Preparing for or Preventing the Next Vermont Flood

Irene has come and gone from Vermont, but we are going to be dealing with her effects for a long time.  Homes and businesses are destroyed, roads and bridges washed out, and people displaced and understandably concerned.

Irene was an 'almost-worst-case-scenario' for Vermont, and hopefully we won't see anything like it again in our lifetimes.  However, floods are a part of Vermont life and we will certainly face other damaging floods in the years to come.  While we can't completely stop them, there are things we can do to decrease their intensity and increase our preparedness when they do occur.

In some ways, reducing flooding in Vermont is harder than in many areas.  Unlike Pittsburgh, with highly urbanized, modified watersheds, or California, with its channelized streams and massive habitat loss, Vermont is a mainly rural state with vast, healthy forests and small towns.  Still, there is much we can do to reduce risk and impact of floods.

This post includes some ideas I have about how to reduce flooding risk, prepare for floods, and better cope when they do occur.  If you think these ideas make sense, please share this with others.  If you think they don't make sense, leave a comment and tell me why.  The most important thing right now, aside from cleanup and repairs, is looking ahead together as a state to make sure nothing like this happens again.

Below are my ideas, in somewhat random order:

More about Beavers in Southern California

Beavers have been on my mind lately, as evidenced in the long post I made about them yesterday.  As mentioned in that post, beavers have huge positive effects on watersheds, and their removal has caused drastic effects that we can't even understand the full effects of.  I have wondered if beavers were present in some of the more protected perennial streams (or streams that would be perennial with beaver meadows) of southern California.  In fact, today I found evidence that in fact beavers did inhabit at least one more wild southern California stream.

The Beaver: Our Slow Water Animal Ally

Us humans sure have an inflated sense of importance!  Since we are the ones who created pavement, rooftops, and channelized culverts, we think we are the only ones who can also work to slow down water with rain gardens, bioswales, and constructed wetlands.  It's time to face up to the truth.  There is another mammal who has been constructing wetlands and 'rain gardens' since long before humans even set foot in North America.  In truth, they do a better job of it than us, too.  Unfortunately, humans have done a good job of driving these animals away from much of the United States in the last 500 years.  The good news is that they are already on the comeback, and all they ask in return for their work is a little bit of space, tolerance, and some delicious aspen and willow to chew on.