Lyndon weighs removing historic bridge to lessen floodwaters

Lyndon — known as the “ Covered Bridge Capital of the Northeast Kingdom ” — is facing a dilemma.

Should it move forward with multimillion-dollar plans to restore one of its historic covered bridges and create a community park at a well-traveled intersection? Or should it scrap those plans entirely and remove the bridge to better contain floodwaters, which have repeatedly battered the town over the years?

On July 30, as residents reeled from yet another flood , a contracted firm presented a preliminary list of ways to minimize flooding damage to the town’s hazard mitigation committee.

According to the presentation, the most impactful option would mean removing the iconic Sanborn Covered Bridge and some of the fill in the adjoining lot where a park is planned. The news was first reported by the Caledonian-Record .

“My first thought was ‘that can’t be,’” selectboard member Susan Mills said during an Aug. 5 selectboard meeting. “But then I was like, ‘well, what’s more important: a covered bridge or people’s homes?”

Mills and other selectboard members agreed that if the bridge needed to be removed, it should be preserved elsewhere. While preserving houses and businesses are the top priority, she said, “we do need to consider our identity as well.”

“I hate to think that we’re going to be known for — I actually clocked this today — having five mini-marts in a 1.6-mile stretch,” Mills said.

The Caledonia County town of around 5,500 has a long history of flooding, sitting in a valley at the confluence of numerous waterways including the Passumpsic River, which winds through town. One area particularly prone to overflow is the well-traveled intersection of Main Street (Route 5) and Routes 122 and 114 on the northern edge of downtown.

Water often covers the road, even during minor flood events, and residents at the manufactured home park on the east side of the intersection have been evacuated or had their homes flooded more than a handful of times in the past 25 years.

On the west side of the intersection lies the dilapidated Sanborn Covered Bridge , originally built in 1869 and moved to its current location over the Passumpsic in 1960. It runs parallel to Main Street between a vacant parcel owned by the town and a former motel site where the landowner plans to construct a gas station and mini-mart . The bridge — listed on the National Register of Historic Places — is not open to traffic but continues to be a tourist attraction.

In early 2022, the town of Lyndon purchased the covered bridge . It plans to restore the structure — at a cost of roughly $2.2 million, according to the Caledonian-Record — and construct a community park alongside it, largely funded by grant money. While the project has yet to go out to bid, the bridge was removed last Friday to await renovation on dry land.

In November 2023, SLR Consulting — a sustainability consulting firm contracted by the hazard mitigation committee — kicked off its yearlong study to evaluate flooding issues in town and explore alternatives.

At the July 30 flood reduction presentation , the firm outlined 14 possible projects, including replacing inefficient culverts, removing bridges, home buyouts, floodplain restoration and raising the Main Street intersection. But the firm’s modeling concluded that removing the Sanborn Bridge and associated fill would make the most difference, by opening up a constricted section of river.

According to SLR Consulting, doing so would reduce nearby floodwater levels by half a foot during a 10-year flood (10% chance of happening every year, based on Federal Emergency Management Administration designations) and a foot during 500-year flood events (0.2% chance of happening every year; Lyndon saw two 500-year flood events in July alone).

At the manufactured home park just upstream, the bridge removal would reduce floodwaters by 0.3 feet during a 10-year flood and 0.6 feet during a 500-year flood, projections showed.

At a planning commission meeting on Aug. 14, members expressed disappointment and skepticism at the preliminary study recommendations, according to the Caledonian-Record . Commissioners contended that the bridge removal would only benefit a small area and that all options only changed flood levels by a relatively small amount.

“There’s no silver bullets to any of this,” Planning Commissioner John Carpenter said at the meeting. “You have to be wary of getting to the point where it’s like the old colonel said in Vietnam: ‘Turns out we had to destroy the village to save it.’ How many houses are you going to remove to keep those houses from flooding?”

At a hazard mitigation committee meeting the following day, members discussed comments and questions they had already received on the flood reduction recommendations. Some suggested dredging , though the contracted firm noted that the river bottoms in town did not show unusual amounts of sediment or debris deposits. Others brainstormed additional options for the covered bridge site and wondered what effect the proposed gas station on the north side of the bridge site would have on floodwaters (according to meeting documents, the developer has rejected a buyout offer proposed by the conservation district).

According to the minutes , the committee agreed to “concentrate on actions to improve the flow of the flood waters through town while also preserving vehicular access as much as possible and also trying to keep human inhabitants out of harm’s way.”

The hazard mitigation committee plans to meet again this Thursday to hold a public review of options. The committee will then choose two to three proposals that SLR will run through a cost-benefit analysis and submit in a pre-application for FEMA funding. Any flood reduction project, which would involve further public input and town approval, is likely to take between three to five years.

Figuring out a path forward on the covered bridge project will be a challenging but important endeavor, Selectboard Chair Chris Thompson said during the board’s Aug. 5 meeting.

“We need to try to get a win-win out of this,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Lyndon weighs removing historic bridge to lessen floodwaters .