The Whetstone Brook slices right through West Brattleboro. And anytime there was heavy rain, it would flood the low-income Melrose Terrace housing complex.
But Chris Hart, who’s with Brattleboro Housing Partnerships, which manages Melrose Terrace, says the flooding in August of 2011 was a wake-up call.
“The day after Irene I was walking through here with Sen. Sanders,” Hart said on a recent afternoon. “And typical to Bernie, he said, ‘You know Chris, I hate to tell you, but it’s all got to go.’ And I said, ‘You’re right. We know that.’”
Since Irene, 11 buildings were knocked down and removed, and the housing group developed two new apartment buildings at another, flood-safe site in Brattleboro for the 80-or-so people who were living at Melrose.
It was an expensive and complex undertaking; finding the land for the new apartments, raising more than $22 million, and moving the residents, some who were reluctant to go.
After the residents were gone, the housing authority worked with the state to create an open space that allows the river to expand when there are heavy rains.
“We should be accepting our responsibility, given climate change, and all of that, that we need to change things. We need to accept that some of the old has to be removed and replaced.”Chris Hart, Brattleboro Housing Partnerships
It was a plan Hart says the housing authority thought about for a long time, before climate change forced them to make the move.
“We should be accepting our responsibility, given climate change, and all of that, that we need to change things,” Hart said. “We need to accept that some of the old has to be removed and replaced.”
Hart says during the recent storms the open space, where the apartments once stood, filled up with water just as it was supposed to do.
The mitigation was so successful that the housing group is now considering adding 20-30 new low-income apartments back at the original Melrose site, where six buildings still remain.
Vermont Hazard Mitigation Officer Stephanie Smith says the flooding we saw in the most recent storm is a reminder that more work like this needs to be done.
“When we have an event like this it’s really terrible in a lot of ways. And it’s also good marketing for the fact that we need to continue to do this work,” Smith said. “Because we are going to keep seeing rain events like this. We’re going to keep seeing flooding. And we need to be supporting these programs and continuing to fund them.”
“The really nice thing about the flood plain restoration is that instead of just helping one home owner who’s in a bad spot get out of that situation, it’s giving the river space, it’s opening up flood plain to reduce flooding in a much larger area."Stephanie Smith, Vermont Emergency Management
Smith says the Melrose project likely prevented more flooding from happening downriver, in downtown Brattleboro.
And she says what we saw in Barre and Montpelier in the recent flooding highlights the need to take on more floodplain projects to allow upriver mitigation before it hits a populated area.
“The really nice thing about the floodplain restoration is that instead of just helping one homeowner who’s in a bad spot get out of that situation, it’s giving the river space, it’s opening up floodplain to reduce flooding in a much larger area,” Smith said. “And part of the trick is you can’t just think about your own town in that context — you need to be thinking about the entire river.”
State and local officials all over Vermont will be considering similar projects as Federal Emergency Management Agency dollars flow in to help rebuild from July's storms.
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or reach out to reporter Howard Weiss-Tisman:
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