One Year After Irene

This is a repost from one year ago, today. While the response to the devastation has been incredible, the underlying factors that made Irene so destructive to Vermont and other Eastern states have only gotten worse. The importance of conserving ridge lines and restoring upper-elevation tributaries cannot be understated.

A few recent stories are added at the end.

September 2, 2011

The East Coast of the U.S. took a walloping last weekend from Hurricane Irene. While millions sighed with relief when it passed through New York City, folks in New England were battening down the hatches for what would certainly be some gusty winds in the higher elevations, and a lot of rain.

On Monday, August 22, the storm was expected to track over the Caribbean and hit Florida as a Category 1 or 2 storm. By the next day, the track and intensity had changed enough that I decided to get ready for what might be a serious weather maker, even all the way up in our neck of the woods.

I never imagined that the eye of Irene would pass directly over our house in Eastern Vermont six days later, or that thousands of people in more than a dozen nearby towns would be cut off from the world by the worst flooding the state has seen in more than 80 years. Somehow, Irene became the perfect tropical storm laying waste to our mountainous, landlocked state, eating away at roads, twisting culverts, taking out bridges, and leaving many without power, phone service, or a place to call home. 

Leading up to the storm, I spent hours ditching and building a water bar on our dirt road. The power went out for a little more than 12 hours, which wasn't quite long enough to pose a threat to our fridge and freezer contents. Having watched the radar for two days straight, I knew that Southern Vermont was hit badly. Up to 10 inches of rain fell in some parts of the state, in as many hours, which was an extremely unwelcome visitor to our steep slopes, moist ground, and all the waterways and tributaries cutting through the Green Mountains. 

2011 has been an especially bad year for Vermont. After Lake Champlain rose to record levels this spring, Barre, saw flash flooding in May due to a fast and furious storm that passed through. Some have already blamed these events on climate change. Others may be content writing it off as an act of, or warning from God. I doubt many Vermonters will be blaming FEMA for their problems, and after the rebuilding really gets moving, I expect this to be a galvanizing event for all of our local communities, lawmakers, and utilities.

If you live in Vermont, or have ever visited, you know that there are many steep mountains between the rich bottom lands along Lake Champlain and the Connecticut River. Those peaks are most noted for their skiing, which draws tourists from all over the world (at least the ones who don't mind a little ice).  Killington, Stratton, Stowe, Jay Peak, Sugarbush, are some of the larger resorts. These ski areas were mostly developed in the 1950s and 60s, just as Vermont's hillsides had begun recovering from being totally cleared, thanks to a massive sheep farming boom during the late 1800s. The great Flood of 1927 was no doubt a result of this particular kind of land use, combined with too much rain in too little time. 

Looking at the concentration of the devastation in the past, and this year, one thing is clear. The steeper the hills and narrower the valleys, the worse the damage was. Already saturated ground left Irene's precipitation with nowhere else to go than through picturesque towns and villages. The difference between 1927 and 2011 is that 80 years ago only 30% of Vermont was forested. Today that number is 75%. It had been as high as 79%, but recent development pressure, including more commercial, residential, and recreational development, not to mention logging, has taken away what just may have been a very critical 4% of our woodlands, leaving Vermont much more vulnerable to epic rain events like we just experienced. 

While 4% may not seem like much, it depends entirely on where that clearing takes place. In most states with steady enough wind to generate electricity, turbines are built in open areas, already devoid of trees. Or in Massachusetts' case, off the coast of Cape Cod. Here in Vermont, economically, they can only go in one place: on the ridge lines. That means roads must be built, mountaintops cleared and dynamited, causing watersheds and ecosystems to become permanently altered. The same goes for cell phone antennas. Unlike urban areas where cell sites are easily mounted on rooftops or water towers, or tall towers are built in the middle of town where they provide the most reception, Vermont has no choice but to site wireless infrastructure on hilltops in order to cover the greatest area, even if few people live or work near those high points in the terrain. With Vermont's rugged topography and dense woods, it is possible to be within a mile of a tower and still not get a strong signal.

Photo from CVPS.

This is why Vermont has been so punished by Irene, the torrent in May, and the snow melt from last winter. A growing number of our peaks and ridges have been staked and claimed by the wireless carriers and their towers. Additionally, the push for renewable energy is taking this unwise elevated development a step further by building roadways capable of carrying the massive turbine pieces to the tops of the mountains, where they will presumably stand until they rust apart. It doesn't matter how much money and thought goes into a road built up a mountain. It will always increase the flow the water down, much faster than before. The Green Mountain Parkway would have surely done this too, had it been approved.

It will remain to be seen if 2011 was a just an anomaly—the likes of which will not seen for another 80 years—or if this kind of precipitation and resulting flooding is going to become a more regular occurrence in Vermont. While some would prefer to leave things up to God, or believe that reducing our carbon emissions will magically protect our roads and bridges from historic downpours, I think the important variable is how we treat our peaks. I think it would be wise to accept that attaining universal cell phone coverage in a mountainous state like Vermont is a zero-sum game. We should be focusing on wired broadband, like fiber optics, running through communities instead of to the tops of mountains before dumbing that massive bandwidth down into wasteful microwave signals. It should be obvious that there are much better ways to generate electricity than from 450 foot tall wind turbines perched at 2500 feet above sea level.

If we choose to keep building roads up all of our peaks and erect ugly infrastructure that's noisy, kills birds, cooks trees, makes people sick, and encourages runoff to head quickly downhill, then Vermonters should expect to see more flooding in the future.

You Can Quote Me - August 26, 2012 -- Anne Morse, a Sterling College faculty member and one of the arrestees recently found guilty of criminal trespass, joins Darren Perron and Jennifer Reading to discuss the Lowell wind project and the arrests.

I Believe: Seeing the rivers for their trees - Burlington Free Press (opinon)

As we mark the first anniversary of Tropical Storm Irene, integrated approaches to our environmental and social problems seem ever more critical. River health, water quality and climate change are important issues on their own, but they are connected and interdependent. It is through understanding and respecting the relationship between these issues that we will be more resilient in the future.

Tropical Storm Irene and the subsequent cleanup stripped many stream and river banks of their trees and vegetation. For the decades preceding the storm, people cut down trees in river and stream buffer zones to expand grazing and crop lands. Replanting these deforested riverbanks and buffers is a simple yet vital step toward positively affecting water quality, climate, wildlife and communities.

With climate change, scientists predict an intensification of the hydrological cycle, which in lay terms translates to shorter and more intense rainfalls and longer warm, dry spells. Forested riparian buffers will be increasingly important to contend with the high-volume rainfalls and flooding that is expected in the future. The changing climate will affect rivers and water quality, and the trees, to a smaller extent, will affect climate.

From a wildlife perspective, forested stream banks and buffers are a clear winner. Trees along rivers provide cover and food for migratory birds as they journey through our state. The forest canopy also helps to cool streams so that native fish, such as trout, can survive. As global temperatures rise, this function will be more important.