The Friends of the Winooski River: Blog

November 22nd, 2023

Dear Friend,

Homes, businesses, and a few entire towns were upended by the historic flooding in the Winooski River watershed this summer. In just the few months since the floods we can see signs of recovery all around us, because of the commitment of our friends, neighbors, and communities to supporting each other.

Friends of the Winooski River’s small staff have been engaged in flood response, recovery, and plans for resilience in myriad ways. In the days that followed the flood,

1. We assessed damage to streams and worked with partners and engineers to find solutions.
2. We visited folks who own dams that breached in the flood and helped them navigate the complex processes of temporary repair and long-term removal.
3. We helped our smaller towns navigate some of the challenges and opportunities they faced.
4. We organized three cleanups of flood debris in Plainfield, which received an astonishing amount of man-made material.
5. And, we continued our important work on a major culvert replacement in Fayston, three dam removal designs in Barre, Storm Smart and Stream Wise visits, and more.

Just as importantly, we need to do more over this next year to mitigate flood damage and build resiliency in our watershed.

Today you can directly support our work to create a clean, healthy, resilient Winooski watershed! Please click here to make a secure online donation, or mail your check to us at PO Box 777, Montpelier, VT 05601.

We’ve done this work before: one remarkable example that made a difference in this year’s flooding is the Dog River Park project in Northfield. Click here to see the story of this park’s impact.  We need your support to be able to do more!

This is what we are planning to do in 2024:

1. At least five riparian planting projects, which enhance resilience by slowing and filtering stormwater and reducing erosion;
2. Continued work on four dam removal projects, which enhance resilience by reducing flood elevations and restoring natural stream processes;
3. Design two culvert replacements, and continue to develop additional culvert replacement projects, which are important for wild fish to access cold water in hotter summers and which enhance resilience by preventing roads from blowing out in big storms;
4. Repair two storm-damaged streams;
5. Get out into the rivers and clean up the flood debris that we couldn’t reach this year!

Have no doubt that we will advocate for the changes that are necessary to help our communities, natural and human, to adapt to the increasingly extreme weather in the future, and we will remain a reliable source of information for you and for our communities. We know that we can live with the tremendous natural resource that is our Winooski River, and we are on the ground finding ways to do just that.

As the year draws to a close, the staff and board of the Friends of the Winooski River want to express our heartfelt gratitude for your support and let you know that your continued generosity will allow us to make great strides in creating resilient places along our rivers in the face of increasingly severe weather events.

This year’s goal is to raise $30,000, a 50% increase to support increasing our capacity to complete more projects more quickly. We hope that you will join our year end campaign! Please consider increasing your gift to FWR so that we can increase our efforts to do the repair, restoration, and planning that communities along the Winooski River need now.

Sincerely,

Jared Carpenter                                                          Michele Braun
President                                                                       Executive Director

P.S. This is what 3 tons of flood debris looks like! Thank you for making us a strong enough team to handle this! We were proud to be able to provide this assistance when it was needed.

Employees of Dealer.com celebrating their work to remove this trash that was caught among the trees in floodplain forest along the Winooski River in Plainfield! September 26, 2023