As of mid-July, none of the property owners nor local officials had heard back from FEMA. A year after floods ripped through Vermont, they have been left in the lurch. 

By Camryn Brauns

Tasha Greene and husband Danny Carpenter have spent 18 years in Waterbury with only U.S. Route 2 separating their 2 ½-acre lot from the banks of the Winooski River. They’re no strangers to flooding — but last year’s catastrophic floods proved too much.

“We had to basically gut the whole house,” said Greene. 

“The property has probably flooded five or six times now,” she said later. “We can’t continue to do this, and if this continues, I don’t know what we are going to do.” 

Barely catching a break from last year’s damages, Greene said her garage took in four feet of water and the home’s insulation was damaged from this month’s floods, too.

Greene and Carpenter are two of several Waterbury property owners the town has approved for Federal Emergency Management Agency buyouts for flood-damaged lots following last year’s crisis. The goal: to turn those problem properties into permanent green spaces owned by the town.

But as of mid-July, none of the property owners nor local officials have heard back from FEMA — and in all cases they’ve been waiting for months. A year after floods ripped through Vermont, they have been left in the lurch. 

FEMA’s regional office did not respond to several requests for comments by phone and email over multiple days.

“I think FEMA is doing their best to get their data modernized,” said Doug Farnham, the state’s chief recovery officer, who has been working with Vermont Emergency Management on the buyout program. “But I think the timing is probably the hardest thing for the human side of things. Most people have mortgages, and so paying a mortgage on a property you can’t even live in while you’re waiting for two years can be very difficult for people, mentally and financially.”

Farnham connected the wait to other floods in the past year that interrupted updates to the state’s flood zone maps, which help determine eligibility for the buyout program. According to Vermont Emergency Management, wait times for approval could go for several months to a year. 

With limited options for recovery from water damage, property owners in Waterbury looked to their municipality for help after the catastrophe last summer and again in December.

The buyout program is for property owners who have suffered or are at risk of flood damage. Local officials have to approve the applications, then FEMA decides how much to give towns to buy the properties. The federal agency pays 75% of the property’s full market value pre-damage, said Farnham, and the remainder is covered by the state — so local governments don’t have to spend. FEMA also offers grants for people to relocate.

The last day people affected by the July 2023 floods can apply for the buyouts is Aug. 16, town leaders said. Now with the impacts from yet another flood burdening Waterbury, officials are encouraging residents to apply for buyouts.

In recent discussions with the selectboard, Municipal Manager Tom Leitz noted that homeowners are not bound to go through with the buyout until they get a purchase price from FEMA. If they aren’t satisfied, they don’t have to sell. One benefit to the transaction, he pointed out, is it doesn’t involve a real estate agent, so the homeowner does not have to pay a typical commission.

To date, six Waterbury property owners have applied for a buyout grant following the July and December 2023 floods, including Greene and Carpenter, who are seeking relocation funding. All of them were approved locally but await FEMA’s green light. 

Waterbury Town Manager Tom Leitz said on July 11 that he had yet to hear from FEMA since the selectboard approved the buyout applications. The town is generally supportive of the program, he said.

“I know after Hurricane Irene, the town’s position was more the opposite, but given now with two floods in the past year, I think that position has changed,” Leitz said. “And I think much of that arises from public safety perspectives where these flood zone properties are bought out.”

Of the six properties with buyout applications in progress, three are on lower Union Street across from the intersection with Armory Drive; another is across the railroad tracks on North Main Street. Two are on Route 2 on the west end of town. The selectboard reviewed the first buyout request from Randall Street on July 15 but chose to postpone a decision to discuss the matter further with homeowner Brian Kravitz. 

Greene, whose family remains on their problem property, understands those struggles firsthand in dealing with years of flood damages since Irene. A culvert running underneath the road by her home often overflows onto the property, she said, as do drains from the interstate. After the July 2023 floods, she found her biggest outlet of support from her town.

“They had different people and groups that came around and helped out,” Greene said. “I think that was a huge difference (from the past).”

Another Waterbury property owner to suffer flood damage last year, Jack Exe, said his support system came from Tom Drake, the town’s flood recovery coordinator, and the volunteers who cleared debris from his Union Street basement last July.

“He was helping people muck out their basements, finding people to help empty their basements along with Waterbury EMT,” Exe said. “They loaded (a dumpster) up, and I came back a few days later and everything was gone.”

Exe was approved for a buyout grant by the selectboard last December, just days after the floods that month, when he decided he could no longer afford to continue renovations on his property. He had been renting it out to people, but it has sat vacant ever since the July 2023 flooding.

“I thought of different ideas — if we had the money, we could raise it up and have it overlooking the railroad tracks — but that’s just a pie-in-the-sky dream,” Exe said.

Though he continues to wait for further approval from FEMA, Exe has stayed sunny about his situation and the future of his property.

“The way I look at it, it could have been a lot worse, and it could have been a lot better,” he said of the catastrophic floods last summer. “There are other people in the state worse off than I am, so I’m just grateful it wasn’t any worse.”

Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, on assignment for the Waterbury Roundabout.