Sometimes, the law is a head scratcher.
Take, for example, the Thurman W. Dix Reservoir, a little over 100-acre pond in Orange that serves as Barre City’s water supply.
The Granite City owns all the land around the reservoir, allowing fishing access at two designated points and granting hunting permission through permits. But because the reservoir provides clean water to thousands of Vermonters, the city tightly controls what happens on and around the pond — and posts the property accordingly.
So imagine Nicolas Storellicastro’s frustration when he, the city manager, discovered that the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife had permitted multiple fishing tournaments on the reservoir for 2026, despite the lack of public access.
Tuesday, Barre City’s top administrator was seeking help from the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee.
According to Storellicastro, the state told him that because tournament attendees could technically “parachute in” to the reservoir, thus avoiding the private property boundary, the state permitted the tournaments.
In response, Barre City plans to station police at the reservoir during the February and June tournaments to trespass attendees, according to Storellicastro, paying police overtime to stop the tournament in its tracks.
“We’re unfortunately going to have some possible confrontations between people trying to access this tournament and us trespassing them,” he said, calling the situation “completely avoidable.”
It’s the sort of fiasco lawmakers hope to prevent with S.224, a bill that would, in part, give towns authority to regulate the use of a public water body used as a municipal drinking source if the municipality owns or controls the surrounding land.
S.224 would give Barre’s City Council the authority to decide what happens on the Dix Reservoir, a power the city currently lacks.
Sen. Anne Watson, D/P-Washington, the committee chair, suggested the bill could address concerns beyond pollution, like the possibility that invasive zebra mussels gum up Barre’s water system if they were introduced in the reservoir.
Like the Dix reservoir, other public water sources across the state are open to some public recreation, such as Berlin Pond, which hydrates Montpelier, and Lake Champlain.
Unlike those larger bodies of water, though, Dix is more susceptible to contamination due to its small size, Storellicastro said. “Dilution is the solution to pollution,” he quipped, but Barre’s not equipped to handle intense toxins.
In the know
U.S. Rep. Becca Balint, D-Vt., has had enough of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“You cannot look at the job that she is doing and say that she should stay in that position,” Balint told reporters at the Statehouse Tuesday. Amid the federal government’s deadly immigration crackdown in Minneapolis in recent weeks, Noem should be impeached — unless she quits or President Donald Trump removes her from her post first, Balint said.
Noem “has lied to us repeatedly,” Balint continued, about what transpired in the moments leading up to when federal agents shot and killed both Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In addition, Balint argued that Noem has violated federal law by directing her Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, to hold up disaster response funding to states in the past year.
A House impeachment resolution targeting Noem has 140 co-sponsors, including Balint, which is nearly two-thirds of the Democratic caucus, Politico reported Tuesday.
— Shaun Robinson
A group of about 30 Vermont House members introduced a resolution Tuesday “strongly supporting the existing U.S.-Denmark treaty related to Greenland and opposing American efforts to secure sovereignty over the island.” The measure’s lead sponsor is Rep. Will Greer, D-Bennington.
The resolution, J.R.H.7, was sent to the House Government Operations and Military Affairs Committee for further consideration.
— Shaun Robinson
Nick Deml, former commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, will lead the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City.
Federal district judge Laura Taylor Swain picked Deml for the role Tuesday, the New York Times reported.
In May, the judge first decided an outside official — rather than a member of the mayor’s staff — should run the jail complex as a “remediation manager,” years into federal oversight of the scandal-plagued institution.
Deml stepped down from his Vermont post in August after almost four years on the job. He previously worked for the CIA and said he would begin consulting on prison-related issues following his departure.
Read the full story here.
— Ethan Weinstein
On the move
Vermont’s House Appropriations Committee voted out its version of this year’s annual tuneup to state spending, the Budget Adjustment Act, on Monday.
The committee’s proposal would direct $5 million to help soften the blow of federal funding reductions to the Section 8 housing program, which helps thousands of Vermonters cover rent. That money would come from a pot of funds already earmarked in the budget for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, to plug potential federal funding cuts.
The legislation, which passed House Approps with unanimous support, is set to be up for second reading on the floor Thursday.
— Shaun Robinson
Correction: Due to inaccurate legislative testimony, a previous version of this newsletter incorrectly referenced which state department issues fishing tournament permits.
