By JOHN FLOWERS

SALISBURY — Faced with mounting expenses, soaring fuel bills, lower client rolls and the prospect of major new competition, Shard Villa — one of the oldest and most historically significant senior care facilities in Vermont — will likely close its doors this November.

While the Shard Villa board of directors plans to keep the ornate, 130-year-old mansion and its spectacular Italian wall murals open to the public, the senior care component of the estate — barring a quick, major infusion of cash — will cease operation this fall after an almost 90-year run. That portends a potentially traumatic uprooting for more than a dozen current Shard Villa residents (most of whom are in their 90s) and layoffs for the 14 full- and part-time workers at the facility.

“It is a decision that has been a long-time coming, and not an easy one to make,” said Shard Villa board President Diane Benware. “But it does not seem economically feasible to continue.”

While the board has not yet formally voted to close Shard Villa’s elder care operation, it is taking steps that would lead toward ending that service on Nov. 1. Those steps include notifying the state of Vermont and securing permission through Addison County Probate Court, which is responsible for enforcing the execution of wills.

Columbus Smith built Shard Villa in 1872-74. He and his wife Harriett began taking in elders in 1919, then the family formally launched the senior care facility in an L-shaped addition built in 1922 — a service they sought to perpetuate through their respective wills. Shard Villa leaders will have to convince a probate court judge that financial hardship now makes the senior care operation untenable.

Officials vowed to work with families to find new accommodations for current Shard Villa residents. They also promised to work with staff to line up new jobs.

By KATHRYN FLAGG

SALISBURY — Collin Tompkins was one of the first out of the old Lund boat, springing onto the narrow dock while the 16-foot craft shimmied up alongside its moorings.

He, like the other three young men in the boat, was damp and smiling. It was a game of back and forth for a little while, and the four men, their wetsuits slung down to mid-waist, looked like they’ve done this a hundred times. Someone secured the boat. Another hoisted their dripping scuba equipment into a deep wheelbarrow.

And among the last items unloaded onto the dock, and then piled into the wheelbarrow, were several mesh bags filled with heavy, wet weeds — Eurasian watermilfoil, the invasive species this team of young divers is at work carefully plucking from Lake Dunmore’s lakebed.

Tompkins, 22, Nate Bierschenk, 19, Derek LaRosee, 19, and Will Pitkin, 17, are the specially trained corps of divers that make up the Lake Dunmore/Fern Lake Association (LDFLA) Milfoil Project. They’re charged with keeping the milfoil problem in Lake Dunmore and Fern Lake — Dunmore’s little sister — in check.

But in addition to serving as lake watch guards, these divers also happen to be a friendly gaggle of students — boys happy with a summer job that puts them on the lake, in the water and among good company.

“It’s a nice way to be on the lake all summer and help out,” said Bierschenk, whose family owns a house on Dunmore.

It’s a remarkable team, in large part because Tompkins, Bierschenk, Pitkin and LaRosee — and the “Lake System Monitors” who have staffed the project in previous summers — demonstrate that it is possible to control milfoil in an environmentally friendly way, without chemicals, herbicides or lumbering, expensive mechanical harvesters.

By VICKY SINAGRA

St.AlbansMessenger

ST. ALBANS — Maurice Lamothe knows engines. Since 1974, he has operated Lamothe’s Repair Shop on Lower Newton Road in St. Albans, and while he’s seen many changes in the past three decades, nothing has been as alarming as recently introduced gasoline additives, which he says are causing problems in the engines and fuel systems of his customer’s cars and boats.

“Three months ago when we opened up the boats from winter, they had bad gas, dirty gas,” he said. Lamothe has also seen the same problem in luxury cars, adding that one BMW owner went through three fuel pumps and gas filters, spending $700 to fix problems Lamothe attributes to gas.

“A BMW will not handle dirty gas,” he said. Lamothe said he believes the problem may have something to do with ethanol.

According to The Boat Owner’s Association of The United States, many states have mandated the replacement of the gasoline additive MTBE (methyl tertiary-butyl ether) with ethanol.

This changeover was part of the 2005 Energy Bill, which also eliminated the requirement for oxygenated gas, the main reason MTBE, a suspected carcinogen and groundwater pollutant, was added in the first place.

The bill also required ethanol, made from Midwestern corn, to be gradually added to the nation’s supply of gasoline.

A blend of gasoline with ethanol added, called E-10, contains 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline and is being sold locally.

MEMBERS OF MAIDEN Vermont, an all-female a capella group from Addison County, sing and dance on the stage of Middlebury’s Festival on-the-Green Monday night. The festival’s tent and the town green were filed with local fans for the second night of the week-long event.
Independent photo/Trent Campbell