This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
WATERBURY – On July 10, 2023, Carrie MacMillan watched as floodwaters crept toward her Waterbury home. The nearby Winooski River had jumped its banks, and MacMillan recalled seeing the water swirl up to the parking lot wedged between her house and the towering state office complex next door. Firefighters came and urged her family to evacuate, she said.
The water reached MacMillan’s row of hydrangeas but stopped short of seeping inside her house, she said. Many of her neighbors on low-lying Randall and Elm streets were not so lucky.
Now, following years of repeat floods, town officials are courting a developer to build a major housing project tucked into this flood-prone neighborhood. Standing on the parking lot adjacent to her home, MacMillan wondered aloud how the future inhabitants of this spot would fare the next time floodwaters rise.
“We’re potentially going to do more harm than good by providing housing that we all know is very much needed,” she said.
Gov. Phil Scott and lawmakers have tried to incentivize more homebuilding in Vermont’s downtowns and villages, in a bid to boost development in areas that are already built up and to avoid sprawling into farmland and forests. Housing laws passed in recent years have loosened development review regulations in town centers and have mandated that municipalities allow multifamily buildings in areas served by water and sewer systems.
But many of those same downtowns and villages with existing infrastructure are situated in flood-prone river valleys. In Waterbury, the project proposed next to MacMillan’s home is a miniature study of a conflict facing many communities: how to both add more housing to address Vermont’s severe home shortage and lessen the impact of future floods.
“Our historic, developed downtown does include significant amounts of flood plain, and so I think that inherent tension is real,” said outgoing select board chair Alyssa Johnson in an interview. She thinks the proposed housing project should move forward.
“Given that it is a potentially viable housing project in a community that really needs housing, I think it’s a worthwhile project to pursue next steps on.”
Few build-able places
The plot of land in question, at the intersection of Randall Street and Park Row, sits at the edge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s 100-year flood zone, according to FEMA maps. It consists of a parking lot next to a patch of grass. Aerial imagery from July 11, 2023, shows floodwater covering much of the grass and part of the parking lot.
The spot was once home to two dormitories at the Vermont State Hospital that were later repurposed as state government offices, according to the Waterbury Roundabout. The two halls were damaged by flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. The state opted not to renovate them, and they stood vacant for a decade before their demolition in 2021.
In the years since, town officials started to eye the site as a possible location for a large-scale housing project. In 2023, the state approved Waterbury’s request to buy the Stanley-Wasson site, still known by the name of the two dorms that stood there for decades, with the aim to seek a housing developer, according to the Roundabout.
The lot’s location in Waterbury’s historic village, with its walkable access to amenities, made it an attractive site for town leaders, along with the critical fact that the land is connected to public utilities.
“There are very few sites that have water and sewer right there, of this size,” said Bill Woodruff, interim municipal manager.
The town currently has an option to purchase the property for $400,000, and intends to sell it onward to a real estate developer for roughly the same amount. This past summer, town officials put out a request seeking a developer to build both market-rate and “workforce” housing there.
The town received one response to the request, from Williston-based DEW Properties LLC. Most details about the company’s vision for building at the site are redacted from the document released to the public.
The company and town officials have discussed constructing around 90 units there, according to Robert Wells, properties development coordinator for DEW. But that number is not set in stone. DEW is seeking an 18-month pre-development agreement with the town in order to conduct a market study and look at permitting requirements to determine what is feasible to build.
“We want to help Waterbury. The town has reached out saying that housing is a key need,” Wells said. “We would love to come in and help, and figure out what needs to be built that best fits the community. And hopefully this site allows us to do that in a way where the flood concerns can be completely mitigated.”
How to build in a flood zone
Local, state, and federal rules for building within the flood zone would all dictate what DEW could construct at the Stanley-Wasson site — and would put any development there under layers of government oversight.
The homes would need to be elevated. That could look like situating a building on top of pilings or posts with a parking garage below, said John Grenier, owner of Waterbury-based Grenier Engineering. DEW has asked Grenier to provide engineering services if the development moves forward.
One similar project, an affordable housing complex that sits on top of Montpelier’s transit center, was also constructed by DEW. When catastrophic flooding hit the capitol city in 2023, the apartments perched above the Winooski River stayed high and dry.
In Waterbury, this model could pose the problem of residents needing to move their cars to higher ground when a flood comes. To Grenier, that would create an inconvenience but likely not a danger.
“These are maybe some of the changes that we need to think about if we are going to have increased residential developments in our downtowns,” he said.
Alternatively, DEW could choose to raise buildings at the Stanely-Wasson site on fill, Grenier said. If the developers go in that direction, they would need to comply with flood-zone rules stipulating that they’d need to remove an equal amount of fill elsewhere.
“The thought is, basically, you have a bathtub full of water. And for every brick or every block of soil or building you put in, you raise the water level — you have to take out an opposite amount so that it goes back down to what it would have been before you built the structure,” Grenier said.
A flood plain restoration project right next door to the proposed development site could also lower flood levels in the surrounding area. Waterbury voters approved a bond for this project on Town Meeting Day.
A newly-elected select board will soon face the decision of whether or not to ink a pre-development agreement with DEW to advance the housing project.
In recent public hearings about the project and in interviews, residents have raised concerns about the potential flood impacts on their homes nearby. They have also voiced objections about the proposed project’s impact on traffic and parking, arguments that often dog larger-scale housing proposals in Vermont. Opponents recently organized as the Stanley Wasson Community Alliance.
MacMillan, the proposed development’s next-door neighbor, said she hears some in the Waterbury community say that it’s possible to both boost flood resilience in Waterbury and build more housing there.
“On the other hand, there is a large group of people in our community that will say the same as I do: Why are we even risking this if we know these floods are going to continue to come, and they’re going to get worse?” she said.
