Ed Hathaway died March 7, 2025, after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. Ed was the lead EPA engineer on the cleanup of the Elizabeth Mine and Ely Mine Superfund hazardous waste sites.
Ed was a brilliant and innovative engineer with a remarkable ability to bring people together to resolve disagreements and find workable solutions. He was a wizard in the complex world of Superfund and managed to steer over $100 million of federal money to Vermont for the cleanup of the Elizabeth Mine, including an unprecedented award of funds to replace roads damaged by heavy truck traffic.
The cleanup of the mine capped the mine tailings that were polluting the Ompomponoosuc River, removed the cloud of liability over the property and led to the creation of a 5 megawatt solar array that generates enough electricity to power over 1,300 homes while paying property taxes to Strafford and Thetford.
At a time when EPA personnel are being fired without cause and administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to cut the agency’s budget by 65%, it is worth pausing to honor the memory of a true public servant whose 30-plus-year career at the EPA, filled with awards and accolades, enhanced the quality of life in communities throughout New England. One way to honor Ed’s legacy is to encourage our elected officials to oppose efforts to demolish the EPA in the name of “efficiency.”
Patrick Parenteau
Thetford Center
Funding freeze hurts farms
President Trump has frozen huge amounts of government funding, “impounding” money Congress had appropriated. The freeze has hurt Americans everywhere, including farmers who’d signed contracts with the Department of Agriculture to improve infrastructure and who had paid up front to put in fences, plant different crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs. Now, with that money illegally frozen, they’re left hanging.
The freeze also paused some funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance to improve infrastructure. Funding for scientific research grants in agriculture and producing climate-smart crops has also been frozen, according to a letter sent to the agency by Democrats on the House Agriculture and Appropriations committees.
The administration rescinded the pause after a federal judge temporarily halted its implementation. But farmers reported that their funding remained frozen — another blow to farmers who are also facing threats of tariffs and freezes to foreign aid spending that involved food purchased from American producers. The freeze is unjust and illegal and must stop!
Steve Gehlert
West Newbury, Vt.
What ‘America First’ means
In the 1940s, Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, created political cartoons for a newspaper. In one of his cartoons, a smiling mother wearing a shirt labeled “America First” is reading a book entitled “Adolf the Wolf” to her children. The children look on incredulously as the mother reads “…the Wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones. … But those were Foreign Children and it really didn’t matter.” The meanness, lack of caring for others, and self-centeredness coming out of Washington these days doesn’t seem too far removed from this 1940s cartoon.
Dena Romero
Hanover
The limits of antisemitism
One hears the word, “antisemitism” more and more frequently these days. It is attributed to anyone who opposes the policies of the Israeli government.
I, for one, resent this attribution. I have great respect for Jews, as a people who have endured oppression down through the ages, and as individual friends and neighbors. I support the State of Israel. But I deplore the treatment of the Palestinians by the current Israeli government: forcing the Palestinians off their land, building Jewish settlements there, refusing to consider the establishment of a Palestinian state, and finally the killing of Palestinian men, women and children in revenge for a terrorist attack.
It is not antisemitic to speak out against the actions of the current Israeli government.
Doug Smith
Enfield