{"id":71488,"date":"2025-07-18T02:24:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71488\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T02:24:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T02:24:09","slug":"northeast-kingdom-towns-recover-from-3rd-consecutive-year-of-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/71488\/","title":{"rendered":"Northeast Kingdom towns recover from 3rd consecutive year of flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">SUTTON, Vt. (WCAX) &#8211; One week after powerful storms slammed the Northeast Kingdom for the third year in a row, roads are opening back up. It comes as Vermont continues to try to better prepare for future floods, and federal dollars to pay for that planning are in jeopardy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Three years to the day, last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcax.com\/2025\/07\/16\/will-northeast-kingdom-flooding-qualify-disaster-assistance\/ \" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wcax.com\/2025\/07\/16\/will-northeast-kingdom-flooding-qualify-disaster-assistance\/ \">intense rain flooded areas of the Northeast Kingdom.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cMaybe next year I should take out a lottery ticket on the 10th of July,\u201d joked Fred Graves from Sutton. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Powerful storms swept through West Burke, Lyndonville, and Sutton, washing out roads, bridges, and homes. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">What was a shallow swale in Nancy and Fred Graves\u2019 backyard turned into a raging river, wiping out their driveway and stranding them for two days. \u201cIt was more like the Connecticut River raging in the springtime, \u201d Nancy said. \u201cI\u2019ve been out here 40 years and I\u2019ve never seen anything like it. It just kept raining hard.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The couple is thankful for the road repair cavalry working around the clock for the last week to dig them out of despair. Crews from half a dozen contractors are working long hours, filling and rebuilding the damaged roads. \u201cI think we\u2019re going to be over a million,\u201d said Sutton Road Foreman Shane Heath. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Restoring roads, replacing bigger and newer culverts, and paving won\u2019t come cheap for the local budget. \u201cIf FEMA don\u2019t kick in, it\u2019s not going to be good. We\u2019re going to have to take a loan out to pay for it all,\u201d Heath said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The latest round of rebuilding comes <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wcax.com\/2025\/07\/17\/vt-ny-join-states-suing-fema-canceling-grant-program-that-guards-against-natural-disasters\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wcax.com\/2025\/07\/17\/vt-ny-join-states-suing-fema-canceling-grant-program-that-guards-against-natural-disasters\/\">as Vermont sues the Trump administration <\/a>to recover $5 million in disaster funding. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program gives towns money to target areas where flooding is likely and engineer projects to better withstand floods.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWhen a flood happens, we can have projects ready when that funding becomes available. We can have shovel-ready projects and get that project funded,\u201d said Stephanie Smith, the deputy director of Vermont Emergency Management.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Some are concerned that without the cash, Vermont flood prevention efforts will be left in the dust. With more rain in the forecast this week, Sutton\u2019s two-man road crew is trying to stay optimistic. \u201cHopefully it\u2019s a nice light rain, and it\u2019ll knock the dust down for us,\u201d Heath said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">He says they\u2019re going to keep working on the roads and figure out how to pay for it, hopefully with FEMA kicking in some dollars later. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">,<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WCAX. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SUTTON, Vt. (WCAX) &#8211; One week after powerful storms slammed the Northeast Kingdom for the third year in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-71488","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114871865493379530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}