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Slippery rock Gazette
Vermont Verde Antique: Resiliency After the Storm
December 2021|3
ON a late summer weekend in August 2011, Hurricane Irene made landfall for
the ninth time, in Brooklyn, NY. The storm had whipped itself into hurricane force some 2,400 miles southward, first crossing over land in the Virgin Islands, then strik- ing Puerto Rico and the Bahamas before gathering strength and bouncing up the eastern seaboard, making landfall three more times, in North Carolina, New Jersey, and finally Brooklyn. The follow- ing day, the storm veered inland and churned her way northward through the New England coun- tryside, stalling over southern Vermont, dropping nearly one foot of rainfall in a single day.
The steep slopes of Vermont’s Green Mountains funneled the rain into streams and rivers, and the famously bucolic waterways transformed to raging torrents. Many of Vermont’s roadways follow stream valleys, and water rose beyond the stream banks and gushed over the pavement, rip- ping out chunks of tarmac, car- rying off cars and pickups, and dislodging bridges that had stood for over a century.
Almost every stream and river in the state flooded. Six peo- ple were killed, and 500 miles of roadway were damaged. Thirteen towns were left stranded when bridges and roads that served them collapsed, leaving no access to the community.
Among those unlucky towns
was Rochester, home of the Vermont Verde Antique quarry.
Rising waters
“All of Vermont was devas- tated,” recalls Tom Fabbioli, the owner of the quarry. “We were like an island. We lost all of our access to roads.”
Due to the widespread extent of the damage, the power remained out for days. Tom uneasily watched water rising in the bot- tom of the quarry, which couldn’t
be pumped out without elec- tricity. As the water rose, Tom searched frantically for a genera- tor, but one obstacle after another prevented access to backup elec- tricity. Three days after the storm, with the power still out, water stood just ten inches below $250,000 worth of equipment inside the quarry.
“I believe in fate, whatever that means,” Tom says with a laugh. “I’m a positive guy.” After pur- suing numerous options, all he
could do was hope for the best. But luck went his way, and the power was restored in the nick of time. Pumping resumed, and the equipment was saved. “I was very thankful,” says Tom, with relief still clear in his voice ten years after the incident.
Overburden Saves the Day
Tom had purchased the quarry only four years prior to the storm, and shortly after he took the helm, the 2008 recession gripped the economy, cutting the compa- ny’s sales by 75 percent. After the company navigated its way out of the recession, Irene took another swipe at the operation.
But the natural disaster had an upside. Before roads could be rebuilt, stream banks needed to be stabilized and restored. Massive amounts of rock and fill would be needed to replace what had been washed downstream. “We had a pile of waste rock from the 1950s; this huge pile of rock,” says Tom, “and within two months, it was all gone.”
Managing waste rock and the “overburden” of soil and frac- tured rock that sit above the more valuable deposits is a fact of life for every quarry. The material has its uses, but it might not be the most interesting sales pros- pect. In the fall of 2011, that waste rock built an essential life- line that reconnected towns and rebuilt infrastructure.
Even 60 years’ worth of over- burden was not enough to meet the demand for repairs. Tom recalls the Vermont Department of Transportation approached them again. “So, they asked us what other rock do we have?” Tom and his crew hired drillers and blasters to extract more rock, removing layers of chlorite schist that lie above the more valuable serpentine.
The excavation of new stone for roadways was good fortune on many levels. It helped the state recover from storm dam- age, it provided steady sales for the company, and it fostered the development of an entirely new access point for the quarry. In essence, the work set the stage for the coming decades of quarrying.
Please turn to page 25
Left: Mud and debris from flooding. Below: Removing the accumulated overburden.
Karin Kirk
usenaturalstone.com
Diagrams and photos ® Karin Kirk.