Flood Response

The July 2023 Great Flood:  Thoughts and Resources

My Thoughts

We’ve all experienced and seen the selflessness, devotion and heroism shown by many of our fellow Vermonters in the face of the July flood.  Our three towns rose to the need.  Calais lost many of its roads and Plainfield as well; Marshfield lost bridges and spent nearly two weeks without water in the Village.  The Selectboards, emergency officers, and staff of all three towns have met these challenges with admirable intelligence, efficiency and devotion. 

Yet…there are two realities about the flood that we must face head on: 

  • It will happen again. And sooner than we would hope. Climate change is not a future phenomenon but rather is upon us now, leading to increased intensity of precipitation and greater frequency and duration of storms. 

  • It could have easily been even worse this time and will be worse in the near future.  What would our world have looked like if the rain had continued for even one more day, or, God forbid, two. Water would have spilled from the Wrightsville spillway increasing the depth of floodwater all along the North Branch into Montpelier.  Would Green Mountain Power have been forced to open the floodgates of the Marshfield dam on Molly’s Falls Pond.  Would the higher water on the upper Winooski and the flows from the dam have combined to inundate the village centers of Marshfield and Plainfield?

So, what is to be done?  We have to do two things at the same time: (1) Work and spend as necessary to recover from the 2023 flood, while at the same time (2) plan now to prevent future flooding.  Let’s look at both. 

  • The recovery resources are simultaneously extensive and insufficient.  I list many of the resources below under “Flood Resources for our Towns, Individuals, Businesses and Town governments”.  And in the coming session as I will push for more recovery funds and services in my capacity as a member of the House Appropriations Committee.  That committee formulates the Budget Adjustment Act (a mid-stream re-look at last year’s budget) and the 2023-2024 budget (that starts in July).

  • A new plan to reduce or eliminate flooding.    We cannot afford simply to “recover” from the 2023 flood only to experience one equally or more damaging in a few years.  If that happens, store owners and flooded residents will give up, abandon their assets, and move elsewhere or call it quits. Montpelier will become a town without the stores and restaurants that serve its population, a town with a capitol and housing but no center or soul. Our villages will not recover—people will simply move away to higher ground.

We need flood control plans for the Winooski and its branches. Everyone is talking about solutions—opening up areas for flooding, increasing wetlands, dam improvements, berms, and so on.  But we’re all expressing good ideas without the necessary information to evaluate their worth. We need to combine these ideas into several coherent versions of a flood control plan that we can examine, cost out, and implement.  The key steps for that are:

  • Determine the entity that will head up the planning effort. This is too big for any one town or village. We need one entity charged with retaining the engineering, environmental and other expertise necessary to create two or three different flood control plans.  The Governor and the Legislature need to collaborate to provide adequate funds for the planning effort. 

  • Create two or three versions of a flood control plan that will protect Montpelier and the villages along the Winooski.  This will take engineering, environmental and other experts.  Exactly how much will increasing wetlands help?  What effect can we squeeze out of efforts to improve existing dams and reservoirs?  Will we need to construct additional flood control measures? It’s only in the context of an overall plan that we can see what combination of efforts will work. 

  • Undertake a concentrated pubic discussion and debate of the merits of a alternatives, and then select one plan.  Once we have alternative plans and the accompanying data we can have a reasoned debate over which options work best for us.  This discussion cannot take years.  We need to reach consensus relatively quickly, meaning to me that some entity must be charged with taking public input and then making a specific recommendation to the Governor and Legislature.

  • Raise the funds and do the work.  This effort will inevitably be very expensive.  We will have to obtain federal funds, and use all the financing methods available to us at the state level.  We may have to raise taxes, but it will be more than worth it. 

Recovery Resources

(Note that the Times Argus publishes a list of “Flood Resources for Vermonters” in nearly every edition. )

Resources for Individuals:

Resources for Businesses:

Resources for Farms/Agriculture:

Resources for Volunteering/Donating:

Please note that these resources are subject to change, and it's advisable to check for any updates or additional information through the provided links or by contacting the respective organizations. Together, we can help our state recover and rebuild from this natural disaster.