On a Tuesday night in mid-October, residents from Barre’s Ward 3 neighborhoods gathered at the Old Labor Hall on Granite Street.
The Labor Hall — now home to Barre’s Historical Society — sits in one of the city’s historic working-class neighborhoods, in a part of town that gets hit especially hard by flooding.
People were there to weigh in on a new flood resiliency plan — something the city hopes could help the neighborhood fare better in future floods.
“I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve seen the flood of … ‘73 … but nothing like what happened this time,” said Judie Copping, who’s lived in the North End for more than 40 years and was there to weigh in.
During Vermont’s historic 2023 flooding, Copping’s neighborhood was inundated with muddy water. It’s flooded twice since then.
Recovering from a flood is a long and arduous process. Often for municipalities, there’s no roadmap for how to do it, or for how to prepare for the next one.
But after three devastating floods in a row, Barre City is working on a formal plan that could serve as that roadmap.
If it works, it’s the sort of climate solution other Vermont towns could take on too.
For example, while stopping the flooding entirely in Barre’s North End is likely impossible, city leaders believe that projects like culvert upgrades and bridge removals could make it a lot less damaging.
To do this work, they’re asking longtime residents of flood-prone areas, like Copping, where the water rises during storms. It’s an approach she said she appreciates, because she and her neighbors have spent years watching the Stevens Branch of the Winooski River.
“They know where the brook came from,” she told city councilors of the people who live on her street, saying every neighborhood has people with this expertise. “They know where the low land is behind their house.”
Much of Ward 3 sits right up against the river, and a lot of families there have lived in the neighborhood for decades. Historically, it’s been a relatively affordable place to live, even as those places dwindle across the state.
But flooding — which is getting worse because of human-caused climate change — is making a lot of the houses in the neighborhood unsafe. And as is the case for many parts of Vermont, there aren’t many other affordable places to go.
I can’t tell you how many homes I go into that are wildly unsafe to be living in, and there’s no place to go.Prem Linskey, construction manager for Barre Up
Residents say it can feel like the outside world has forgotten that they are still contending with damage from flooding.
“I can’t tell you how many homes I go into that are wildly unsafe to be living in, and there’s no place to go,” said Prem Linskey, the construction manager for the grassroots flood recovery group Barre Up. They draw on grant funding and fundraising to help people pay for home repairs. “And it doesn’t seem like there are really many people stepping up to do something about it.”
Dozens of people have applied for buyouts in Barre, but the city says it can only afford to approve about half of them.
It’s one of a host of roadblocks Barre City’s faced when it comes to recovering from the recent floods, and in preparing for the next one, says Nicolas Storellicastro, Barre’s city manager.
“The buyout process is horrible. I’ll just be pretty blunt about it,” he said. “What I’ve found is that it really pits a homeowner against a municipality, especially in a place like Barre City.”
The city faces some geographic constraints that exacerbate these challenges. Barre encompasses just about 4 square miles and is located at the bottom of a big bowl. About a third of the city is in the floodplain.
Barre — like many Vermont municipalities — has a housing shortage, which makes it hard for people who take buyouts to stay in their community.
Additionally — if a property is approved to be demolished as part of a FEMA buyout, that land can never be redeveloped again, or be a source of property tax revenue.
On top of that, buyouts don’t make people financially whole.
Michael Deering II is a City Council member who represents the North End.
He says his constituents are in a bind because staying put is expensive too.
“At what point does your soul just say, ‘Man, I love Barre so much, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t afford it in my pocket. I can’t afford it in my heart,'” he said. “And at what point do you just give up? And there’s no hope, there’s no help. Because it’s all about money.”
Deering supports the plan and says he hopes it will help people he represents stay in Barre and in the North End safely.
Written by Ward 2 City Councilors Amanda Gustin and Teddy Waszazak, the plan outlines 14 concrete priorities and more goals. Some of them came from other work the city has done over the years, and others came directly from community members.
One of the top priorities is using leftover federal pandemic dollars to pay for new modeling of how water flows through the city.
The hope is that city officials could one day know if it rains 8 inches in 24 hours, how high the water will rise in each neighborhood and when.
The plan ranks bridges the city wants to raise or remove, like the one on Berlin Street. It also looks for places where Barre could support infill development and build new homes that are more resilient to flooding.
Waszazak says the city can’t just sit around and wait for the federal government or the state to show it how to adapt to climate change.
“The two things towns and cities need right in the aftermath of a flood is contractors and bags of cash,” Waszazak said.
Funding from the Legislature last year was critical, he said, to allowing Barre to keep the streets plowed after the floods. But the need for aid and assistance continues — as does the need for revenue to plan for the future.
The City Council is hopeful that the Vermont Emergency Management's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program could fund the Berlin Street Bridge removal, as well as work in two areas identified for buyouts and floodplain restoration.
However, Barre is still looking for ways to fund other work in the plan. The hope is that when more funding does show up, the city can be competitive in applying for it and start crossing projects off its list.
However, Waszazak would like to see a more coordinated statewide approach to how Vermont responds to widespread flood events, like the ones in recent years.
It’s not just Barre. It’s Plainfield that needs that help. Southern Vermont needs that help, the Northeast Kingdom needs that help. It’s a statewide issue and it needs a statewide response.Teddy Waszazak, Barre City Councilor
“It’s not just Barre,” he said. “It’s Plainfield that needs that help. Southern Vermont needs that help, the Northeast Kingdom needs that help. It’s a statewide issue and it needs a statewide response.”
Making a plan like Barre’s is something Jessica Savage at the Vermont Council on Rural Development says other Vermont towns can do too. Though she says Barre does have the advantage of having a paid city staff. Many Vermont towns run largely on volunteers, which could limit the scale of projects they're able to take on.
Savage helped Barre with their community outreach — hosting forums and in some cases, going door to door in hard-hit neighborhoods.
“We’re in it right now as a state, and I’m really curious about what it looks like to have a well-designed flood response and recovery and resilience system that works for Vermont,” she said.
Savage says towns can apply this month for grants from VCRD to help them fund this kind of work. And the organization is already working with Plainfield, Weston, Johnson and Hardwick on similar projects.
Barre City Council is expected to vote on whether to approve the flood resiliency plan at its Nov. 12 meeting.
And so far, councilors and the city's mayor say it has strong support.
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