RIPTON — As rains pummeled the state last week, it seemed possible that Addison County might avoid some of the severe flooding damage that other Vermont regions experienced.
But on Friday night the county received additional rainfall — 3 to 3.5 inches, according to Jessica Storm, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington — that catalyzed a delayed wave of disaster in multiple towns.
By Saturday morning, a catastrophic mudslide had decimated a swath of hillside off Route 125 in Ripton, uprooting trees, tearing up soil and unmooring Christopher and Amber Poploski’s house from its foundation.
“The soil was saturated and just let go,” said Alison Dickinson, Ripton’s town administrator and town clerk on Tuesday. Dickinson said that the Poploskis, who did not sustain any injuries, are currently searching for a new place to live in Ripton.
“Chris does road work and plow work for the town,” she said. “We’d really like to keep him here.”
From the Ripton town office, Dickinson pointed out the window across the street to where the Middlebury River borders Route 125, describing how water from the river had risen at least 10 feet over the weekend, spilling into the road.
Further up the road, six Ripton residents were isolated in their homes Tuesday on the other side of a culvert that had washed out in the flood, creating a crevasse across Billings Farm Road.
“That’s the only road I know of in that desperate situation,” Dickinson said. “There’s a lot of driveway damage (in Ripton). There’s what our road commissioner has called a ‘significant amount of damage,’ but not catastrophic.”
The same road washed out in 2011, Dickinson said, during Tropical Storm Irene. Now, however, the ditch is so deep that ladders are positioned on either side so that residents can traverse the road on foot.
Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency surveyed the private road on Tuesday morning, Dickinson said, conducting a preliminary assessment of damage throughout Addison County before they are scheduled to return on Thursday. Officials from the Vermont Agency of Transportation will also visit the county on Wednesday, Dickinson said.
For now, the river seems to be receding, running murky and brown through the woods.
A few miles west, in Middlebury, the Otter Creek has risen to flood some of the walking trails that circle the river, spilling over the waterfall in the town’s center with a ferocity that passersby stared at in awe on Tuesday.
While Creek Road, which borders the Otter Creek, has been closed due to rising water, Middlebury Police Chief Thomas Hanley said floodplains located east of the river have been catching most of the excess water effectively.
“It’s flooding where it always floods,” Hanley said, “It fills up a floodplain, which knocks over some corn, but that’s about it.”
Hanley said that officials are most concerned about the Middlebury River, which flows off the mountain into Otter Creek and crosses low under multiple roads, including Three Mile Bridge Road, Blake Roy Road, and Shard Villa Road.
“They’re all open right now,” Hanley said. “We’ll pay attention if we get some heavier rains later today or overnight … to see if the creek comes up and covers those roads.”
Further up Route 7 at Belden Falls in New Haven, brown water was climbing the stairs at a boat launch on Tuesday. A sign had been posted to announce that there had been a “less than fully treated sewage discharge” upstream at the Middlebury wastewater treatment plant.
Elsewhere in the state, sewage and wastewater leaks have occurred due to heavy rains and flooding, dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated wastewater into local waterways and Lake Champlain.
The notice posted at Belden Falls said that swimming, wading, fishing and boating would be prohibited while the sign was up.
Officials at Middlebury’s treatment plant did not respond to VTDigger’s requests for comment on Tuesday.
Weekend rain has also raised water levels in Vergennes, particularly along the edge of the Otter Creek. On Monday, the Vergennes Falls were explosive, pouring a deluge into the creek’s basin below. Two shoreline parks at the base of the falls were underwater, along with the lawns of creekfront homes.
Dianne Jackson, the general manager at River’s Edge Cottages & RV Park in Vergennes, said the campground has been unscathed.
“We have no damage. We’re close to the road, but … it’s not flooded on Basin Harbor Road, so hopefully we’re good,” Jackson said. “But I don’t know. We will keep monitoring every day.”
Jim Larrow, public works supervisor in Vergennes, says only two houses in Vergennes are near enough to the edge of the water to flood, and that as of this week, neither have.
“I talked to one of the owners this morning and he said (the water) came about a foot from going into his house,” Larrow said. “(The water) is going back down, but just very slowly. Because of all the storms we’ve had in recent days, the ground is so saturated, there’s no more room for water to go into the ground.”
The main issue for Vergennes, Larrow said, is removing debris that got caught on the bridge in town after flowing downstream from other towns.
“All the water that comes through Vergennes on Otter Creek comes out of the New Haven River, which goes way up into Lincoln and beyond … so any overflow that they get it all comes our way,” Larrow said. “As water comes this way, it starts taking trees and stuff down along the bank. Anybody who has things along the bank that didn’t think about the high water, it just floats down to us and stops at the bridge.”
Larrow said Vergennes officials have decided to wait to remove the debris until water levels have receded, likely in another two to three weeks.
