Flood/Climate Buyouts Beginning To Greatly Change Vermont Towns

A flood-damaged  house in Cambridge, Vermont in
July, 2023. I don't know whether the owners of this
home took advantage of a FEMA buyout program
for flood mitigation, but other owners of damaged
property in Cambridge have done so. 

Dozens of Vermont property owners have had it. 

Too many floods, too many fears if more to come. 

A good three dozen or so homes in Lamoille County are now involved in the buyout program. 

Under this scheme funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency are used to buy the flood-prone properties. Houses on those properties are then demolished and the land becomes open space - forever free from development.    

 Says WPTZ:

"In Johnson, 17 properties are being considered and (Johnson Town Administrator Thomas) Galinat said the town's selectboard has given support to each one. 

'We're losing property and we're losing our grand list, but we're also identifying the need to change and I think getting off the river and getting away from risk and into a new tomorrow is really the focus,' said Galinat"

 Galinat crystallizes one major aspect of disasters and climate change in the Green Mountain State.  Towns and cities depend upon property tax revenue to run. Everything from street repairs to schools need that revenue. 

Get rid of houses and property through buy outs, you get rid of some of that revenue. 

There's also a well-documented housing shortage in Vermont. The buyouts get rid of some of that needed housing stock. 

But you can't expect people to live in homes that have already been flooded multiple times and are always under threat from future inundations. So the buyouts make complete sense. 

The added challenge now for Vermont communities is to grow, add more housing, but do it in a way that doesn't get in the way of climate change.

Johnson isn't the only Lamoille County town involved in the buyouts, reports VTDigger. .Wolcott is thinking about nine buyout requests. Morrisville has two in the works. There's another buyout proposed in Hyde Park, and another in Stowe.

Cambridge has approved seven buyouts in the village and only rejected on application. That was for a house that had not suffered damage in any of the three big floods along the Lamoille since July, 2023. 

Already, houses are set to be torn down, the properties about to become undevelopable, open land. One in Cambridge is set to come down any day now. 

All these flood and climate buyouts in Lamoille County feel ironic to me considering that 2021 ProPublica/New York Times study calling that county the "safest" refuge in the United States from the effects of climate change. 

That study was based largely on risk factors such as heat, oppressive humidity, farm crop yields, sea level rise and large wildfire risk.  Lamoille County is indeed fairly safe from those threats, but not flooding. 

A recent analysis puts Lamoille County, and surrounding Vermont counties as having had among the most federally declared disasters of any in the nation.  

Most of those declarations have involved flooding, so I suppose you're relatively safe from climate change in that county, and Vermont as a whole if you're away from a flood-prone area.  

Which means I anticipated more and more buyouts involving flood prone houses and neighborhoods in the coming years and decades. It's all one of the more visible ways climate change is changing the face of Vermont, as it is the entire world.