Charlotte Oliver is a reporter with Community News Service, part of the University of Vermont’s Reporting & Documentary Storytelling program.

SOUTH HERO — Ethan Wagner has been fishing as long as he can remember, mostly as a hobby. So when the Essex High School senior injured his knee playing football, he joined the school’s varsity bass fishing team. And among his teammates, who all call him Wags, he’s found a new bond. “When you’re on the boat together all day, you find something in common,” he said. 

Wagner competed on one of 19 varsity high school teams at the Vermont Principals’ Association’s seventh annual Open Classic tournament last Saturday, hosted at the John Guilmette Access Area in South Hero. The tournament was the most competitive yet, said Jeff Goodrich, chair of the association’s fishing committee — with more “‘full bags’ and competitive weights” than ever before.

It’s part of a trend in a new co-ed sport that’s only seen growth since it was trialed in Vermont in 2018, inspired by New Hampshire high schools, and made official in 2019. 

Kids go out on the water in the early morning, then parade back mid-afternoon. Boats are pulled out of the water and teams go up to weigh in the six best bass, smallmouth or large, they caught that day.

On Saturday, 34 boats went out on Lake Champlain, with 19 varsity and 15 junior varsity teams making up two divisions. Each school can have one team in each division, four kids to a team. The teens took shifts, allowing two in the boat at a time while a coach or volunteer captain maneuvered it. 

Milton High School came out on top that day, weighing six bass at 24.33 total pounds. Burlington High came in second with a weight of 20.97 pounds, and Champlain Valley Union High came in third with 18.28 pounds. 

The teams spent the day fishing on the Inland Sea of Lake Champlain, a stretch protected from wind and weather by the Champlain Islands and the causeway between Milton and South Hero. 

In Vermont varsity fishing, anglers must weigh in live fish — so all boats are required to have live wells that maintain temperature and oxygen levels to sustain the bass while on board. Teams get point deductions for any dead fish. 

At every tourney, employees from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife collect the fish in larger live tanks to release them after they’re weighed. The state workers make sure the fish are healthy and redistribute them, said Paige Blaker, one of three state employees working last weekend’s event. That afternoon, the crew released fish across three to four locations along the Inland Sea, Blaker said.

Part of the sport is “being a steward of the environment and taking care of the water,” Goodrich said, hence the partnership with the fish and wildlife department, which doesn’t exist in adult tournament leagues. 

Anglers master a tactic called culling: They weigh their fish as they go, dumping the lightest overboard and constantly replacing the ones in their on-board well until they’re left with the biggest six they can find. 

“You can control a lot of things — but the one thing you can’t control is if the fish is gonna bite,” said Scott Green, the coach at Harwood Union High School. The team at Harwood, last year’s state champs, has 18 anglers, the most ever. 

How do they prepare for tournaments? 

“We make sure there’s no frays in our line,” said team captain Nathanael Conyers. 

At the Duxbury school’s last practice ahead of the Open Classic, Green set up cornhole boards and cut-up recycling bins on the lawn in front of the school — targets for the athletes to try to land their hooks on. The team was working on their line-casting skills in preparation for the tournament in a few days. 

The rod is an “extension of your hand,” and “your wrist dictates where it goes,” Green said. 

The team gets in two practices on the lawn during the week — due to the long drive to the lake — and one on the water every weekend. Like all school teams in the state, Harwood Union relies on local anglers and coaches to volunteer personal boats, paying for insurance and fuel. 

Other schools far from the lake, like Middlebury Union High School, practice on the water only a couple times a year, said John Fitzgerald, that team’s coach. Other than with those sporadic sessions, he helps his anglers by directing them to YouTube and online resources to learn about “different setups,” he said. 

Although the sport is co-ed in Vermont schools, girls are far outnumbered. Hailey Isham, a sophomore at Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol, said she’s the only girl on her school’s team. She’s been doing the sport since she was a freshman and plans to participate all four years. 

The Harwood team has only had a few girls over the years, Green said. The Middlebury team had a girl on the team last year, though none this year, Fitzgerald said.

But Green said he’s happy to have girls on the team, and leaders in the sport emphasize it’s for everyone.

“It gets students an opportunity to be a part of their school community, wear the uniform and represent their school in a nontraditional fashion,” Goodrich said. 

Wagner from Essex High said he’s excited for the VPA State Championship on Oct. 5 and hopes his team will do better there than at the South Hero tournament.

“I don’t do anything in my life to lose,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermont high schools hooked on a new sport: bass fishing.

Close to 400 people working for the Federal Emergency Management Agency are delivering aid to flood-affected Vermonters, following President Joe Biden’s approval last week of a major disaster declaration for seven Vermont counties hit by the remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl in mid-July.

Alongside Republican Gov. Phil Scott and other state officials, FEMA’s Federal Coordinating Officer William Roy told reporters at a Wednesday press conference that the agency has already opened three disaster recovery centers — located in Barre, Plainfield and Waterbury — and a fourth, to be located in Lyndonville, is expected to open soon.

At the disaster recovery centers, residents will be able to meet with FEMA staff, who can help guide them through the application and documentation processes for seeking federal aid. Roy said that FEMA aims to open centers in all seven counties where people are eligible to receive individual assistance under Biden’s major disaster declaration: Addison, Caledonia, Chittenden, Essex, Lamoille, Orleans and Washington. Orange County was recently approved for public assistance, which reimburses municipalities and other public bodies part of the cost to recover public infrastructure.

According to Roy, 370 FEMA personnel are currently deployed in Vermont to aid in the state’s natural disaster recovery. As in the aftermath of last July’s floods, FEMA officers are going door-to-door to offer assistance to Vermonters in flood-stricken areas. Out of 375 Vermonters who requested that FEMA inspect their homes for flood damage, 235 inspections have already been completed, Roy said.

And as of Wednesday morning, Vermonters had applied for individual assistance, Roy said, and more than $1 million in grant dollars are “going out the door.”

However, the current disaster declaration only encompasses damage from the storm that hit Vermont between July 9 and 11. 

Scott announced in a press release late Wednesday afternoon that he had submitted a request for another declaration to cover the July 30-31 storm for Caledonia, Essex and Orleans counties. An initial federal assessment found that 85 homes were damaged or destroyed in that storm, while public infrastructure withstood more than $3.7 million in damages. The release also noted that the governor had requested a separate declaration last week for Lamoille and Caledonia counties, which were hit by an earlier bout of flooding that began June 22.

“It’s important to remember, while these federal and state resources are essential and will help, we know it’s not enough,” Scott said at the press conference. “It’s not going to make people whole, or cover all the costs. I know this repeated flooding has taken a toll on municipal and family budgets, especially for those who have been hit multiple times just in the last year.”

In an effort to help fill those gaps — at least for business owners — the state will relaunch last year’s Business Emergency Gap Assistance Program. The program offers interest-free grant dollars to business owners to help cover the cost of flood damage to their businesses, or to make up for lost revenues due to the floods.

Scott and legislative leaders earlier this month approved an additional $7 million for the program to help business owners recover from this year’s multiple bouts of flooding. That comes on top of $5 million that the Legislature greenlit for the program during the legislative session, Scott said Wednesday.

The application portal for businesses to apply to the state for BEGAP funds opens Thursday. According to Commissioner of Economic Development Joan Goldstein, businesses that qualified for the funding after last year’s floods may apply for 2024 funding, as well. Businesses, nonprofits, landlords and farms may receive grants for up to three physical locations per flood event.

Businesses hit by this summer’s floods have until Nov. 15 to apply for BEGAP funding. Those grants will cover 30% of net uncovered damages up to $100,000 per business location.

And businesses impacted by last year’s floods that could still use help can also apply for BEGAP aid by Sept. 30.

The federal Small Business Administration also offers low-interest disaster loans to businesses and homeowners impacted by the floods. Anita Steenson, a spokesperson for the administration, said Wednesday that the deadline to apply for those loans to help with repairs related to the early July flooding is Oct. 21.

Read the story on VTDigger here: FEMA gets to work helping Vermont recover from remnants of Tropical Storm Beryl.

Editor’s note: Interviews with Nicaraguan sources were conducted in Spanish and later translated into English.

Behind the customers ordering pastries at the counter, somewhere among the movement of bakers, cooks and delivery drivers for the Red Hen Baking Co. in Middlesex, two women from the northern highland region of Nicaragua prepared for the lunch rush.

Nereyda Urbina and Seydi Moncada, part of the 65-strong regiment manning the popular bakery and cafe, are among a large group of Nicaraguans who have moved to central Vermont through a special federal humanitarian program for residents of four conflict-torn countries. 

Both women started at Red Hen in the last year, cleaning floors and washing dishes. On a morning earlier this summer, Urbina worked in the kitchen preparing salads and sandwiches. Moncada brushed out bread baskets, readying them for the hand-shaped loaves they would soon carry. 

Red Hen is something of an institution in the area, its bread sold in grocery stores across Vermont. Owners Randy George and Eliza Cain have made a concerted effort to integrate the two women, paying interpreters to attend performance reviews, purchasing a business Duolingo for the rest of the staff to learn Spanish, and hanging up a flipboard with translations of technical baking terms. At a staff talent show in May, Moncada performed a traditional Nicaraguan dance. 

“I’m overwhelmed with joy that that’s our workspace, our everyday work environment,” said Cain.

In their short time here, the more than two dozen Nicaraguans — all from the region of Matagalpa — have taken up jobs baking, cooking, painting houses, teaching Spanish, and taking care of elderly and disabled neighbors. On the face of it, theirs looks like an immigration success story, of newcomers finding a better life in America and, in the process, becoming part of the communities that welcome them. 

But the federal program they have come under has a two-year limit. Unless it is extended, these Nicaraguans will have to pack up the lives they’ve built here in Vermont — and face returning to a country that no longer guarantees them any rights. 

Moncada, her husband, and their two teenage sons were the first Nicaraguans to arrive in the area under the humanitarian program. A university professor and researcher in Nicaragua, Moncada quit her job and applied for a spot within days of its announcement. 

Back home, her husband Omar Montalván worked as a mental health counselor and in human resources. Here, he is an all-purpose handyman, renovating kitchens, installing new decks, or painting houses. Though their jobs have changed, the opportunity for work the couple have found in Vermont has not ceased to amaze them. 

“Think about it: if I go paint houses on a Saturday and make $50 for two hours, that money goes a long way for my mom in Nicaragua,” said Montalván. 

By next April, if the program is not extended, the family’s time will be up. A decision looms about what to do next. Returning to Nicaragua, however, is out of the question, said Montalván.  

“When I left, I kissed my family and I told them: ‘No matter who dies, I’m not coming back.’”

From Matagalpa to Middlesex

What links the mountains of northern Nicaragua to central Vermont began more than 30 years ago, when an 18-year-old student from Middlesex came to live at the home of Urbina’s grandmother in the city of Matagalpa. 

Beth Merrill’s arrival in Nicaragua in 1992 — on a semester-long college exchange program — came soon after the end of more than a decade of civil war in the country. Her time in the neighborhood of La Chispa marked her for life. 

“It’s a really marginalized community. Taxi drivers don’t want to take you there,” said Merrill, who for years afterward would keep a home in both the Matagalpa region and Montpelier. 

Teaching first-graders at the local school, Merrill was shocked by the lack of educational material. Chief amongst them: the absence of books to teach children to read.

“A lot of the kids said they needed a library,” said Merrill.

Years later, having collected donations in central Vermont, Merrill bought a plot of land in Matagalpa and built one. In 2002, the library of La Chispa was born, and alongside it Planting Hope, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the educational opportunities for children in the area.

Building preschools in local communities, driving a book bus to remote villages, offering cultural exchanges between Vermont and Nicaragua — Planting Hope soon became much more than just a neighborhood library. As the organization ballooned, Merrill realized that she needed someone who could direct things in Nicaragua full-time. And she knew just the woman for the job: Mercedes Guerrero. 

“Mercedes was very connected and vibrant and a community organizer at such a young age,” said Merrill. 

Guerrero describes herself as being “de pilas puestas” — a Spanish expression that literally translates to “having your batteries on”, meaning someone who is full of vigor and initiative. 

“We had a limited budget, but we did so many things,” said Guerrero, who arrived in Montpelier with her husband and daughter in July 2023.

As the director of Planting Hope, Guerrero established a network of host families in the nearby town of San Ramón. Those host families took in the generations of Vermonters who participated in the organization’s service-learning program. Through it, Merrill estimates that over 1,000 people from central Vermont traveled to Nicaragua. 

When their help was later needed to sponsor Nicaraguan families —  a requirement of the humanitarian program — many of them responded.

“It speaks to Vermonters. People have bent over backwards to make things work,” said Merrill, who herself sponsored Moncada’s family from San Ramón. 

‘Humanitarian parole’

Planting Hope might have conceivably kept growing. But in 2018, after sweeping anti-government protests were followed by a brutal police crackdown, Nicaragua took a markedly authoritarian turn. 

“You could hear the shots from my house, and the next day we saw them dead on the streets, just laying there,” Urbina recalled. 

One of the main targets were foreign nonprofits, who the government accused of “undermining national integrity”. American organizations are particularly despised by President Daniel Ortega, who denounces them as part of the long history of U.S. interference in Nicaragua, from the Marine Corps occupation of the country from 1912 to 1933, to U.S. funding of rebel Contra militias in the 1980s. 

On May 24, 2022, the day after throwing a party for the neighborhood kids to celebrate the library’s 20th birthday, Planting Hope was officially included in the list of hundreds of NGOs shuttered by the Nicaraguan government. Police seized the library for the government. To this day, the building stands disused, empty of books, shelves, computers, and children. 

“What we will always have is the desire and the willingness to keep working for our people,” said Guerrero, who found herself suddenly unemployed. 

Getting a job usually depends on your standing with the ruling Sandinista party, according to other Nicaraguans interviewed for this article, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals should they have to return. Having worked for an American organization can brand you as unwanted, they said, and subject you to close scrutiny by the authorities. 

Between the 2018 government crackdown and the 2022 disbanding of Planting Hope, more than 250,000 Nicaraguans fled the country. 

On January 5, 2023, in the face of historic and sustained migrant encounters with Border Patrol at the U.S-Mexico border, the Biden administration announced the new program to allow nationals from four politically and economically unstable countries — Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela — to live and work in the U.S for two years. 

Called “humanitarian parole”, the idea was to provide a safe and legal pathway for migrants fleeing turmoil in their home countries, and ease the pressure on the border. But one requirement proved a major obstacle: the need for applicants to have an American sponsor commit to supporting them financially. 

Thomas and Kristen Dunn provided that crucial sponsorship support for Guerrero and her family in Montpelier. The Dunns had hosted Guerrero for a month in 2007, during a cultural exchange put together by Planting Hope.  

Last fall, three months after Guerrero arrived, Urbina followed with her husband and two sons, sponsored by Nathan Suter and Morgan Lloyd, who had visited Nicaragua in 2016 as part of one of Planting Hope’s service-learning trips. Suter and Lloyd moved Urbina and her family to an apartment they own in Montpelier, and have not charged them rent. 

Urbina remembers rushing home to tell her family after receiving an email from Suter and Lloyd offering to become sponsors: “I didn’t think twice when I saw it, I said ‘Yes’!” 

‘The most beautiful thing’

Life in America has been a vast improvement for both Urbina and Guerrero’s families. Firstly, in an economic sense: Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, according to the International Trade Administration. 

“Here, you have a chance. If you work, even if you don’t make much, you can pay rent and buy groceries,” said Guerrero, who worked as a Spanish teacher last year at Montpelier’s private Pacem School. 

But most important for the two women, as mothers, is what living in Vermont means for their children. 

Guerrero’s 7-year-old daughter Valentina has nonverbal autism. When the Nicaraguan government closed the nonprofit that provided care for her, Guerrero finally made up her mind to move to the United States. 

“I saw that her behavior began to regress,” said Guerrero. 

At Union Elementary School, Valentina has access to an occupational therapist, as well as swimming lessons, both of which Guerrero said have benefitted her enormously. 

And at Urbina’s house one morning, as her sons gathered in front of the TV and flicked on a baseball video game, she said she had lived something very similar. 

Her youngest son, Maynor, 14, was born with a form of cerebral palsy. Because he did not learn in the same way as other students, the teachers in Nicaragua did not let him move up the grade levels. Instead, he was sent to a school for kids with all sorts of disabilities.

“But here, all the teachers were open to getting to know him, to figuring out ways to help him,” said Urbina. 

Her son’s inclusion has extended outside of the classroom, too. In Montpelier, Maynor has played soccer, basketball, and most importantly, baseball. 

“I tried signing him up in Nicaragua, because he loves baseball. But the second I mentioned that he has a disability, they didn’t want him,” said Urbina. 

The crack of a bat, then the holler of a virtual crowd, sounded from the TV. The brothers laughed and cheered on the little pixelated batter running for first base. 

“The most beautiful thing that’s ever happened to him is the acceptance he’s had here,” said Urbina. 

Venezuelan bellwether

So what chance do Nicaraguans have of staying in the country?

According to Astrid Montealegre, an immigration lawyer and advisor for the Nicaraguan American Human Rights Alliance, there are essentially three options: a family petition, a work visa, or seeking asylum. 

But if a Nicaraguan person had a family member with permanent legal status in the U.S, they would have pursued that option before ever coming to the country with humanitarian parole, according to Montealegre. The other options, work visas and asylum claims, are complicated and expensive processes, with lawyer fees generally ranging from $3,000 to $5,000 per person. 

None of the Nicaraguans interviewed for this article were pursuing any of these three options. Instead, they all hoped that the Biden administration would extend the parole program. 

Montealegre agreed: “The most viable option for most Nicaraguans would be the establishment of a temporary protection status, practically an amnesty.” 

An extension would be in line with the Biden administration’s carrot-and-sticks policy, hardening border enforcement while simultaneously normalizing the status of noncitizens already in the country. Montealegre believes that Venezuelans will be a bellwether — they were the first beneficiaries of humanitarian parole in October 2022, and as such, will be the first ones to have their two-year stay expire. 

If the Biden administration does not extend the program for Venezuelans, Montealegre said it is highly unlikely they do so for Nicaraguans. The result, she feared, could be “hundreds of thousands of migrants suddenly cast into limbo”, with no legal basis to stay but unwilling to return to the countries in turmoil they left behind.  

That could spell disaster if Donald Trump is reelected in November, according to Montealegre, because the former president has repeatedly vowed to deport millions of undocumented migrants. 

“We don’t know what will happen with Trump, he can do any crazy thing,” said Montealegre.

Guerrero puts it more bluntly: “If Trump wins, a la mierda. He’s going to kick us out.”

In the meantime, Republicans in Congress have repeatedly challenged the president’s parole authority. A Texas-led coalition of 21 Republican-leaning states took it to the courts, arguing that they were suffering financial harm from having to take in paroled migrants — though that lawsuit failed. And on Aug. 2, the Department of Homeland Security “temporarily paused” the program after concerns surfaced about fraud amongst financial sponsors.

“We haven’t come here to be a burden to the government, we’ve come here to work, to pay taxes,” said Guerrero. 

One year on in Vermont

Arriving home with Valentina from a summer camp one afternoon, Guerrero sighed. Her daughter buzzed about the kitchen, dragging toys and laughing, a ceaseless blur of motion and energy. 

Guerrero’s family had just reached a year of living in Vermont, but it was not an anniversary they would happily celebrate. 

“It’s horrible. They’re such mixed emotions. I want to see my family back home,” said Guerrero. 

Guerrero said they did not apply for asylum — though she believed it would have been granted — because to do so would have meant essentially renouncing on ever going back to Nicaragua. The thought of never seeing her parents again, or her friends, or her house in her native San Ramón, and the mangos and bananas she could pick from the trees in her garden, was too difficult to stomach. 

“Valentina,” Guerrero called, suddenly. “Do you want to put on your dress? The one abuela made for you?” 

Valentina nodded. And for a moment, as her mother slipped her into the traditional Nicaraguan folk dress in the blue and white colors of the Nicaraguan flag, Valentina became quiet and still. 

“Beautiful,” said Guerrero, kissing her. “Beautiful.” 

On a hill above Montpelier one recent evening, on the field of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Omar Montalván tried desperately to defend a soccer goal from the shots raining down from his two teenage sons. It was an all-star “Dad” performance, full of laughing taunts at his kids if they mis-kicked a ball, lots of pointing to his injured calf if they scored on him, and improbable yarns about sporting glories in his younger days. 

After work, if the weather’s fair, Montalván likes to take Dylan, 15, and Denzell, 14 — his and Moncada’s children — up here and kick the ball around for a couple hours. 

“I’m a family man, you know? The free time I have, I like to spend with my family,” he said. 

Having been here now longer than a year, Montalván is proud of how his family has adapted to America. After scoring plenty of goals with U32’s junior varsity soccer team last fall, Dylan was quickly promoted up to the varsity squad. Denzell was a star during the track and field season in the spring. 

The first to arrive, the Montalván family will also be the first whose two-year parole will be up. Considering the future, Montalván became thoughtful. Sometimes, he said, in the middle of a long, heavy work shift, or trying to find sleep at night, so many doubts assailed him at once that he despaired of ever making sense of things. 

“Sometimes I feel nostalgic. What am I doing here? This isn’t my country. I don’t speak the language.”

Across the darkening field, his two boys chased each other, shouting and running tirelessly after the ball. 

“But then I think of them. You do it for them. For their opportunities.” 

Montalván looked around at the fading outlines of the houses that faced the college green. 

“I like it here. The people are very close with their community, like at home. But if we can’t stay…”

He smiled: “I feel good. I feel ready. Whatever comes our way, we’ll be ready.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Nicaraguans made central Vermont home in the past year, but they may not be able to stay.

As floodwaters swept through Vermont earlier this month, communities sought to share and receive emergency updates as quickly as possible. Some turned to town Facebook pages, some exchanged observations with neighbors at the general store, and some waited for official updates to get the information they needed to stay safe. 

Clear, timely alerts “could be imperative for life safety,” said Brett LaRose, the operations and logistics chief for Vermont Emergency Management. In an emergency, he said, every second counts.

When Vermonters waste time making calls and scanning social media platforms in search of updates they can trust, they have less time to prepare for flooding events and, eventually, to recover from them, according to Jason Van Driesche, chief of staff for the communications platform Front Porch Forum.

“People need good information right away so they can get back to whatever they have to do to deal with the emergency,” he said.

Though a statewide alert system — Vermont Emergency Management’s VT-ALERT platform — disperses location-specific information via text, email, phone calls and a mobile app, it doesn’t have a broad reach. 

Just under 64,000 people have registered for VT-ALERT, according to LaRose. “Pushing out awareness about the VT-ALERT notification system is an annual priority,” he said. “I would like to see a much larger number.”

When registering for VT-ALERT, Vermonters can select what municipalities they want to receive notifications for and what categories of notifications they want to receive — including health alerts, weather warnings and more. It’s more granular than the Wireless Emergency Alert system that the state uses, which delivers urgent threat-to-life and missing person notifications to most phones without a registration process.

But many towns, specifically those in rural Vermont, don’t have enough staff to regularly send updates to state officials who run VT-ALERT, or to run a branch of the system entirely on their own. And even if they did, many of their residents aren’t subscribed to VT-ALERT.

Washington County, with just 19% of residents enrolled in the VT-ALERT system, nonetheless has the highest rate of participation of any Vermont county. In rural Essex County, which has the lowest percentage of VT-ALERT subscribers, only 226 people have signed up out of around 6,000 inhabitants.

Town officials sometimes use other virtual platforms that have a wider reach.

Front Porch Forum has about 235,000 members in Vermont, Van Driesche said — almost four times the number of VT-ALERT subscribers. Even though crisis communications have never been “front and center” in the company’s mission, he said, announcements about road closures, emergency shelters and more have become more common as town officials use the platform as their megaphone during crises. 

But even Front Porch Forum posts take time to craft and distribute to subscribers — time that town officials might not have at the height of an emergency. 

‘Friends and neighbors’

In the Addison County town of Bridport, locals often report emergencies to Pratt’s Store, according to Corey Pratt, the general store’s owner. Pratt, who is also a member of the volunteer fire department, said that when news about flood damage came in during last summer’s historic storm, and then again earlier this month, he was among the first to know.

“We find out almost immediately when something’s wrong,” he said. “We really find that we’re a first response to it.”

He said he often calls in his reports to town officials.

Addison Town Clerk Cheri Waterman, whose office is 10 minutes down the road, said she had heard important flood updates through word of mouth and Facebook. The washout of Route 17 on July 11 made its way to her “3rd, 4th, 5th-hand” in a system of what she calls “local intel.”

Pratt said he isn’t always prepared to be a de facto public official. People call him about everything from “a lady with a cat stuck in her tree” to genuine emergencies, sometimes instead of calling 911, he said. 

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” he said, laughing. But when push comes to shove, he’s always willing to help out. “They’re not just our customers — they’re our friends and neighbors,” he said.

Other rural towns rely on networks similar to Addison’s “local intel,” but create community forums on virtual platforms rather than in the general store.

In the Northeast Kingdom town of Lyndon, town officials use Facebook as their main avenue to communicate with residents, according to Assistant Town Clerk Denise Montgomery. In the wake of this month’s floods, posts have ranged from boil water notices to instructions for how to report flood damage. 

But the Facebook page only has 490 subscribers — less than 10% of Lyndon’s population. Another Facebook page, which announces general information for a broader area including nearby St. Johnsbury, has 4,600 subscribers. Those platforms are how residents can stay informed, Montgomery said, both during emergencies and otherwise.  

Lyndon leaders don’t send updates to the state officials who run VT-ALERT, according to Montgomery. “We just don’t have the time to get on board (with VT-ALERT) right now,” she said, considering the energy and resources it takes to recover from the floods — especially in Caledonia County, which saw the most rainfall during the July 10 storm.

For most town officials in Canaan, this month’s flooding was their first major emergency, according to Town Clerk Zachary Brown. The Essex County town was relatively unscathed in last summer’s floods, but “we paid for it this year,” he said wryly.

Brown, too, largely communicated with his constituents via the town Facebook page, and its website. Though he felt confident that the community was generally kept informed, the town’s staff members were nonetheless pushed to their limit.

Small towns like Canaan have just enough capacity to run day-to-day operations, he said. So, “in an emergency, no one’s actually prepared.”

“We rely on volunteers stepping up,” he said.

Brown said the town hadn’t previously signed up to operate VT-ALERT locally, but given the events of the last few weeks, he plans to change that.

Town leaders aren’t alone. State lawmakers also report feeling overstretched when it comes to updating community members about emergencies.

Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, said that she has become a source of emergency information for her constituents. During the pandemic, she began releasing updates and resources via email and Front Porch Forum. “I heard from a lot of constituents that I was really the only one that provided them with information,” she said. 

“I take that really seriously, as part of my responsibilities as a state senator,” she continued, “especially in times of crisis.”

These means of communication all take time and money. At the moment, Hardy said, it feels like a public service that’s being privately funded.

Sen. Andrew Perchlik, D/P-Washington, agrees with Hardy that the model must change. He said relying on under-resourced individuals in rural communities is not a sustainable model for emergency communications, especially when volunteer emergency management directors have limited bandwidth and little professional assistance.

And while there are three regional coordinators for Vermont Emergency Management — responsible for connecting local officials with the department’s resources — Perchlik said they are spread too thin to be substantially helpful on a local level. “It's hard for that coordinator to be that much of a resource for all those little towns,” he said.

“I don't have good answers,” Perchlik said, acknowledging the lack of funding for more professional staff in such small towns. He mentioned the possibility of audible sirens, of the kind that some local fire departments still use, to alert the public of possible threats.

Sirens could potentially reach additional people, especially in areas where cell phone networks are weak. A December 2022 report from the state Department of Public Service found that AT&T had the highest rate of call reliability, with just 55% of Vermont's buildings — including homes and businesses — located in areas where all AT&T calls go through successfully.

‘Only so much time’ 

Montpelier’s communications coordinator, Evelyn Prim, said the city is exploring all avenues of emergency alerts, including a city-specific alert system.

“People are busy. They have lives. They don't have time to read every newsletter,” Prim said. “So it’s all about having many systems in place so that people have options and don't have to spend time wondering what to do when an emergency strikes.”

Prim said VT-ALERT is Montpelier’s “first line of defense” in emergency situations, largely because it has the widest reach of any of the city’s communication platforms, with about 10,000 subscribers. For hyper-local alerts, she can choose which subscribers within the region will receive messages. That comes in handy during floods, she said, when just a few feet in elevation can change how much a household is at risk. 

“We have hills and waterways and low-lying areas and such a diverse landscape,” Prim said. “With (VT-ALERT) we don't have to constantly bombard everyone with things that don't necessarily apply to them. We can target it.”

According to LaRose at Vermont Emergency Management, this is the best possible solution. “Nobody knows their communities better than the people that work and live in them,” he said. While state officials can issue local messages through the VT-ALERT system without input from town leaders, those messages are more targeted and timely when generated from within town lines.

But Prim also relies on other platforms, including Front Porch Forum, Facebook, Instagram and Notify Me — a messaging system run through the city’s website — to make sure residents can access emergency updates regardless of what technology they have access to. 

Crafting accurate and efficient posts on each of those platforms takes time, Prim said, and wouldn’t be possible without a full-time communications administrator like her. Even so, “there’s only so much time in the day when you’re a department of one,” she said.

But having access to an alert system — and the staff to run it — is just the first step, she said. Cities also need residents who are willing to sign up to receive messages, and that engagement is never guaranteed.

Towns without communications departments have to get creative, according to Waterbury Municipal Manager Tom Leitz. When floods left many Waterbury homes and businesses underwater in July 2023, the town didn’t even have a Facebook page to communicate with its residents, he said. He started one a week later to start sharing information about flood recovery resources. 

“We saw a need to fill that gap,” he said. “You need to have access to information to know how to respond to an emergency like this.”

For the past year, he’s looked for an alert system that would best fit Waterbury’s needs. He said he found it in a system called TextMyGov, a platform also used by Middlebury.

“The great irony,” he said, is that he wasn’t able to schedule his training for the system until July 10, 2024 — the day the rain that fueled this summer’s floods began.

He said the town will start rolling out the new system by the end of the month. Leitz opted for the system because it facilitates communication from town officials to residents, and vice versa. Once enrolled, residents can make reports to the town — including everything from flagging mundane problems such as potholes to sending crucial updates about flood damage, he said.

The platform will allow Leitz to get emergency updates to residents instantaneously, rather than hoping they find his messages in a stream of non-urgent Facebook or Front Porch Forum posts “about garage sales and missing pets.”

The system will eat into the town’s budget with its $5,000 annual operating fee and will add more to Leitz’s already overflowing plate of town responsibilities. But “it’s worth it,” he said, to keep locals informed and safe.

Preparing for the future of emergency communications

Town officials interviewed by VTDigger — even those with formal alert systems in place — said they still rely on some unofficial communication platforms, such as Facebook and Front Porch Forum, to send alerts during emergencies. 

But some worry that informal platforms won’t always meet their needs.

For example, while public officials can use Front Porch Forum for free, they are limited in how much they can post “in order to keep the conversation centered on neighbors,” Van Driesche said. According to the company’s terms of use, Front Porch Forum can “set limits on the maximum number and/or size” of posts and “may reduce or eliminate the ability of selected categories of public officials to post on (Front Porch Forum) for a period of time before an election.”

Van Driesche said Front Porch Forum “typically exempt(s) any posting related to a significant emergency from those limits.” And Front Porch Forum staff members publish emergency alerts from town officials as soon as they come in, rather than waiting to post them in the typical evening newsletter, according to Chloe Tomlinson, the company’s community division director.

But Prim, in Montpelier, said Front Porch Forum staff didn’t consider her flood alerts this month to be related to a “significant emergency,” so she had to take steps to limit how much each city official was posting.

Hardy said that, at the moment, she can only post on Front Porch Forum twice a month — which isn’t enough to address locals’ concerns about flood recovery.

The Addison County senator chairs the Senate Government Operations Committee, and said she worked to address issues of emergency preparedness in the last legislative session. Act 143 provides for a number of improvements to emergency communications — including reviews of existing systems and expansion of their accessibility — as well as more cooperation between VT-ALERTS and the state’s Enhanced 911 Board.

That law took effect on July 1. “Obviously, they weren't able to do anything in those 11 days (before this year’s flooding) to make any improvements,” Hardy said.

LaRose said that after the passage of Act 143, a task force was assembled to improve the state's emergency preparedness, including its alert systems. The goal of the group, he said, is to “find solutions to be able to communicate with all people that live in the state of Vermont.”

This includes people with limited internet connection, people whose first language is not English, and people who are hard of hearing, he said.

Hardy said expanding accessibility is important but emphasized that it’s only a start. “It's not an issue that we could solve just by passing a bill,” she said.

Some cities are taking the state’s lead and are reforming their communication systems now to prepare for the future. 

“It's really important in this day and age of a changing climate to figure out the right way to distribute urgent information,” said Robert Goulding, public information manager for Burlington’s public works department.

Although there was no need to send alerts in Burlington during this month’s floods, the city is constantly expanding its understanding and use of VT-ALERT so it is prepared for future crises, according to Goulding. Burlington was “fairly limited in rapid and effective communication” before 2020, but now alerts “reach pockets in milliseconds,” he said — about 20,000 pockets to be precise, meaning almost half the city’s population.

It’s all to ensure that Burlington is prepared, he said. 

“I imagine, as floods become more dire and rainfall becomes more intense, that we are going to unfortunately have more use for (VT-ALERT),” he said. “Luckily, we have a tool like it in place.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: As Vermont’s weather worsens, emergency communications aren’t reaching all of its rural residents.

WESTON — When a Wellesley College senior named Barbara Solms arrived at this town’s namesake theater to act in summer stock 70 years ago, locals quickly fell smitten.

“Barbara, an attractive blonde,” the Rutland Herald wrote in July 1954, “played with poise, spontaneity and charm.”

“Charming and sincere” the Springfield Reporter seconded.

“Very lovely and tender,” Windsor’s Vermont Journal confirmed.

A month later, the 20-year-old up-and-comer starred alongside Sam Lloyd, a “versatile leading man” portraying an “unusual killer with some humor as well as blood curdling suspense,” according to the Herald.

The surprises weren’t confined to the script. The actress didn’t know she’d go on to marry her scene partner, move into a house across the road and act together in more than 30 years of Weston productions — occasionally alongside her husband’s brother Christopher Lloyd (of the “Back to the Future” movie trilogy) and son Sam Lloyd Jr. (of such television comedies as “Scrubs”).

“We used to take turns at intermission coming home to walk the dog,” she recently recalled. “It was magic, just magic.”

Then it all seemingly disappeared. Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Weston Playhouse in 2011. Sam Lloyd Sr. died of heart failure in 2017. More record rainfall swamped the theater again in 2023, sending the state’s oldest professional troupe to its second stage at the nearby Walker Farm.

Turning 90 this year, Barbara Lloyd has reason to introduce herself with dramatic flourish.

“When you are as old as I, my dear, and I hope that you never are,” she’ll say, “you will woefully wonder why, my dear, through your cataracts and catarrh.”

Then again, those are the opening lyrics of Lloyd’s showstopper in the Weston Theater Company revival of the Broadway musical “Pippin” — a five-minute, first-act star turn that comes on the 70th anniversary of her local debut.

Lloyd first performed the song “No Time at All” in Weston’s original production in 1987, belting out a seize-the-day number in which her elderly character urges those listening to stop fretting about the future and instead to “start living.”

“Time is fleeting, kid,” she summed up the show tune in a recent interview. “Use it right.”

But Lloyd wasn’t sure if anyone would remember — let alone want her to repeat — her past “Pippin” performance when the theater company began casting its latest version.

“Forget it,” she remembered thinking. “Nobody would take a chance on somebody my age.”

Enter Susanna Gellert, Weston’s executive artistic director, who surprised Lloyd by offering her the role of the title character’s grandmother as a birthday present this Feb. 5.

“I knew immediately that I wanted to cast Barbara,” Gellert said this month. “Few can compare when it comes to bringing heartfelt love, sincerity and a true sense of joy and light to the stage.”

‘Here is a secret I never have told’

Ask Lloyd about her life story and she rewinds back to Monticello, New York — “capital of the Borscht Belt,” she said of the Catskill resort region seen in the film “Dirty Dancing.” There, she got her start as a first grader in a classroom production of “A Christmas Carol” and was starring as “Snow White” by the time she graduated elementary school.

Lloyd was in college when a friend suggested she try out for Weston in 1954.

“It was 10 weeks and we did 10 shows,” she recalled of rehearsing one play during the day and performing another at night. “Then I went off and had another life, got married and had children.”

Returning to the playhouse 20 years later, the once “petite blonde newcomer” (per the Bellows Falls Times) reunited with that “versatile leading man,” who by then was also a Vermont House representative, Town Meeting moderator, head of municipal planning and zoning, volunteer firefighter and owner of the since-closed Weston Bowl Mill.

Marrying in 1981, Barbara and Sam Lloyd went on to perform in a host of Weston shows as varied as Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest,” Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite” and A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” — the latter which she considers their “signature piece.”

“Every time we do it,” she said during a 2010 tour of the show, “we bring a little more age and a little more looking back.”

A year after her husband died, Lloyd acted in her last show, a 2018 production of “Our Town.” Capping a Weston career with nearly 50 credits, she retired to volunteer positions as a member of the Farrar Park Association (known locally as the “Ladies of the Green”) as well as municipal vendor ordinance administrator (“if you want to come here with a hotdog truck, I will tell you right now, don’t even try”).

Lloyd’s comeback has required a few accommodations. The show’s lyrics call for her to sing, “I’ve known the fears of 66 years / I’ve had troubles and tears by the score / But the only thing I’d trade them for / Is 67 more.”

Weston musicians thought about substituting Lloyd’s real age, only to realize the truth would clunk up the syllable count. That’s why, in the interest of art, the 90-year-old will proclaim she’s a more melodic 86.

Lloyd’s return to long workdays (she’s scheduled for 31 performances between July 24 and Aug. 17) has kept her away from a flood of recent state, national and world headlines.

“With all that’s going on,” she asked a reporter, “why do you want to talk with me?” 

Because of all that’s going on, he replied.

With that, the great-grandmother of two returned to rehearsing her song.

… Here is a secret I never have told

Maybe you’ll understand why

I believe if I refuse to grow old

I can stay young till I die …

“I’m in training,” Lloyd concluded of preparations for her coming run. “I’ve even given up dairy and martinis, but it’s up to you whether to put that in.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Amid a flood of bad news, a 90-year-old Vermonter finds reason to sing.

NORTON— For nearly a week, David T. Leidy’s Lake View Store went without deliveries.

July’s storm, which dropped 4.5 inches of water in Leidy’s rain gauge, knocked out Route 114 on either side of him, Norton to the west and Averill to the east.

A quick fix, he said, allowed cars — but not trucks — to resume travel along the state highway, which parallels the Canadian border in Essex County.

 “There’s a lot of people that rely on me for their staples,” Leidy said, “I was really low on a lot of stuff.”

Norton has a full-time population of about 150, practically a metropolis compared to Averill’s roughly 20 permanent residents. Both communities swell in the summertime, with vacationers and camp owners flocking to Great Averill Pond and Lake Wallace, attracted to the isolation and serenity of Vermont’s most rural corner. 

Essex County is the least populated, most rural and poorest county in the state. 

And all of those attributes pose challenges to flood recovery, according to Terri Lavely, who works in training, development and advancement for Northeast Kingdom Human Services. 

“This is the ruralest part of Vermont, and they don’t know to call 211, they don’t know where to reach out for resources,” she said. “It’s Vermont pride, too. You know, we kind of suck it up, do it ourselves. We’re not really good at asking for help.”

After last summer’s flooding, Essex County didn’t make the cut to qualify for the federal government’s individual assistance disaster declarations, which Lavely attributed to under-reporting of damage. 

While Essex County communities haven’t garnered the attention for flood damage of some other hard hit communities farther south, the destruction was considerable.

Lavely said that Wednesday, she traveled to Lunenburg to check in on several households. While there, she met an elderly couple whose home flooded last week.  

“This couple spent two nights in a hotel right after the floods because their house is uninhabitable right now. And then they couldn’t afford that, so they decided to stay in their car for an evening. We’re talking about an 82-year-old gentleman and his 79-year-old wife,” Lavely said. “The next day they were driving home and he fell asleep behind the wheel and totaled his car.

“So when I arrived at the home last night, he was like ‘screw it, we’re just gonna stay in the house,’ and three-quarters of their home is off the foundation. So, if we get one good rain, that house is gone.”

Lavely fears Essex County will once again miss out on assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency due to under-reporting of damage, even though communities like Lunenburg, Concord and Gilman were significantly impacted. 

Houses and other property elsewhere in the county also sustained damage. Homes along Railroad Street in Island Pond near the Pherrins River took on water last week, according to Trevor Colby, Essex County’s sheriff, who also noted washouts in Maidstone and crop damage to corn and hay fields around the county. 

On Wednesday, a week after the intense rains, a couple in Canaan who still had water in their basement was working to dry out, their driveway and yard ravaged by flooding. Three feet of water entered the home the week prior, and the basement smelled dank with mildew. Along Route 114 from Brighton to Norton and into Averill, driveways were washed out, roadsides eroded, and debris lie strewn beneath bridges and culverts, swept there by rushing water. 

One silver lining, according to Lavely, is that local organizations are far more prepared than last year to respond to disaster. Groups such as Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort, Northeast Kingdom Organizing, and a web of volunteers rushed into action, taking on “muck and gut” projects, as Lavely called them, or knocking on doors to check in on neighbors. 

“We’re seeing a lot of folks who lost everything signing up to help others,” Lavely said. “It’s a pretty robust community effort, and it’s not really owned by anyone. It’s kind of managed by everyone, if that makes sense. It is absolutely amazing to see the difference between this year’s flood and last year’s flood.”

Still, it’s an uphill battle. Kari White helps lead the local long-term disaster recovery group, Kingdom United Resilience and Recovery Effort, and works to support health equity in the Northeast Kingdom. The group was engaged in canvassing across the region, and had received damage reports from Essex County but was worried about possible gaps.

“We are concerned about towns, smaller towns in Essex and Orleans, that don’t have the visibility and don’t have maybe the neighbor-to-neighbor networks or the sort of civic infrastructure to have kind of a coordinated, unified response,” White said. “I think we have learned that part of the challenge is, in fact, the huge land area of the Northeast Kingdom. It’s 55 different towns and municipalities.”

Many of the same characteristics that concern area service providers about successful flood response in Essex County appeal to its residents. 

Leidy, who took over the Lake View Store eight years ago and now lives there, fell in love with the area’s isolated location and trusting community. People rely on him to make sure their camps are still standing after weather like last week, and they bring him their bucks to weigh during deer season and show him the lake trout they pull from the pond across the street in the summer. He knows the hunters, snowmobilers, and border patrol agents who frequent the store, and celebrates the never-lock-your-doors nature of the place.

“I don’t think anything should change up here,” he said, as two German Shepherds — Luna and Averill — played in front of his chair. “I don’t leave this area. I hardly ever leave this building.” 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Locals worry flood assistance won’t reach rural and remote Essex County.

Updated at 6:47 p.m.

It was an afternoon of unease across the state as local officials, business owners and residents waited to see what the after-effects of Tropical Storm Beryl had in store for their towns.

With the weather forecast still uncertain about which areas would be hardest hit with incoming rain, many spent the anniversary of last year’s catastrophic summer flooding preparing for the possibility of another inundation. Officials distributed sandbags, established shelter locations, relocated equipment and refreshed weather maps in what is becoming an all-too-familiar routine. 

Rutland and Windsor counties

As potentially damaging rain and thunderstorms rolled in from the west, Ann Kuendig, Pittsfield’s selectboard chair, said she was monitoring the weather and in touch with the town’s emergency management directors.

“We’re just watching and waiting,” she said.

Tropical Storm Irene cut off Pittsfield from the outside world. But last summer’s flooding spared the town, which lies along the Tweed River.

Some combination of “Lady Luck” and “flood hazard mitigation projects” likely led to the better outcome, according to Kuendig, who said the town had expanded culverts and addressed previous erosion.

In preparation for Wednesday’s weather, Pittsfield officials have spread the word of potential flash floods on local social media. The town’s newly renovated offices are available as a potential shelter, Kuendig said, and have already been used twice this summer as cooling stations.

Neighboring Stockbridge was taking a similar approach.

When asked how the town was preparing, Town Clerk Jill Gifford said: “Other than praying it doesn’t hit us again?”

Stockbridge’s emergency management team was on standby, according to Gifford, and the town had publicly shared information regarding the impending weather.

If necessary, the town’s meetinghouse was available as an emergency shelter, she said.

Addison County

The rain had just begun to fall, loudly enough to hear over the phone, when Laurie Cox, chair of the Ripton’s selectboard, told a reporter that she, too, was hoping the storm would spare her town. Ripton experienced two landslides after last July’s storm, one of which destroyed a person’s home. 

The town recently received its first payment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Cox said, which covers only a fraction of what it has spent to repair damage to roads and other infrastructure.

Over the years, as water has torn at the town’s infrastructure, road crews have installed increasingly large culverts. With each new storm, the rebuilt parts of the road have been the strongest, Cox said.

The only thing to do, Cox said, is to assume that a typically small stream might become a “massive force of water, and be ready for it as best you can. There’s limited funds all around, so you just do the best you can.”

In nearby Middlebury, Assistant Fire Chief Myron Selleck said the department is ready and waiting for any storm impacts but is cautiously optimistic about the forecast.

The volunteer squad was already scheduled to hold a meeting at the department on Wednesday night, Selleck said, so the crew is ready to act if there’s a need.

“We may or may not get to go out back and practice ground ladder work,” Selleck said. “We may be out there in the field. We may or may not get to sit upstairs and have a business meeting, or we might have a business meeting with wet clothes on.”

Either way, Selleck said the town has been through worse than what the weather forecast currently predicts for Middlebury.

But down the street from the fire department, Steve Duboise, owner of the auto shop County Tire Center, said he’s feeling nervous. His business took on water last year, when a flash flood hit the area in August.

Water from higher ground in Middlebury typically runs toward his business, located near an underpass in a lower-lying section of town. Last summer, the underpass was full of water. Duboise said his business was not significantly damaged.

Duboise attributes the area’s susceptibility to flooding to improper drainage near his parking lot. There’s not a lot he can do to prepare for the coming rain, he said, so he’s hoping Middlebury doesn’t see flash flooding this time. 

Washington County

One year ago to the date, Alexis Dexter was smashing a screwdriver and hammer into the first floor of her downtown Barre City business, the Kitty Korner Café, as water seeped in from the flooded Main Street outside. If she could get a hole into the floor, she figured, the water would drain down into her basement, away from the 57 cats her business had available for adoption.

Dexter’s plan worked. By the time the rain stopped, the basement was filled with 10 feet of water. All of her business’s equipment down below was ruined, but the cats were safe.

On Wednesday, she joked that she should have left that gaping hole in the floor.

Outside the cafe, Dexter and her mother completed what has become a ritual for downtown Barre business owners before a heavy rain: lining their storefronts with sandbags.

Forecasts for the area were nowhere near as dire as they were one year ago, but tensions among business owners were high. Several had packed bags in case they had to stay overnight to watch over their businesses.

“We’re definitely trying to think positive, but can’t help but have a little bit of anxiousness, like everyone up and down the street,” Nelson Ace Hardware’s store manager, Annette Boisvert said.

“If we get a little bit of water, it’s going to be okay,” Linda said. “If we have inundation again, it’s not going to be a good year.”

For both the Nelsons and Dexter, climbing out from the financial hole of last year’s flood has been difficult. 

“I mean, half of my trauma right here is, we’re still paying off the things that we had to do last year,” Dexter said. “It’s just a nightmare. There’s a lot of businesses and a lot of people, people who live here in Barre, who, if this happens again, they can’t stay. There’s no money to put back into it.”

While talking, Linda continually knocked on a wood cabinet next to her and wiped tears from her eyes.

“All we can do is just keep knocking on wood and just see what tomorrow looks like,” Linda said.

In Montpelier and Waterbury, past experience has taught officials to be more pessimistic than what the forecast predicts.

Officials in the capital announced Wednesday morning that “out of an abundance of caution” it had made sandbags available for downtown properties to defend against flash flooding. 

In Waterbury, the National Weather Service announced Wednesday afternoon that the Winooski River could reach minor flooding stage by 8 a.m. Thursday, which would likely affect the fields behind the Vermont State Office Complex.

But Waterbury Municipal Manager Tom Leitz said that during the past two floods last July and December, the river ran about 3 feet higher than predicted. That would place flooding at a moderate level on the National Weather Service’s scale, and could affect properties on Randall Street, Foundry Street and U.S. Route 2 and cause field flooding from Waterbury downstream through Richmond.

With the forecast still in flux, Leitz said he’s encouraging locals to empty their basements and pack a “go bag” in case they need to evacuate.

“We’re hoping none of that is necessary, but we want to be smart,” he said. “We can’t change the river, but we can change how we respond to it.”

Kathy Murphy, co-owner of Stowe Street Emporium in downtown Waterbury, said “everyone is a little bit on edge,” especially due to the timing of the storm. Just minutes before the first rain drops started to fall, Murphy said, the Waterbury Congregational Church rang its bells at noon to recognize the resilience the community has shown since last July’s floods.

“I went outside, and I yelled and rang my angel bells too,” she said. “It was a way to say: ‘We made it. We’re moving onward and upward.’” 

Others are hesitant to celebrate recovery with another possible flood on the way.

“This is a different type of fear,” said Jenna Danyew, who lived in Waterbury when Tropical Storm Irene hit Vermont in 2011 and works in town. “It’s the fear associated with the one-year anniversary, and the fear of the strength of a hurricane. It’s difficult for everyone.”

William Woodruff, Waterbury’s public works director, said it’s important to be prepared, but it’s equally as important to think of tonight’s rain as “a possible flood event” and not a repeat of past floods’ damage. He said his team is providing sandbags to locals who want to barricade their homes and taking precautions around town, such as collecting trash bins and picnic tables that could get swept away in the water’s path. Otherwise, he said, “all we can do is wait it out.”

Chittenden County

Farther north in Richmond, Town Manager Josh Arneson said the town had shut off the pump to its well to keep the drinking water clean in case the Winooski river floods. He also said the highway department had “checked the roadside ditches and culverts to make sure they’re free of obstruction.”

“They’ve got everything fueled up and ready to go should they need to respond if there’s anything happening with road closures or any corrosion on the roads,” Arneson said.

At Burlington’s Intervale, located along the Winooski River and a chronic victim of flooding, Intervale Center employees have a pre-flood response plan in place for the land, which is leased out to seven small- to medium-sized local farms. That means moving or securing any infrastructure away from flood zones and harvesting what crops they can before rains and flooding events begin.

“Our community’s been on high alert with this weather coming for a couple of days already,” said Mandy Fischer, director of programs at the Intervale Center.

On Wednesday, employees were watching the rain forecast and refreshing hydrology maps. While action levels are not projected to be as high as they were last July, Fischer said the organization takes a more cautious approach and assumes higher measurements.

“We tend to add several feet to the forecast projection just because we know that these projections are usually low,” she said. “We’re planning as though it’s going to moderate to major, but at this point, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen, so hopefully we’ll be doing this preparation unnecessarily.”

Lamoille County

The Lamoille Area Recovery Network, a long-term support group set up in the wake of last July’s flooding, was planning to host a one-year anniversary dinner at a church in Johnson on Wednesday night. But those plans are now off the table, at least for the time being, said Sarah Henshaw, the recovery network’s coordinator.

“We don’t want folks on the road,” Henshaw said around 4 p.m. Wednesday. As she and other local leaders agreed to postpone the gathering — which was also meant to connect Johnson residents with mental health service providers — “the irony and the sadness that we’re canceling it for the same reason that we were going to have the anniversary did not escape anybody” she said.

According to Henshaw, water levels in the Lamoille and Gihon rivers, both of which cut through towns in the heart of the county, are currently lower than they were in the buildup to last summer’s flooding. That means officials are less concerned about flooding from the rivers, she said, though they are worried about the impacts of runoff from the heavy rain forecast to fall overnight.

Town officials are preparing for “minor flooding,” and the Red Cross has preemptively deployed some resources to the town, according to Selectboard Chair Eben Patch. 

Swift-water rescue teams have been deployed to Johnson and Stowe in case they’re needed in the coming days, Henshaw said Wednesday afternoon. And churches throughout the county were preparing to provide temporary shelter space, she added.

Henshaw said she felt confident in the county’s preparation for the storm. But in conversations with locals on Wednesday, she’s heard a deep sense of fear.

“The folks that I’ve spoken to today — that were pretty badly impacted last year — are high-anxiety, super triggered,” she said. “Worried about everything.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Amid uncertainty about where floods could strike, towns prepare for the worst.

This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its most significant decision on homelessness in decades: It ruled that municipalities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places.

The implications for the court’s 6-3 decision are most immediate for the Western U.S.: The ruling undermines lower court decisions in that region that prohibited local governments from penalizing someone for sleeping outdoors if there were no shelter beds available.

But experts anticipate the ruling will influence homelessness policy nationwide, clarifying how local officials can respond to people sleeping outside. And it comes as cities and towns across Vermont grapple with a rise in unsheltered homelessness – and are bracing for more people to lose their shelter over the next few months, as new limits on the state’s safety-net motel voucher program kick in.

“I would expect that in the wake of Friday’s decision, there may be cities or towns that are considering taking another look at some of these policies,” said Harrison Stark, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Vermont.

The high court upheld a wide-ranging ban on sleeping and camping in public places like sidewalks, streets, and city parks in the small city of Grants Pass, Oregon, finding that the rules did not defy the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Such blanket bans on sleeping in public spaces appear to be relatively rare in Vermont, according to Stark.

Last fall, the small Northeast Kingdom town of Canaan considered such a ban. At the time there was no homeless shelter available in the region for the general population, although one has since opened in St. Johnsbury. At the time, the ACLU raised concerns about the potential ban’s constitutionality. 

The town tabled the ban and hasn’t revisited it since, said town clerk and treasurer Zachary Brown in an interview Tuesday. The town’s selectboard wanted to wait and see what the Supreme Court decided, Brown added. He said he could not comment on whether he anticipated the selectboard would take up the ban again in light of the Supreme Court case. Canaan’s selectboard chair did not respond to a request for comment.

Officials in towns that do have camping bans on the books, like Brattleboro, say they aren’t heavily enforced. Clearing encampments is expensive, said Brattleboro Town Manager John Potter, and town resources are limited. The town has directed attention to encampments that “have gotten out of control, are dangerous,” Potter said – such as areas where it’s difficult for first responders to reach. 

“The focus of the town has not been on encampments. The focus of the town has been on how to increase housing in the area so that fewer people are without,” Potter said.

While the court case was underway, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns advised municipalities to be careful about removing people from public spaces unless they had alternative spaces to direct them toward, said Josh Hanford, director of intergovernmental relations for VLCT and former commissioner of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development.

“That’s just been our general guidance,” Hanford said. “Be cautious, be careful, understand that there is this pending court case.” At the same time, Hanford said, cities and towns could address public health safety concerns surrounding encampments.

That guidance isn’t changing significantly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Hanford said. Stark, from the ACLU, cautioned that the court’s decision is fairly narrow – and cities and towns should consider other existing safeguards before altering policies on camping.

“It removed one specific check on government’s ability to criminalize sleeping outside, but didn’t address any of the other myriad protections for the unhoused,” Stark said of the court case. Those other protections include the right to due process, an individual’s rights to their possessions, and their privacy rights, among others, he said. 

Municipalities don’t appear to be leaping toward more stringent encampment policies. Dominic Cloud, city manager for St. Albans – which recently broke up an encampment – said the Supreme Court decision has been critiqued “because it authorizes a heavier hand. That’s not our game. Our game is to use a softer hand to the very last resort.”

Rutland City Mayor Mike Doenges said the city’s approach to addressing encampments – which involves deploying police officers to conduct health and welfare checks – is working well, and he doesn’t anticipate the court’s decision will change it. But once the city has more transitional housing set up, he said, it will consider what options the ruling might allow for enforcement.

“What can we do to work and get people from one situation to another?” he said. “How can we get them from camping, perhaps, into a transitional housing campus that will benefit their life and get them back on their feet?”  

The court ruling comes as many Vermont municipalities expect to see more unhoused people setting up camp over the next few months. As of July 1, participants in the state’s motel voucher program have their stays limited to 80 days in a year (though stays during the coldest winter months, from December through March, won’t count toward that limit). In tandem with that time limit, the total number of rooms in the motel program will be capped at 1,100 come mid-September. As of late June, there were over 1,400 rooms in use. Meanwhile, shelters across the state are generally full.

“Some households might exit their hotel or motel units on July 1st and preserve their eligible days for colder weather, while others may choose to stay in the unit and use their 80 days this summer,” Miranda Gray, deputy commissioner of the Department for Children and Families’ economic services division, wrote in a letter to municipal leaders last week. “While some households will move into permanent housing, it is also likely that some may camp over the summer.”

Burlington is anticipating seeing more people living unsheltered over the next few months as those new limits take effect, said Sarah Russell, the city’s special assistant to end homelessness and co-chair of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance. 

That’s on top of a stark increase in unsheltered homelessness the county has observed over the last year. Before the first major wave of motel program evictions last June, the county averaged about 60 to 80 people a month self-reporting as unsheltered, Russell said. After the evictions, those numbers skyrocketed, and have remained high. In June, the county tallied 265 people living unsheltered, according to Russell.

Russell does not expect the Supreme Court decision to change Burlington’s policies around encampments – which were shaped, in part, by a 2019 settlement in a case brought by the ACLU. The city bans camping in city parks specifically; when it removes an encampment, it must give its inhabitants adequate notice and store their belongings. Recently, the city moved toward providing basic services at some encampments, like water and portable toilets.

Russell described the city’s approach to encampments as “human-centered,” and said the city’s leadership is opposed to “criminalizing poverty and homelessness.”

“We know that when we do that, it makes it much more difficult for folks to enter into permanent housing, when they’ve had multiple low-level interactions with law enforcement or the criminal justice system,” she said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: As Vermont homelessness rises, US Supreme Court ruling gives towns more authority to punish camping.

For roughly the past two years, the state of Vermont has operated a program to help people like René Pellerin.

Pellerin, who lives in Waterbury Center, has dual sensory loss — he is deaf and has a condition that has caused his vision to deteriorate. To do many activities in his daily life, Pellerin uses state-funded support service providers: trained aides who drive him to social events, help him do outdoor activities and guide him when shopping at the store. 

But with the funding for that state program scheduled to dry up this fall, Pellerin and others fear that it will leave them without crucial support.

Without the program, “it would be much more isolation, staying home, using just a computer to send out communication, no social interactions, and I’d just be sitting around getting fat,” Pellerin said in an interview through an interpreter.

Vermont’s support service provider pilot program was funded by a two-year grant of $121,000 from the federal Administration for Community Living. 

The nationwide interpreting firm Vancro was awarded the grant to operate the program. According to Cory Brunner, Vancro’s vice president, support service providers received 268 separate requests for help in its first year. In its second, that number had increased to 470. 

Vancro’s program serves 32 Vermonters and has a short waiting list. 

Brunner, who lives in Vermont and is herself a support service provider, estimated that more than 30 other states have permanent state-funded support service provider programs. Clients of Vermont’s program are devastated that it might shut down, she said in an email. 

The program’s clients have ranged from teenagers to octogenarians and include people with vision and hearing loss for a variety of reasons — military service, medical conditions and age among them.

Pellerin, the Waterbury client, said support service providers have taken him to medical appointments, helped him shop at grocery stores and brought him snowshoeing. 

“It’s an opportunity to get out more,” Pellerin said. 

Nancy Wisner, a Pittsfield client of the program, has used the program for appointments and hopes to attend some local concerts. Wisner is legally blind and has some hearing loss but is not deaf. 

The program gives her the opportunity to socialize with more people, she said.  

“We’re social animals,” she said. “We need other people to survive, keep our mental health. That was proven during Covid.”

Fred Jones, the director of Vermont’s Division for the Blind and Visually Impaired, part of the Agency of Human Services, said the initial intent of the grant was to improve clients’ “social integration.” Its ultimate goal, he said, was to combat the isolation experienced by people with dual sensory loss. 

“I feel like it’s been very, very successful,” said Jones, who is himself legally blind. 

But the grant money, which initially came from federal Covid-19 aid, is slated to expire by Sept. 30. 

Jones and other state officials are looking for other potential sources of money that could help extend the life of the program. Without an appropriation from the Legislature, however, it’s not clear whether the state will be able to continue to fund it after that. 

“We know it’s not a lot of people, it’s not a lot of money, but it makes a huge difference in someone’s life,” Jones said. 

Wisner echoed that sentiment.

Losing the program “would be a very, very sad thing for a lot of people,” she said. 

Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters with hearing and vision loss fear end of a pilot program.

Rick Weston owns a seasonal camp, deep in the forests of the Green Mountains, at least according to the town of Huntington. 

However, the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home would be considered a year-round residence in Bolton, on the other side of the town line just yards away.

So Weston is moving — 12 feet, to be precise. 

Work to lift the house 4 feet above the ground and move it with a network of temporary rails and large rollers began last week. 

By relocating his house on Happy Hollow Road, Weston can accomplish in a week what he has tried, but failed, to do through Huntington’s municipal permitting process over the past four years: get his house to be recognized as a year-round residence. 

Under Huntington land use regulations, the structure can only be used for six months out of the year because it is in the woodland zoning district. The designation is intended to protect environmentally fragile locations in high elevations and maintain “unfragmented forest land and wildlife habitat,” according to the regulations.

“I grew up here. This is home,” Weston said. “But these past few years, it’s just been discouraging. It’s a nightmare. I can’t build what I’ve worked for my whole life, can’t even live in my home.”

The 67-year-old grew up in Essex but visited the house at his grandfather’s Huntington camp almost every weekend to hunt, ski and help his family build Happy Hollow Road. Since he was 12 years old, he’s been planning to build another house at the top of the property that overlooks “the nicest view in the state.” 

After a career of building homes for other families across Vermont, Weston said he finally felt ready to retire and build that dream home in 2019. He just needed the money — and the health — to make it happen. Weston was diagnosed with throat cancer in the same year.  

He decided to sell his existing house on his family’s Happy Hollow Road property — originally built in the late 1960s and owned by various family members and other locals since then — to fund the new construction. But the house couldn’t be sold as-is in Huntington, real estate agent Jeremy Collins said. 

“No one wants to buy a house you can only live in for six months,” Collins said. He also said it’s “near-impossible” to get lenders to finance seasonal dwellings that are in areas as remote as Huntington’s woodland district. 

Bolton’s forest district abuts Huntington’s woodland district. However, Bolton’s district was designed to protect high-elevation areas from “undue environmental disturbance” while still allowing for “traditional uses such as forestry, outdoor recreation and compatible low density residential development,” according to Bolton’s land-use regulations. Year-round homes are permitted in the district, Bolton’s Planning and Zoning Administrator Kelly Diglio said.

With the year-round label, Weston said he can sell his house after three years of watching it sit untouched on the market. He said the sale will give him the financial foundation he needs to build his dream home on an adjacent parcel in Bolton. 

So, Weston began the process of requesting a conversion of his seasonal camp to a year-round dwelling — just like some of his Huntington neighbors have done over the years, he said. 

Weston said he attended meetings, filed paperwork and “did everything they told me to do” to move his case forward in the Huntington Development Review Board — all in between 32 rounds of radiation and eight chemotherapy treatments. All along, he said, his goal was to protect his rights to his family’s land so his grandchildren could learn to appreciate Happy Hollow the same way he did.

“There was no reason not to move forward with everything,” he said. “Why shouldn’t I think I can live in my house on a road I built?” 

In June 2023, the Development Review Board denied Weston’s conversion request, citing a land-use regulation passed on Town Meeting Day in March 2023 in which “conversions of seasonal dwellings to year-round dwellings are prohibited in the Woodland and Conservation Districts,” according to the board’s decision. 

Weston said he wasn’t aware of the policy. When he submitted the application in January 2023, regulations had an “absence of language prohibiting” conversion in the woodland district, said Weston’s attorney, Peter Raymond, according to minutes from the May 9, 2023, board meeting. 

But Huntington government officials said rules are rules. 

Yves Gonnet, the zoning administrative officer in Huntington, said the conversion policy is not a new rule and merely clarified a regulation already in place — that only camps are allowed in the woodland district. Any conversions previously allowed were made by administrators who “accidentally or erroneously” issued permits, he said. 

Adam Miller, Weston’s neighbor and a member of both the Huntington and Bolton development review boards, wrote in an email to VTDigger that “there is nothing unique about applying the current town zoning regulations to Mr. Weston’s seasonal camp.”

Miller said he compiled a letter of Happy Hollow residents’ concerns about how Weston’s plans would violate local regulations, which was jointly submitted by the neighbors to Bolton’s Development Review Board. 

Miller recused himself from all votes involving Weston’s property in Huntington and Bolton “to avoid any apparent conflict of interest,” he said. He spoke against Weston’s construction plans during a public comment period in Huntington “much like all other members of the public who participate because they have a perspective they believe would be helpful,” Miller said. 

Weston said he felt blindsided by his town government, especially Miller.

“It’s just not fair when these towns start playing God,” he said. “They’re supposed to work for the people, not against them.”

After these frustrations, Weston said, the $100,000 cost to move his house over the Bolton town line feels worth it. Late last week, the New England Building Movers started to slowly roll the house to its new location in Bolton. Weston said he’ll refurbish the house over the next three months so it can get back on the market as quickly as possible. 

Then, he plans to start construction on his dream home as soon as he has the money to do so. He said he already has the approval from Bolton to begin building. 

The race is on, he said, “just in case Bolton decides to change their rules, too.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Zoning in Huntington held a Vermonter back. So he moved his house to Bolton..