Mountain Times - Vol. 49, No. 53 - Dec. 30, 2020 - Jan 2, 2021

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2 • LOCAL NEWS The Mountain Times • Dec. 30, 2020 - Jan. 5, 2021 Study gives hope to people with internet connectivity problems in Rutland County By Emma Cotton/VTDigger Outdated internet services, exacerbated by the pandemic, have plagued residents in rural Rutland County towns. Now, a new feasibility study provides a path forward for them. Last spring, Meghan Hill, who teaches English at Fair Haven Grade School, taught classes remotely from her home in Benson, a community with no access to cable or fiber internet. With a remote learner also in the house, Hill said the push-and-pull for an available 10 megabits per second of DSL connectivity caused her face and voice to freeze or blur during class, and sometimes the Google Hangouts call dropped her entirely. “You just scramble,” she said. “I was pretty lucky that I never had any problems, that my kids were pretty good.” In Sudbury, Keith Knapp, a consultant, tries to meet with business partners overseas. Knapp, who grew up in the area, moved away for a job in medical device engineering. He retired early with the idea of running his own consulting business back in his home state. “I knew what I was getting into with regard to DSL, but I don’t think I realized how painful it would be,” he said. “You can’t really even do an effective Zoom call, for example. You can’t really do video conferencing at all, because the upload speed is so slow.” Working virtually, Knapp said, is “one of the reasons I came back to Vermont.” Knapp’s daughter, who attends Castleton University, couldn’t attend her remote classes from his Sudbury home when the college shut down its campus this spring. Instead, specifically seeking improved internet, she’s renting an apartment near campus. Knapp said he tries to keep the problems in perspective. His family is faring OK in the pandemic, all things considered. But for many individuals — and local economies — the problem is severe. “At least from my perspective, the ability to be productive in business and industry with crummy connections like that — it’s crushing,” he said. Four towns shut out Benson, Sudbury, West Haven and Goshen have no access to cable or fiber internet, and only 10% of Hubbardton has access to those services. The feasibility study, issued last week, provides suggestions for Rutland County towns with those connectivity problems. Chartered in April through a $60,000 grant, its thesis is hopeful: A communications union district — CUD for short; it’s a municipal entity that pools the resources of multiple towns to guide the expansion of communication infrastructure — is economically viable in the area. Bill Moore, president of the newly-minted Otter Creek CUD, formed earlier this year in anticipation of the study, stressed that representatives from the organization’s 13 member towns have many decisions to make before creating and expanding the network. Those decisions include choosing a network operator and determining whether they’ll partner with another CUD or remain independent. As a first step, to assess demand in the area, the study advises the CUD to conduct a pre-subscription campaign to find out what services residents want. The study was produced by ValleyNet and Rural Innovation Strategies Inc., the organization that recently produced a report offering a number of short-term solutions for the state’s connectivity problems during the pandemic, including using $2.4 million to install internet hotspots around the state. When the time arrives to begin building infrastructure in Rutland County, the study establishes a build sequence that prioritizes the four towns with no access to cable or fiber. A familiar story Moore said stories like Hill’s and Knapp’s are common throughout the rural areas of Rutland County. “You could randomly dial up anybody in Sudbury, Goshen, you know, and get those same sorts of stories,” he said. “Housing deals that fell through because they found that they couldn’t get more than satellite internet. We’re at a point now where we’re being held back.” The Vermont Legislature voted in 2015 to authorize the formation of CUDs, which act like sewer or solid waste districts. The state plans to ensure that all residences have access to high-speed internet by 2024, and has encouraged municipalities to form CUDs to that end. ECFiber, a district that covers much of Windsor County, was formed around 15 years ago and now includes 31 towns, whose residents largely receive high-quality internet. The CUD has been used as a model for other districts. “Critically, in Vermont,” the study reads, “this legislation also ensures that taxpayers in individual towns are not liable or responsible for mismanagement or failure of the CUD to repay debt incurred in building the network.” Existing, high-functioning fiber and cables services in the state are focused in its population centers. Within the county, 98.86% of Rutland City and 100% of Rutland Town are served by cable and fiber, for example. Oh, the geography In its description of the county, the study gives a sense of the challenges for rural areas. The outskirts of the county are covered by “challenging mountainous terrain,” it says, and have few major roads that run east-west and north-south. “Existing infrastructure often dead-ends on rural roads and traverses cross-county off the roadway, making it difficult to create a network with redundant distribution,” it reads. “The terrain would also make it difficult for a wireless network to provide universal service.” A CUD needs 5,000 customers to be economically viable. Two scenarios outlined by the study — partnering with another CUD, or activating independently — predict that Otter Creek will be able to gain that many customers in less than a decade. If it operates alone, the CUD’s internal rate of return is estimated to be 5.05% — higher than the cost of capital, which makes it financially sustainable — but not as high as the alternative scenario, in which Otter Creek partners with another CUD. In that case, the rate of return increases to 5.6%. Moore said Otter Creek will likely partner with either Catamount Fiber CUD in Bennington County, or Maple Broadband CUD in Addison County. Moore called the study the CUD’s “guiding document.” He said broadband is more important now than ever, with school, work and doctors’ appointments all happening through the internet. As Brandon’s economic development director, Moore also worries about property values, and the study verifies his concern: Values increase 3% to 5% when the property is connected to fiber. On the other side, the study says lack of sufficient broadband “impacts the ability of homeowners to sell their homes at any price.” John Hill, Benson’s representative on the Otter Creek CUD, said he has similar concerns in the small town of 907 residents. “There are people who recently moved into town and recently started working from home and the service is really slow,” he said. “Benson is a nice little town with some good things going for it. If we had highspeed internet service, I think it would help the economy a lot.” The district has more decisions to make before it can act, and for many board members, there’s a learning curve involved. “We are all neophytes, every last one of us,” Moore said. “But it looks like we’ve got some paths forward we can choose.”
The Mountain Times • Dec. 30, 2020 - Jan. 5, 2021 LOCAL NEWS • 3 By Brett Yates Rutland residents will see an increase in their water and sewer bills next year. On Dec. 21, the Board of Aldermen approved the Dept. of Public Works’ new rate schedule for Fiscal Year 2022 (FY22), which begins on July 1, 2021. Rutland City bills households and businesses quarterly for water, wastewater treatment, and wastewater collection (listed as “sewer maintenance”), based on usage, in addition to assessing two flat service fees each cycle. Next summer, the city will begin to charge $1.719 and $4.655 per 100 cubic feet of wastewater for collection and treatment, respectively — compared to existing rates of $1.344 and $4.406. A concurrent reduction in the water rate — from $3.359 per 100 cubic feet to $2.968 — will only partially offset the raised sewer rates. The two flat fees ($29.05 for water and $17.55 for sewer, every three months) will go unchanged. By Amanda Gokee/VTDigger Demand for organic milk in Vermont has gone up during the pandemic, which is welcome news for organic farmers, particularly after a three-year period without growth in consumption. Cooperatives such as Organic Valley, the largest farmerowned organic cooperative in the United States, have responded by allowing some farmers to increase production. The cooperative says demand for organic milk has gone up across the country by 11.3% in the past 52 weeks, based on data from SPINS MULO, a multi-outlet tracking service, looking back from Nov. 29. Over the past 12 weeks, it’s grown by 8.4%. The increase is encouraging news for the future of organic dairy farming in Vermont, said John Cleary, New England manager for Organic Valley Cooperative. “We do hope to bring on more farmers in Vermont in the future,” he said. Many farmers have gone organic to get a premium price. Even a modest 5% to 7% increase in consumption “means we need quite a bit more milk,” Cleary said. He estimates that market demand could sustain about 50 more organic dairy farms in the next five to 10 years. Vermont now has about 200 organic dairy farms, with herds ranging in size from 15 cows to 350 or so. Vermont has about 650 total dairy farms in all, accounting for 80% of the state’s working landscape. But dairy has been in crisis for years, with farmers losing money and many farms going out of business. Organic dairy is an attractive option for farmers because it pays more than conventional milk. Right now, organic milk in Vermont is sold for $30 to $35 a hundredweight, and there’s an extra premium for grass-fed milk, which ranges from $35 to $40. Conventional dairy farmers get about half that much. With organic milk, “that’s a price that farmers can make money, if you’re a good manager,” said Cleary. However, too much organic milk can cause a glut in the market and lead to a decrease in price, as happened in 2017. So, cooperatives have to coordinate carefully. While conventional dairy farms have been getting bigger in an effort to compete, organic dairies can do well on a smaller scale, and Cleary says that’s an opportunity for Vermont. “A lot of other parts of the country don’t have the same number of small-scale dairies left,” he said. Dairy farmers in Vermont have been grappling to find solid financial footing, and the pandemic made things Rutland to raise sewer rates All in all, the Dept. of Public Works estimates that, under the new rate schedule, an average family of four in Rutland City, using about 200 gallons of water per day, will pay $270.81 for water and sewer per quarter, an increase of 2.11% over their old bill of $265.22. The new rate schedule will also affect some customers in Rutland Town, Mendon, and Killington who make use of Rutland City’s water and/or sewer services. Sam Gorruso was the only Rutland City alderman to vote against the new water and sewer rates, observing that many ratepayers are already having a hard time covering their bills during the pandemic. “I don’t know why we can’t cut somewhere. I don’t know why, when we need more money, we just go to the “It’s all debt service that’s forcing this,” Wennberg explained. ratepayers all the time,” he said. Public Works Commissioner Jeff Wennberg sought to emphasize his department’s frugality. Although the lease-purchase of a new sewer flushing truck will contribute to a $13,592 jump in the operational budget for wastewater collection in FY22, that of wastewater treatment will drop by $41,777 due to expected efficiencies associated with the rehabilitation of the sewage plant’s digester. The Water Divisions’ total operational budget, meanwhile, will fall from $1,937,504 to $1,833,213, owing partly to the replacement of defunct meter contractor FATHOM Water Services with a collection of cheaper vendors. Reduced water usage — particularly noticeable during the spring’s coronavirus-induced worse. One casualty was Thomas Dairy in Rutland, a family business that closed in October after nearly 100 years in operation. But while conventional milk lost the regular business they did with restaurants at the start of the governor’s stay-home order, organic dairy got a boost at a time when people were staying (and eating) at home more often. Demand for retail grocery products has increased, while food service has gone down, as people are eating more meals at home and fewer meals out, said Elizabeth McMullen, a spokesperson for Organic Valley. E-commerce has also been affected, according to McMullen, and demand for single-service milk products has gone up. “We have seen an impact in demand because of social distancing and more consumers eating at home. As more and more people look for healthy, quality ingredients, we have seen increased demand for our organic products,” McMullen said in a statement. “During stressful times, or for other reasons, maybe people are looking for healthy foods and foods that align with their values,” said Cleary. Longtime organic practices like cover-cropping are now being used by some conventional farmers to keep soil from eroding into nearby waterways; the practice keeps roots in the soil year-round. And organic farms are held to other standards, like crop rotation and pasturing animals. Rotating crops keeps the soil healthy and able to hold more water, while pasturing animals allows manure to spread onto soil more gradually than liquid storage. So, more organic dairies could benefit the environment, keeping waters clean. Maddie Kempner of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) said Vermont producers report higher demand for organic food across all product categories, even beyond dairy. “People are going more out of their way to seek out options that they feel are supporting their overall health and well-being at a time when that’s really, really necessary,” she said. But added too much of Vermont’s agricultural economy is based on dairy, and that poses a risk. “I don’t think there’s any other state in the country who has as much of their farmland tied up in producing one commodity. So that’s an economic reality that we really need to look at and think about how to diversify, for our own food security and the future of that working landscape,” Kempner said. shutdown of restaurants and hotels — will also enable Public Works to skip its previously annual purchase of fluoride and zinc orthophosphate for water treatment and draw instead from its existing stockpile next year. But Rutland City’s responsibility, starting in 2021, to begin to pay off a $7.4 million bond approved by voters in 2019 to fund major sewage system improvements, made a rate increase unavoidable in Wennberg’s view. “It’s not operations. We’ve cut those as far as we dare. It’s all debt service that’s forcing this,” Wennberg explained at a meeting earlier in the month. Rutland previously raised the combined sewer and water rate three years ago. As of November 2018, Rutland City residents paid more for water and sewer than Vermonters in Burlington and South Burlington and less than those in Montpelier and Barre. Demand for organic milk has gone up during the pandemic Market demand could sustain about 50 more organic dairy farms in the next five to 10 years.
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Mountain Times - Vol. 49, No. 53 - Dec. 30, 2020 - Jan 2, 2021

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