Listening to advocates for the Mad River and other rivers speak, it makes sense that the interventions of and interactions with humankind have upset the equilibrium of rivers.
Listening to river advocates discuss the health of rivers, a river's natural self-correcting tendencies, river morphology, gravel deposition and more, it is easy to see how human actions have created unstable rivers, unstable riverbanks, unnatural constrictions and overly deep riverbeds.
Like so many areas where human actions overlap with nature's equilibrium, if often becomes clearer - after the fact - that nature knew what it was doing and that human intervention was bound to screw things up.
That's the dilemma right now in Waitsfield Village, where people and development are concentrated and where riverbanks are unstable for a variety of reasons. Certainly those who lived here and governed here before us own a share of the responsibility for today's problem, but blaming someone who is long dead does not do much to find a workable solution.
The riverbanks in Waitsfield Village are unstable and eroding regularly. Each high water event - and there have been several this fall and early winter - have resulted in another foot or a few more inches of the banks in the heart of the village being eaten away. The village is on the National Historic Register. The Covered Bridge that causes some of the river constriction and hence the problem is a featured attraction in the village.
It flies in the face of responsible governance to ignore the problem from a public safety standpoint. It flies in the face protecting property values to ignore the problem. Yet state officials are charged with doing their job to protect the health of the Mad River in Waitsfield Village and along its entire length.
Doing the right thing for the riverbanks in Waitsfield Village and doing the right thing for the Mad River as it flows north are two different and apparently conflicting goals. When this occurs, middle ground must be sought and public safety and property protection must be weighed equally with river health. It is a good, appropriate and laudable goal to help rivers reach equilibrium and return to their natural meandering ways, but we cannot ignore the reality of the built world around us, nor can we ignore the safety of those who inhabit it.
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