On Tuesday evening, the Woodstock Selectboard heard a report from the town’s economic development director, Abbie Sherman, about the potential for delays in the timeline for the installing a new water main suspended under the Elm Street Bridge and construction of a new well.
Sherman explained that the town was awarded a Northern Border Regional Commission (NBRC) grant in June 2025 for nearly $869,000 to be used to fund a portion of the cost for the Elm Street Bridge water line and replacement of the water supply well. Since this is a federally procured grant, Sherman said usage of the money requires a review of environmental impacts pertaining to this project.
“We hoped to get around this requirement,” Sherman told the board. “We wanted to begin construction as soon as possible, but we found out in December that we did not qualify for this specific exclusion.” Sherman explained the reason is that the well is located in a specific floodplain, and the bridge, while not historic in nature, is a “contributing structure to Woodstock’s Historic District” and thus qualifies for this specific environmental assessment.
The environmental assessment can take anywhere from six to twelve months, Sherman explained. “We have to hire a consultant to complete [this assessment] for us, and there are several steps to this process.”
Sherman said that this project will halt construction plans for both infrastructures. “Talking with engineers and looking at everything, the earliest we can expect construction for the Elm Street Bridge is this fall. The well, on the other hand, is a more complicated problem. That project would not be able to start being planned until the spring [of 2027], because we still must go through the design and permit interface for the well, which is tied to this grant and could not develop until the assessment is complete.”
The biggest concern this NBRC grant raises, according to Sherman, is that a six-to-twelve-month delay could impact the town’s Small System Capacity and Resiliency Program (SCRP) loan from the bond bank — a $100,000 at 0% interest loan awarded for the Elm Street Bridge project. “This loan from the state is meant to fund emergency projects resulting from the flood. The state had hoped we would use it last year and are giving us until the end of 2026 to spend it.”
Sherman said the town has asked for an extension for the SCRP loan but given that the money is allocated for emergency projects, the state’s timeline is firm.
Sherman continued, “The other big concern — maybe the biggest — is that the new well still needs design and planning, which is going to take about six months to complete, and the current well urgently needs to be replaced. The need to replace this well only continues to grow. At some point, it won’t be covered, and we don’t know when that’s going to happen.”
Sherman laid out several options. “The first question we need to answer is: Do we want to continue with the NBRC grant or not?” Sherman asked the board. “If we do choose to continue with this grant, the first path forward would be to simply continue with the laid-out timeline, accept that the environmental assessment could take a number of months, and use the NBRC grant money when we have access to it. The second option is to remove design and permitting of the well from the NBRC grant so we can start working on that now. Hopefully, when we get the notice to move forward from NBRC this fall, we can bid the project out and use this grant funding to finance construction. The third option is to remove the Elm Street Bridge project from the NBRC grant. This project is ready to be bid out; we have completed 95% of the design and are ready to begin construction this spring or summer.” Removing the Elm Street Bridge and design planning of the well from this grant would leave NBRC grant funding for only the construction of the well, nothing else, Sherman added.
Until the board decides on how they want to deal with the NBRC grant requirements, Sherman said, “I cannot move forward until I know which path the board wishes to take.”
The selectboard has added this issue to their next meeting agenda and plan to have a decision for Sherman on Tuesday, Jan. 20.
For more on this, please see our Jan. 15 edition of the Vermont Standard.
