Want to Transform your Land?

The relationship between the plants that blanket our Valley and the water that flows through it is essential to the health of our rivers and the resilience of our communities. Plants absorb the impact of storms by slowing down rainfall and snowmelt, allowing it to absorb into the groundwater, and by reducing the surface runoff which can cause damaging erosion. Plants absorb carbon, provide shade, and act as habitat for wildlife, mediating the impacts of a changing climate.
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It was humans in the 19th century who cleared the forests from Vermont’s hills and valleys. It can be humans in the 21st century (and beyond!) who care enough to re-forest many of the places still not recovered.

Restore Riparian Areas
 
One way we can help is by restoring the sensitive and critical riparian buffers which run along our streams and rivers. These buffers take all the benefits of plants, multiply them, and concentrate them to create a riparian backbone of clean water, wildlife habitat, and resilient floodplains. 

This fall and winter, Friends is working to find people interested in strengthening and restoring the riparian buffers along their property. Whether this is up in the mountains on the banks of Freeman Brook or along the main stem of the Mad itself, we want to work with you to make it happen.
 
Your property might be eligible for buffer plantings at no cost to you. Friends has a long history of bringing the resources, partners, and community members needed for these projects together - but it all starts with you!

Get in touch with us at stormsmart@friendsofthemadriver.org or visit us online to schedule a site visit. Friends staff can meet with you to provide assistance in identifying native trees and shrubs that will suit your property and determine your property's eligibility for programs to cover the cost of the trees. 

Storm Smart Meets the Wider Winooski

​We're proud to report that the Storm Smart program is finding opportunity to grow beyond the borders of the Mad River Valley in partnership with the Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District (WNCRD) and the Friends of the Winooski River (FWR) and with support of Lake Champlain Basin Program!

As we close out the last days of summer, the Storm Smart program is nearing the end of its third field season. That’s three years of working with people at over one hundred properties across the Valley to find opportunities to slow down, spread out, and sink in water where it lands. The program emerged from the hard work of Valley community members involved in the Ridge to River initiative and has continued to grow and adapt with the feedback each property assessment provides. The Storm Smart program might be run by Friends staff, but at its heart it is a partnership between Friends and the community. The lessons from one property go on to inform the opportunities found on the next. In the same way that small problems can add up, each property that takes steps to ‘spongify’ the landscape adds to the resilience of the whole Valley.

Not unlike other past projects that have found fertile "incubation" ground in the Mad River Valley, the value of the Storm Smart program has not gone unnoticed outside our community. As the Mad River flowed downstream it brought with it the stories of motivated property owners, hands on support, and a growing Storm Smart community. Statewide, people are looking for ways to build flood and climate resilience, protect and expand wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and ensure clean water for future generations. This work takes all of us and the Storm Smart program has become an important piece of that work – in no small way thanks to the people of the Mad River Valley. Since late 2019, Friends has been working behind the scenes with WNRCD and FWR, as part of a Lake Champlain Basin Program Grant, to bring the Storm Smart program to the entire Winooski watershed. The Storm Smart Partnership launched in earnest this August and has funding through the 2021 field season.

Thanks to the Mad River Valley community, but also to the grants and foundations that have helped to grow Storm Smart - especially the Robbins de-Beaumont Foundation, High Meadows Fund, Vermont Watershed Grants, and Lake Champlain Basin Program!

River Science

Damage to the Mad River Valley from flooding is related to topography but also to the way people have historically manipulated the river channel – by straightening, damming and confining it with bridges, roads, villages and homes. River science has become the foundation for understanding where the river might move as it adjusts to equilibrium and anticipating how to avoid damage to infrastructure in its path. FMR worked with the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to produce fluvial geomorphological assessments that show how the river moves across the land, where it can access flood plains to disperse energy, and how wide the river corridor needs to be to allow the river to meander and adjust naturally. In the last two decades, Valley towns have developed flood overlay zoning districts in response to the information from these assessments and from revised FEMA flood plain and risk mapping.

Acknowledging Irene’s damages in August 2011 and implications for the future, FMR and its partners in the Mad River Valley Conservation Partnership, including Mad River Valley Planning District (MRVPD) and Vermont Land Trust, as well as ANR and town historical societies, hosted a symposium called “It’s a Mad River” in November 2011. Together, they shared the context and history of flooding, costs of Irene and stories of resilience. In a show of solidarity, the community volunteered about 15,000 hours to help neighbors clean up property and the river.

In 2013, working closely with FMR and MRVPD, the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development, with federal funding, laid out four specific recommendations for long-term resilience in The Valley: conserve river corridors, protect vulnerable development, plan for future development out of harm’s way and implement stormwater runoff management across the watershed to slow, spread and sink rain and snowmelt.

Better Management of Runoff

In 2015 FMR and MRVPD invited 20 community volunteers to participate at the 2015 Leahy Center Environmental Summit, where the group focused on strengthening The Valley’s resilience to future floods by better managing runoff.
A taskforce formed that later called itself “Ridge to River” and was comprised of
two representatives of the five watershed towns and led by FMR, with grants for its still-on-going work. “Better managing runoff is a way we can actually take our vulnerabilities into our own hands,” Corrie Miller, executive director of FMR, said. “With less water moving more slowly across the landscape before it enters
streams, our community will experience less flood damage.” The taskforce’s multiyear study and plan collected landscape, planning and community
data that highlighted needed protections of soils and forests, mitigations of
impervious surfaces and improved maintenance of transportation arteries like trails, roads and driveways.

FMR developed the Storm Smart program in 2017 to help landowners address some of the challenges identified by the Ridge to River taskforce. Through the Storm Smart program, property owners can get a free site assessment and suite of recommendations to enhance their home, driveway and yard’s ability to absorb storms. By making adjustments, each homeowner or property manager can lessen flood damage to downstream neighbors.

This story was originally published August 20th, 2020 in the Valley Reporter.