Floods

Vermont has taken a beating. The heavy rains from tropical storm Irene overloaded rivers and streams all across the state. Anyone reading this from within Vermont already knows the details, or is perhaps living the details. We’ve lost at least three people to the water. Eleven towns are essentially cut off from the world by washed out roads. We’ve lost a few bridges, including one covered bridge built in 1870, swept away like a handful of sticks. Roads are closed all over the state and a number of downtowns are wrecked. Twenty thousand homes and businesses are still without power.

It’s going to be days or even weeks before all the electrical lines get repaired. Some line crews were stranded by the flooding and had to stay with the families they were reconnecting. Some roads aren’t damaged as much as they are just missing. People are using the old cliché, “You can’t get there from here,” with a new tone of voice. The fresh pavement is still visible from the repairs to the damage from the floods in May.

Vermont is set up for this kind of disaster. I’ve always said that around here you can find your way back to town by always turning downhill. Our forebears located town centers down in the river valleys where there was flat land and water power. Many roads in our steep terrain parallel streams and rivers.

As the state rebuilds, we should plan for more of this. The climate models scientists use to analyze the progress of climate change indicate that the northeastern U.S. will see warmer and wetter weather. They predict that the Atlantic Ocean will produce more and larger hurricanes.

Part of our preparation should be the recognition that so-called 500 year floods will show up more often than every 500 years. This means redefining flood zones and building codes. We need to redesign our infrastructure for a new relationship with flowing water. In some places this means building things stronger. In other places it means building vital structures elsewhere. In an absurd development, Vermont’s emergency management center had to be moved out of Waterbury because of flooding. Siting the center in an area susceptible to flooding seems to have been a slight oversight.

The hard part will be, in some cases, accepting that nature is stronger than we are and yielding. Some parts of Vermont may not be viable for human habitation in the future. If a piece of land is going to be neck deep in rushing water every couple of years, then it makes no sense to keep rebuilding. This yielding will also manifest itself in new patterns of agriculture. Wetter springs can mean later planting or changing crops.

Your Minor Heretic is growing a microscopic crop of cold-hardy rice this year. I have just two 4’x8’ paddies, but a wheat farmer in Ferrisburg is hoping to produce 4,000 pounds on a perennially soggy and formerly useless field. A friend of mine who grows organic produce is building more greenhouses, both to control water inputs and to extend his growing season year round. These are small beginnings, but they point in a direction.

Out in the Atlantic, at latitude 12 degrees north, longitude 33 degrees west, Tropical Depression 12 just became Hurricane Katia. The computer models show it heading just north of Haiti and Cuba and becoming a Category 3 storm by Sunday afternoon. It is still far too early to accurately predict the path, but most of the ensemble models show Katia hooking northwards and sweeping up the east coast. We can hope that Katia stays well off the coast, but we need to be ready for even more rain, next week and in years to come.