RUTLAND, Vt. (WCAX) – A Vermont correctional officer faces charges after investigators say he smuggled contraband into a prison.

Vermont State Police say David Orvis, 28, of Rutland, coordinated with at least two separate inmates to transport tobacco into the Marble Valley Correctional Facility. Police believe the inmates paid him to do so.

Orvis was reported to Vermont State Police back in February. He has since resigned and now faces charges of neglect of duty.

Orvis is due in court in June.

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In a pioneering measure to hold companies responsible for environmental damage, Vermont is poised to make oil and gas giants shell out billions in climate change cleanup.

Vermont’s Climate Superfund Act, which parallels the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, would mandate high-emission corporations — such as ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron — to be financially accountable for a portion of the costs of extreme weather damage in the state.

“For decades, fossil fuel corporations knowingly destroyed our planet for short-term profits,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders told ABC News.

If approved, companies responsible for more than one billion tons of greenhouse gas pollution in the state would make payments calculated based on each corporation’s emissions from 1995 to 2024, according to the legislation.

The bill would use data from the Carbon Majors database, which analyzes historical production data from 122 of the world’s largest oil, gas, coal and cement producers, to litigate the climate liability claims.

Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources would then allocate the funding for the Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program Fund to enhance infrastructure, weatherproof public buildings and address the health impacts of climate change, the bill states.

The groundbreaking measure would make Vermont the first state in the country to enact a bill of this kind, with New York, California, Maryland and Massachusetts attempting to push similar policies.

“I am proud that Vermont will go further than any other state in forcing the fossil fuel industry to pay for the destruction caused by the crisis of climate change,” Sanders said.

Marking a bipartisan victory, the bill passed in both Vermont’s Senate and House with an overwhelming majority and is headed to Republican Governor Phil Scott’s desk to sign or veto.

If vetoed, Vermont’s General Assembly is prepared to reconvene next month to consider an override vote, according to Vermont Public.

Proponents of the bill say the Superfund Act is the first legal step in a decades-long environmental crusade to hold polluting companies responsible for damaging waste.

“This effort comes down to a simple lesson that we all learn as kids: If you make a mess, you have to clean it up,” Elena Mihaly, vice president of the Vermont chapter of the Conservation Law Foundation, told ABC News.

In July 2023, catastrophic flooding drenched communities across Vermont, leaving two people dead, bridges and roads decimated and over a billion dollars in property damage in its wake, according to Mihaly.

“Last year’s devastating floods showed just how vulnerable Vermonters are to the climate chaos spurred by the fossil fuel industry,” Mihaly said, adding, “It’s Vermonters who bear the full burden of that chaos on our physical, mental and financial well-being.”

Adversaries of the bill warn the legislation would pit the state against billion-dollar corporations in a legal battle that could never make it out of the courtroom.

“A decision was made to go to war with corporations that probably have as many attorneys as we do citizens,” Vermont Sen. Russ Ingalls, who cast one of the three votes against the bill, told ABC News, adding, “We will be squashed like a bug.”

Ingalls contends the Superfund Act would “cause our property taxes to rise by nearly 15%,” arguing that the potential “millions” spent in litigation could be better spent.

A spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, argued the Superfund Act would “stall” corporation’s progress to create “low-carbon solutions.”

“America’s natural gas and oil industry is working to address climate change and build a lower carbon future, while simultaneously meeting the world’s growing energy needs,” API’s Scott Lauermann told ABC News.

“This proposal is nothing more than an unnecessary new fee on American energy that would only stall the innovative progress underway to accelerate low-carbon solutions while delivering the energy communities need,” Lauermann said.

Environmental experts fear that promises of a sustainable future are not pushing the needle far enough when extreme weather damage has left communities displaced, and a state scrambling to respond.

“The reality is, the climate crisis is here,” Ben Edgerly Walsh, climate and energy program director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, told ABC News. “It’s already costing even little Vermont hundreds of millions of dollars — so, we have to do right by our citizens and invest more in resiliency and adaptation.”

Infrastructure projects funded by corporations would include flood protections such as upgrading stormwater drainage systems, making defensive upgrades to roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems, retrofitting sewage treatment plants and other infrastructure sites vulnerable to flooding and more, according to the bill.

Mihaly believes “the Climate Superfund bill is a rational, lawful and necessary means of holding the fossil fuel industry accountable to pay their fair share of those burdens.”

“The global fossil fuel industry has contributed to making a mess in Vermont – and it’s time for them to help clean it up,” Mihaly said.

PLAINFIELD, Vt. (WCAX) –

A logger most of his life, Matt McAllister has seen nearly everything that can go wrong on a logging site.

“I’ve had plenty of issues I’ve had to fix,” McAllister said. “It’s just the nature of the beast.”

But McAllister, a native Vermonter, never lets those issues fester. He says he’s diligent about Acceptable Management Practices, or AMPs, regulations loggers must follow to maintain water quality on logging sites. “We’re not in it for two years. I mean, we’re in it for life. You wanna do a good job, you wanna keep the water clean, you wanna follow the AMPs. Most of it’s just common sense anyway,” McAllister explained.

Still, other loggers cut corners or fail to meet AMPs. Another logging company, Thomson Timber Harvesting and Trucking LLC, was just fined over $32,000 for violating AMPs. Between 2017 and 2020, the agency says Thomson Timber caused water quality and wetland issues on sites in Bridgewater and Thetford. Thomson Timber didn’t respond to our request for comment.

Watershed Forester David Wilcox with the Agency of Natural Resources says the state works hard to educate loggers about AMPs. “It’s a little frustrating. We try to make the rules as easy to follow as possible,” Wilcox explained. He says AMPs are there to preserve the environment: soil runoff can strip wetlands of nutrients, erode water banks and harm wildlife habitats. “We have a responsibility to follow the rules and implement good water quality practices so that we can show that we can harvest in Vermont and protect the environment.”

But even the most responsible loggers can struggle to meet AMPs. McAllister says they’re not only pricey but hard to maintain through increasingly unpredictable weather conditions like this winter. He recently met with Governor Scott to ask for support. “We really do need some help, especially when Mother Nature is at her worst.”

Wilcox says the state is working to offer loggers financial support so they’re better able to meet regulations.

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