The recent flooding associated with Tropical Storm Irene severely impacted many river valleys in central and southern Vermont.
In some places, vast tracts of land were underwater, but the damage to infrastructure was greatly reduced because portions of some river corridors, such as areas along the Batten Kill, had a "safety valve" in the open land along the river, as Cynthia Browning, state legislator and director of the Batten Kill Watershed Alliance, puts it.
This safety valve is one of the features that VLT, the Vermont River Conservancy, and the State of Vermont aspire to protect through river corridor easements, a new conservation approach.
