Waterbury toasts its decade of transformation
August 28, 2021 | By Lisa ScagliottiFor a few hours late Friday afternoon, Waterbury’s lower block of Stowe Street became the town’s living room as traffic was diverted for friends and neighbors to gather to mark an anniversary and celebrate the downtown’s decade of transformation.
There was music, cake and ice cream, dignitaries, and a new public art installation behind a curtain fluttering in the breeze. People cautiously shared hugs given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As they milled about, conversations bounced between admiring the facelift downtown recently received from the $21 million three-year Main Street reconstruction effort and recounting experiences from that fateful August weekend in 2011.
Ten years ago today, Tropical Storm Irene made its mark on Vermont. The powerful, water-laden cyclone was the first named hurricane of the season and it peaked as a Category 3 storm as it barreled up the Atlantic coast. It rained all day and waters across Vermont rose as night fell.
The Winooski River claimed a path several times its usual girth spilling across downtown Waterbury and the low-lying neighborhoods across the river in Duxbury. After many residents spent a harrowing night fleeing their homes and rising water, the rest of the town awoke the next morning to a scene of destruction that would literally take years to reconstruct.
A series of speakers late Friday afternoon recalled that experience agreeing that it will be one that the entire community carries for many years to come.
It would be an understatement, Municipal Manager Bill Shepeluk said, to call 2011 an incredible year. “At the same time it was awful and wonderful,” he said, “flooding waves of great despair over us and then lifting our hopes and spirits near unimaginable heights. Tropical Storm Irene brought fear, destruction, and devastation to our home and to our village.”
But what followed was an outpouring of generosity, compassion and good deeds, the veteran administrator noted. Ultimately it turned into a wave of construction and reconstruction from the nearly $140 million investment by the state of Vermont in its office complex, to projects that provided the town with new, modern town offices and a library, more affordable housing, an improved wastewater treatment plant, more child care capacity. The flood recovery dovetailed with an array of transportation improvements that were already planned for the community, Shepeluk said.
He recounted how when he interviewed for his job in November 1987 then-chair of the select board Ed Steele said Main Street would be rebuilt in 1991. That work actually wrapped up this month. In all, close to $200 million was spent on all of the transformative projects in town in the past decade, “examples of federalism at its best,” Shepeluk said, as state and federal tax dollars factored into every one of them.
In attendance Friday was U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who mingled with the crowd, taking in the tunes from The Barn Band set up on the sidewalk. Vermont’s longest-serving U.S. senator is also the senior member of the Senate, serving as president pro tempore putting him third in line to the presidency following the vice president and speaker of the House. Despite having a contingent of security personnel never more than a pace from his side during the occasion, Leahy embraced his local role rather than his national one and offered remarks that illustrated his longtime connection with and fondness for Waterbury.
“Waterbury is a very, very special place to me,” Leahy said, pointing out that he spent a large part of his childhood here and that his parents were part owners of the Waterbury Record newspaper before he was born. Fast-forward to the day after Irene when he toured Vermont by helicopter with Gov. Peter Shumlin. “I had tears running down my face,” he said, telling of photographing scenes of twisted bridges, washed-away roads, and a farmhouse upside down across a stream from where it originally sat.
A sign thanking volunteers seen on South Main Street for weeks during Irene recovery. Photo by Gordon Miller
Leahy said he used his photos in Washington D.C. to tell the story of Irene’s wrath in Vermont as he pushed for disaster recovery funding for the state. He choked up a bit telling how colleagues in the Senate were quick to lend support when they saw the images that he also circulated at the White House. “President Obama at one time said, don’t you have nice pictures of Vermont?” he recounted.
A decade later, Leahy said an image he will never forget was of a sign he photographed on Main Street in Waterbury. “It said, ‘Thank you volunteers. You continue to give us hope,’” he said.
Leahy acknowledged all of the reconstruction that followed but credited townspeople for seeing the recovery through. “Frankly, it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t kept your spirit, if you hadn't stayed Vermont strong.”
Rebecca Ellis was chair of the select board and one of Waterbury’s two state representatives when Irene struck. She recalled the stunning sight of water receding from Main Street the morning after the Winooski River flooded the village.
In a nod to Shepeluk’s guidance, she recounted how her role in the recovery response began with a call from the town manager. “He suggested that as chair of the select board perhaps I should call a special emergency meeting,” she said with a laugh. “I said, ‘Yes! That’s a great idea!’ And that meeting was probably the first of more than a hundred meetings to follow as we navigated through the difficult recovery.”
The next day Ellis stood in the center of a gathering of dozens of people who had come to lend a hand and she ticked off assignments to begin the cleanup. “Hundreds of people – people from Waterbury, people from other parts of Vermont, people from other states – came to our village to help muck out buildings, tear down drywall, preserve photographs, provide temporary housing, make meals and many other acts of kindness,” Ellis said.
Ellis now works as state director for Vermont Congressman Peter Welch and she shared remarks from him in the program. Also in attendance was Haley Pero from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ staff who offered congratulations to the community on the occasion recalling the response of Vermonters whose efforts to rebuild after Irene were “nothing short of extraordinary.”
For state Rep. Theresa Wood, Irene recovery consumed life for many months as her mother’s home on Randall Street was hit hard and she took on a role with the ReBuild Waterbury project started through Revitalizing Waterbury to help homeowners with reconstruction to return to their homes. It’s still remarkable to think that one event that came and went in the course of one day could change so much for so many.
“Nine years and 364 days ago, we were all just going about our normal routines getting ready for school late-summer vacations, tending gardens, just everyday life,” she said. Even when the rain began, flooding wasn’t on people’s minds. “The river came quickly, leaving a much-changed Waterbury in its wake.”
State Rep. Tom Stevens said he was thankful his village home was spared and recounted tireless contributions by volunteers coupled with state, local and federal officials contributing to the reconstruction. “We remember how hard it was for us to get through it – but we did it,” he said.
The commemoration wrapped up with a ribbon-cutting across Main Street and the unveiling of the “Phoenix Rising” mural on the side of 5 Stowe Street. Whitney Aldrich, owner of Axel’s Gallery and Frame Shop at the same address, spearheaded the mural project with the Waterbury Arts group. The image, she said, was designed for this moment.
“Like the phoenix that rises again and again from the ashes, Waterbury comes back from adversity every time. This community has resilience and heart,” she said. “Phoenix Rising will be a reminder of what we can do together despite the challenge at hand.”
The Barn Band set up across Stowe Street from the presentations concluded by performing their original tune “The Spirit of Vermont,” written about Tropical Storm Irene.