Montpelier Youth Conservation Corps

In the 1930s, the US had the Civilian Conservation Corps, which built public works projects around the country, including a dam that this summer saved Montpelier, VT, from even worse flooding than it had. Montpelier also has its own version of the CCC, the Montpelier Youth Conservation Corps.
The MYCC consists of area teenagers who signed up to work on the city’s parks and trails for the local Parks Department. But when the July 10-11 flood hit, what the 16-member crew got was a sudden immersion in disaster relief, spending days cleaning out muddy, waterlogged basements in the flooded downtown, bucket by bucket, and doing whatever else they were called upon to do. When the emergency demands diminished, they were back (as pictured here) to their original jobs for the Parks Department, working to restore what the heavy rains and flooding had damaged in city parks and at the city’s FEAST Farm.