2024 TOP 10 BLOG
Rising Waters, Rising Solutions: Navigating the Path to Flood Resiliency in a Changing Climate
VJEL Staff Editor: Hannah Weisgerber
Faculty Member: Christophe Courchesne
In 2011, Vermont experienced a devastating flood after Hurricane Irene brought historic levels of rainfall to the state. In 2023, “an atmospheric traffic jam,” and relentless rain once more inundated the state with catastrophic floodwaters coupled with an already unusually wet season. Both tragedies were spurred by similar conditions—after all, one of the long-anticipated effects of climate change is the increased frequency and intensity of flood events. Both tragedies in Vermont resulted in loss of life, communities battered by the resulting floodwaters, and severe degradation of the environment. This phenomenon is occurring across the United States: long-term warming trends are associated with increased flood risk across much of the country. Land management is one of the many tools the U.S. can employ to address the increasingly urgent need to protect at-risk flood communities.
Three months after Vermont’s 2023 summer floods, an estimated 250 people are still without functioning furnaces and boilers as winter draws near. Moreover, nearly 100 Montpelier-based businesses have yet to reopen. Considering the tragic effects of the flood this year still linger, is the state adequately prepared for the likely flooding of the future? This article discusses the flood resiliency plans that were implemented following Hurricane Irene, considers the neglected strategies, and emphasizes policy decisions that could reduce future flooding vulnerabilities. These strategies can be adjusted and replicated across the country.
Following Hurricane Irene, Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation commissioned a report—Enhancing Flood Resiliency of Vermont State Lands—to study how Vermont could increase its flood resiliency through public land management. Despite significant time and financial investments in enhancing flood resilience, public land management still lags. This report intended to evaluate the state’s existing land-use practices to make recommendations for improving water quality and reducing downstream flooding. The report also sought to find a process for identifying vulnerable land and implementing flood mitigation measures.
According to this report, flood resilience is defined as “a community’s capability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from floods with minimum damage to social well-being, the economy, and the environment.” Although the state department commissioned the report, it is not obligated to implement the report’s recommendations. Despite Vermont’s implemented improvements to flood resiliency following Hurricane Irene—land buyouts, infrastructure repair, and increased funding and education for flood resiliency—not all opportunities have been realized.
Paving the Way for Flood Resiliency in Vermont
Since Hurricane Irene, Vermont and its local governments have adopted a variety of policies to decrease flood vulnerability and increase flood resiliency. For example, many cities and towns have “bought out property owners in flood zones to avert future problems.” The state also rebuilt stronger roads, bridges, and culverts and launched websites to increase public education, including Flood Ready Vermont and the Vermont Climate Assessment.
Other initiatives like the VTRans Better Roads Program, sought to reduce erosion during flood events with a budget of $2.78 million. Stream measurement systems also received an upgrade; an improvement that added detail to storm predictions, providing emergency crews with invaluable assistance.
Finally, the state updated its laws to encourage municipalities to address flood resilience and river corridor protection when it passed Act 16 in 2013. The Act’s goal is to encourage flood resilient communities by maintaining and restoring floodplains and upland forested areas. The Act also includes guidelines for municipal flood resilience plans. Vermont even provided incentives to municipalities to do this work. But what the statutory language does is “encourage” flood resiliency, floodplain protection, and flood emergency preparedness and response planning…is encouragement enough?
Residents described Irene as “just the appetizer,” for what’s to come in of flooding in Vermont. Because Vermont has experienced flooding every year since 2007, and 2023 was no different, it appears like the residents were right. If the improvements made following Hurricane Irene failed to prepare Vermont for this past summer’s flooding, what will?
Which Strategies were Forgotten, and Why?
The state of Vermont cares tremendously for its residents, and state legislators made that clear when they implemented a host of policy changes following Hurricane Irene. Even today, legislators are bustling away to improve non-native English language access to disaster resources, adapt to future flooding, and ensure federal funding is distributed throughout the state. Even so, critical flood resiliency strategies continue to be neglected by Vermont policymakers.
Much of the onus for flood resiliency in Vermont falls on the state’s municipalities. Yet, state lands represent an ideal percentage of forested land—eight percent—to begin preparing for flood resiliency. In fact, state lands were the original focus of the report that the Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation commissioned. Prioritizing these lands is a logical starting point because forested public lands, when stewarded with wisdom, can help attenuate the flow of rain and flood.
The report identified nine improvements for the state to focus on, including updating the Acceptable Management Practices (AMPs) standards, incorporating flood resiliency in Long-Range Management Plans (LRMPs), and establishing appropriate conservation targets, to name a few.
The state failed to implement a key recommendation: adopting Optimal Conservation Practices (OCPs) for enhancing flood resiliency and water quality. The state currently uses the AMPs to maintain water quality when conducting logging. AMPs are “designed primarily with the objective of maintaining water quality and reducing the likelihood for direct discharges during historic storm conditions.” Indeed, the current version of the AMPs from 2019 makes no mention of flood resiliency.
But the OCPs take many important factors into account, striking a balance between management for economic benefit and management for flood resiliency. OCPs would incorporate a higher set of protections for those lands deemed “vulnerable.” “Vulnerable” land is land that may be located at a higher elevation, have steeper slopes, and may have clay or bedrock underneath it, which inhibits rainwater absorption. All those factors contribute to whether the land will generate more runoff and erosion in response to human landscape modifications and climate change. Protections include: adapting flood-sensitive infrastructure with mitigative actions, building roads during dry seasons, and increasing riparian buffers to protect water quality. Adhering to stricter standards for these vulnerable lands is not only a key to flood resiliency—it’s common sense.
Vermont State Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale, chair of the Senate Committee on Economic Development, Housing, and General Affairs believes that disaster recovery hinges on “civic infrastructure.” As Vermont moves forward from its Summer 2023 flood, maintaining connections community members have with one another is imperative. But civic connections can only help so much.
Another shortcoming of the state’s land management is the inability to establish appropriate conservation targets for state lands and hydrologic resource zones in particular. The Agency of Natural Resources drafts and releases management plans for state lands known as Long-Range Management Plans. LRMPs establish targets for multiple management categories, including natural resources, recreation, and timber management. Recent plans for the management of state lands fail to include maps of the hydrologic zones. This is concerning because the state has an obligation to ensure flood resiliency on state lands. Without an inventory and map of vulnerable lands, how can the state be sure it is implementing the best practices?
To rectify this discrepancy, the state should follow recommendations laid out in the report it commissioned. If it does follow the recommendations, LRMPs will consider hydrological maps to ensure that projects in river corridors or hydrologic reserve zones will receive site-specific designs that incorporate appropriate conservation targets. On those vulnerable lands, the regular AMPs just won’t do it.
Going with the Flow: Embracing Flood Resiliency
Vermont has made a significant effort to increase its flood resiliency. It updated its statutes with important new guidance for municipalities, rebuilt bridges and culverts to withstand future floods, and created a host of opportunities for sharing information and funding throughout the state to respond to flood damage. However, the Green Mountain State is still resisting change.
In large part, this happens because better management of state lands to achieve flood resiliency doesn’t get the political prioritization that it deserves.Age-old debatesabout whether to manage forests as working forests or take a hands-off approach haveindustry members,conservationists, andexpertsin an ideological stalemate.
To maximize flood resiliency while maintaining economic functions of our state lands like timber harvesting, the state should adopt the OCPs that protect those lands that are already vulnerable to increased runoff and erosion. Furthermore, the state should incorporate thorough analyses of river corridors and hydrologic reserve zones into its LRMPs so forests can withstand the increasingly wet seasons in Vermont and around the world.
Without making these necessary changes, the state and its residents will be forced to endure the same floods year after year. As one resident put it, “you can only [rebuild] so many times.”