If you're looking for "I Spys," dating or LTRs, this is your scene.
View ProfilesPublished January 10, 2024 at 10:00 a.m.
Vermont legislators returned to Montpelier last week eager to help the state recover from July's floods, rebuild with resilience and prevent future catastrophes. They quickly introduced several flood-related bills, and others are in the works.
Some measures are narrowly focused, such as a proposal by Rep. Peter Anthony (D-Barre City) to compel redesign of a bridge over the Stevens Branch, which he says exacerbated flooding in North Barre.
Others are sweeping pieces of legislation that could be budget-busters. Topping the list is a bill put forward by central Vermont lawmakers that calls for $85 million in bailouts for flood-affected homeowners, businesses and municipalities across the state.
Rep. Conor Casey (D-Montpelier), who cosponsored the comprehensive flood recovery proposal, acknowledged "It's a beast of a bill."
That initiative got plenty of attention on the first day of the legislative session as flood victims and advocates gathered in Montpelier to support it. At a rally on the Statehouse steps, Montpelier residents Katie Swick and Mary Zentara described how their flooded homes remain uninhabitable and need to be raised several feet before they can begin reconstruction.
"Montpelier has begun to rebuild on many levels, and that is just wonderful," Zentara told the crowd. "We're stuck in limbo."
Jen Roberts, co-owner of Onion River Outdoors, said a state program meant to compensate businesses for lost inventory was helpful but wouldn't go nearly far enough.
"The road to recovery is long and slow, and there are many expenses that are not on the list of physical losses," she said.
And Rep. Johnathan Williams (D-Barre City) said the state needs to refill municipal coffers drained by the lengthy flood response and sharply lower property and business tax revenues.
"My community, Barre City, must be made whole, but the burden of recovery should not and must not fall on the shoulders of Barre residents alone," he said.
The entire 22-page bill may not become law, Casey acknowledged, as other proposals addressing specific areas such as dam safety and lost business revenue could move forward separately.
The big flood bill will also face pushback from the administration of Gov. Phil Scott. The governor has urged lawmakers to face financial reality: Federal pandemic relief funds are drying up, and the economy is slowing.
Nevertheless, the bill offers insight into how some lawmakers view short- and long-term flood recovery in a mountainous state that is wetter and warmer because of global climate change.
"We thought it was important to present it as a package to show the enormity of what we're facing going forward," Casey said.
The measure's key provisions fall into three broad categories: flood recovery, resilience and preventative measures.
One recovery goal is to bail out cities and towns facing major financial shortfalls. Montpelier, which was especially hard-hit by July's flooding, is grappling with a budget "in shambles," Casey said. The loss of tax revenue from shuttered downtown businesses has dug a $1.5 million hole in the city's funds. Without state aid, the city faces the prospect of "brutal cuts" including to first responders and senior centers, he said.
Williams, the Barre City representative, said his community is facing a similar shortfall. To preserve essential services, the city already has instituted a range of spending cuts — down to halting the use of color photocopiers in city offices. "I know that sounds almost cartoonish, but it's the reality of the situation," Williams said.
To shore up municipal budgets, the bill includes a $15 million grant program for communities that lost tax revenue. Businesses would also get bailouts. An existing program announced by the Agency of Commerce and Community Development was helpful but woefully insufficient, lawmakers said. The agency's grants only cover physical damages, such as lost inventory or equipment, and do not reimburse lost revenue, employee wages, or administrative and reconstruction costs. The lost business revenue from the July flood in central Vermont is estimated at $300 million, Casey said.
A new $10 million program would provide grants to businesses and nonprofits that suffered losses. So many businesses are unable to reopen without financial help that the long-term cost of not helping them would be far greater, Casey said.
"When you have your entire central Vermont economy coming to a standstill, you need to restart that engine," he said.
Homeowners, too, could receive aid if their stricken properties are not eligible for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The bill sets aside $10 million to buy out properties, remove structures, elevate them or otherwise make them more flood-resistant.
It would also boost by $2 million an existing state program offering grants of up to $50,000 to build or rehabilitate rental properties. The additional money would aid projects in towns affected by the flooding, speeding the construction of new rental units.
That need is particularly acute in Barre. About 60 percent of city residents are renters, and the July flood wiped out 50 to 100 units of housing, said Anthony, who lost his own home.
"While Montpelier's Main Street and business community got hammered, it's our residential sector in the North End that got hammered," Anthony said.
The bill also includes proposals to help communities weather future storms. This includes $3 million to install larger culverts capable of handling more floodwater, $2 million to protect wastewater treatment plants from flooding and $2 million for long-term flood recovery groups that to date have been largely volunteer efforts, Williams said.
The legislation also seeks to improve the state's emergency response, which was harshly criticized in the wake of the July flood. Williams said major shortcomings included the failure of the state's 211 system to handle the spike in calls asking for assistance and the disorganized way emergency officials processed nonemergency service requests.
"People died in my community, and I believe people were severely harmed by the failure of our state programs," Williams said.
The bill includes $700,000 for grants to fund emergency managers in each of the regional planning commissions. It also instructs the Vermont Emergency Management division to explore using the enhanced 911 system to better alert residents of impending danger and to develop and share best practices for flood recovery.
The bill includes $10 million for removing obsolete dams, which conservation groups say can help prevent flooding. The bill identifies dams on the Winooski River for expedited removal, something the Vermont River Conservancy is already studying.
A related initiative would commission a $500,000 study of land in the Winooski River Valley that "should be acquired or conserved in order to protect communities in the watershed from recurring flood events." Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore has asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to pay for a similar study of the Winooski River basin.
Vermont has a long history of turning riverbeds into walled channels that leave floodwater nowhere to go but up and over their banks, explained Rob Evans, the river programs manager at the Agency of Natural Resources. He told lawmakers last week that restoring rivers' connections with historic floodplains is a crucial flood-prevention strategy.
"That's a river's pressure-relief valve, where it can get out onto the floodplain, spread out, slow down, store floodwater, and deposit sand and debris," Evans told a joint meeting of House committees with an interest in the legislation.
At the rally on the Statehouse steps, Sen. Anne Watson (D/P-Washington) said she is keenly interested in flood prevention strategies that remove defunct dams, reconnect rivers to their floodplains and increase the natural buffers along waterways.
She noted a project along the Dog River in Northfield as a textbook example. After 2011's Tropical Storm Irene, the town purchased several flood-damaged homes and replaced them with a park designed to accommodate floodwaters.
When the Dog River rages today, floodwaters are about half a foot lower than they would have been without the project, Watson said.
"Six inches may not sound like a lot, but if that six inches is in your living room, that makes a huge difference," she told the crowd.
When the governor spoke about flooding during his annual State of the State speech last week, it was mostly as a backdrop to stories of resiliency and neighbors helping neighbors.
Scott's budget priority is to ensure the state has sufficient matching funds set aside to maximize disaster relief from FEMA, which will run into the tens of millions of dollars, spokesperson Jason Maulucci said.
"We have not had the chance to review the proposal from several lawmakers but would be interested to see where they think the $85 million should come from," Maulucci said.
Casey said he understands the budget pressures, but he thinks Scott's anecdotes about children raising flood recovery funds by selling lemonade suggests that a fight over state spending may lie ahead.
"This is the time that state government needs to step up and help people who just suffered some of the greatest hardships of their lives," he said.
The original print version of this article was headlined "Awash in Flood Bills | Vermont lawmakers are focused on disaster response"
Comments are closed.
From 2014-2020, Seven Days allowed readers to comment on all stories posted on our website. While we've appreciated the suggestions and insights, right now Seven Days is prioritizing our core mission — producing high-quality, responsible local journalism — over moderating online debates between readers.
To criticize, correct or praise our reporting, please send us a letter to the editor or send us a tip. We’ll check it out and report the results.
Online comments may return when we have better tech tools for managing them. Thanks for reading.