Buyouts prevented some damage in Vermont’s July flood, but more will be needed
Buyouts prevented some damage in Vermont’s July flood, but more will be needed
In early July, heavy rains across the Northeast lead to devastating floods, especially in Vermont. But in some parts of the state, the damage was minimal — thanks in part to property buyouts that began after a different flood 12 years ago, caused by Tropical Storm Irene.
About 170 homes have been purchased and demolished in Vermont since that storm. Now, after the July floods, dozens more may be needed. But as Vermonters have learned over the past decade, the process of paying homeowners a fair value for their homes in order to demolish their property and move them out of harm’s way is rarely easy or efficient.
Along the Dog River in Northfield, Vermont, there’s a small park with a wooden pavilion and a few picnic tables and benches across a large open lawn. Michele Braun, the town’s former land use planner, knows this space well.
“As you get closer to the river, there’s a big meadow area with a big walking path that loops around, and right along the river there is a buffer of trees and shrubs,” Braun said.
It’s hard to tell at first, but as we look around Dog River Park, the signs of flooding that hit this area in early July become apparent. Some small trees are bent over and filled with dead leaves and sticks that were carried by the flood waters. You can see signs that water spilled onto the lawn too.
“I describe it as sediment dropped by the river,” Braun said. “It looks like a lawn with muddy areas.”
Braun, who now leads a nonprofit focused on river protection, said that on July 10, floodwaters covered this park and the adjacent street, and spilled into the basements of some nearby homes.
But unlike when major flooding from Tropical Storm Irene hit this area in 2011, that was the extent of the damage. That’s because back then, this was not a park; it was a neighborhood of seven homes.
“For the seven houses that we no longer see in the park, where we’re sitting, they would have been flooded in this most recent flood,” Braun said.
Using mostly federal funds, the town of Northfield bought out all those homes after Tropical Storm Irene, and it fell to Michele Braun to facilitate those buyouts. It was a move that was not welcomed by everyone in the community of less than 6,000. The main concern: that demolishing homes would reduce Northfield’s property tax rolls, also known as its grand list.
“My main argument was that it was the flood that had hit the grand list, not the buyouts,” Braun said. “The purpose of the buyouts is to save the community money in the long run, to prevent these massive losses from happening again in the future.”
Ultimately, town leaders agreed, and in total, Braun arranged 18 buyouts around Northfield. Some took up to four years to complete. Other post-Irene buyouts in Vermont took as long as a decade.
Most buyouts are funded by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But usually, it’s local officials — like Michele Braun in Northfield — who get that FEMA money to homeowners. That bureaucratic process is one reason buyouts are often slow. A 2019 analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council found the median buyout takes about five years.
One way that process could be sped up: If risk areas are mapped by planners and buyouts are discussed with homeowners before a disaster strikes, according to A.R. Siders, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware who’s studied buyout programs.
“The first time someone ever hears about a buyout, you don’t want it to be when they’re standing in 3 feet of mud,” Siders said. “Because at that moment, they are also emotionally overwhelmed, they might be financially overwhelmed, and you don’t want them to be making that big decision in that emotional moment.”
Some states and municipalities around the country — including Vermont — have started up ongoing buyout programs that operate outside times of disaster response. In the last two years, the state legislature directed nearly $20 million in federal pandemic relief funds to fund its buyout program. According to Stephanie Smith, the state’s Hazard Mitigation Officer, the idea is to be more proactive.
“In a perfect world, the program is designed in a way where it’s intended to be forward-thinking, long-term risk reduction, so that we’re fixing things before they go wrong,” Smith said.
But in reality, that’s not always how it works. “People are most interested in it when things have gone wrong,” Smith said.
Like right now. Homes and businesses around the state are still reeling from the July flooding, and Smith said the state is just beginning the process of offering buyouts. Already, she said, about 120 homeowners have expressed interest in selling.
Kevin Geiger, a director with a local planning commission who worked on buyouts after Tropical Storm Irene, said as long and challenging as that process was, it paid off.
“Well over 100 households did not lose basically all of their money in their house, and nobody had to go rescue them,” Geiger said. “Nobody had to knock on their door, they didn’t have to lose everything. None of that trauma happened again to them or to the next person.”
The work now is to find ways to do buyouts faster — before the next flood hits.
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