USDA to provide $31.7M flood relief to Vermont farmers – Valley News

Vermont farmers impacted by sweeping floods in 2023 and 2024 will receive more than $30 million in specialized relief funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the office of U.S. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., confirmed Wednesday.

In a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Welch asked for an update on the status of the more than $62 million the state had requested from the USDA.

“We signed Vermont yesterday,” Rollins said, regarding the $31.7 million that was secured through a disaster assistance block grant.

The state received confirmation of the funding Tuesday evening, according to a Welch spokesperson who deferred to the state on when the funds will be made available.

The $31.7 million will go toward flood relief, specifically for farmers who have limited access to Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. The funding will support farmers who have faced infrastructure damage, flood-related losses or market losses.

Wednesday’s announcement came after Tuesday’s word of $4 million in FEMA funds for the Vermont Studio Center, the Vermont Agency of Transportation, and the Washington Electric Cooperative to support flood recovery and restoration.

“As a member of the Agriculture Committee, I worked across the aisle to secure this dedicated funding for small states like Vermont, and am encouraged to hear directly from Secretary Rollins that millions will soon be headed our way,” Welch wrote in a Wednesday statement to VtDigger about the USDA funding.

Anson Tebbetts, Vermont’s secretary of agriculture, food and markets, told VtDigger that the grant will be administered to his agency to “sustain damages” for the severe weather losses in 2023 and 2024, including two significant floods and a hard frost.

Tebbetts added that Gov. Phil Scott helped ensure the funding, along with Welch, in his role as co-chair of the National Governors Association’s Public Health and Disaster Response Task Force.

Douglas Farnham, the state’s chief recovery officer, also welcomed news of the funding. “I think this is an excellent award that we’re very grateful for,” he told VtDigger. “I know that our agency’s been working with the federal agency for months to get this right, and we’re really happy to be moving forward with it.”

Farnham said the next step is for the state’s Office of Disaster Recovery to get authorization from the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Committee to accept the USDA award.

“I think they’ll be excited about it as well, so I don’t see any challenges there, right?” he said. “We just need to make sure they’re aware of it and approve it.”

Farnham confirmed that all parts of the award are designed to help farmers, specifically to address crop losses incurred in 2023.

Back-to-back summer floods in 2023 and 2024 devastated communities across Vermont, swamping towns, destroying homes and businesses, and causing nearly $1 billion in damage to public infrastructure.

For farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s primary relief tool at the time was not grants, but emergency loans that carried interest. Then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s disaster designation for all of Vermont’s 14 counties came nearly two months after the 2023 floods.

A second disaster declaration followed the 2024 floods. But the direct, interest-free aid required action by Congress, which came in the form of a disaster relief package lawmakers passed in December of that year. A state analysis has found Vermont faces more than $350 million in unmet needs from the 2023 storm alone.

Still unresolved is the second half of the $62 million that Vermont had requested from the USDA Rural Development Disaster Assistance Fund, roughly $31 million that Rollins did not confirm on Wednesday. Welch asked whether both pots were “on track for deployment quite soon,” and Rollins committed only to the block grant.

“We don’t have word on the other money ($31 million), which is more focused on wastewater facilities and municipal community facilities like municipally owned buildings,” Farnham said. “I think we’re still trying to figure out what the status of that is.”

Tebbetts added that the state is developing an application for farmers to receive the funds, as well as outreach materials for when it’s finalized.

“There’ll be some time for producers and farmers to apply, and when they apply, we’ll review the applications, and then start sending money to those eligible farmers and producers,” Tebbetts said.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.