Flood cleanup throughout Vermont is progressing. Basements have been pumped, flood-damaged garbage piled up two stories high in the streets has been or is being removed. Volunteers continue to provide critical helping hands with clean up, feeding people and helping people navigate the morass of FEMA bureaucracy and other relief organizations.
But now what? The July 10-11 flood was a 100-year flood, Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 was a 500-year flood. The flood of 1998 was a 100-year flood. Clearly this calculation is not working as Vermont, the nation and the world face the reality of a changing climate.
What are people to do who have had to rebuild homes and businesses flooded multiple times in a decade or two? What happens if they accept FEMA funds and rebuild and are flooded again in a few years? Can towns and the state and FEMA buy out all homes and businesses that are now in flood-prone areas based on the new climate reality?
Given Vermont’s housing crisis, where will those people live?
In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene, a great deal of flood mitigation work took place in Vermont, locally and in our neighboring communities. And a lot of it helped ensure that the damage wasn’t worse. The scale of destruction in terms of Vermont’s roads and infrastructure was less than in 2011. The work and the awareness of how we can lessen the impact of flooding was and is critical going forward.
That post-Irene, work was undertaken to improve flood resiliency took place where we thought it was needed, based on that flood. After this flood we will do the same. But it’s not sustainable to use a whack-a-mole approach to how we prepare for flooding, deal with a changing climate and try to live harmoniously in proximity to Vermont’s rivers and streams. As we have seen, flood damage can come from tiny streams and our mightiest rivers.
So, what’s next for people and business owners struggling to decide on their next steps? Do they rebuild? Do they hope for a buy-out? What’s next for towns and the state? And how do we answer those questions specific to this flood while anticipating the next one and the one after that?
