Vermont Yankee

A he-said-she-said battle over a Vermont Yankee oversight ignited between the Green Mountain State's Democratic and Republican gubernatorial candidates Thursday and continued into Friday.

The controversy began Thursday afternoon when House Speaker Gaye Symington (D-Jericho) held a press conference attacking incumbent Gov. Jim Douglas (R-Middlebury) for what she claimed was inadequate monitoring of the facility. She argued that the Douglas administration had complicated the Public Oversight Panel's tasks, then proposed a set of her own policies regarding the monitoring of Vermont Yankee.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gaye Symington has been on the attack this week, assailing on Thursday incumbent Gov. Jim Douglas (R-Middlebury) for his policies related to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power facility, while proposing some of her own.

At a press conference Thursday afternoon, Symington, the state House speaker, hammered the governor for what she claimed was a failure to provide adequate oversight of  Vermont Yankee. She then outlined her own set of initiatives for dealing with the aging power plant should she be elected governor in November.

Symington claimed that Douglas' oversight was "weak" and that "Vermonters are not being well served."

Gov. Jim Douglas' gubernatorial challengers attacked his policies, and those of his administration, in regard to the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant today. 

This morning, the Brattleboro Reformer ran an Op-Ed story by Democratic gubernatorial candidate and House Speaker Gaye Symington in which she criticized the Douglas administration for what she calls their "false claims and obstructionist tactics" coupled with "a very public effort to denigrate the Public Oversight Panel." 

Gov. Jim Douglas (R-Middlebury), House Speaker Gaye Symington (D-Jericho) and Anthony Pollina (I-Middlebury) squared off in their first gubernatorial debate yesterday evening in Waitsfield, sparing over environmental issues and food policy for over an hour.

The three major candidates presented their positions and defended their records on everything from fuel to the food they had eaten that day.  

A leak in one of Vermont Yankee's cooling towers has state officials and legislators concerned that the owner of the nuclear power plant in Vernon is not doing all that it promised to insure the plant operates safely.