Last year’s flooding caused ‘close calls’ for Vermont dams. Officials are trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

This is Part 3 of Downstream , a 10-part series looking at what’s changed — and what hasn’t — one year after catastrophic floods swept through Vermont.

A year ago, as historic levels of rain fell and rivers jumped their banks, Vermont’s dams felt the full force of the flooding.

At least five small dams failed entirely. Around 50 dams, at least, sustained damage requiring repairs by the state Agency of Natural Resources. And at key state flood control dams — Waterbury, East Barre and Wrightsville — water levels reached record or near-record highs, alarming residents who lived downstream.

For Vermonters living along waterways or beneath dams, last summer’s historic flooding drew attention to the state’s network of dams — hundreds of structures, many old, decaying or forgotten, dotting the state’s rivers and streams.

DOWNSTREAM PART 1

The disaster helped spark a sweeping reappraisal of how the state manages its waterways and the structures built on them. Now, new legislation, as well as an influx of state funding and a suite of new rules, are slated to dramatically reshape how Vermont oversees its dams.

“It’s a big deal,” Neil Kamman, the director of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation’s Water Investment Division, said in an interview. “The dam safety program is evolving significantly, in a good direction.”

‘More close calls than we should have had’

Last July, as torrential rainfall soaked Vermont, water rose precipitously behind the state’s Winooski River flood control dams — Waterbury, Wrightsville and East Barre.

“If water (at Wrightsville) exceeds capacity, the first spillway will release water into the North Branch River,” Montpelier City Manager Bill Fraser warned on Facebook on July 11, 2023. “This has never happened since the dam was built so there is no precedent for potential damage. There would be a large amount of water coming into Montpelier which would drastically add to the existing flood damage.”

State officials scrambled to get personnel to monitor the structures, and despite several false alarms and high anxiety in downstream communities, the dams held fast.

“At the end of the day, we’re actually pretty fortunate with how everything performed,” Ben Green, an engineer and the section chief of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s dam safety program, said in an interview. “But we had probably more close calls than we should have had.”

In the aftermath of the floods, those close calls came into focus. In the two weeks following the flooding, state inspectors — as well as dam safety personnel called in from New York and Massachusetts — assessed nearly 400 dams across the state, Green told lawmakers in presentations last winter.

State inspectors found that five dams — in Woodbury, Wallingford, Peru, Cabot and Washington — had failed, meaning they were effectively destroyed. Another 50 dams sustained “notable damage,” according to Department of Environmental Conservation data. The state estimates that 57 dams were overtopped by floodwaters.

At the Wrightsville and East Barre dams, officials recorded record-high water levels, with floodwaters rising to within 10 inches of the Wrightsville Dam’s auxiliary spillway. The Waterbury Dam, meanwhile, recorded its fourth-highest water level on record.

Officials said that the flooding provided something of a wake-up call. After hearing testimony about the impact of the flood on Vermont’s dams, Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison, the chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Energy, thought, “How do we not have this happen again?” he said.

“We are understaffed, and then the weather is more and more violent, making us more and more susceptible” to flooding, Bray said in an interview. “So how do we build a long-term pathway out of here?”

More funding, more oversight

In this year’s legislative session, that pathway largely took the form of Act 121, a sweeping law regulating development near waterways, improving wetlands conservation and strengthening dam safety.

Lawmakers added four positions to the dam safety program and made two others permanent, bringing the total number of state dam safety staff from five to nine — a much-needed boost for the program, officials said.

The legislation will also correct what critics say is an inconsistency in the state’s dam oversight system. Currently, the state Agency of Natural Resources’ Department of Environmental Conservation has jurisdiction over roughly 1,000 dams, while another 21 hydropower dams fall under the purview of the state Public Utility Commission. (Dozens of others are regulated by federal agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service, among others.)

Act 121 brings the Public Utility Commission’s dams under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Conservation by 2028, unless they qualify for federal oversight. That change will standardize two different processes — a disparity that has sometimes caused anxiety for dams’ neighbors.

The Legislature also added $4 million to a pot of money,  the Dam Safety Revolving Loan Fund, to fund the removal of dams that could pose a threat to communities downstream.

Previously, Vermont’s dam safety loan fund was much smaller, and could only be tapped in emergencies. Act 121, however, allows dam owners to access money for dam removal or renovation even before it’s urgently needed.

That funding, officials said, will allow landowners — who might not otherwise have the resources to remove dams — to access forgivable state loans to get rid of potentially hazardous structures.

Karina Dailey, a restoration ecologist at the Vermont Natural Resources Council, said that in the aftermath of last July’s record rainfall, multiple landowners reached out seeking to get rid of dams on their property. After the floods, “there was a noticeable difference in people calling who had dams on their property who no longer wanted them,” Dailey said.

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Deconstructing dams is not only safer for downstream communities, said Dailey, who runs the nonprofit’s dam removal program, it’s also a boon for the health of stream ecosystems.

“Certainly a removed dam is the best dam, in our opinion,” she said.

‘A paradigm shift’

Outside of the Legislature, officials are using other strategies to improve the state of Vermont’s dams.

The Waterbury Dam is already undergoing a multi-year renovation , a collaboration with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade deteriorating concrete and flood gates. That project, which is currently estimated to cost roughly $80 million, is scheduled for completion in 2029.

Vermont’s Department of Environmental Conservation is also in communication with the Corps about making potential improvements to the Wrightsville and East Barre dams. Officials are considering renovations that would allow the dams to release water more quickly in order to build capacity ahead of expected rainfall.

That process is still in its early stages, and it’s not clear if or when such improvements would take place.

And even before last summer’s flooding, state officials were drafting new rules governing dams. New regulations will strengthen the state’s oversight of dams owned by other entities, giving state officials the authority to compel dam owners to inspect and remediate the structures.

“They are a big deal,” Kamman said. Once they go fully into effect, “the state will be in a position of saying, okay, owner, your dam was found to be in poor condition. It poses a risk to downstream residents. It’s not imminent, but it is a significant risk, and you need to do X, Y and Z in order to make this safe. That’s enforceable.”

Green, the dam safety engineer, told lawmakers in the past legislative session that the new rules amounted to a “paradigm shift in terms of how dams are regulated in the state.”

After delays caused both by Covid-19 and last year’s flooding, the regulations are scheduled to take effect next summer.

State officials and lawmakers say the reforms, all in all, are the product of a need to keep adapting. Climate change is exacerbating flooding in Vermont, experts say , forcing state policymakers to continually adapt to heavier rainfall and more frequent deluges — events that will put further pressure on Vermont’s dams.

“We’re just living in a different climate,” said Bray, the chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy committee. “And we had not adapted our laws and planning practices to keep up with the hazards that we’re facing.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Last year’s flooding caused ‘close calls’ for Vermont dams. Officials are trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. .