Situated along Route 15 in Hardwick, on the banks of the Lamoille River, is the appropriately titled Inn by the River.
This location is risky because the hotel was swept into the river during a flood in the 1970s. And it recurred in July of last year. Reaching a height of 21 feet, the Lamoille submerged the hotel and almost dragged it back into the waterway.
The Inn by the River is not returning this time.
Almost precisely one year after the July 2023 flood, on Tuesday, timber rafters were crushed and the red metal roof was peeled off the top of the hotel by an excavator pulling its bucket across the structure. Vermont Emergency Management gave the municipality of Hardwick $942,097 to purchase and destroy the motel.
The land is now owned by the municipality, according to Hardwick town manager David Upson, who made this announcement on Tuesday. “We are limited in what we can do by the deed, so this property could never be developed.”
According to Upson, the town is seeking additional funding to convert the former vacant lot into a public area where the river can spread out in the event of flooding.
“Why don’t we give Mother Nature and the river a wide berth?” Standing beside the Lamoille River, Upson said. “Make it so that property is not destroyed by flooding.” That seems to be the key to the strategy.
Most of the damage caused by the floods that destroyed numerous towns in Vermont a year ago has been fixed; culverts and roads have been reconstructed, and homeowners have replaced the drywall and dried out their basements.
However, towns urgently need to construct flood protection projects since climate change is threatening to bring increasingly extreme storms. Millions of money and years will be needed for that work.
Additional information from Vermont Public Following Tropical Storm Irene, Vermont invested millions in flood prevention measures. Was it successful?
It’s a good idea to combine buyouts with floodplain restoration. The town of Northfield purchased and demolished seven houses along the Dog River in order to restore a floodplain during Tropical Storm Irene. In July of last year, officials calculated that the initiative had decreased flooding there by six inches.
The state hazard mitigation officer, Stephanie Smith, believes that Vermont needs more of these kinds of initiatives.
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In a recent interview, Smith stated, “An individual property buyout gets that person out of a tough spot.” However, we expect that by completing buyouts in close proximity to one another, we will also be able to perform restoration.
After the floods in July of last year, Vermont is expected to get between $80 million and $90 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is more than twice as much as the state received for comparable work following Hurricane Irene. According to Smith, the funds can be utilized for buyouts, floodplain restoration, and the construction of larger bridges and culverts.
Additional information from Vermont Public If a floodplain had been approved, Waterbury might have avoided catastrophic flooding. It was never constructed.
Financing from the federal and state governments is necessary to complete these mitigation initiatives, particularly for small municipalities.
A million dollars was spent by the town of Londonderry to repair flood-related damage from the previous year. For a community with a $2.5 million operating budget, that is a significant amount of money.
The town administration of Londonderry, Shane O’Keefe, stated, “We took quite a hit.”
According to O’Keefe, FEMA has provided the municipality with half a million dollars so far to help with repair expenditures. However, more funding will be required by the town to complete mitigation projects, such as rebuilding a bridge that flooded out twice during Hurricane Irene in July of last year. The project’s potential cost could reach $5 million, which is twice the town’s budget.
“Our community is small and has limited resources,” stated O’Keefe. Furthermore, it’s challenging to work on these bigger projects while still running the town’s operations.
Towns are typically required to contribute 25% of the project cost in order to receive FEMA hazard mitigation grants, but for this round of projects, the state is covering that cost.
Smith stated, “There’s a lot more interest because we’re paying for the entire project.”
The approval and construction of FEMA-funded projects can take years, and in the interim, more extreme weather events are occurring due to climate change. In July and December of last year, two significant floods affected a few Vermont towns.
Among the towns that was hit twice was Cambridge.
“A lot of houses that had been flooded out in July were ready to be occupied for Christmas,” said Eric Boozan, the acting town administrator for Cambridge. “And within six months, lost everything a second time.”
Boozan expressed his wish that there was a way to complete mitigation initiatives a bit quicker, given the likelihood of additional storms.
