Lyndon, Vermont – known as the “Covered Bridge Capital of the Northeast Kingdom” – faces a dilemma.

Should multimillion-dollar plans to restore one of the historic covered bridges and create a public park at a busy intersection go ahead? Or should the plans be scrapped altogether and the bridge demolished to better control the flooding that has plagued the city over the years?

On July 30, as residents were still reeling from another flood, a contracted firm presented the city’s Hazard Mitigation Committee with a preliminary list of measures to minimize flood damage.

According to the presentation, the most impactful option would be to demolish the iconic Sanborn Covered Bridge and part of the fill on the adjacent property where a park is planned. The news was first reported by the Caledonian-Record.

“My first thought was, ‘That can’t be,'” said Select Committee member Susan Mills during a Select Committee meeting on Aug. 5. “But then I thought, ‘So what’s more important: a covered bridge or people’s homes?'”

Mills and other members of the selection committee agreed that if the bridge must be removed, it must be preserved elsewhere. While preserving homes and businesses is the top priority, she said, “we also have to consider our identity.”

“I don’t even want to imagine that we’re going to be known – I actually noticed this today – for having five convenience stores in a 1.5-mile stretch,” Mills said.

The Caledonia County city of about 5,500 residents has long been prone to flooding. It is located in a valley at the confluence of numerous waterways, including the Passumpsic River, which flows through the city. One area particularly prone to flooding is the busy intersection of Main Street (Route 5) and Routes 122 and 114 on the northern edge of downtown.

Even during minor flooding, the road is often underwater, and the homes of residents in the mobile home park on the east side of the intersection have been evacuated or affected by flooding more than a few times over the past 25 years.

On the west side of the intersection lies the dilapidated Sanborn Covered Bridge, originally built in 1869 and moved to its current location over the Passumpsic in 1960. It runs parallel to Main Street between a vacant lot owned by the city and a former motel site where the landowner plans to build a gas station and convenience store. The bridge — listed on the National Register of Historic Places — is not open to traffic but remains a tourist attraction.

In early 2022, the town of Lyndon purchased the covered bridge. It plans to restore the structure — at a cost of about $2.2 million, according to the Caledonian-Record — and build a community park next to it, funded largely by grants. While the project has not yet been put out to bid, the bridge was removed last Friday to await renovation on land.

In November 2023, SLR Consulting – a sustainability consulting firm hired by the Hazard Mitigation Committee – launched its year-long study to assess the city’s flooding problems and explore alternatives.

At the July 30 flood mitigation presentation, the company outlined 14 possible projects, including replacing inefficient culverts, demolishing bridges, buying up homes, restoring floodplains and raising the Main Street crossing. But the company’s modeling concluded that demolishing the Sanborn Bridge and associated fill would make the biggest difference by unblocking a constricted stretch of river.

According to SLR Consulting, this would lower nearby flood levels by 4 feet for a 10-year flood (10% chance of happening each year, according to the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s classification) and 100 feet for a 500-year flood (0.2% chance of happening each year; Lyndon experienced two 500-year floods in July alone).

In the mobile home park just upstream, demolishing the bridge would lower flood elevations by 0.3 feet for a 10-year flood and 0.6 feet for a 500-year flood, projections showed.

At a planning commission meeting on August 14, members expressed disappointment and skepticism about the preliminary study’s recommendations, according to the Caledonian Record. Commissioners claimed that demolishing the bridge would only benefit a small area and that all options would change flood levels by relatively little.

“There’s no one size fits all,” Planning Commissioner John Carpenter said at the meeting. “You have to be careful not to get to the point where it’s like the old colonel in Vietnam said: ‘It turns out we had to destroy the village to save it.’ How many houses are you going to tear down to protect those houses from flooding?”

At a Hazard Mitigation Committee meeting the following day, members discussed comments and questions they had already received about the flood mitigation recommendations. Some suggested dredging, although the company hired noted that the river bottom in town did not have unusual amounts of sediment or debris buildup. Others considered other options for the covered bridge site and wondered what effect the proposed gas station on the north side of the bridge site would have on flooding (according to meeting documents, the developer has rejected a buyout offer from the conservation district).

According to the minutes, the committee agreed to “focus on measures that will improve the flow of flood water through the city while maintaining vehicular access as much as possible and attempting to protect the human population from danger.”

The Hazard Mitigation Committee plans to meet again this Thursday to conduct a public review of options. The committee will then select two to three proposals that SLR will subject to a cost-benefit analysis and submit in a pre-application for FEMA funding. Each flood mitigation project, which will require further public input and city approval, will likely take three to five years to complete.

Finding a way forward for the covered bridge project will be a challenging but important task, Selectboard Chairman Chris Thompson said during the board’s Aug. 5 meeting.

“We have to try to make it a win-win situation,” he said.