Repeat flooding compounds need for repairs to Vermont’s popular trail networks

Repairs to the flood-damaged Lamoille Valley Rail Trail were still underway last week, a year after last summer’s devastating storms. Then the flooding — and the damage — happened again.

Now, crews are back out on the popular summer cycling route and taking stock of the latest damage, which officials said is greatest across several towns in the Northeast Kingdom. That’s on top, they noted, of the work from last year that still isn’t done.

The flood damage also comes, like last year, at the height of summer tourism season. Meanwhile, numerous hiking trails and state parks across Vermont also remain closed, officials said this week.

Several segments of the rail trail, which runs for 93 miles between St. Johnsbury and Swanton, remained closed on Wednesday, according to the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

That includes the portion from the Danville Village trailhead (mile 11) to the West Danville parking area (mile 14.2), as well as from the Hardwick train depot (mile 34.3) to the Wolcott trailhead (mile 40.6).

Meanwhile, Joe Flynn, the state’s transportation secretary, said Tuesday that another portion of the trail remains closed for repairs stemming from last summer’s flood. That’s the segment from East Hardwick (mile 24) to Greensboro Bend (mile 26.9), he said.

Flynn said at a press conference that the state is hopeful the entire trail could reopen in mid-September, “but that remains to be seen.” Last year, the final segment of the trail to open after a decade of construction — from Hardwick to Wolcott Village — did so just months before the floods.

At the same time, some of the state’s most well-known hiking routes also suffered damage last week, according to the Green Mountain Club, which maintains the Long Trail network.

As of Wednesday morning, the club’s website said the Monroe trailhead from Camel’s Hump Road in Duxbury, the Stowe Pinnacle trail and the Long Trail from the Duxbury Window parking lot to the Winooski River footbridge were closed, among others .

Keegan Tierney, the club’s director of field programs, said crews were still cataloging the extent of the storm’s damage to the Long Trail network, but focusing on portions around Route 125 in Addison County and around Route 15 in Lamoille County.

He characterized trail damage in those areas as “moderate.” Compared to last summer, Tierney said, the biggest difference appears to be that more local roads leading up to trail access points were damaged in last week’s storm. In those areas, he said the club is urging hikers to seek other routes so that town crews have space to do their jobs.

“Even if they’re passable, town road crews are putting in a lot of hard work right now to try to get those roads built back up,” Tierney said in an interview. “So we just want folks to be cognizant of that.”

Compounding the club’s challenges, he said, is the fact that it still hasn’t been able to start most of the trail repairs stemming from last summer’s floods. The club has fixed some of the most obvious damage, he said, but the bulk of the work has been on hold until the club gets the disaster response funding it needs to pay crews’ salaries.

Where that money comes from depends on where the repairs are needed. Generally speaking, in the northern half of the state, the club’s trails are on state-owned land, which Tierney said means disaster funding is available through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In the southern half, though, its trails largely traverse the Green Mountain National Forest — land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which Tierney said has its own disaster response funding stream that is separate from FEMA.

The club has seen “a little bit faster response” from the forest service so far in terms of assessing damage and getting money flowing, Tierney said, though he noted that “in both cases we are still waiting to get work on the ground.”

“The mechanisms that exist out there don’t necessarily follow the same timelines as Mother Nature does,” he said, referring to the two major floods in a single year.

Tierney noted, too, that much of the damage is so far into the backcountry that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to bring in anything other than hand tools. He estimated that it would be at least five or six years before all of the work could be completed.

State officials said this week that another popular summer draw — Vermont’s state parks — had closures across the system as a result of storm damage. As of Wednesday afternoon, that included :

• Boulder Beach State Park in Groton, expected to reopen July 22
• Ricker Pond State Park in Groton, expected to reopen July 22
• Seyon Lodge State Park in Groton, expected to reopen as early as July 26

The state also said that camping beaches at Little River State Park in Waterbury, at Waterbury Center State Park, and at certain other remote sites in Waterbury remained closed until water levels returned to a safe level.

State officials also continued to advise people against swimming in rivers and lakes until the water has been tested for contaminants after the storm and cleared for public use. The water should be clear and calm, they said.

At a press conference Tuesday, Agency of Natural Resources Secretary Julie Moore said she was concerned about the impacts of flood-caused runoff to Lake Champlain. In the week after last year’s flooding, she said the lake took in nearly the same amount of sediment and nutrients that it normally would over the course of an entire year. This month, she told reporters, the lake could see a similar impact.

In fact, she said, the state has “received anecdotal reports from lakeshore property owners that, in some ways, they believe the lake has never looked worse.”

Correction: The captions for photos accompanying this story previously misidentified the location of the trailhead and trail signs that are pictured.

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