For months, Kevin Lawyer’s apple orchard in Swanton was underwater.
His land became impassable and infested with mosquitoes, and he had to get his septic tank pumped several times. That was three years ago. Now, he estimates 50 apple trees near the site of the flooding are dying or have died already.
Lawyer said he’ll never know how much revenue he lost out on because of the flood. But he’s certain he knows what caused it: A culvert failure on Route 78.
“There’s high water in the places there shouldn’t be,” Lawyer said in an interview. “This problem is on both sides of the road. It’s not draining properly.”
On the 6-mile stretch of Route 78 from Swanton to the Missisquoi Bay Bridge, property owners and drivers passing through have faced floods and road closures for years. In some cases, such as Lawyer’s, the aging infrastructure may be to blame.
Route 78 is a vital artery in northwest Vermont — it is the only road directly linking Franklin and Grand Isle counties. When the span between Swanton and the bridge to Alburgh is closed, the shortest detour often goes through Canada.
The current highway also is “extremely hazardous” for pedestrians, cyclists and drivers, said Ken Upmal, the project’s manager at the state Department of Transportation. The travel lanes are narrow, and there is effectively no shoulder on both sides.
Andre Stefaniak, the general manager of a farm equipment supplier on Route 78 in Swanton, agrees. He said people often cross the highway to get access to fishing areas, but there just isn’t enough space to do that safely.
“It’s a dangerous road,” Stefaniak said. “I’ve seen several accidents in my time.”
‘End of the tunnel’
State officials first identified a need to rebuild the highway more than two decades ago. The project has gone through several iterations since, Upmal said, and construction is now expected to take place from 2024 to 2026.
Plans include rebuilding the base of the roadway and widening its lanes to 12 feet, plus 8-foot shoulders on each side. Some parts of the new road will be at slightly higher elevations than they are now, he said, which could help mitigate flooding.
VTrans is negotiating access for the expanded road with the abutting property owners, Upmal said. The agency also is working with the Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge — which Route 78 bisects — to address the project’s environmental impacts.
The rebuilt highway will allow space for wildlife to pass underneath, Upmal said.
Archaeologists have also studied the project site, he said, and found extensive artifacts from Abenaki settlements that date back thousands of years.
These all present additional challenges for the project’s engineers, Upmal said, though he said that VTrans can now “see the end of the tunnel.”
‘Long overdue’
Last month, a culvert failed on Route 78 in Swanton near Campbell Bay Road, causing part of the highway to collapse. VTrans replaced it with a concrete structure, and Upmal said the culvert will be replaced again when the entire roadway is rebuilt.
Repair work took multiple days — and with the Canadian border closed, drivers had to take a detour through Vermont that was at least 50 miles long on Interstate 89 and Route 2. The latter runs the length of the Lake Champlain islands.
“When there’s a problem on that road, the detour routes are very long and tenuous,” said Rep. Brian Savage, R-Swanton.
The highway gets heavy truck traffic, Savage said, because it is part of the connecting route between Interstate 89 and Interstate 87 in New York State. These trucks have even fewer options for detours, he said, since they cannot fit on smaller roads.
“Every spring has always been an issue of whether that’s going to flood over,” he said of Route 78. “It’s long overdue to have this taken care of.”
Lawyer said it took about five months for the state to repair the culvert by his orchard. But once it got fixed, the field dried up, and it’s been that way since.
Looking ahead, he said he’s worried about a lower crop yield but is glad the state is making progress on plans to rebuild the highway.
“They know they have to fix it,” Lawyer said. “But it cost me, as a business owner, a lot of money.”
