With only around 125 employees, Fish and Wildlife is one of the state’s smaller departments. But thanks to Tropical Storm Irene, it has one of the state’s bigger headaches.
Officials with the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife are still tallying the damage from the Aug. 28 flooding from Irene, which struck virtually every aspect of the department’s activities and diverse property holdings.
So far, the department has incurred $1.7 million in Irene-related costs, or about 10 percent of its annual budget.
The widespread impact on the department hasn’t received the same publicity as the monumental damage to homes and highways and bridges, but Commissioner Patrick Berry has seen it first hand and is still staggered by the havoc wreaked by Irene, several months later.
“There wasn’t a whole lot in my division where something wasn’t damaged somewhere,” said Berry. He spent the fall dealing with infrastructure, insurance and figuring out funding reimbursement from FEMA.
Tom Decker, the Fish and Wildlife operations chief, said the department’s estimate of damage now stands at about $1.7 million, and may rise as high as $1.8 million. In absolute dollars, compared to road damages estimated as high as $250 million, it’s not much. But considering the department’s budget is just $17.7 million, that amount carries a lot of impact and leaves the department with some complex decisions as it feels pressure to fix the devastation Irene wrought, said Berry.
The broad scope of the damage starts with the damage to the Waterbury State Office Complex. Berry himself only last Monday finally moved into a replacement office in Fayston. His department lost a lot of equipment and files at the flooded Waterbury State Office Complex, everything from game warden uniforms and firearms and office equipment, to publications on game regulations, license materials and even muzzle loader tags, which all had to be reprinted.
Fish & Wildlife’s extensive state land holdings also endured Irene’s wrath. Berry said “hundreds of items” — from culverts and fishing access areas and boat ramps to eight vehicles — were damaged or destroyed. The department has a total of 170 access ramps to lakes and ponds and rivers, 85 wildlife management areas comprising 130,000 acres, conservation camps and five fish culture stations.
The good news is that it appears FEMA and insurance together will cover most of the costs, Berry said, but the bad news is that FEMA’s 75 percent reimbursement is not expected anytime soon. The state has to make decisions now on, however, what he calls the “two major big ticket items,” the Roxbury Fish Hatchery and Kent Pond Dam in Killington.
Decker said the estimates of damage at The Roxbury Fish Hatchery now total around $500,000. All the outdoor structures were lost or badly damaged when Flint Brook, which feeds the spillways where brook trout are raised, cut a new channel and wiped out just about everything, including a new fish genetics and health lab that the state upgraded five years ago with expensive new testing equipment, all of which was destroyed to the tune of $250,000, Berry said.
Repairing the facility won’t be simple because of legal and property issues, according to Berry. There are questions about who is liable for repairing the dry-laid stone wall that blew out where it diverts the brook into the hatchery, and how to fix it.
A complicating issue is an unusual deed covenant in the Roxbury property that requires it to be used for a fish hatchery but if that use stops, the state would lose ownership, Berry said.
The other major site of damage is at 71-acre Kent Pond, which sits across from Gifford Woods State park off Route 100 below the Killington access road. The scenic pond is located next to Mountain Meadows Lodge and the cross-country ski center, which sets trails across the iced over pond in winter.
The dam that holds in the waters of the pond was severely damaged and the access ramp was also destroyed; the spillway was washed out and the pond suffered considerable silting that created major sandbars. Decker said the estimated damaged is around $300,000, and Berry noted that to do repairs, the pond will have to be drawn.
Berry has been busy appearing before legislative committees, keeping them apprised of the damage costs as lawmakers begin to grapple with funding for Irene repairs in the upcoming session.
He has been joined several times by another department in the Agency of Natural Resources, Forests and Parks and Recreation, which has also been busy this year coping not only with Irene damage but flooding in the spring, which caused $700,000 in damage.
Michael Snyder, commissioner of the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation recently testified that his department “began the season underwater and ended the season underwater.”
Snyder said the latest estimate of damage to the 52 state parks is around $250,000, ranging from everything to damaged structures, shelters, toilets, water and sewer lines, playgrounds and roads.
Two of the most significantly damaged areas are Coolidge State Park in Plymouth and the Duxbury access road to Camel’s Hump, one of the state’s iconic hiking peaks. He showed lawmakers remarkable photographs of eroded roads at both sites that he said were “just wiped out.”
Repairs will require a number of new culverts and extensive work, he said, which will take time to engineer and construct.
“This is stuff we’ll be fixing for years,” Frank Spaulding, parks project coordinator, told a joint meeting of the House and Senate Institutions Committees.
