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Jack Scully
Member since May 30, 2017
Recent Comments
Re: “What Is That White Dome on a Hill Overlooking St. Albans?”
A good friend of mine was an airman at this radar site in 1961-1962. Trained as an electronic technician at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, he often regaled us with stories of his duty at the Dome.
For 8-hour shifts, he sat at a large CRT screen watching for blips (Soviet aircraft) coming south through the Arctic Circle. He took the job seriously for about a month before realizing it was a fool's mission. That's when the fun began. He and his buddies soon discovered a way to patch into AT&T telephone lines from the USAF secure communications network. He estimated he spent 2-3 hours a day talking to girl friends and fellow airmen at other Domes. He and a computer savvy buddy at a Dome site in New York used their monitors and telephones to daily play an early version of online chess.
To this day whenever I see the white dome on the horizon, I am reminded not just of the Cold War, but also of the ingenuity of young men and women who used their native intelligence and wits to pass the time away.
Posted by
Jack Scully
on 05/30/2017 at 8:56 PM
Re: “Malletts Bay Sewer Proposal Hits Choppy Waters”
Thanks Molly for a timely overview of the Malletts Bay sewer issue. Two important points need clarification. Defeat of the $14 million sewer proposal does not mean Colchester residents must live with polluted water in the inner Bay. Rather, it opens the door for real progress against both point-source and non-point source pollution.
First, camps, being converted to permanent homes along East Lakeshore Drive, notably at the Mongeon and Lefebvre properties, are not squeezing septic systems onto small lakeside lots. Rather, they are pumping wastewater to state-of-the-art septic mound systems on the land side of the road. Such developments called "Decentralized Wastewater Management Systems'" are sanctioned by the EPA and Vermont.
Second, the town owns sufficient land on and near East Lakeshore Drive and Goodsell Point to implement a multi-mound system for some 60 homes/camps on the rim of the Bay. In Charlotte, officials and volunteers developed a four-mound septic system for 112 camps on Thompson's Point. Built over 20 years ago for less than $2 million, it has eliminated any trace of human waste from these camps into Lake Champlain.
If Charlotte, Bristol, Rochester, and Shoreham can successfully solve the "failing septic" problem with decentralized wastewater systems, surely we can do the same in Colchester.