Association of Vermont Conservation Commissions

Since Tropical Storm Irene, replacing undersized and outdated culverts have been a reoccurring conversation. The Friends of the Mad River along with federal, state, private, and municipal partners have recently installed two new culverts in central Vermont. Both these projects were highly collaborative, spanning multiple years. With planning, designing, permitting, and constructing, these projects took hundreds of hours of time and resources. Each culvert, one in Fayston, VT and one in New Warren, VT, were undersized, eroded and damaged by Tropical Storm Irene. These two project locations were chosen due to their 'high-priority' with regard to native trout habitat upstream and flood resilience values.

The Friends of the Mad River, FMR, started identifying problematic culverts within their watershed shortly after Irene hit. FMR and partners worked collaboratively to recognize specific culverts that needed to be reconstructed for aquatic habitat benefits, flood resilience, and road safety. The culvert in Fayston, VT was paritally funded from the America's Great Outdoors Initiative. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contributed to the funding along with technical assistance. The Fayston culvert project was managed by the FMR while the town's road department did the installation. For both culverts, the town of Warren and Fayston, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Vermont Community Foundation, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, Winooski Natural Resources Conservation District and FMR were involved and credited their project's success to their dedicated collaboration.