Town officials in Chester are still assessing the damage from Monday afternoon’s flash flooding. They say more than three inches of rain fell on Chester and the Williams River, creating the worst flooding since Tropical Storm Irene hit the area almost three years ago.

Town Manager David Pisha says a number of roads have washed out and culverts are plugged.

"The river moved up on Potash Brook Road, to the extent that we will probably be constructing a new bridge just to accommodate the move in the river," Pisha says.

When then-Burlington Free Press photographer Emily McManamy captured the scenes at a monthly pro-wrestling event in St. Albans a few years back, she thought it would just be for a newspaper story. But with the help of the Folklife Center in Middlebury, she’s turned it into a multi-media exhibit that the Center is currently hosting.

“Hitting the Mat” features photographs, audio interviews and looping video clips of the office workers and carpenters turned villains and superheroes that turn out for Slam All-Star Wrestling each month at the Moose Lodge in St. Albans. 

Groups of volunteers in over 100 towns have been educating and facilitating home owners and municipalities transition to small-scale renewable energy or to find ways to reduce energy consumption. It’s the work of Vermont’s town energy committees.

When scientists need massive volumes of data or they need data collected over a huge geographic range, they often turn to well-trained citizen scientists for help. From counting the populations of species, to monitoring water quality, citizen scientists are contributing to research and learning about science in the process. We dive into some of the research projects in Vermont that are boosted by citizen-gathered data. Our guest is Larry Clarfeld, an environmental educator at the North Branch Nature Center in Montpelier.

A group of protestors associated with Rising Tide Vermont briefly stopped work at a Vermont Gas Systems pipe yard in Williston Wednesday morning.

The group, singing protest songs and chanting, marched across a field and through the pipe yard before staging a sit-in at the entrance to the site, blocking vehicles from coming in or leaving.

Unlike at previous protests, like a “knit-in” that led to one arrest, the protestors fled as soon as a Vermont Gas official approached them. It was a coordinated effort to evade being served notifications of trespass.

This is the time of year Vermont cities and towns set the municipal tax rates and start sending out property tax bills. Vermont property taxes pay for public education as well as municipal infrastructure and government services. As such, municipal tax rates vary widely based upon the level of service provided by cities and towns.

Senator Patrick Leahy has introduced legislation that makes major changes in surveillance programs used by the U.S. government.

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, Leahy has worked on this issue for several months.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Leahy said his goal is to end the massive data searches that the National Security Agency has conducted in recent years.

Applications are now being accepted for the first round of funds provided by Entergy Vermont Yankee for economic development in Windham County. In a settlement with the state, Entergy agreed to pay $10 million over five years to help the region recover from the plant’s closing later this year.

Funeral services for Cheryl Hanna will be held Friday at 3 p.m.  in the Ira Allen Chapel at the University of Vermont.  

The well-known Vermont Law School professor died suddenly on Sunday. 

According to a news release, law school trustee emeritus and former board chair J. Scott Cameron will speak at the service.

Two years ago, Vermont’s House Committee on Health Care became the first legislative panel in the country to approve a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The vote triggered a massive response from the beverage industry, which poured more than $600,000 into advertising and lobbying aimed at killing the measure.

“We really got outspent, big time,” says Tina Zuk, director of government relations for the American Heart Association. “I think we got outspent 80-to-1.”