RICHMOND, Vt. (WCAX) – A Richmond farmer says his business is becoming more challenging due to riverside erosion and intense weather. Vermont environmental officials say they are trying to help.
“Mother Nature’s always in control, every day,” said Andy Aldrich, who runs Aldrich Tree Farm in Richmond, a Christmas Tree and maple sugaring operation along the Huntington River. He says his close proximity to the river helps nourish his trees but threatens them, too. “It’s a constant battle now. you’re trying to adjust, you adjust and it seems to continually get worse, or more severe.”
Aldrich is talking about a perfect storm of intense weather and river flooding that eroded the land next to his farm.
The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation found that 75% of Vermont’s 3,000 miles of rivers show evidence of major erosion. River program manager Rob Evans says we need to think differently about rivers if we hope to avoid flood disasters like last July. “I never liked the term ‘flood prevention.’ You don’t prevent floods. Floods happen, full stop. It’s avoiding those areas where floods occur if we can,” he said.
Evans says keeping water in the river instead of letting it routinely overflow into floodplains only creates more risk for flooding downstream. He says the solution is to reconnect rivers with their floodplains, mostly by giving them space to chart their course and reach their natural balance.
Aldrich tries to maintain a 50-foot buffer between his trees and the river but says the erosion makes it tough. “It’s hard to keep the buffers. I’ve got places where I don’t even have buffers anymore,” he said.
It takes about eight years for a tree to mature and that investment can be lost in an instant. Aldrich lost 200 trees — and land they grew on — in a Halloween storm five years ago. “All the land and all those trees are in Lake Champlain now,” he said. “A lot of the remaining trees, they’re in what is now a floodplain. It wasn’t floodplain 50 years ago. It’s just filled with junk and silt.”
The state makes active efforts to help, including buying out and removing structures built on rivers or widening river channels. “Floods are only a bad thing when we put ourselves and our investments in harm’s way,” Evans said.
Owners of riverside properties can sell their river channel management rights to the state through the River Corridor Easement Program, an incentive to stay away from the river.