STOCKBRIDGE, Vt. – After hundreds of thousands of tons of rock were hauled out and tens of thousands of man-hours were spent, Vermont celebrated the completion of the biggest single engineering challenge following the flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Irene.
Just in time for the new year, and four months after the storm hit, Route 107 between Bethel and Stockbridge was reopened Thursday. The state highway, a major east-west thoroughfare, is the last to reopen after being closed by flooding.
The road’s reopening was marked with a ceremony at a Stockbridge school, where scores of local residents and state officials tossed fluorescent orange baseball caps into the air.
“It will cut our commute time down, it will lessen our trauma of looking at all the damage and the moonscape,” said Stockbridge resident Melissa Thompson, who had to navigate a 70-minute detour to get her son to school and to get to work
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