(Barre, Vermont) The night when the flood reached their land, Shayd and Laurie Pecor fled with their dogs, parked their cars on a higher ground and watched the river rush into the house.
The flood of July 2023 threw more than a meter of water on the city center of Baront in Vermont and flooded the centenary opera which also serves as a town hall as well as the police and firefighters, trapping emergency vehicles. At least 350 properties have been damaged, including the Pecor house: the basement and the ground floor were made uninhabitable.
The federal government proposed to buy the properties to their market value before the rains and the flood to demolish them and create a green space. Sixty-seven households accepted, including the Pecor. Federal redemptions are a key element in the American flood mitigation strategy. More than 55,000 flooded properties have been acquired since 1993 since 1993, for a few years, with climate change and more frequent and more serious floods.
Rural exodus
But this voluntary program designed to help people to relocate has become a major depopulation vector in the country’s villages and small towns, according to local officials and post-merister experts.
When the houses are shaved, families leave and the properties are scratched from the taxation role, which weighs on the municipalities struggling with enormous reconstruction costs.
At the bar and elsewhere in Vermont, the buyouts create such financial pressure that the town halls made the unpopular decision to reject requests.
According to the director general of Barre, Nicolas Storellicastro, the figures were unbearable: approving all the acquisitions would have erased $ 280,000 in tax revenue in this city of barely 8,400 inhabitants, the quarter of which lives in poverty.
Another problem: the city needs more land to resolve the shortage of affordable housing. In the end, bar leaders approved 27 buyouts out of 67.
Photo John Tully, Archives The Washington Post
Nicolas Storellicastro, Managing Director of the City of Barre, at Vermont.
“Here, it’s a real dilemma. The city is four square miles ”(10 km2), including a part in a flood zone or on escarpments where building costs expensive, explains Mr. Storellicastro: “We cannot lose all these properties. »»
We see the same problem on the eastern and western coasts of the country, much richer, where the standard effects of climate change accuse small cities with bankruptcy.
A national phenomenon
“I spoke with people from everywhere, often in rural areas, who say:” We capitulate, we want a takeover “, reports Anna Weber, analyst at the Council for the Defense of Natural Resources, specialist in floods. They make requests from the municipal council and they are said to be said no. »»
The 2023 floods in Vermont were serious enough for President Joe Biden to declare them “major disaster”, which starts federal aid. Then, in 2024, another flood flooded the same cities, bringing a hard blow to the morale of the inhabitants.
The state currently estimates nearly 250 redemption requests.
“It is more than all requests from the last 10 years,” sighs Doug Farnham, responsible for the reconstruction of Vermont. In many of our communities, we come to the point where it is unbearable. You have to think and find a solution. »»
Photo John Tully, Archives The Washington Post
In 2023 and 2024, the Gunners river and a tributary of the Winooski river, the Stevens Branch river, left their beds and flooded riparian districts of the city of Barre, in Vermont.
The Pecor knew that their house was in a flood zone – they were required to secure against floods when they bought it. From their entrance, they could see the Stevens Branch river, which crosses Barre before throwing themselves into the Winooski river. But apart from a little water in the basement, to their knowledge, the house had never been seriously flooded.
When Barre rejected their buy -back requests, the Pecor used insurance money and their savings to repair the $ 100,000 in damage. Now fearing the river, they hoped to sell their house. After having rejected, they learned that they had to mount electricity and heating upstairs to make them compliant with standards. It was too expensive for them.
Instead of the federal acquisition, the city offered to buy the properties of Pecor and their neighbors in this hard -hit district. Free from federal restrictions, land could accommodate new raised housing. But the housing crisis strikes the Vermont: with the $ 70,000 in the city, it is impossible to find a house comparable to the dry.
We feel trapped. We would like to sell the house and move on a hill, where we are not afraid of water. But it seems practically impossible.
Shayd Pecor, whose house was flooded twice
During a visit in May, the district still wore the flood stigma. Mold covered the walls of the thrift store of the Salvation Army, today abandoned, and the dried mud covered the ground.
Photo John Tully, Archives The Washington Post
Two years after the first flood, we still see the flood brand everywhere at the bar, as on the walls of this abandoned building.
There was a lack of large parts of coating to houses and sandbags still blocked the signs, as if the water was dropped the day before. Two years after the first flood, we saw the flood brand everywhere in the local neighborhoods.
Tensions between elected officials and citizens
According to Mr. Storellicastro, the buyout program has drawn up owners against elected officials, whose duty is to favor the long -term interest of bar, not that of individuals. Aid to the elevation of houses is limited to $ 300,000 per property and only three owners have obtained it. Today, families are stuck, in damaged houses that they do not have the means to repair, and the city is taken with vacant or underused lots. And everyone is waiting to see if the other party will give in, he explains.
“In my opinion it could last for years,” he added.
The solution developed by Mr. Storellicastro is based on three infrastructure projects – at the cost of around 4 million dollars – and on the creation of a band of free land in anticipation of future floods. The town hall also wants to add multi -depth buildings in the non -flood zone. All this requires the help of Washington, which has already paid 67 million to Vermont.
Under this plan, cities could accept more buy -back requests: temporary financial assistance would compensate for the drop in tax revenue. According to the senior official Mr. Farnham, a law for this purpose, in the process of approval, recognizes that cities as a bar “are part of a broader dynamic”.
Vermont must rethink its relationship with rivers. We can no longer occupy all the constructed space. But we must also take note that the municipalities see their tax base decrease.
Doug Farnham, responsible for the reconstruction of Vermont
A quarter of an hour’s drive from Barre, the village of Plainfield, which has 1,200 inhabitants, authorized 39 buyouts. It is a third of the built heritage, underlines Arion Thiboumery, a long-standing resident who participated in the Committee of Post-InDondations Citizens.
Plainfield was flooded in July 2023, but it was the torrential rains of 2024 that devastated the village. The flood and landslides have swept away bridges and sections of the road. The river took a good part of a building of eight apartments. No resident was inside.
Photo John Tully, Archives The Washington Post
The torrential rains of 2024 and the flood of the Great Brook river in 2023 destroyed or seriously damaged a third of the houses in the village of Plainfield.
In a small village, losing all these houses is a psychological shock, says Mr. Thiboumery. The town hall decided that it was better to sacrifice its tax plate rather than forcing people to stay in these houses where you can no longer feel safe, he said.
Since the flood, he has been thinking about the means to reverse the apparently inevitable decline in the village: “We enter a new world, that of climate change, and cities must adapt. Thinking about it, it seems to me that the logical response is to move on a higher ground. »»
With other volunteers, he works on a plan aimed at subdividing a large agricultural plot in fallow; There would be room for 40 houses.
In the meantime, Mr. Thiboumery, who owns the residential building carried, asked for a takeover.
This article was published in the Washington Post.
Read the original version (in English; subscription required)
