Tell Gov Shumlin to Let Vermont's Rivers Heal

This is an urgent appeal for your help. Would you make one phone call?

In the days after Irene struck Vermont, the state responded to the emergency by allowing contractors with excavators into rivers in order to conduct critical repairs to roads other infrastructure. Now, four weeks after Irene, many municipalities have taken advantage of the situation, and excavators remain in many of our rivers, chewing away at river banks and river bottoms in a misguided effort to clean out the rivers. Cleaning out the rivers is not only a disaster for river ecology and fish habitat, it is actually going to make future flooding worse.

The emergency situation prompted by Irene has been stabilized. River science clearly shows that digging sand and gravel out of our streams increases, not decreases, the risk to property in the future. The science is clear but being ignored.

We strongly urge you to call Gov. Shumlin’s office right now at 802-828-3333 and leave a clear message for him that this continued digging in the rivers must end because continuing to deepen and widen river channels will increase the risk of damage to property and public safety. Read more about the science here: http://www.vnrc.org/water/hot-issues/get-the-gravel-out-of-the-river/

Please call the governor’s office today. Urge him to rescind the emergency rules that are allowing unchecked in-stream excavation, and restore the rules that were in place before the storm to protect river health and public safety. 

Thanks for all you do.

The VNRC water program