6 days ago
On the anniversary of Vermont's summer floods, one village seeks to rebuild on higher ground
'It's like looking at a dollhouse, you know?' said neighbor Lauren Geiger as she gestured toward the wreckage. 'It's so traumatizing for the people who've lived there to have to walk by this place all the time. It's just heartbreaking, really.'
Much of Vermont continues to reckon with the damage from the
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'The joke is we're gonna just not have July 10 this year,' said Patricia Moulton, the state's flood recovery officer for central Vermont.
A chair sat on the edge of collapsed river bank in Plainfield, Vt., which was badly hit by a flash flood the night before, July 11, 2024.
Dmitry Belyakov/Associated Press
As that grim anniversary approached, many Vermonters felt 'this sort of creeping anxiety,' according to Plainfield's volunteer emergency management director, Michael Billingsley. They're aware that human-caused climate change is likely to deliver more frequent and intense deluges to the state's mountainous terrain, prompting rising rivers and flash floods.
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At the same time, Vermont officials are eyeing with alarm President Trump's
The administration
In recent days, following far deadlier flooding in Texas, critics of the Trump administration have begun questioning whether federal cuts left emergency responders less prepared in that state.
'We're in a place where we don't have definitive answers about what's going on,' said Eric Forand, director of Vermont Emergency Management. 'We don't know where we're going to have to step in and we don't know how much we're going to have to step in.'
Community groups from around Vermont have stepped into that void
in search of local solutions to a planetary problem.
Residents of Plainfield — a town of about 1,200 people best known for Goddard College, the recently shuttered hippie enclave — have come up with perhaps the most audacious plan: to relocate their village center to higher ground. They're working to buy 24 acres of nearby land to subdivide into lots for those whose homes were destroyed or remain imperiled.
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Like many New England towns, Plainfield was built around a series of mills — in its case, at the confluence of Great Brook and the Winooski River. Now a bedroom community about 10 miles from the state capital, Montpelier, it features just a handful of businesses and public facilities in the village, surrounded by farms and forests.
The plan to relocate the village, locals say, is a recognition the waterways that once fueled Plainfield's growth now threaten its future.
The $5 million project, which organizers hope to pay for with federal disaster recovery funds, would connect town water, sewer, and waste water systems to the new village. Individuals would then buy the parcels and build on them — some with assistance from affordable housing agencies.
Already, organizers say, 50 people have expressed interest in buying and building on the 30 to 60 potential lots.
'This felt like something we could actually do to be more in control of our own destiny, rather than be a flood victim with no agency,' said Arion Thiboumery, who owns the Heartbreak Hotel and is helping to lead the East Village Expansion Project.
A man in waders navigated the flooded streets in downtown Montpelier on July 11, 2023.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Patrick Lafaso tossed couch cushions out of the window as he helped Jessica Anthony clean up from the historic flooding in Johnson, Vt., on July 12, 2023.
Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Thiboumery, an entrepreneur in the renewable energy business, recalls feeling that the effects of climate change had reached Vermont after that first storm in July 2023, when 3 to 9 inches of rain soaked Vermont — devastating towns along the spine of the Green Mountains and flooding Montpelier and Barre. That year, the swollen Winooski cut off much of the village in Plainfield and irreparably damaged several houses, but the Heartbreak Hotel suffered only a flooded basement.
A year later, it was not so lucky.
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The remnants of Hurricane Beryl dropped up to 7 inches of rain in July 2024, sweeping sediment, tree trunks, and even cars down steep slopes into Great Brook. The debris formed a logjam
at the bridge just upstream of the Heartbreak.
When one side of the bridge broke free, the wall of water tore two-thirds of the building downstream.
An overwhelmed resident surveyed the damage following flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl, July 11, 2024, in Plainfield, Vt.
Dmitry Belyakov/Associated Press
'It was really a cinematic event,' said Billingsley, the emergency management director.
Hope Metcalf, a resident of the Heartbreak, was there that night with two of her children. By the time they heard the 'big crack' of the building breaking apart, they had fled to their car. Her kids, 11 and 8, remain traumatized, according to Metcalf.
'Every time there's a thunderstorm or heavy rain, they get worried,' she said.
The family is now renting a home just upstream, but that too was damaged last July and is on a list of properties the state hopes to buy with federal funding and demolish to reduce the risk of flooding.
On a recent summer day, Metcalf and her children played outside their rented house on the banks of Great Brook. They set up a tent and dug a fire pit. Metcalf, a kindergarten teacher, said she didn't have the energy to take the kids camping.
'This time of year — it's just bringing up a lot of emotions for me,' she said. 'What does life look like now? What do we do to be happy and move forward?'
Debris was strewn about a damaged bridge over the Winooski River following flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Beryl July 11, 2024, in Plainfield, Vt.
Dmitry Belyakov/Associated Press
The same house in Plainfield remained covered in dirt and silt as their owners await word on government buyout programs on June 27.
Paul Heintz for The Boston Globe
All told, 42 Plainfield residents lost housing in the 2024 floods, according to Billingsley. Twenty-eight homes damaged in the 2023 and 2024 floods are on the state's buyout list.
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That's prompted locals to reconsider the viability of the village in its current location.
'For anyone who wasn't convinced this was a problem, they're convinced now,' said Karl Bissex, who chairs the Plainfield Selectboard. 'We've got to move our downtown.'
Unlike most of Vermont's flood-battered municipalities, Plainfield has a place to go. Two landowners are willing to sell a combined 24 acres that sit on a plateau about 85 feet above the current village. It is well outside the floodplain, but close enough to connect to town infrastructure.
Geiger, the Heartbreak Hotel neighbor, is among the volunteers behind the vision.
'People who love Plainfield want to see it thrive,' she said as she walked toward the relocation site, which features panoramic views. 'Having this rise up out of the flood and from local residents is just a beautiful thing.'
Community organizers in Vermont point to Plainfield as an example of how informal networks of neighbors can fill gaps left by more traditional entities, particularly in times of crisis. Throughout the state, 'long-term recovery groups' have been established — often serving multiple towns in a watershed.
Lauren Geiger gestured toward an undeveloped property where some residents hope to relocate the village of Plainfield.
Paul Heintz for The Boston Globe
'These community-based organizations are nimble and responsive and allow people to step into roles in less formal ways to serve their neighbors in a way that's really powerful,' said Jon Copans, executive director of the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience.
Moulton, the state recovery officer, lauds the Plainfield project but questions whether it's reasonable to expect residents to take the lead on such endeavors.
'I think it's exciting what they're doing,' she said. 'Is it sustainable in the long term to have volunteers do all this work? I'm not sure.'
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Many Vermont towns have only a couple of part-time employees, Moulton noted, while the rest of the municipal load is handled by residents 'wearing two and three hats.'
Case in point: Billingsley, Plainfield's emergency management director, has been volunteering full time for the past year — helping to clean up the last storm while preparing for the next. At 79, he said he's burning out.
'It's past the point of being reasonable,' he said of his workload. 'It's just how much can I put up with.'
Critics of the East Village Expansion Project wonder whether its leaders are biting off more than they can chew. Already, the
estimated cost has more than doubled and the timeline has slipped from selling the lots this year to next.
The swollen Great Brook rushed by the remains of the Heartbreak Hotel last year in Plainfield, Vt., on July 12, 2024, after flood waters and debris caused by the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl.
Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press
'My real concern is that they haven't shown that they understand the complexity and pitfalls that come with it,' said Riley Carson, a former selectboard chair. 'There's just so much rush and so much pressure to get this done.'
But for displaced residents such as Metcalf, there's little time to waste. If her rental is bought out, she doesn't know where she'll go next. Quite possibly, it won't be in Plainfield.
'I'm not gonna wait around for that,' she said of the new village. 'I need to find a place to live now. Right now.'
