Transcripts of Fish_Passage_Program

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The National Weather Service in Burlington has issued a flash flood warning for the Northern Washington County in Central Vermont. 

What we are finding within the Natural Resources Agencies is that these flooding events are occurring more often. It's damaging to the resource as well as to the local communities and economies. 

Last August Tropical Storm Irene left a scene of devastation across the entire state of Vermont. And caused damages in the excess of hundreds of millions of dollars. 

I don't think people realize the magnitude of the disaster unless you were standing right next to it because aerial photos and video footage and second hand reports just really didn't do justice. 

Well the day that the flood came through it started hard raining the brook came down through the valley and basically flooded the hatchery and took all our fish rearing ponds. Outside we probably had 80 to 100,000 fish at the time of the flood. Those were the larger more valuable fish. 

Not only were the rivers re-arranged by Mother Nature basically, the whole evolution of the river was fast-forwarded by decades but in the process it took out a lot of infrastructure. 

So you have one culvert that goes out downstream the 2nd culvert will go out carrying all that debris that came from the 1st culvert, that much more bed load and water flowing down to the 3rd culvert, that blows out, the next thing you know you've got just a wall, because everything is coming at the same time now. You've just got a wall of water debris and sediment rushing down at the town that can just take it out completely. 

The town of Rochester was one of the you know towns that sustained significant damage during Irene. You know these small mountain streams just became absolute muddy raging torrents. Taking down trees hillsides soil, gravel, they just clogged all the waterways, culverts, bridges all were next to go. 

There it goes, Oh my God! Tropical storm Irene also provided us with some opportunities. 

The agencies involved in this project include FEMA, through the Public Assistance Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, specifically the National Fish Passage Program, The U.S. Forest Service, the Green Mountain National Forest, the State of Vermont and the White River Partnership. 

The Town of Rochester was able to broker the funds and resources to not only repair its infrastructure but to enhance some of the fish passages in the town. This is the first time in New England where we've tried to tackle the issue of infrastructure road stream crossing issue, post flooding. FEMA's Public Assistance Program showed up on the sites early assessed the damages and wrote Project Worksheets to rebuild the town's infrastructure, to the tune of nearly 3 million dollars. 

For the culverts themselves the town then went and applied to FEMA for an improved project. Using that funds then go to Fish and Wildlife for additional funding to build the fish passages and do the engineering design. 

The U.S. Fish and Wild life Service, National Fish Passage Program the regional office in Massachusetts has a whole slew of stream engineers and so in addition to providing funding to purchase things like this bridge they also provided in-kind services the engineers are actually designing the installation of the bridge. So they're designing the abutments, they did the hydraulic study that's required by the State and FEMA and all of that costs money and again because the town is partnering with us we're able to provide that design, that engineering service at no charge. 

We're up here working off of the Green Mountain National Forest on private lands with the town on town roads as we look to the future the conditions of our streams the conditions of our water temperatures, we need to be able to connect habitat across the watersheds so that fish can move and repopulate areas. If it were to dry up and we had culverts that didn't allow fish to move back up in here we wouldn't see fish in this stream again, for a very long time, if ever until those aquatic organism barriers like culverts were removed. 

There are two important standards that we need to look at when we talk about value to Vermont. First of all fishing alone generates $63 million dollars in economic activity. And we're a fairly small State, that's a lot of money. But equally important to your average Vermonter is the heritage and culture of fishing. 

On the Green Mountain National Forest in 2010 three open bottom arches were installed They survived Tropical Storm Irene water flows and debris. They were able to pass that through the culverts and withstood all the forces that were working against them. If it had been a standard culvert they would have been downstream pretty quickly. 

These are designed by meeting the stream simulation design criteria. These will exceed the 100 year flood event. Our main objective was to provide unobstructed passage for aquatic organisms and terrestrial organisms Mainly up in here are brook trout and so by designing it this size we're able to create a natural stream bed that allow for them to pass easily up through the structure. 

There are 2 things that the improved culvert design will help with. First of all and probably most importantly, if that it is able to pass a lot of water and a lot of of the debris that comes down, there's not the impact on infrastructure so there's not the need to go back in and rearrange a river with big yellow machines, which you have to do when a bridge blows out and the town's disconnected. And the second value is the habit value of it self, which people often lose site of. 

These culverts are designed not only to be able to move organisms throughout the watershed, but in many culverts there's actually habit within the culvert itself. So there's definitely a lot of value to these culverts. 

Well the goal of the Fish and Wildlife Service, in particular the Fish Passage Program, is to work with local communities and FEMA post Irene disaster to be able to build these things that are both fish friendly and that would be resilient to future flooding events. 

From FEMA's perspective the new enhanced stream crossings and fish passages should be built to a level to withstand 100 year floods. So it's going to save FEMA and Fish and Wildlife Service, time actual tax payer dollars, and our effort in coming back and having to replace something if we build it right the first time so we don't to replace it again. 

I think that this partnership between the federal agencies is kind of a win, win for everyone. And its a good way of taking a natural disaster adding a little funds on to what FEMA is bringing to the table and improving it. 

Bringing all the different entities together to try and figure how it is that we can be most effective in our post disaster recovery for all things seems to be a win - win for everyone. And that's the goal here. 

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