BARRE CITY — Seven months after the July floods that pummeled much of the state, Barre City leaders still shudder to recall the mud.
While many central Vermont communities had mud- and dust-covered streets after the flood, Barre officials told Senate lawmakers on a field trip last week they believed their city held the record as the muddiest in the state.
“Montpelier got higher water. We got mud,” Barre City Manager Nick Storellicastro said. “The cleanup for the businesses and the houses was very labor intensive.”
Standing along the sidewalk on Main Street in the North End neighborhood, he pointed out all the lingering effects of those muddy days, from the roads that had to be repaved to the Salvation Army store, which Storellicastro said was coated with mud until August. A peek through the glass doors of the shuttered store reveals that its walls are completely covered with a black film that Storellicastro referred to as mold.
The Barre area had the most claims for federal aid in the weeks after the flood. That damage was concentrated in the North End, which has a mixture of single-family homes and small businesses.
Storellicastro led a group of Vermont legislators on a walking tour of the North End on Friday, along with other sites in the city facing recovery challenges.
The goal, according to Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, P/D-Chittenden Central, was to have the members of the Senate Government Operations Committee see the issues they were discussing at the Statehouse with their own eyes.
“We’ve spent a lot of time this year really looking at how the state government can better respond to natural disasters,” she said. “We thought it might be helpful for our committee to come out and get a sense of, what does that actually look like on the ground?”
The bill the committee is discussing, S.310, would create a Community Resilience and Disaster Mitigation Fund and make changes to how statewide emergency management works during natural disasters.
After touring the lingering remnants of damage at the city’s police station and dispatch center, Storellicastro, four city councilors and city department heads led the legislators on a walk down Third Street, where houses were covered with tarps and construction equipment sat in front yards.
Storellicastro said that many homeowners still have not been able to return.
Thom Lauzon, a Ward 1 city councilor, added that people are living “where they shouldn’t be living.”
“They’re living in homes that have not been remediated because that’s all they have,” he said.
Lauzon is also the former mayor of Barre City and a major developer and property owner. As he pointed out signs of long-term damage to the neighborhood’s infrastructure, he touted his own plan to redevelop the North End with new multifamily housing and green space.
Gov. Phil Scott unveiled his own version of a redevelopment plan at a City Council meeting in October. But that proposal encountered local opposition and questions about where funding for new construction would come from.
Barre has received dozens of property tax abatement requests, according to City Clerk Carol Dawes. Other properties have requested buyouts, which Barre would have to front the costs for and would leave city officials to figure out what to do with flood-prone or landslide-prone properties.
“Half of the folks” in the North End are gone, and they cannot afford to come back, Lauzon said.
A greater proportion of Barre residents live below the poverty line than across the state as a whole, according to U.S. Census data, although the data is not broken down by neighborhood. Lauzon said that residents might struggle to pay for construction that could cost as much as $350 per square foot.
So when it comes to Barre’s budget holes and the city’s recovery needs, Lauzon asked aloud, “who will pay for it?”
“We’re all going to pay for it,” said Sen. Alison Clarkson, D-Windsor.
“We’re all paying for it now,” Lauzon said.
Living with the river
Kyle Richardson has already paid for part of the cost to repair his home on Scampini Square, close to the Stevens Branch river. Flood insurance fronted about $100,000 of the $180,000 needed to repair the damage from the 4 feet of water that got into his house.
“I feel like there should have been more of a warning saying ‘Hey, listen, that area is not even a flood zone. It’s a floodway. So if it floods it’s guaranteed to get water in your house.’ Nobody told me this,” he said.
Ward 2 City Councilor Michael Boutin stopped to chat with Richardson as Storellicastro took legislators on a tour of Scampini Square. The legislators walked past the home of Rep. Peter Anthony, D-Barre City, who Storellicastro said has applied for a buyout along with the two houses behind his.
But Richardson, who lives next door, told Boutin he has hardly heard anything from the city about a potential buyout of his property. Instead, he received a notice that he must raise his home 6 feet to comply with local codes.
“The engineer I was talking to, he’s like, ‘It’s not even worth it’” to pay for that work compared to the value of the house, Richardson said.
Boutin collected Richardson’s contact information and promised city employees would be in touch. He said that the city has been overwhelmed with the logistics of communicating to more than 80 homeowners who experienced substantial damage.
The legislators had come to the area to tour the nearby Berlin Street bridge, which became choked with debris during the flood that led to additional flooding in the area. The city is seeking funding to raise the bridge higher.
Even in the December rainstorm, where the city experienced far less damage, Storellicastro said he was monitoring that bridge closely.
“This is the spot where, if it had kept raining for another hour, the city would’ve flooded,” he said.
The group also toured the city public works department headquarters, a group of structures which flooded in July, forcing department employees to frantically relocate city vehicles to higher ground, Storellicastro said.
The main public works garage, part of that cluster of buildings, currently in use is dusty, poorly insulated and cramped with equipment. Storellicastro said the city is looking for an alternative location, even if it means paying for space outside of town.
Lawmakers had a moment of levity when city employees brought out the vactor, a large truck equipped with a vacuum hose that can suck up mud from storm drains and speed the movement of water, mitigating flood hazard.
The committee members paused in front of the truck to take photos with it. Vyhovsky said they had spent a lot of time in committee discussing the benefits of vactor trucks, so she was excited to see it in person.
“I googled how expensive a vactor was” — about $200,000 — “but not what it looked like,” she said.
