By Brett Yates
Regional planners want to help a trio of Windsor County municipalities win federal funds for projects that would prevent flood damage during future storms. But, so far, the town of Bridgewater isn’t interested.
A new program called the Resilience Initiative for Vermont Empowerment and Recovery (RIVER) aims to protect communities that sit on the banks of rivers that overflowed in July of 2023. Vermont Emergency Management will forward promising local proposals to FEMA, which will cover the full costs of implementation for selected submissions.
The Two Rivers-Ottauquechee Regional Commission (TRORC) has worked to develop plans for addressing vulnerable locations in Plymouth, Woodstock, and Bridgewater.
On Sept. 24, Chief Planner Kevin Geiger pitched the Bridgewater Select Board on a handful of ideas. The elected officials declined to pursue them “at this time,” citing a reluctance to take on the administrative burden of managing the potential grants.
“I think we’ve got enough going on in the town,” Chair William O. Young summarized.
According to Geiger, he hasn’t encountered the same resistance in Plymouth or Woodstock. And he remains hopeful about the Bridgewater Select Board.
“I was a little surprised,” Geiger told the Mountain Times. “I think we may be able to ameliorate some of their concerns.”
Because the proposed work would take place on private land, TRORC would need to secure the support of property owners as well. Geiger described an unsuccessful overture in Bridgewater Center, where he had pictured using grant funds to buy a “flood easement” for a field beside the Ottauquechee River.
But he recounted that another landowner had expressed interest in receiving a buyout for a damaged property on Route 4.
The Bridgewater Mill, an important commercial complex, sits perilously close to the Ottauquechee’s northern bank. On the opposite shore, Geiger initially contemplated floodplain restoration, “where you would lower that far bank and see if you could take the pressure off of the channel on the mill side.”
At this point, he would settle for flood-proofing the structure itself. TRORC has focused on two particular sections, for which Geiger envisions “a set of permanent and temporary measures to seal up things.”
Half of the Bridgewater Mill actually lies in Woodstock, and Geiger expects to ask officials there to sign off on the associated grant application. But TRORC has also set its sights on the so-called Pottery Building, which houses the ShackletonThomas workshop and showroom, and that belongs to Bridgewater.
Geiger theorized that Bridgewater’s reluctance to take part in the RIVER initiative may owe to ongoing frustration caused by FEMA’s Public Assistance Program. All over Vermont, towns like Bridgewater still await promised federal reimbursement for road repairs following the Great Vermont Flood of 2023.
“I think it’s too bad that that kind of slotted over to this,” Geiger remarked. “If the town wasn’t out millions of dollars, I think they would have been in a better mood.”
RIVER, however, targets FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which, by Geiger’s account, offers much prompter payouts than the Public Assistance Program. And he pointed out that participating towns won’t have to interface with FEMA directly.
“You deal with the state emergency office. They deal with FEMA. To me, it’s a lot easier to do it that way,” Geiger said. “Like all grants, you still have to sign some papers, keep some records, and do some stuff.”
Officials in Bridgewater have time to change their minds, as TRORC has yet to begin submitting applications. But it has already contracted the engineers who will work on them.
“We’ve spent time looking at projects,” Geiger said. “But now I’m going to be asking them to come up with the first kind of engineering analysis, and that’s going to cost thousands of dollars per site. The town won’t pay anything. We will pay it all.”
