River corridor conservation will reduce flood risk and support wildlife habitat
Jean Ballantyne and Jerry Fox added protections to their conserved Wolcott farm to boost flood resilience and improve wildlife habitat.
Spaces where streams and rivers meet
The places where rivers and streams meet up are dynamic and can be dramatic, even when there’s no heavy rain. Jean Ballantyne has witnessed this firsthand.
Her family has owned land in Wolcott for many generations. The parcel is bisected by the Lamoille River and includes the confluence with the Wild Branch, so named by early settlers for its tendency to change course and alter the land around it.
Over the years, attempts have been made to straighten both the rivers and reduce impacts on nearby agricultural land. However, while armoring stream banks can reduce adjacent erosion in the short term, it typically worsens erosion downstream.
A long relationship with the Lamoille River and the Wild Branch
Jean and her family have been watching the rivers for a long time.
“We’ve been here on this land along the Lamoille since 1791, when the farm was first set up,” Jean said. “There must have been a lot of big stones [near the river] because they formed the foundation of the big barn.” The family ran their sheep farm on the land. According to Jean, an 1883 town listing said there were 29 sheep on the farm. In the winter, the family would cut ice from the Lamoille and store it in an ice barn. The confluence of the Lamoille with the Wild Branch was added to the farm in the mid-20th century, when Jean’s grandfather bought neighboring land and added it to the farm.
Jean spent part of her childhood on the land and has seen how dynamic the Lamoille and Wild Branch are here. She remembers cows crossing the river to graze on the southern side, an access that is now gone. “We had a ford across the river; when it was low enough the cows would walk across,” she said. She has seen gravel bars form and grow and shift, and noticed a lot of river movement around the confluence.
“My family and I have watched the erosion happen over decades,” said Jean. “In the last year alone, we’ve lost 30 feet along the Wild Branch. The Lamoille River has also been a very dynamic part of the farm itself. My aunt Ruth Reed told me there once were three barns near the Lamoille river that got washed away in floods by the early 19th century.”
Protecting the confluence of the Lamoille River and the Wild Branch
Jean’s late uncle, John Reed, first conserved the more than 200-acre farm with us in 2006. This fall, Jean and Jerry added protections for clean water and flood safety on nearly 17 acres of wetlands and farmland, including over 2,200 feet of river frontage.
“It just makes sense to mitigate some of the problems that we have along the rivers,” said Jean. “Rivers are rivers and water does its thing.”
The newly protected acreage spans a strip between the northern bank of the Lamoille River and the old railroad (now the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail), with Vermont Route 15 immediately to the north of the railroad. It includes the confluence of the Wild Branch and the Lamoille.
The area is now a corridor within which the Lamoille and Wild Branch can meander freely and spread into their natural floodplains when waters rise. This will minimize flood impacts there as well as downstream, provide critical habitat for aquatic and other species, and filter water that flows into Lake Champlain.
“While all of Vermont’s rivers are dynamic and move across their corridors, river confluences are even more so because of two different systems coming together,” said VLT’s Ecology & Restoration Program Director, Allaire Diamond.
“Where the Lamoille and Wild Branch rivers meet on Jean and Jerry’s land is especially changeable,” Allaire added, “because there’s rock armoring nearby to protect Vermont Route 15 and the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. The new conservation protections will give the rivers space to move, which is critical for watershed resilience.”
In addition, Jean and Jerry will retire several acres from active farm use to reduce human activity near the stream banks and allow forest to establish. A new 50-foot forested buffer along the rivers will bolster watershed health at this important confluence. The property is enrolled in the federal Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which will plant and maintain trees in the buffer to restore forest along the stream banks and connect wildlife habitats.
A partnership effort for healthier watersheds
The project brought together the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, which funded the river corridor conservation, the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, the Town of Wolcott, and VLT. “As an individual, this is a huge undertaking,” Jean said, “but when you are working with different agencies that want to accomplish the same thing, it’s a whole different dynamic. I can see the value of it.”
The project also adds special protections for nearly two acres of open and forested wetland, restricting agricultural and forest management activities in the area. Wetland plants help filter water for phosphorus and nitrogen, keeping the water cleaner. Wetland plants can often withstand floods, allowing the land to absorb more water during spring thaws or heavy storms, and reduce downstream impacts of flooding.
