WOODSTOCK – Vermont will flatten Suicide Six this fall and use the rocks and soil to fill the Quechee Gorge. \u201cThis multibillion dollar effort will create thousands of jobs and create new flat grounds for affordable housing,\u201d declared Governor Scott, \u201cand the Woodstock-Quechee area will finally be rid of any unfortunate mis-association with suicide.\u201d The announcement, which had been expected for some weeks, was made on the steps of the mansion in the Billings-Rockefeller National Park, which is one of the parks being sold by the Trump administration to fund the \u201cNewer Deal\u201d infrastructure improvement effort announced late last month and dubbed \u2018the mega-MAGA program\u2019 by the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the depictions of the final result on display inside the Billings Farm park office (they will be available to the public through April 15), once the top 3000 feet of Suicide Six have been leveled and transported to fill the Quechee Gorge, there will be two flat areas turned into Levittown-like developments and Suicide Six will be renamed Tabletop Two. \u201cThat hiking trail that starts by the cemetery in Woodstock will become a through road tying the new neighborhoods to Woodstock Village,\u201d noted Woodstock Town Manager Phil Swanson. \u201cWe\u2019ll be looking for townspeople to send suggestions for a name, but we already have an early favorite: Suburban Byway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In between the two neighborhoods will be an open area suitable for a box store, presumably a Walmart. \u201cThat will likely be called Trump Plaza,\u201d said Swanson. \u201cThe President has indicated to the Governor that he\u2019d like to make his first trip to Vermont someplace where there would be a lot of fresh concrete, and there will be something like 500 acres of it in the middle of Tabletop Two as we currently envision it, so naming it after him is a natural. We’re hoping to have at least six fast food restaurants up and running before his visit as well. Sort of our nod to the old Suicide Six resort.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The state had been wrestling with demands that the name of Suicide Six be changed and that the Quechee Gorge Bridge over Route 4 be turned into a concrete tube with television screens displaying the view for those unable to afford smartphones capable of running the free \u201cVermont Views It For You\u201d app. \u201cHaving this project shovel-ready as a result of the $50,000 appropriation Teo Zagar sponsored into Shumlin\u2019s final budget was an incredible boon,\u201d said Scott. \u201cWhen I met with President Trump at the Governor\u2019s Association meeting in February, he agreed that nothing is more beautiful than tract housing and this program will bring that sorely-missing and lower-cost housing to the Quechee-Woodstock vicinity. It was a perfect project for the Mega-MAGA program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another feature of the ambitious effort recognizes that with the Quechee Gorge filled to the brim with the remnants of Suicide Six, the various stores, restaurants, antique shops and vistor\u2019s center will no longer have purpose. \u201cThat\u2019s a lot of wonderfully flat land that is easy to build on,\u201d noted Scott Milne, who was introduced as the Chief Overseer of the project. \u201cWe forsee turning the entire stretch of Route 4 from the flashing light in Quechee to Exit 1 into a series of cookie-cutter single-family home neighborhoods with starting prices in the low 60\u2019s. Surely then every family making ends meet by juggling multiple seasonal jobs will be able to afford their own home, right on a main road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another aspect of the plan involves increasing the height of the Hartland Dam by 205 feet, and building a new wall along the southern edge of Quechee State park to increase the capacity of the flood-stage holding area. \u201cIt may have been the need for this 30-foot high concrete wall along the border of Matt Dunne and Simon Pearce\u2019s property in Hartland that really caught the President\u2019s eye,\u201d laughed Scott. \u201cIt sure caught mine. But the fact is, you fill up the Quechee Gorge after turning the bottom of the river into a big culvert pipe, and you lose some of the capacity of the Hartland Dam to hold back floodwaters. I know folks against this project tell me we can\u2019t do this because we are depriving future generations from the astonishing sight of the Quechee Gorge filled with 100 feet of water, as it was in the days after the Irene floods, but nobody really cares about stuff like that anymore; we have our screens to entertain us. Natural phenomena are just too unpredictable and fleeting. That\u2019s one of the reasons why Vermont just isn\u2019t attracting people, it\u2019s too easy to call it up on the Vermont Views It For You app when all you really want is a 5 minute break from MineCraft, not a four hour drive to a place with crappy internet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked about what is certain to be a firestorm of opposition, Scott smiled and said \u201cFor too long the ordinary working people in Vermont have had to put up with flatlanders telling them how to keep their storybook countryside pristine. But what\u2019s really been needed is more flat land. It\u2019s too damn expensive to build on steep slopes. And what with all the logging, blasting, trucking, grading, paving and building this project entails, we\u2019re talking about pumping hundreds of millions of dollars through our economy over the next few years. The opposition just isn\u2019t going to be able to turn their NIMBYism into the votes to shut it down. First off, most of them are non-residents who don\u2019t vote. Second, a lot of them are going to skedaddle and stay back in Boston when they realize they can\u2019t get a plumber to come for love or money until this project is done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pressed for an explanation of how this would get past Act 250, the governor shook his head and said \u201cThe federal money comes with a provision via executive order that no politically-correct state environmental regulations can be used to block this effort. So Act 250 has nothing to say about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked for comment, Peter Gregory of the Two Rivers Ottaquechee Regional Planning Commission said \u201cI think Mr. Scott is going to find himself trumped by the Vermont Supreme Court. This is one of the most incredible moments in the history of regional planning in Vermont: we had no idea this plan was being readied for this region. We will fight it with all the resources at our disposal, which will be considerable once we let Hartford know maybe the Milne plan wasn\u2019t so bad after all and get them back on board with us. If that doesn\u2019t work I\u2019m not sure we will be able to afford a lawsuit against this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the engineering schedule, the first work will start just after foliage season ends. \u201cThat\u2019s the beginning of a slow period for a lot of folks who work multiple seasonal jobs. We\u2019ll need thousands of people for this work at the very start, so my folks tell me that we should plan on a mid-October kickoff,\u201d Gov. Scott concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"