The torrent of water that ripped through Vermont in July left some towns in ruins and others unscathed. The disparity was due, in part, to differences in the amount of water that fell within the towns’ watersheds. But some municipalities took on large quantities of water and still escaped significant damage. Often that was because those with more resources, such as full-time staff, have woven together the complex web of funding and logistics that’s required for most flood resilience projects. For example, Brattleboro is wrapping up a 12-year land conservation project that could reduce local flooding by 4 to 5 feet. Brandon built a giant box culvert that allowed the town to avert the kind of dramatic damages it experienced during Tropical Storm Irene in 2011. Both towns have full-time staff that worked for long spans of time on the projects. Meanwhile, other towns with fewer resources haven’t been able to look closely at river corridor management, and that can have ripple effects downstream, said Sen. Chris Bray, D-Addison.“The fact that they haven’t necessarily engaged in river corridor planning and management at a level that climate change is demanding of us is no surprise,” he said. “So it’s like, OK, how do we improve our game across the board?”

Bray, who chairs the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, plans to introduce and prioritize a bill he’s dubbed the Climate Change Response Act in Vermont’s coming legislative session, which begins on Jan. 3. The bill would include a “coordinated, comprehensive” statewide plan for river corridor management, Bray said, “rather than leaving it as, basically, an optional municipal activity.”It would also address wetlands management and conservation, which he considers a piece of the river management puzzle, and it would look into measures that increase the safety and maintenance of the state’s dams, such as a dam safety revolving loan fund.  He also pointed to the challenges that arise when municipalities have different ideas about how to manage rivers. Some may choose to conserve land upstream from a developed area, widening the floodplain and giving the river space to slow down during times of high flow. 

Others have gone in the opposite direction, hardening the streambed into channels to protect development, which can make flooding worse downstream. “No one has their own river,” Bray said. “They have a segment of a river that flows through their town. And so just like the electric grid, you need a coordinated approach to manage the whole system of waterways.”The current patchwork of river management doesn’t make sense, Bray said, but it’s been “more tolerable because we’ve had less flooding.” In the last few years, as flooding has become more common, that’s changed. Lawmakers will contend with a tight budget in the upcoming year, caused by hot-and-cold consumer spending patterns that resulted in relatively meager tax collection, paired with a drop-off of federal Covid-19 funding and a need to distribute aid to municipalities that are still recovering from the summer floods. 

“I would caution everyone: This is going to be a very, very lean year in terms of our own budget,” Gov. Phil Scott warned at a press conference earlier this month. Bray’s plan would likely require more staff within the Agency of Natural Resources. Asked whether he was concerned about this year’s financial constraints, Bray said he’s accustomed to money being tight in the state budget. Recent federal funding may have given newer lawmakers the impression that money is easy to come by, he said, but he’s been in the Statehouse for 16 years. “I’m just used to the idea that we’re always short of money, and we should have to make a good case for any kind of expenditure,” he said. After the summer’s floods, Bray is ready to make that case for his bill. 

“We’re going to have to be willing to prioritize investing in these things,” he said.