“You can’t push the river…”
By Julia Purdy
This flood season brings back memories of past epic events. The Great Flood of 1927 blindsided the state and prompted rescue and remedial action by the state and communities — and, Tropical Storm Irene, which continued to rearrange the landscape a generation later.
Now, whatever we are calling this latest disaster has acted in both familiar and unanticipated ways. Now, once again, rebuilding the environment will require both fresh analysis and renewed understanding of the behavior of water as it impacts human activity — but above all, our human ability to adapt to what seems to be the inevitable.
In many ways, July 2023 could be considered a litmus test of the effectiveness of flood prevention measures.
Vermont, with its steep hillsides, is no stranger to flash floods, or freshets as they were once called. But 1927 introduced a new climatological problem, one that might have presaged the future.
In his contribution to the Vermont Flood Survey Committee Report to Gov. Weeks, a month after the flood, F. E. Hartwell, meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Bureau in Burlington, noted the excessive rainfall: “… and practically all of it flowed immediately into the river systems of the state without … first soaking into the ground and running off more gradually as would have been the case if this rain had followed a dry month instead of a wet one.”
As a stalled late-autumn weather system dumped 36 hours of steady rain on waterlogged and frozen November soil, mountainside brooks exploded like fire hoses. Rocky river channels swelled to overflowing in a matter of minutes. In those 36 hours, the entire state received overall an average of 8.6 inches of water, reported the Rutland Daily Herald of Nov. 9, 1967.
While Irene’s torrents undercut riverbanks of glacial gravel and sand in 2011, toppling more than a few houses, in 1927 an entire village vanished almost literally overnight. That was tiny, postcard-pretty Gaysville, a hamlet of Stockbridge located at a bend in the White River known as “The Narrows,” with shady porches, stores, warehouses and mills. The White River, diverted to form a large millpond, obediently flowed over the cement dam at the modern hydroelectric generating station, and alongside it, the local White River Rail Road (affectionately known as “the Peavine”) connected Gaysville with the valley north and south.
Driving between Stockbridge and Bethel on Route 107 now, one might notice a strangely empty space in the roadside scenery about 6 miles west of Bethel, marked only by a street sign for Bridge Street, with a large iron bridge beyond. That is — was — Gaysville.
What the townsfolk of Gaysville didn’t know was that they sat upon a natural gravel dam deposited over the millennia by the river. Surging down from Granville and Rochester, gathering side streams as it came, the raging White River hit Gaysville like an avalanche, seeking its ancestral bed directly beneath the village. One by one, 30 structures tipped over into the river and the railroad track was twisted like a rollercoaster. The low-lying portions of state highway (now Route 107) were under water. The village never recovered; all that remains are a tiny post office, an abandoned trading post, a new 1928 iron bridge across the “new” river, the vegetation-choked foundation of the hydro station, and scattered homes on the hillside.
At the other end of Windsor County, in Cavendish, travelers along Route 131 can look down into a 150-foot deep chasm where the Black River in 1927 obliterated the main road out of town, leaving the schoolhouse teetering on the edge. After sluicing out Ludlow’s downtown, the Black River backed up at a power company dam in Cavendish, jumped a constructed dike, and scoured out an estimated 2 million tons of glacial till, exposing, as the White River did, a pre-glacial riverbed.
Since the available state emergency fund didn’t come close to meeting the need, in conference with Governor John Weeks, the state emergency board took the stance of “act first and apologize later” and committed funds in the expectation that the Legislative Assembly — and their constituencies — would approve the move.
Much of the burden of reconstruction fell to the cities and towns while the state focused on restoring roads and bridges with the help of the Army Corps of Engineers. The majority of Vermont bridges are town-owned. While state statute limited construction of a single bridge to $5,000, for example, in some towns the total damage came to $100,000, reported the Rutland Herald. Altogether, 1,258 bridges were damaged or lost.
Field surveyors from the Farm Bureau fanned out across the state to tally up tangible farm losses in buildings, acreage, livestock, feed, fuel, equipment and household goods. Estimated at 75% of the total losses at best, the Extension Service of UVM came up with its report of losses suffered by 690 farms for a total value of $1.3 million.
The statewide grand total reported to Gov. Weeks by the Vermont Survey Committee came to an estimated $25 million (in 1927 dollars). Vermont self-financed much of its portion of recovery by issuing special flood bonds. Even though Gov. Weeks initially asserted that “Vermont can take care of its own,” once Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and U.S. Attorney General John Sargent — a Vermont native — toured the state, Vermont received $2.65 million in federal aid, plus loans from the newly formed Vermont Flood Credit Corporation and assistance from the Red Cross.
Vestiges of the Great Flood of 1927 are still visible if you know where to look. In an attempt to stabilize the White River’s banks, junked autos of 1920s vintage are buried in the riverbank in Rochester, at the confluence with the West Branch. Likewise, in Stockbridge a discarded steam locomotive from Montpelier was buried in the riverbank, following a primitive practice of erosion control, an interpretive plaque on Stone Cutters Way outside Hunger Mountain Coop informs us. In Gaysville, a section of train rail pokes out of the riverbed in the now deceptively shallow White River.
With the aid of the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, the Army Corps of Engineers built three major earthen flood control dams in Vermont between 1933 and 1938. (One of these — the Wrightsville Dam on the north branch of the Winooski — seemed about to spill over July 11 this year, before the flood surge abated. The Wrightsville Dam alone serves a drainage area of 66.5 square miles and normally can accommodate 6.6 billion gallons.)
Fast-forward: “Irene, you bitch”
In 2011, 90% of Vermont towns lost critical infrastructure. Not surprisingly, the central spine of the Green Mountains spawned the most damage as runoff poured into the valleys, highlighting the meaning of the term “watershed.”
Cavendish got hit again in almost the same spot, with a major washout on Route 131 on the brink of “Cavendish Canyon.”
In Mendon, a half-mile of Route 4 between Wheelerville Road and Meadow Brook Lane disappeared, sluiced out by Mendon Brook. What remains are steep, exposed gravel banks, visible from the new roadway. Even more visible is the continuing erosion, which each year topples more trees into the brook below.
Back in Stockbridge, there was nothing much left in Gaysville for the river to take other than a small commercial campground at water’s edge, but the White River obliterated a 4,000-foot stretch of Route 107 east of Gaysville, where the highway skimmed the edge of a long curve in the riverbank. Building an all-new roadway from scratch required 250,000 tons of rock, 7,500 feet of guardrail, and 38 culverts, reported NBC5. Because Route 107 is a section of the only more or less direct east-west truck route linking Interstate 89 to New York, the job was done in a record 119 days. Heavy equipment clambered up and down the new high embankment above the highway, carefully placing riprap to prevent future landslides, while special “rock trains” dumped their loads on a siding in Bethel.
Today, the scars are still there: extra-wide, shallow riverbeds littered with boulders, towering embankments of glacial till sheared in half, exposed ledge where rock was harvested for repairs, bridge abutments standing starkly in the riverbeds and the ever-present layer of fine-grained river silt that smothered vegetation.
In 2023, it is beginning to look all too familiar.
Flood Ready Vermont (floodready.vermont.gov/floodcosts) publishes a map of the U.S. showing the increased incidence of “very heavy precipitation.” Of all the regions, the six states of the Northeast are seeing a 71% increase in torrential rains. As a rural state that has weathered natural disasters repeatedly, this time Vermont knew to respond quickly.
Where do we go from here?
Hundred-year-old methods of flood control have proven inadequate and even added to the devastation. River scientists say the dredging of rivers and armoring streambanks with riprap, while they may be ad hoc fixes to push more water through and deflect it from streamside development; if overdone they disrupt a river’s natural flow, setting the stage for the next flood.
“Building Better”
In a post-mortem of the Great Flood of 1927, the Rutland Herald (Nov. 21, 1927) presciently speculated on elements that intensified the damage. The editorial opined that even had the hillsides not been laid bare by logging and agriculture, the forests alone would not have been enough to impede the torrents; but where human activity did directly impact the outcome was “the obstructions of one kind and another that [man] has put in the way of watercourses.” The writer singles out power dams that yielded to megatons of water piling up behind them. Another “prolific cause of the trouble” was the “[n]arrowing of natural river channels for man’s convenience or profit … ” The writer further points out that “Populous towns have been largely constructed right into the natural courses of streams at flood height — a fatuous proceeding, as events have shown.”
So far, immediate fixes have come to mean buying out flood-prone properties and setting them off-limits to future development, replacing culverts with bigger ones and bridges with higher ones, restoring natural floodplains by means of easements, and clearing obstacles on riverbanks to allow the water to slow down and spread out before engulfing property downstream.
In an email to the Mountain Times, Shannon Pytlik, with the Rivers Program of Vermont DEC, made the same, but updated, analysis: “Many communities have land use bylaws (zoning) that allow for continued development within the floodplain and river corridor. … This is one area they could work on to improve their flood resiliency over time,” she said.
Post-Irene, some 155 damaged houses and buildings around the state were “bought out” by the state and the parcel restored as open public space, off-limits to development. An example is Pittsfield village on Route 100N, where several homes, located where a branch stream tumbles into the Tweed River, were broken up and shoved off their foundations in a pile of rubble and occupants forced to permanently relocate.
While some bridges succumbed, many bridges stood their ground while their approaches were gutted, making them inaccessible, such as the Route 73 “R.I.P.” bridge in Rochester, which came to resemble an off-ramp to nowhere. Even though old bridges tend to have sentimental, scenic or historic value, some have been replaced with higher, streamlined concrete structures. One exception was the beloved 1920s steel truss bridge on Route 107 at Bethel, itself a replacement. It was replaced by a smaller replica, as a longer, modern bridge would not fit in the space.
Of the over 200 bridges damaged or destroyed in 2011, all were rebuilt with streamlined designs to prevent flood debris jams, a spokesperson for Vermont Agency of Transportation told the Mountain Times.
As of Aug. 1, 2023, she noted a temporary bridge at Route 100 on the Ottauquechee River in Bridgewater and two bridges, on Route 125 in Hancock and Route 116 in East Middlebury, whose culverts failed. The repair-and-replacement work after Irene came to “nearly 130 projects,” she said.
Undersized culverts were especially vulnerable. Brandon, which potentially faced Gaysville’s fate, is a case study. Driving through Brandon today on Route 7, you would notice nothing amiss. But 12 years ago, the heart of the village, which straddles the small Neshobe River, was a shambles.
In Brandon, the Neshobe pours over an ancient mill dam and squeezes through a narrow, rocky chute under Route 7 in Conant Square, a cluster of 19th century commercial blocks. In 2011, the Neshobe, originating at a crest in the Green Mountain National Forest, thundered over its old dam and choked on the too-small culvert underneath the highway, gouging a cavern in front of Briggs Carriage House Bookstore, sending the House of Pizza, onto the sidewalk of Route 7 and causing a backup all the way into the hamlet of Forest Dale upstream, which had become a regular occurrence.
In 2017 a mammoth new culvert had been installed beneath Route 7 and the little downtown hub had been put back together, even better. A pocket park adorned with plantings allowed a pretty view upstream of the once-raging Neshobe River cascading scenically over its mill dam. People could once again enjoy a midday break in the gazebo plaza overlooking the lower cascades. This July, Brandon Town Manager Bill Moore told WCAX the culvert did its job: “We’ve experienced at least four or five events since 2017 where the culvert has accepted water and kept our downtown from flooding.”
A significant measure to protect both streambanks and property and meet river demands for space is to clear land for “alluvial fans” to form. Instead of ramming against an obstacle or narrow channel, the water spreads into the surrounding land, slowing the main flow. Sometimes the rivers do this themselves, as the Neshobe unfortunately did upstream of Brandon center, or where existing open farmland allows it, as with Otter Creek in North Clarendon and Rutland. And river silt can act as a soil amendment, but human infrastructure, located for convenience to the water, suffers.
In the past, efforts to channel streams consisted of building barriers, called berms, to keep the river in place. But now the science is to remove the berms and let the river spread out into adjacent open space. The Cold River in North Clarendon is one such spot, where Middle Road crosses on a low bridge. Post-Irene, river management partners removed the berm, opening a 10-acre parcel of level woodland to the river.
Shannon Pytlik, with the Rivers Program of Vermont DEC described the effect of measures taken after Irene. “The [North] Clarendon village did flood in Irene prior to the floodplain restoration and did not flood this year. … We are collecting and analyzing the flood heights and river response. What we can say currently is that many floodplain restoration projects did function as intended and did store water and sediment upstream of development, including the [North] Clarendon project. We … do know that extra storage of waters upstream of infrastructure will take some of the pressure off development in flood prone areas.”
She said when she visited the location she found “debris and sediment” covering the open ground instead of farm fields and roads downstream, “which is exactly what we want to see on a functioning floodplain.”
“When Flooded Turn Around Don’t Drown”
It’s not a prank. The yellow-and-black signs pop up at Alfrecha Road over Otter Creek in North Clarendon and other flooded stream crossings and roadways. National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service (AHPS), which surveys rivers, lakes and precipitation (including snowfall) to predict river conditions and flood hazard outlook, issues flood watches and warnings to the public. The site uses Doppler radar, satellite, water gauges and direct observation and maintains a continually-updated, interactive Observed Gauge map of the U.S. that can be filtered to show local areas.
AHPS was launched in 1997 and now has sites across all 50 states. In Vermont, 340 data-gathering gauges are located throughout the state, including the Missisquoi, the Lamoille, the Winooski, Mad River, Otter Creek and Poultney River. The map features a color-coded key to show the degree of flood hazard on these streams, visit: water.weather.gov or find an interactive flood map at: weather.gov/safety/flood-map.
