement. Parties in Chittenden South began negotiations in November for a contract to replace the one expiring June 30.

Details from the mediation are confidential, as neither party is bound to the offers made, Cameron said.

Christopher Hood, President of the Chittenden South Education Association, said teachers are “exceedingly disappointed” they’ll be starting the year without a contract.

“We know that budgets have already been approved in all of the towns that would more than adequately fund a reasonable settlement,” Hood said.

Hood said the association would be open to meeting again with the boards even as both parties move forward with the next step in negotiations, hiring a fact finder.

A fact finder will review comparable local teacher settlements and towns’ ability to pay for increases. Cameron said both parties have a month to prepare their fact-finding positions. The fact finder then will require roughly a month, Cameron said, to review points of discrepancy and issue recommendations. The fact finder’s report is confidential for the first 10 days after the parties receive it, in hopes an agreement can be reached. If not, the report becomes public.

Comparable teacher settlements are likely to be the most influential to a fact finder’s work, Cameron said. A fact finder report issued last year in neighboring Chittenden East Supervisory Union showed that other recent local teacher settlements gave roughly 4 percent annual salary increases. (Chittenden East is comprised of schools in Bolton, Huntington, Jericho, Richmond and Underhill, and Mount Mansfield Union High School.)

Over the last three years, CSSU teacher salaries have increased 4.55 percent each year. The Chittenden County average over the same period is 4.66 percent, according to data provided earlier this spring by CSSU. The average salary this year for a full-time teacher in Williston schools is $60,924; the average CVU High School teacher salary is $57,768.

Teachers’ contributions to health care premiums were a sore point among some Williston voters in the last budget cycle. The Chittenden East fact finder acknowledged that 20 percent contributions “may soon become the norm,” but that currently 10 percent contributions are more prevalent.

CVU High School and Williston teachers contribute 10 percent of the premium cost of either a single, two-person or family insurance plan. The current county average is 11 percent, with the teachers’ share increasing slightly next year, according to CSSU data.

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UVM students find town’s hidden nature

By Greg Elias
Observer staff

Williston’s landscape holds many surprises.

An unusual forest features long views and trees that seem to be shedding their bark. Spear points unearthed along the proposed route of the Circumferential Highway show that humans lived here thousands of years ago. Before it became a commercial center, Taft Corners was a historic crossroads that featured several taverns.

Those were among the findings of University of Vermont graduate students after a semester-long survey of Williston’s physical, ecological and cultural landscape. The students presented the results during a meeting last week at Williston Town Hall.

The program is called PLACE, short for Place-based Landscape Analysis and Community Education. It aims to educate residents about their own towns.

Williston was especially ripe for such a study because it is a community in transition, a place that provides a contrast between intense development and bucolic landscape, said Walter Poleman, PLACE program director and senior lecturer with UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources.

“Generally, we survey rural towns,” Poleman said. “What was really appealing about Williston is that there is a lot happening as far as natural history goes that is not apparent, especially to people in the county who don’t live there.”

Williston, of course, is best known as the home to many big-box stores. But some 75 percent of the town’s 30 square miles is undeveloped and rural.

That came as a surprise to Jesse Fleisher, one of the 10 students who worked on the project.

“My only real knowledge of Williston was it was a place I passed through on the interstate,” he said. “I saw Taft Corners, and I thought that was all of Williston. I didn’t realize how much more there was. It turned out to be a pretty fascinating place.”

The PLACE program inventoried several categories of natural features, including soils, vegetation and wildlife. It also looked at how Williston’s cultural history impacted the landscape.

Poleman said the study revealed connections between those elements that may give Williston residents a new perspective on their town.

“We feel strongly that such an integrated and inclusive educational effort fosters both a sense of community and a sense of place – a potent combination that leads to a more informed and creative planning process,” said the project’s Web site, www.uvm.edu/place. The site goes on to say that such an approach may allow community members “to transcend the divisive nature of many land-use debates.”

Poleman acknowledged that place-based landscape analysis will not by itself solve the battles over development that have raged in Williston and elsewhere in Chittenden County. But he said the information may allow residents to find common ground through an understanding of how the town’s geography and natural resources shaped land use in the past and suggest its best use in the future.

UVM students worked with members of the Williston Conservation Commission during the months-long survey process, said Carrie Deegan, the town’s environmental planner.

Deegan said she and Conservation Commission members were already aware of much of the information gathered by students. But an interactive map showing natural features can now be accessed by residents through the program’s Web site, which she said may head off questions planners might otherwise answer about the location of wetlands and other natural features.

“Now this is something they can do at their own home,” Deegan said.

Among the natural features that might surprise even long-time residents is a wooded area near Five Tree Hill. Called a dry oak-hickory-hop hornbeam forest, it has little undergrowth, allowing visitors to see long distances through the trees. Shallow soil and a relatively warm microclimate foster growth of the unique shagbark hickory tree.

Another unusual find were arrowheads and spear points in the path of the proposed Circumferential Highway. They were dug up by archeology students surveying the highway route a few years ago, Poleman said.

The PLACE program started in the late 1990s as a collaboration between UVM and Shelburne Farms. Initially, a series of field trips was offered to Shelburne residents.

The first official PLACE project took place in Richmond in 2001. Since then, programs have been conducted in Thetford and Jericho.

The survey and analysis in Williston is just a prelude to the program’s community outreach effort, Poleman said.

Six Williston teachers have already signed up to learn more about the town’s geology and natural history during professional development sessions scheduled for next month, Poleman said.

Fleisher expects to work with the Conservation Commission throughout the summer. He said one site of particular interest is wetlands near Williston Central School. Workshops for the general public will be held next fall.

The hope is that residents will contribute to the study, sharing their knowledge of Williston’s natural and cultural history while they learn more about their town, Poleman said.

Fleisher said Williston, wedged between the Champlain Valley and the foothills of the Green Mountains, has a surprisingly diverse landscape. He said residents who learn about the physical landscape and cultural history will feel a deeper connection to Williston.

“The more knowledgeable and interested people are in their town, the better stewards they become to their land,” Fleisher said.

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By Greg Elias
Observer staff

The original Circumferential Highway design does the best overall job of relieving traffic congestion, according to a study of road-building alternatives released Tuesday.

The study marks the third step in a five-part, court-mandated Environmental Impact Statement. The analysis considers a plethora of alternatives to the original Circ design, comparing how each would affect traffic, safety, the environment and many other factors.

“This is a little like American Idol,” said Vermont Agency of Transportation Secretary Neale Lunderville at a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “You start with a list of alternatives and pare them down.”

The analysis looks at 10 options as well as a no-build alternative. The options fall into three categories: build a limited-access highway or a boulevard along the originally planned Circ route between Interstate 89 in Williston and Vermont Route 117 in Essex; widen Vermont Route 2A to three or four lanes through Williston and Essex; or construct a hybrid that uses parts of each approach.

Results of the analysis are mixed. Some of the Route 2A and hybrid options do better in categories such as safety, cost and environmental impacts. But when it comes to traffic relief, the original Circ design beats the other options, albeit sometimes by only a narrow margin.

For example, building the Circ would reduce backups along Route 2A, avoiding a failing level of service (defined as a wait of 80 seconds or more) at all intersections during morning and afternoon rush hours. Three intersections currently fail, and six would fail by 2030 without any new road construction, according to the analysis.

Some of the other options, however, work nearly as well. For example, the hybrid option that calls for widening Route 2A to three lanes, replacing traffic lights with roundabouts and building a street along the Circ route also eliminates failing intersections.

All the other alternatives leave one or two failing intersections.

As for improving traffic flow between Route 2A intersections, the Circ finishes only in the middle of the pack. Two of the Route 2A widening options and two of the hybrid alternatives do better.

A limited-access Circ is best at speeding the commute between Williston and Essex Junction, according to the analysis. When all possible routes between the two towns are considered, building a limited-access highway would cut the average travel time between the two towns by 7-15 percent. Other options show small improvements ranging from 10 percent to 0.5 percent.

The analysis said the Circ options have a clear advantage in two other categories: moving truck traffic off local roads and relieving congestion on North Williston Road, which some motorists use instead of Route 2A.

The study marks the latest development in the long-running Circumferential Highway saga.

The highway as originally proposed was supposed to be a 16-mile bypass running from Williston to Colchester. Only the middle segment in Essex has been built.

Work on the Williston segment had started in May 2004 when a federal judge ordered construction to halt until a new Environmental Impact Statement could be completed. The former study dated back to the 1980s.

Transportation officials presented results of the new analysis during a pair of meetings in Burlington and Essex on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A third session is scheduled in Jericho on Thursday.

A draft of the Environmental Impact Statement is scheduled to be released in July. A 45-day public comment period follows, during which a public hearing will be held.

The final EIS and selection of the preferred alternative is expected by spring 2008.

But don’t expect highway construction to start then. Lunderville said he is nearly certain that opponents will sue to stop construction no matter which option is picked. That could delay the project by months or years.

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