The Great Hydropower Heist: How Corporations Colonized Our Watershed Commons

The Historical Context for Understanding Vermont's Electric Power Industry (Part II of a Two-Part Story)

by Dr. Richard Foley

with assistance from Hervey Scudder, President of NorthEast Center for Social Issues Studies; and Lee Webb, author of A History of Electric Utility Regulation in Vermont 1880-1965

In Part I of this essay we deconstructed the initial invasion of Investor Owned Utilities (IOU's), focusing on the Connecticut River Power Company, that launched in 1902 a brilliant bait-and-switch marketing campaign that paved the way for the corporate takeover of one of the crown jewels in the Vermont “Commons,” the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers. Damming large portions of the watersheds, the Power Company gutted much of the decentralized local power capacity while exporting the vast majority of the dams' output south and east to the New England grid's large metropolitan and mercantile customers.

As the second half of the hydropower heist story will show, for the next 100 years, a stream IOU “raiders” relentlessly continued their invasion of our State, building more dams and snapping up dozens of municipal electric utilities. The aggressive energy moguls solidified their holdings to the point that by 1930, 95% of Vermont's consumers were held hostage to out-of-state IOU's that owned 99% of the electric power plants in the State. Vermonters paid “through the nose” for electricity. And worst of all, 9 out of 10 Vermont farmers could not get electricity!

Turns out that all Vermonters, not just the folks in Windham County, have sold down any number of “rivers.”

The Fox Guarding the Hens' House: Who's Regulating Who?

Before continuing with the story of the damming of the Great River and the related saga Vermont's 100-year struggle against IOU's (investor owned electric utilities), we need to look at how IOU's were positioning themselves to control as much as possible (and profitable) of Vermont's electric generation, local distribution and regional transmission infrastructure.

We should start you off with one little question. Are you under the impression that the existing Vermont Department of Public Service (DPS) and the Public Service Board(PSB) exist to represent your interest as a consumer and to regulate the electric utilities? Well think again. Here's some history around the real question: who's regulating who?

In 1909 the IOU's, not consumers advocates, successfully lobbied for the establishment of the Vermont Public Service Commission (PSC) which later evolved into the current Department of Public Service and its complementary quasi-judicial agency, the Public Service Board. IOU's wanted the State to recognize them as “public utilities” — a clever misnomer for privately owned, for-profit entities, the IOU's.

Secondly, IOU's wanted the PSC to supercede municipal authorities. Here the IOU lawyers and lobbyists really earned their paychecks. In one fell swoop, they maneuvered the State into removing local control and thereby shielding the IOU's Achilles heel. Instead of being burdened with dealing with hundreds of potential local “regulators” with clear allegiances to their communities, the out-of-state investors could focus all their resources on influencing one State regulatory agency. And early on, the nascent Public Service Commission was intentionally under-funded resulting in over-worked, less-than-qualified personnel supported by IOU hand-picked consultants.

To paraphrase architect and industrial ecologist William McDonough, regulatory agencies regulate us, the public. Not the agencies' partners, the corporations. Regulators decide what quality of service, at what cost and at what level of toxicity we, the public, will have to tolerate. Arsenic and fluoride in our water, sulfuric acid in our rainwater, noxious particulates and unburned hydrocarbons in our air, genetically modified organisms in our food, radioactive strontium-90 in our atmosphere from weapons fallout. Exotic emissions from automobiles, refineries, power plants, pharmaceutical and manufacturing operations.

So when you hear or read about “regulations,” you may want to think carefully what about the level of risk the regulations are imposing on you and your local community. “Regulator” is shorthand for the fox guarding the hen house.

The Weasel Guarding the Hens' House: Big Brother Knows Best
To supplement their control over the regulatory process, IOU's turned to their corps of savvy, arm-twisting lobbyists to influence the State legislature and administration. To disarm public inquiry, IOU dollars and influence peddling found ready collaborators in local newspapers. If that strategy proved problematic, they could always count on the emergence of the new breed of Regulator — the Federal government's multi-tentacle control over interstate commerce.

Take for example, the issue of exporting home-grown, cutting-edge renewable electricity at the turn of the last century. As the Connecticut River Power Company's electrical power flowed south and east from the Vernon dam and the Deerfield River system of dams, the State Legislature finally appointed in 1912 a Commission on the Conservation of the Natural Resources of the State of Vermont to look into the matter. The Commission slammed the Power Company on two counts. First, along with other IOU ‘s, the Power Company were raking in huge profits on their exported power; secondly, the Power Company was failing to extend service to their local Vermont customers. In a classic example endemic to the resource curse, the Power Company was exploiting an natural or ‘indigenous resource' and refusing to share with the ‘indigenous people.'

The Commission recommended that the State control the export of electric power, much as Maine had banned exports in 1909. But the combination of the Power Company's and its IOU allies' lobbying efforts and public relations campaigns convinced the Legislature to ignore the recommendations.

A few years later spurred on by public outrage of the Vernon and Deerfield dams rip-off, the PSB made a second attempt to implement State regulation of exports. The Power Company challenged the order in Federal Court which, in turn, ruled in 1919 that Vermont, or any state for that matter, had no jurisdiction over such interstate commerce such as export contracts. We might add here, that at this point in time, the Federal government also lacked jurisdiction. The Federal Court's ruling rendered the State powerless to enforce the “public interest” intent of the original Power Company charter.

Many analysts agree that these watershed decisions triggered the long-standing, ongoing battle over Vermont's electric power exports.

IOU Raiders Invade the Rest of Vermont

If Southern Vermonters first fully experienced the “resource curse” that currently bankrupts developing countries as outside interests exploit and export their resources to the detriment of the environment and indigenous populations, their fellow Vermonters soon found themselves in a century-long struggle with a ravenous pack of public utility IOU's held in check, theoretically, by State regulators.

The decade of the twenties literally lit up America — demand of electricity doubled every few years — and ushered in the IOU's ruthless campaign of monopoly and Enron-like manipulation, corruption and outright thievery. By 1929 IOU's had bought out the lion's share of Vermont's patchwork of municipal and small private utilities and thereby controlled over 90% of the electricity generated and about 75% of the power distribute in Vermont. Colorful rogues abounded — like Chicago mogul Samuel Insull, and the infamous Minneapolis-based duo of Forshay and Ohstrom.

By 1929 Samuel Insull's Central Vermont Public Service outranked all the other IOU”s and local producers combined — with over 50% of Vermont's consumers beholden to the CVPS monopoly.

By 1928 Forshay and Ohstrom had purchased six power companies and merged these assets into Green Mountain Power that controlled power to 48 of Vermont's 220 plus towns.

Meanwhile, starting in 1921 the Boston-based Power Company doubled the generating capacity of Vernon to 48,000 horsepower and a few years later added the Searsburg and Harriman dams to boost the Deerfield River system to 125,000 horsepower. But in 1926 the Power Company was reorganized as New England Power Association (NEPCO) and folded into a Russian doll of holding companies, ultimately controlled by a new ownership group dominated by the International Paper Company. International Paper rapidly compiled a new utility empire and orchestrated the construction of the 60,000 horsepower Bellows Falls dam (one of New England's largest at the time, 1928) followed by the 300,000 horsepower Fifteen Mile Falls on the upper Connecticut in 1930 — the largest in New England and the fourth largest in the United States.

Whoever touts the clichés of current wisdom — “economy of scale,” “the efficiency of centralization“ and “let the market decide” — should study the IOU track-record in Vermont: the financial fraud of corrupt corporations, their interconnected layers of operators, vendors and holding companies each skimming off profits; the inept technical performance marked by excess generation, poor load factors and duplicated transmission.

Century of Consolidation: Beware of Corporatists Bearing Gifts

We could sum up the next 70 years of out-of-state IOU's versus Vermont consumers with the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Once the IOU's consolidated their holdings, they worked hand-in-hand with the Republican Party (remember, Vermont was effectively a one-party state up until the 1960's) to control the chronically under-funded State Regulators. When Regulators did attempt to do the right thing by responding to consumer complaints of high rates and lack of service, the Republican-controlled administrations and legislatures authorized Regulators to hire “outside industry experts” who validated the IOU's cooked books and their series of requests for rate increases.

Secondly, as we illustrated in the first part of this essay, the original IOU raiders simply morphed into modern “Corporatists” as the Federal government starting with the Civil War systematically stripped states of their original powers to issue charters of incorporation and to enforce corporations' obligation to serve the public good. Vermont IOU's simply caught the tidal wave of corporate influence over the Federal governance and found additional leverage in the evolving, but never clearly articulated Federal national electrical energy plan that bolstered IOU control over a national transmission grid drawing power from ever larger centralized power plants. Vermont's IOU's emerged after WWII as small players in the nation-wide organization of the Corporatist Big Boys, regional IOU's who had successfully ensconced the electric utilities as protected monopolies, largely under self-imposed “Federal supervision,” but still responsible parties in negotiations with state regulators.

In short, Vermont's IOU's are still playing by the rules that “regulate” the utility industry that they and their national Corporatist cohorts largely crafted over the past 100 years.

It's instructive to look at what the “Corporatists-know-best” agenda has gifted Vermonters in the last fifty-plus years.

• During the Aiken years, the Federal Government initiated the Rural Electrification Law, established the hydroelectric regulatory office, FERC, which oversees the licensing of dams and pushed for regional public power projects like the Tennessee Power Authority. Aiken's mistrust of both the Feds and IOU's (he had witnessed both sectors abuse eminent domain) translated into the continued, near total domination of IOU's in Vermont.

In the 1940's Democratic Governor Gibson proposed a Vermont State Power Authority to import and distribute a portion of the 2 million kilowatts of low-cost hydropower from the massive St. Lawrence River project. The IOU's under the leadership of CVPS President Albert Cree worked with Republicans and conservative newspapers to defeat the prospect of Vermonters benefiting as original investors in this low-cost power source.

• In the 1950's the issue reverted to a lesser opportunity — what entity, a public power authority or an IOU — would access the St. Lawrence power. Again, the IOU-Republican team headed by Governor Johnson, Brattleboro Senator Robert Gannett and the ubiquitous Cree successfully battled for IOU access to the power through a new IOU, VELCO (a consortium of Vermont IOU's headed by CVPS), to deliver the power to Vermont.

30 years of IOU control netted Vermonters continued high electric rates (despite the St. Lawrence contributions) and fewer job opportunities as Vermont industries migrated South to take advantage of the lower rates offered by TVA and other Federal public power authorities.

• The history of the 1960's largely consolidated the IOU control of generation, transmission and distribution within Vermont. For the third time, Cree and the Republicans (led by insurance tycoon Luther Hackett and Richard Mallary, Speaker of the House and ultimately Cree's successor as the CEO of CVPS) beat back the Democrat's attempts to access inexpensive hydropower from Canada — the proposed massive Dickey-Lincoln dam on the St. John's River and the Passamaquoddy Bay project.

• Two big payoffs orchestrated by the IOU's for our collective benefit arrived in the 1970's. One consisted of multiple contracts for hydropower from — surprise, not from the dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers — but from the massive 10,000 MW HydroQuebec project that set records, according to some well-researched sources, for the amount of earth moved, environmental degradation and ill treatment of indigenous populations. Vermont's IOU's agreed to high prices (in the 10 cents/Kw range) in return for secure contracts that would not wind down until a phasing out from 2008-2012.

The other gift has proved more permanent. In 1972 the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station went online, its majority owners, Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Vermont, publicly basking in the glow of the soothing slogans promoting the peaceful atom, electric power too cheap to meter and safe, clean, economical spent nuclear fuel recycling and waste reduction. Privately smarting from the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) arm-twisting.

This powerful Federal agency, a particularly aggressive expression of the “military/industrial complex,” deployed teams across the globe to promote nuclear power plants and to find utilities and industries willing to build them. The AEC “convinced” Vermont's reluctant IOU's (CVPS and GMP) that if they didn't build an atomic plant in Vernon, then AEC would find outside investors who would. As a result of AEC's coercion, both Vermont's IOU's and Regulators found themselves negotiating relative minor sidebars like rates while the Feds (AEC /NRC) monitored the life-and-death issues of radioactive waste storage, license extension and overall all safe operation of an atomic power plant.

• Since the New Millennium, Vermont's Regulators, in combination with an IOU-friendly Republican administration and Federal agencies, have gifted Vermonters two disasters — the failure to step up to the plate during the bankruptcy-induced sale of the Connecticut and Deerfield river dams (Canadian-based transnational, TransCanada now owns the dams) and the creation of a permanent radioactive dump on the Connecticut River.

After almost 30 years of “running” Vermont Yankee, the consortium of original owner-operators headed up by CVPS and GMP found the combination of rising operating costs, the closing of sister “Yankee” plants, potentially problematic regulatory action, under funded decommissioning reserves and an uphill battle to recover stranded costs through rate increases outweighed their financial capacity. So in a bold move our homegrown IOU's decided to sell the plant to the highest bidder. With the Vermont Regulator's (PSB) blessing, one of the Corporatist Big Boys, Entergy, a $14 billion, 14,000-employee Louisiana-based giant purchased Vermont Yankee in 2002. Entergy simply had the investment capital and nerve (unlimited funds for public relations) go where Vermont's IOU's feared to tread — to resuscitate the old reactor based on a controversial three-part plan to boost reactor power to 120 percent, extend the plant's operating license, and construct outdoor dry cask storage to make room for hundreds of tons of radioactive waste.

Although the State Legislature may have on more shot at denying the license extension, both State and the Federal Regulators have agree to all three conditions and pushed Vermont into the permanent radioactive waste dump business.

True to their IOU-written script, Vermont Regulators supported the sale and subsequent expansion of atomic power on the Connecticut River based on VY's present and future contribution to the State's electricity supply. While the Connecticut and Deerfield River dams export more than 80% of that “contribution.” Or put another way, if the State owned the dams, Vermont would instantly reach the current goal touted in Montpelier — “20% energy independence by 2020.”

Who's regulating whom? Who benefits? To quote historian Lee Webb: “In every major battle over regulatory policy, the private utilities [IOU's] effectively used their political power, legal expertise, and public relations programs — all paid for by Vermont electric users — to defeat supporters of stronger public regulation and public ownership.”

Respect for the Small: Size Does Matter

Do we have any choice in where we get our electricity, except from IOU's? Understand, of course, that the Douglas administration has already selected the “more big-bad-business-as-usual” option that translates as additional dependence on the status quo, the fossil-fueled, IOU-dominated New England power grid.

So, what can we Vermont citizens do? Certainly not leave it up to the current editions of the Governor or the Legislature. The heroes will be well-informed, principled and motivated citizens, taking responsibility individually and collectively. We will play champion to our all our Commons, the water, air, forests, as well as our manmade infrastructures serving the public good. We will restore the respect for the Small. Here are five mindsets.

• Yankee frugality

Old-timers know this one: don't use as much electricity. Although conservation and increased efficiencies don't eliminate the need for some basic level of supply, the cumulative impact of a collective effort minimizes dollars sent on IOU's and releases monies for local investment. The unique, award-winning conservation utility, Efficiency Vermont, has led the way in helping Vermonters cut demand to the point that conservation, efficiency and new renewable supplies have met all the projected needs despite the incredible pressure for increased demand based on “consumer conveniences” (electrical-intensive appliances, information/entertainment systems) and commercial growth over the past decade.

• Yankee ingenuity

More and more Vermonters have been installing solar, photovoltaics (PV), wind, small hydro systems to supply their homes and businesses (Vermont leads the country in PV's per capita). The combination of awareness of climate change, access to more reliable and cost-effective technologies, as well as financial incentives (combination of Federal and State grants) have made these direct investments a less pricey option, but like conservation, these energy dollars stay longer in Vermont.

• Stay-out-of-my-way attitude

Innovative business and institutional leaders selected “captive” co-generation technology — power plants burning various fuels that produce electricity, as well as process and space heat to meet their internal energy needs. For example, Brattleboro's Bob Johnson designed and built the state-of-the-art Delta Campus around such a co-gen concept to fuel his 120-employee optical filter operation. The generators running off British diesels could qualify the plant as self-sufficient, except that the local bank wouldn't loan the construction monies without a connection to the IOU grid. This form of “energy independence” in many ways replicates the old water/steam mills and competes directly with IOU-priced power.

• Respect for Small-Is-Sustainable

“Distributed generation” has become the term to capture the latest, hottest trend in the electric utility industry — smaller, decentralized generating stations that can be customer-owned, or developed and operated by third party “independent power producers” (IPP) or some combination of IOU/IPP partnership using a variety of fossil fuels, renewables (wind, hydro, photovoltaics, wood) or exotics (landfill gas, fuel cells, wind-diesel hybrids).

Even the IOU Corporatists are realizing that bigger (large power plants; pumping electrons over hundreds of miles of transmission lines) is not better. The Industry has even come up with an acronym, NTA or Non-transmission Alternatives, that captures the emerging synthesis of conservation, efficiency and distributed generation.

In fact Vermont's Public Power producers fit the “small is better” ideal and have more in common with small local businesses than their IOU Big Brothers. Most people would agree it has been the thousands of for-profit, ethically run small businesses — be they retail stores, farms, service providers, manufacturers or idea producers — that have benefited our communities by fueling new jobs, economic opportunity and innovation. Capitalism with a respectful Small “c.”

For example, a self-selected group, Brattleboro District Energy, has targeted their town for an expanded version of that kind of co-generation approach known internationally as a “district heating system” — a combination of a 5-30 MW electric generator running of any of a number of fuels (oil, natural gas, coal, biomass) and an insulated underground distribution system of pipes carrying hot and chilled water (think municipal water and sewer and add space heating and cooling to the mix). BDE would like to introduce the first new, biomass-fueled project to the United States. We have enough waste wood in Windham County to make the fuel supply for a 20-30 MW plant sustainable. Although the initial investment carries a hefty price tag ($30-200 million based on the size and number of generating plants and distribution networks), BDE realizes that Brattleboro exports $30 million annually just to stay warm and do business. And according to engineering firms that do this type of project, the numbers look good.

• Dream Big

Vermont's most logical option would be to add to the number of truly “Public Power” producers, the 22 small electric municipalities and cooperatives, most of which run small hydro and wood-burning plants. These “co-ops and munies,” as they're commonly referred to, have slowly nibbled into the IOU's market share to currently service one in seven Vermonters. One little known fact is that, all across America and here in Vermont, Public Power customers pay less for electricity than the IOU's consumers. How come? Because compared to IOU's, the Public Power folks tend to be:

• leaner (less management overhead);

• more flexible (re-investing “profits” in their systems and energy conservation);

• and more responsive to consumer/members who have a direct voice and vote on policies and decisions.

The shortest route to adding to our State's Public Power portfolio is pretty obvious, if we can shed the IOU/Regulator propaganda. Here are five scenarios:

Name-it-the-ConnecticutRiverAuthority-and-they-will-come. Purchase the dams one-by-one to build a regionally-controlled, locally-owned CRA. Local Vermont-New Hampshire consortiums would purchase their individual dams and plug them into CRA system — using the current lever of eminent domain and the increasing appetite of financial institutions for investments in “sustainable projects.”.

Build municipal wind farms. Find a developer that specializes in building “turn-key operations” — they finance and build the project and then turn it over to a local entity (municipal utility, cooperative or even a fire district). That way we eliminate the “industrialization of our ridgelines” and encourage NIMBYS to compromise, since they will have more control over the project and ultimately, ownership.

Invest in district heating. Copy those wingnuts down in Brattleboro, you say? Thirty years ago, no such district heating systems existed in Sweden. Currently, more than 50% of all residential and commercial spaces are heated by these local systems and the Swedes are aiming for 75% coverage in the next decade. Crazy stuff? Most Swedes living in town turn up the thermostat like you and I turn on the faucet.

Plug-in transportation. True plug-in hybrids are just around the corner, not just retrofits of Toyota Prius' or Honda Civics. Designed from the ground up to travel 100-150 miles on battery power alone at 100 mpg, vehicles like the new Chevy Volt will revolutionize our gas-guzzling fleet. The key here is that electricity at off-peak hours (times when demand is low, especially at night) sells for pennies (2-3 cents/Kwhr), but as a substitute for high-priced gasoline, electrons will become far more valuable, representing a huge savings compared to $2-3/gallon gasoline, even at peak rates (10-15 cents/Kwh). Hence, the 100 mpg equivalent.

In short, Vermonters' investments in indigenous or homegrown electricity (PV/battery storage, wind, biomass, “cowpower,” landfill, hydro) will pay off handsomely. And we'll export fewer petrodollars and circulate more of our local dollars, while getting closer to the equivalent to 100 mpg. Here's the win-win: think of the dams and our “native” distributed generation as our own refineries and service stations.

Tap two deep pockets (Wall Street-types and our tax dollars) To recover our Commons by investing in these sustainable projects, we can use the same formulas as the Texas wind farm developers who now boast about their #1 ranking as the leading state in wind power production. Sure, the vast plains of that former Republic supply plenty of wind, but those sharp cowboys have accessed the exploding alphabet soup of funding incentives — REC's (renewable energy credits), RPS's (renewable portfolio standards), CC's (carbon credits), CREB's (clean renewable energy bonds), as well as a complicated mix of Federal and state inducements. Believe it or not, there are Deep Pockets out there with such “an appetite” for tax breaks that they invest in Texas wind, take their write-offs over ten years and then sell off the money-makers because they can't be bothered with the pedestrian task of supervising O&M (operation and management).

Perhaps Vermont will never afford to host an NFL franchise to compete with the Dallas Cowboys, but we can certainly lure financial markets to invest in our vision as the #1 sustainable, energy self-sufficient State.

The no-brainer is simply to allocate monies from the $2 billion State employees retirement fund to invest in OurSelves. Not just the measely millions-over-the-years that is being proposed by the State Treasurer, but chunks large enough to leverage or outright purchase the dams, invest in locally-owned commercial-scale wind farms, district heating systems and countless other worthy projects like helping Vermonters purchase the new plug-in hybrids. l

• Confront The DarkSide, Walk into The Light Finally, the most logical and radical and ethical investment strategy of them all — admit to our addiction to cheap, exploited energy sources and work towards political independence or the “S” word — secession.

At last count, the Federal government has billed Vermonter taxpayers for $626 million (and counting) just for the war/occupation of Iraq that now carries a $431 billion price tag. Talk about sticker shock! Go to costofwar.com or nationalpriorities.org and watch the digital counter silently click away as it calculates the bill to the US taxpayers. I watched dumbfounded the inexorable climb towards who-knows-what? Somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $2 trillion depending on the length of the conflict and the extent of the downstream accounting criteria.

On the state level, we could have purchased dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers outright — meeting about 20% of our current demand and positioning ourselves to allocate our 1.5 cent/Kwhr electricity in a projected 5-10 cent/Kwhr New England wholesale market. Now that would be fun. To own the “cash cow” outright means we could parcel out low-cost power to stimulate local industry and re-invest “profits” in making Vermont energy independent.

Dividing $626 million by that number of living units in Vermont, we could project investing $2,232 in energy efficiency measures for each and every household. Imagine the fuel savings and improvement in our quality of life. Or grant each community an allocation (based on the number of living units) to invest in upgrading housing stock or developing community electric power generation.

Take Londonderry, a town famously resisting development of a commercial wind farm. Under this “formula,” the approximately 750 full-time resident living units multiplied by $2,232/share would give Londonderry more than $1.67 million to invest in their energy future. The town could choose to invest in energy self-reliance through a locally-owned wind farm, a wood-chip generator or energy efficiency measure. Including pooling their money with their neighbors like Peru, Stratton or Bondville. Good-bye NIMBY label.

But our mortaged support for that expression of the single most unsustainable activity — war — pales in comparison to our annual contribution to the Federal government's planned war economy. The acknowledged dean of East Asian studies and author of Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, Chalmers Johnson analyzed the total annual allocations to support the US war machine in 2006 at $720 billion.

Did we Vermonters paid out roughly $1.045 billion last year to keep ourselves safe? Or was to keep our selves warm, to keep us behind the wheel, to keep the lights on? Is that $1.025 is the true cost of Vermonters' enrollment in the National Energy Plan or The American Way of Life?

Will we Vermonters continue to tolerate the U.S. war taxes that bleed us to subsistence level individually and collectively? That rob us of our personal energy, our hard-earned dollars that we absolutely must retain to invest in our energy independence.

Our Commons, Ourselves

Who in the hell then sold our “white coal” down river? The Blame Game start with Investor-Owned-Utilities. The track record of Vermont's current line-up of IOU's speaks to a business culture of “corporate corruption.” If you stick with the logic of “corporate personhood, ” call them “Corporatists” — by which we mean out-of-state financial syndicates, utility speculators and brilliant moguls like Andrew Insull. But let's not forget the extensions of corporate control — Vermont's corporate managers, politicians, Regulators, and, of course, the Federal courts, governments and regulators. The Corporatists walked in Vermont's front door and carted everything out the back door.

But when you point the finger of blame, remember, three fingers point back to you. Lots of Vermonters helped the Corporatists and the Regulators.

We, the people, have failed to secure and protect our Vermont Commons. It's time for Vermonters to invest more of their time and energy in becoming well-informed citizens so we can step up our grassroots activities and work towards a sustainable economic future.

Postscript: A Damning Metaphor
What would our Vermont ancestors say about our current dependence on imported energy? About exporting the energy equivalent of 2,000,000 barrels of oil annually or about $120 million at $60/bbl as electrical power from the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers hydroelectric dams? About hosting a permanent radioactive waste dump and keeping secure hundreds-of-tons of highly toxic spent fuel on the banks of the Great River?

Would they acknowledge their own tradeoffs in harnessing energy? Would they warmly remember cutting, splitting and stacking tens of thousands of cords of wood to feed their insatiable, eclectic collections of open fireplaces and metal monsters while acknowledging the smoke-filled air and areas of deforestation? Would they speak glowingly of wrestling horse-drawn freight wagons over early wooden corduroy toll roads or rescuing coal-fired steam trains from spectacular derailments along narrow, treacherous river banks or carving up the countryside with ribbons of right-of-ways? Would they spin inspiring stories around their hodgepodge of manmade steppingstones — those charming mill ponds and water-wheeled mills — that interrupted the brooks and fish migrations while offering workers a myriad of wheels, pulleys and gears with which to feed their fingers?

Would they proudly point to dozens of early 1900's municipal electric companies boasting the reliability only rivaled by modern day Baghdad or Mumbai? Would they eulogize as epitomes of Yankee ingenuity the hundreds of cleverly retrofitted water-powered mills humming with electric dynamos and back-up coal-fired steam-powered systems that fueled Vermont's contribution to the explosive industrial revolution right into WW I? Would they admit that when the harbinger of the current centralized public utility grid in the form of that single wire strung along the poles finally appeared at their farmhouse window and then made the final leap to home and barn, they didn't weep and kiss the meter, instead of saying a prayer to heal the environmental devastation wrought by the coal companies down country.

Meanwhile, did anyone rue the day when they relegated the horses and oxen to the back-forty as the family invested in its first gasoline-powered vehicle — truck, tractor or family sedan? And fifty-odd years later, who among our more recent forbearers, except for a minority of intolerant hardliner flatland haters, would not trade the slow-motion State routes, #5, #7, #30, #100 to name a few, for the ease of unobstructed passage offered by the I-91 and I-91?

And who among our ancestors would connect the modern American Way of Life with a century of “resource wars” which had arrived in the various forms — as the Great Wars, later the seemingly endless Cold War sprinkled with conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and the Near East, and now as the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and its military presence in virtually every oil-rich country, starting with Columbia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and the Philippines?

Would the Venerable George Aiken share with us the reasoning behind his support in the cusp between the late 1950's and early 1960's for granting the Federal Government in the form of the Atomic Energy Commission permission to construct an atomic generating station on the banks of the Connecticut River? Would he admit that he felt squeezed in between the proverbial rock-and-hard-place? That the he feared more of the same rip-offs — the taking by eminent domain of more valuable farm land and community infrastructure, flooding the Commons, building more great hydroelectric dams, exporting its power and profits?

For Aiken, his decision to save Vermont farmers from the Great Hydropower Heisters opened the doors to the Peaceful Atom. Vermonters can now boast that their State ranks #1 in playing host to more radioactive waste per capita than any other State. Stored on the banks of the Connecticut, the Great River whose power, hydraulic and electrical, flows down-country. Our Watershed Commons bled and despoiled. How ironic. One of our icons of independent self-reliance fell for the old Corporatist bait-and-switch.”

I wonder who Old George is rooting for?