Jon Copans watched videos of the July 2023 flooding from his phone during a well-timed vacation. But reality hit when he turned onto Montpelier’s State Street five days later. The debris, salt and smell of remaining devastation left Copans wondering what could be done.
Following the floods, Copans became executive director of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience, a partnership with the city government to build flood resiliency. After two years, the group is beginning to wind down its work in preparation for a merger with the Montpelier Foundation to build a new organization of aid for the city.
As a final course of action, Copans supported H.778, a dam safety bill which passed out of the House Committee on Environment on Feb. 20. The bill is now in the House Committee on Appropriations.
H.778 aims to target the state’s “high-hazard potential” dams, or those that would likely endanger human life if they were to fail. Of the roughly 1,000 dams in the state, there are 74 dams that fall under the high-hazard category.
In Feb. 2023, the Vermont Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a “C” grade to Vermont dams in its infrastructure report card. In the same year, state inspectors found that at least five dams were destroyed by flooding and many saw record-high water levels, threatening neighboring towns.
H.778 would create a pilot program requiring the Vermont Division of Emergency Management to write emergency operation plans for two state-owned dams with high-hazard potential. The plans would identify evacuation routes and options for shelter, including for unhoused people and schoolchildren, among other details.
One of the plans would apply to a dam that would put between 100 and 1,000 lives at risk if it were to fail. The other would have a population risk of more than 1,000 people. Both reports would be due by July 2028, after which state officials would consider the cost and timeline of writing similar plans for the state’s remaining nigh-hazard dams by 2035.
The bill would also enable the governor to declare an evacuation in the event of dam failure or flooding without municipal approval.
The pilot program would look at what-if scenarios and outcomes. The findings would then be reported to the legislature, giving lawmakers an idea of how to support the development of emergency plans for all high-hazard dams in the state, said sponsor of the bill, Rep. Ela Chapin, D-Washington-5.
As a former emergency medical technician, Chapin has experience responding to crises. Her sponsorship of H.778 stems from her interest in emergency management and her district’s location, East Montpelier and Middlesex, which is downstream from high-hazard dams.
“I just care about good emergency planning and know it makes a big difference in making sure communities are prepared,” she said.
Chapin hopes H.778 would raise awareness about dam safety and emergency planning and support community members who are involved with it.
“Public safety is going to increase whether people are aware of the hazards of certain dams or not,” she said.
Eric Forand, director of the Vermont Emergency Management, testified multiple times to help develop H.778. He told legislators on Feb. 4 that it can take over a year for his office organization to draft and put an emergency plan into action.
Back in Montpelier, Copans said he appreciated the legislature’s focus on questioning dam safety.
“It’s critically important for places like Montpelier that are downstream of dams,” he said, later adding, “I don’t think (H.778) is designed to prevent. I think this bill is designed to prepare.”
Copans said the plans would help make connections between community members who play a role in responding to emergencies.
“You’re building relationships, you’re understanding roles, so that when that moment of warning comes, you know who to call,” he said.
The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
